When I sign up to help make a launch or giveaway successful — in whatever small way that may be — I have a reasonable expectation of only receiving news and updates about that event. Or, at most, notification of a future JV with that same individual.

What I don't expect, nor want, is to be pitched every new product on the market. Maybe joint venture opportunities for them, but even then, don't you think, as a supposed insider, I'd know about those from their creators? Certainly by the time it comes to being a purchaser for the next big thing, those on a JV list are going to know about it already.

Why segment your lists if you're going to send the same damn thing to all of them?! Near as I can tell, the answer is because that way if someone unsubscribes from one, you still have them on five others. (Aweber and several other autoresponders will let you unsubscribe from all at once, but it's a list-owner option that not everyone leaves checked.)

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. My humble plea, to all you "JV" and affiliate list owners, is... Please keep these lists clean, by which I mean on-topic, informative, and respectful, not salesy. We're ostensibly partners, right? (Yeah, I know...)

Unfortunately, in most cases, those "efforts" are hardly deserving of the appellation; a good 80% (there's that Pareto Principle again) are just copy-and-paste emails from the product owner. Of course, I'm not speaking only of this launch; it's standard practice.

Meanwhile, those of us, like myself, who actually take the time to review all the materials and offer honest evaluations in our own words, suffer under the stampede. I sent a single mail yesterday before the frenzy and after viewing all the videos.

The results? Not a single sale. Reminds me of the dating scene as a young(er) adult! That's what I get for building my list from giveaway events (I kid the frugal people on my list as I was similarly so). Anyway, enough of the sour grapes. What did I think?

Well, if you're a beginning marketer, the first 13 videos contain a ton of valuable teachings. And, even if you've heard all his recommendations for building a list of buyers before, the review and implementation details are worthy of careful study. I've watched them through twice as of this writing.

In addition, he's included three advanced videos that are just that — advanced. Finally, everything's reiterated in a fairly dense 144-page, step-by-step PDF.

On the other hand, I once thought the same about autoresponders. After a year of managing it on my own server with phpList, my list had outgrown the local option, and I finally switched to the industry standard, Aweber. My advice as far as mailing lists are concerned is to go with them right from the start. You will lose subscribers on any change of systems.

So, I'm still quite open to either. What are your thoughts and experiences? Please comment below.

Firesale Magic Giveaway

Niche Giveaway

While you can, to some extent, recycle products seen over and over again in these giveaways, you have to be fast to be first, as duplicates are not allowed. However, to do things right, it really is better anyway to make your own product, especially a "viral" PDF, one that people have incentive to pass along, in addition to its presumably good content. One such motivator is to allow them to rebrand the report, so their own links appear therein. This can be accomplished with software like Instant PDF Profits.

The downside of giveaways? You have to promote the damn things, lest you get culled from the ranks! So, here's the obligatory list of those in which I'm participating. If you haven't already signed up to these, please do me a favor and enter through my links then enjoy all the great freebies. Thanks!

Easter JV Giveaway

Great Blogging Giveaway

Daddy's Birthday Giveaway

Firesale Magic Giveaway

Niche Giveaway

Peter Cottontail Easter Giveaway

The thing is, you can get the same powerful import functionality of Opt-In Accelerator or Friend Inviter with a free tool. Indeed, it's what I use. Test it out from the Tell-A-Friend link at the bottom of my "squeeze" page. I'm sure you agree I deserve a little love for this tip.

I'd started with phpList, an open source solution, and was happy with it, despite some tricky problems (as a software engineer, I was able to solve these myself, but it sure was a time sink). I also felt more comfortable knowing I wasn't dependent on the longevity of a company or the stability of their system—I performed regular downloads of my lists as CSV (comma-separated values) files, etc..

So, what changed and why would I now join the gurus in giving the same advice?

1. Domain hosts limit the number of emails you can send in an hour. This is the biggie. Somewhere around the 500 subscriber mark, you realize it's taking way too long to send out a single email. To be safe, I was further throttling it to 150 per hour, so it was several hours before the entire list would get the mail.
2. Lists on multiple domains require extra installations.
3. Sequenced or follow-up emails not easily achieved.
4. Poor deliverability. A good third of the list was not even receiving the mailings, and bounces were not accurately reported. I'd get an email back for a full mailbox or discontinued account and phpList didn't even bat an eye.
5. Intermittent language setting errors.

I must admit my selection of a true autoresponder was almost automatic. I'd heard the question asked so often on forums and conference calls that I went with Aweber, following the overwhelming majority opinion. It helps too that I was already up and running with various combinations of payment processors and product delivery systems, including PayPal, PayLoadz, and now the Rapid Action Profits script. If I hadn't been, I would've given serious consideration to 1ShoppingCart, which includes the whole kit-and-caboodle. Another popular choice is GetResponse.

So, if you've a little time to shop around, there you go. Just remember, you don't want to hit that magic 500 mark and have to ask them all to switch over. It's not pretty. I take solace in the fact that most that didn't respond probably weren't getting the emails anyway, but either way, this is so much easier and really takes the stress off.