The Internet Marketing Spy

If your business could use a boost through sending periodic (or frequent) e-mails to a list of subscribers, then iContact is the service you want to consider. For only $10 per month, iContact will capture names and e-mail addresses and deliver your e-mail to up to 250 subscribers. The goes up in very modest increments for to send out more e-mails.

But the reason I consider this the best service for sending out mass e-mails goes far beyond price. iContact’s user interface is simpler (and more reliable) to use than every other e-mail marketing service I have tried — and I tried them all! Using iContact is similar to using any basic Word or WYSIWYG program making it super-simple to get your html e-mails out quickly and looking the way you want them to.

Other features? iContact allows you to track your e-mails (how many opened, bounced etc), protects you from being accused of spam, schedule messages well ahead of time, post your e-mails to the iContact a community and choose from over 300 templates! Plus if you need to run surveys, you won’t be charged a separate fee for setting them up. Most of the other services I checked into require you to purchase a separate subscription just for your surveys.

To get started with iContact, click here.

If you’re setting up any kind of e-commerce store or otherwise selling classes or similar items on the net, then you’re going to need a way to collect credit card payments. The quickest and easiest way to do that, if you aren’t yet established, is to create a Paypal standard account. The Paypal standard account is free, until someone makes a purchase. Then you are charged at a rate that is slightly higher than their Pro account. The only potential drawback with Paypal standard is that your customers must leave your website to make a payment and sometimes will abandon the sale upon doing so. Also, note that if your potential customer has their credit card linked to their own Paypal account, then the card will be declined for purchasing through your Paypal Standard account. Fortunately, this does not happen with Paypal Pro.

With Paypal Pro (which functions like any other payment processor), you can accept payments on your own site and it doesn’t matter whether or not your customer is using a card that is tied to their own personal Paypal account or not. For the convenience of this service, you are charged $30 per month. However, in order to receive payments this way, you must have a shopping cart to link your site to the payment processor. Most of these shopping carts cost upwards of $30 per month and have an interface that is very difficult to understand. I tried a host of shopping carts when I was in the market for one, most of them I can’t remember the names of.

• 1Shoppingcart was the first one. At $100/month, it was a complete waste of money and incredibly difficult for techie me to figure out.
• I used another one called WAHMcart, which again had a confusing back office and while the Work-at-Home-Mom who owned it was very nice, she was the only customer support. That was $30 or $40/month. Still too expensive.
• Mals-e was a decent free shopping cart. It was fairly easy to use, but had several glitches plus the customer service was in Spain and it was hard to get responses from them.
• The best one of all was e-junkie. E-junkie is a $5 shopping cart that works great. In fact, it is endorsed by both Paypal and Google for it’s ease of use and fantastic customer service. This shopping cart allows you to enter multiple items, apply discounts and coupons easily, sell digital or tangible products and much, much more. At any price it is a winner, but for only $5 you really can’t go wrong!

Streaming audio is a must for certain types of sales sites — especially if you’re selling digital downloads from a squeeze page and want to get your audience’s attention before they click away. The typical streaming audio sites such as Audio Acrobat charge you upwards of $30 per month, but this one released by Novasoft Inc is absolutely free and works just as well as those expensive ones. Simply sign up as an affiliate, then click on ‘links’ in the upper right corner. On the next page you will see the e-book download on the left side, which will explain how to put the code on your website. Don’t worry about getting bombarded with e-mails. I’ve only gotten one follow up e-mail after my initial sign up two years ago. Enjoy!