… it is SAD how there are so many people getting duped into so many informational products and Software as a Service, “SaaS”, Platforms as a Service “PaaS”, etc. etc.
How do I know?
Many MANY years ago, I also got duped into a lot of those! LOL!
And so of course, I always feel horrible after realizing, the “uh-oh” … and then the “self-scrutiny” begins.
All these documentations I have been typing up here (on protected blog posts) is for those people who need HELP – those who do searches on “How Tos” get PITCHED into more and more super expensive courses, ON TOP OF the basic costs that ANYONE who wants to have a website pays for.
I got an “emergency type” task.
(Thanks to Ranjan also for helping me out! And to Justin as well, there are still a LOT of great developers who create products that actually HELP. 🙂 )
I am going to be building / installing an in-house mailing list autoresponder. I know it will take a couple days, which means I will give my Mission Van a chance to rest. 🙂
So for those website owners who want their own in-house Autoresponder, (hosted on their own site), I’ll make the documentation for it. (It’s been a couple of years since I did one). But just so you all know that you TOO, can install it on your own website.
Why do you need that?
If you pay an “Autoresponder” SaaS (Software as a Service) membership, let’s say, $20/month, that’s $240/year.
Eversince I realized how your lists and links aren’t yours, when you give the “Software as a Service” all the time and effort building your list, and have put money on Advertising those links or pages, you are just “enriching” the website owner with your paid for traffic and ads.
Also, you do not know how they use whatever links you might have shared on Social Media (what the former SaaS company I paid for for years – they created or converted my old links to their own). Even those app developers – that supposedly provide their apps for free, detoured some of my customers to their own sites, it was infuriating for someone like me who know tech – what about others who are not so tech-savvy?)
Clients wonder why there are so many people advertising these SaaS Companies (autoresponder companies, sales funnel companies, ecommerce sites), I say those people advertising or giving testimonials for those and hyping it up is so that people would CLICK, and when you PAY, they get a commission out of it.
But those affiliates spend their own time (writing copy) and money for ads and traffic.
The issue I have with that is, if someone trusts you with their email address, you, as the website owner, have to make sure that NO OTHER entity will use it for THEIR benefit.
Because when you write your own copy that you send to your email list, and then that EXTERNAL company blasts out a spammy email to your list, (some make mistakes), then YOU will suffer the consequences (for other people’s mistakes).
There are website visitors who ACTUALLY want to get notified when you publish a blog post, or if you are giving some discounts on your e-commerce store. These are the visitors that would like to have to subscribe to your mailing list.
This would be two – fold. I have also received a lot of requests from people to have an autoresponder on CLG, because people want to receive daily bible verses. A lot of churches do that. But I think that those are requested because they know at CLG, NO MONEY is ever asked. Just READ the online bible for free, no tracking. 🙂
So anyway, will do the test here on SH. The money I paid for the software that I can customize and tweak has more than paid for itself, and I can also teach other people to use it on their sites.
while doing it at the same time. 🙂 This is perl / Linux stuff and the customizations of this, I surmise would take longer …..
Stuff worked on and done thus far:
1) Software download and upload
2) Change permission settings
3) Create new DB and DB user, with super admin privileges
4) Create bounce email handler (using pop3)
5) Schedule hourly cron job
Been hitting some errors.. Taking a break …. 🙂 timestamp.
Or maybe I can rant a bit….
I do understand people want to earn money online and that is one hot keyword people always type out.
Then you see all of these websites who promise you the moon, the stars, oxygen and everything else for the bells and whistles.
You want fries with that?
And then you get hypnotized to buy buy buy … pull out your credit card and buy!
Great, if you are paying for something that you were ORIGINALLY looking for.
People are scared of tech, so they pay tech people.
With the amount of money you will spend, you have to make sure that at least what you paid for is indeed YOURS.
You don’t want to be a “forever customer” of something that you can buy once, (because you can just buy it once, and most online marketers want you hooked).
There is such a thing as “affiliate marketing” – the internet thrives because of it.
A product or service is sold, and then to help with marketing, companies create “affiliates” who are “members” and when they sell the product or a service, the affiliate earns a commission.
Pretty clear cut. There are agreements that affiliates sign.
It is when your email gets put in a mailing list, that you did not personally subscribe to. That’s the real annoying part.
So IF a client is paying for an email autoresponder to do their email marketing, IF the tech person “recommending a specific autoresponder SaaS” – the client need to ask the tech person,
“Are you an affiliate of the SaaS that you are recommending?”
This works for other SaaS too.
Those freebie surveys or webforms that even Charitable Organizations use?
They ARE COMPROMISING the privacy of their employees and donors too!
There is one NGO that I have helped with, and one other member, out of ignorance or greed, or both – have decided to put my email address (specifically used for that NGO) on his autoresponder.
Can-Spam Act violation.
So I also advise others, NEVER unsubscribe to a mailing list that you DID NOT PERSONALLY OPT-IN to.
Those have trackers, and it would just be like whack-a-mole.
You unsubscribe from one list, you get put in another mailing list.
Spam is when you DID NOT subscribe to a mailing list, and you get the unsolicited mail.
Mark it as spam, and the automation will take care of it.
One Email client that is useful for that is the open-source “Horde”.
You can create a filter that when you mark it as “Spam”, you can also automatically add the email sender to your “BLOCK LIST”.
When they send you another email, it just goes to your spam folder.
That’s why for me personally, I just use the Signal App. Best way to reach me.
Because when you work on too much automation, and handle a whole lot of testing with – you get fatigued with it.
So the month to month autoresponder SaaS that I used to pay for, I do not do anymore, because if you can have your own in your own website, at least you know that IF ever there’s any issues on your list, it’s just going to be because of a webhosting issue.
I strongly advise others / clients to NOT use external companies to handle your email marketing.
Unless you EXPRESSLY inform your subscribers that you are doing that.
Closed-Loop Opt-in system.
The only way that you should go, if you will be opening your website to subscriptions.
Timestamping …
… it is SAD how there are so many people getting duped into so many informational products and Software as a Service, “SaaS”, Platforms as a Service “PaaS”, etc. etc.
How do I know?
Many MANY years ago, I also got duped into a lot of those! LOL!
And so of course, I always feel horrible after realizing, the “uh-oh” … and then the “self-scrutiny” begins.
All these documentations I have been typing up here (on protected blog posts) is for those people who need HELP – those who do searches on “How Tos” get PITCHED into more and more super expensive courses, ON TOP OF the basic costs that ANYONE who wants to have a website pays for.
I got an “emergency type” task.
(Thanks to Ranjan also for helping me out! And to Justin as well, there are still a LOT of great developers who create products that actually HELP. 🙂 )
I am going to be building / installing an in-house mailing list autoresponder. I know it will take a couple days, which means I will give my Mission Van a chance to rest. 🙂
So for those website owners who want their own in-house Autoresponder, (hosted on their own site), I’ll make the documentation for it. (It’s been a couple of years since I did one). But just so you all know that you TOO, can install it on your own website.
Why do you need that?
If you pay an “Autoresponder” SaaS (Software as a Service) membership, let’s say, $20/month, that’s $240/year.
Eversince I realized how your lists and links aren’t yours, when you give the “Software as a Service” all the time and effort building your list, and have put money on Advertising those links or pages, you are just “enriching” the website owner with your paid for traffic and ads.
Also, you do not know how they use whatever links you might have shared on Social Media (what the former SaaS company I paid for for years – they created or converted my old links to their own). Even those app developers – that supposedly provide their apps for free, detoured some of my customers to their own sites, it was infuriating for someone like me who know tech – what about others who are not so tech-savvy?)
Clients wonder why there are so many people advertising these SaaS Companies (autoresponder companies, sales funnel companies, ecommerce sites), I say those people advertising or giving testimonials for those and hyping it up is so that people would CLICK, and when you PAY, they get a commission out of it.
But those affiliates spend their own time (writing copy) and money for ads and traffic.
The issue I have with that is, if someone trusts you with their email address, you, as the website owner, have to make sure that NO OTHER entity will use it for THEIR benefit.
Because when you write your own copy that you send to your email list, and then that EXTERNAL company blasts out a spammy email to your list, (some make mistakes), then YOU will suffer the consequences (for other people’s mistakes).
There are website visitors who ACTUALLY want to get notified when you publish a blog post, or if you are giving some discounts on your e-commerce store. These are the visitors that would like to have to subscribe to your mailing list.
This would be two – fold. I have also received a lot of requests from people to have an autoresponder on CLG, because people want to receive daily bible verses. A lot of churches do that. But I think that those are requested because they know at CLG, NO MONEY is ever asked. Just READ the online bible for free, no tracking. 🙂
So anyway, will do the test here on SH. The money I paid for the software that I can customize and tweak has more than paid for itself, and I can also teach other people to use it on their sites.
I’ll start the next documentation.
Still working on the
https://www.shallhelp.com/autoresponder-system-documentation/
while doing it at the same time. 🙂 This is perl / Linux stuff and the customizations of this, I surmise would take longer …..
Stuff worked on and done thus far:
1) Software download and upload
2) Change permission settings
3) Create new DB and DB user, with super admin privileges
4) Create bounce email handler (using pop3)
5) Schedule hourly cron job
Been hitting some errors.. Taking a break …. 🙂 timestamp.
Or maybe I can rant a bit….
I do understand people want to earn money online and that is one hot keyword people always type out.
Then you see all of these websites who promise you the moon, the stars, oxygen and everything else for the bells and whistles.
You want fries with that?
And then you get hypnotized to buy buy buy … pull out your credit card and buy!
Great, if you are paying for something that you were ORIGINALLY looking for.
People are scared of tech, so they pay tech people.
With the amount of money you will spend, you have to make sure that at least what you paid for is indeed YOURS.
You don’t want to be a “forever customer” of something that you can buy once, (because you can just buy it once, and most online marketers want you hooked).
There is such a thing as “affiliate marketing” – the internet thrives because of it.
A product or service is sold, and then to help with marketing, companies create “affiliates” who are “members” and when they sell the product or a service, the affiliate earns a commission.
Pretty clear cut. There are agreements that affiliates sign.
It is when your email gets put in a mailing list, that you did not personally subscribe to. That’s the real annoying part.
So IF a client is paying for an email autoresponder to do their email marketing, IF the tech person “recommending a specific autoresponder SaaS” – the client need to ask the tech person,
“Are you an affiliate of the SaaS that you are recommending?”
This works for other SaaS too.
Those freebie surveys or webforms that even Charitable Organizations use?
They ARE COMPROMISING the privacy of their employees and donors too!
There is one NGO that I have helped with, and one other member, out of ignorance or greed, or both – have decided to put my email address (specifically used for that NGO) on his autoresponder.
Can-Spam Act violation.
So I also advise others, NEVER unsubscribe to a mailing list that you DID NOT PERSONALLY OPT-IN to.
Those have trackers, and it would just be like whack-a-mole.
You unsubscribe from one list, you get put in another mailing list.
Spam is when you DID NOT subscribe to a mailing list, and you get the unsolicited mail.
Mark it as spam, and the automation will take care of it.
One Email client that is useful for that is the open-source “Horde”.
You can create a filter that when you mark it as “Spam”, you can also automatically add the email sender to your “BLOCK LIST”.
When they send you another email, it just goes to your spam folder.
That’s why for me personally, I just use the Signal App. Best way to reach me.
Because when you work on too much automation, and handle a whole lot of testing with – you get fatigued with it.
So the month to month autoresponder SaaS that I used to pay for, I do not do anymore, because if you can have your own in your own website, at least you know that IF ever there’s any issues on your list, it’s just going to be because of a webhosting issue.
I strongly advise others / clients to NOT use external companies to handle your email marketing.
Unless you EXPRESSLY inform your subscribers that you are doing that.
Closed-Loop Opt-in system.
The only way that you should go, if you will be opening your website to subscriptions.