In this issue:
1. ISP’s Blocking your email?
2. Internet Marketer’s Belly?
3. The Long Tail is Growing?
Hi Again
This week I wanted to alert to you a potential problem that you may have depending on your ISP. There is also some diet news (yes, you read that right), and an article and videos about the long-tail and why you need to tap into it.
Incidentally, as you should know, I am going to be giving away some software to my newsletter subscribers. That’s not quite ready, but the first fr.eebie should be coming your way very soon.
Let’s get on…
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1. ISPs Blocking your email?
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I got a support ticket from a newsletter reader this week that got me thinking about how widespread a problem this might be.
In the ticket, Linda told me:
"Just a heads up – anyone hosting a website with Godaddy likely will not be receiving email generated by GetResponse, Aweber, WizardResponder, and possibly others. They are being blocked by GoDaddy.
I found this out when my brother was supposed to be receiving the certain same emails as me but he wasn’t. He contacted GoDaddy and they confirmed that some servers were being blocked because of complaints.
For example, he receives email from Martin Avis at his one email address but not the one hosted with GoDaddy.
Autoresponder services seem to be on their way out for Internet Marketers. In future, we’ll probably have to have autoresponder software installed on our own servers. I’m looking at AutoResponderPlus right now. Any comments?"
I know that services like Aweber work hard at maintaining relationships with ISPs to prevent this type of thing from happening.
When you think about it, ISPs should not have the right to do this. Aweber forces people who send a newsletter to use double opt-in.
That means that if you get an email sent to you from Aweber, YOU, and ONLY YOU, authorised that email to be sent. The only way that statement is not true is if someone else is reading and replying to your emails.
So why should complaints get Aweber blocked, after all the complaints are from people who are essentially lying when they call the email spam!
ISPs who do this are depriving their customers of their rights.
Are any of you using Go Daddy hosting and receiving this newsletter at a Go Daddy hosted email address? If so, please leave an "I’m with Go Daddy" comment at the end of this newsletter.
Incidentally, I asked Aweber about this potential problem, and this is what they told me:
"When we send out a message for you, it is sent to the ISP that you are using, in conjunction with the email client you have chosen. Once that message reaches the ISP, it is then in their control to place that message into the inbox, a spam folder, or completely filter that out based on their standards. Any number of words or phrases could have affected the placement of that email that was sent, or it could have been any number of filters that are a part of that email client (user or server enabled).
Since ISPs do not release their full filtering criteria, for
obvious reasons, you will never be able to tell why that or any message is placed into a spam folder.
Different domains, have different filters and it appears that these subscribers’ domain is filtering your message, but that doesn’t mean that other messages won’t be delivered.
I can assure you we are in no way "blocked".
OK, that brings us onto Linda’s second question. Autoresponders installed on your own domains.
DON’T DO IT! You have been warned. These scripts send out emails from your own domain, and from your own email address. All it will take is a couple of spam complaints and you’ll get your domain and hosting closed down by your host. And if you think you wont get spam complaints because you feel your newsletter is interesting and informative? Don’t believe it. I get 1 or 2 spam complaints EVERY TIME I send out a newsletter 
When I told Linda about this, she replied:
"I realize that having an autoresponder on your own server can be hazardous if you’re a spammer but with a double opt-in there’s a record to follow as proof for the IP. That’s my opinion. I’m considering AutoResponder Plus at the moment but want to do more research first."
Well Linda, and anyone else who thinks the same, what did Go Daddy apparently do? Didn’t you tell me they BLOCKED Aweber emails because of a spam complaint, even though Aweber is 100% double opt-in? The fact your mailing list is double opt-in will have no bearing on trigger happy ISPs.
On a slightly different, though possibly related note, I got an email last night from a subscriber who was asking if I was alright (there are some bad forest fires over in the Canary Islands) as he hadn’t received a newsletter since issue #247. Well, firstly, yes, we are all fine here and we haven’t even seen any fires. The bad ones that are being reported on the news are on a different Island – La Palma.
Anyway, back to my point. If the last newsletter they received from me was #247, then its likely someone is filtering out my Aweber email….. Their ISP was Wanadoo but the problem may be closer to home. Anti-virus, anti-spyware, spam blockers, email filters and firewalls can all be causing you problems.
I would suggest that everyone contact their ISP and ask whether double opt-in services like Aweber are blocked from receiving email, and if so, ask them why.
If you find any ISPs that are doing this, please leave a comment at the end of this newsletter.
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2. Internet Marketer’s Belly?
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As an Internet marketer, I spend long hours in front of my computer. That can be up to 18 hours a day, though not every day
Over the years the pounds have crept on. Here is a brief history of my ftiness/activity levels (I guess its similar to many other people my age):
* At school I was actively involved in Sport and very fit.
* At University, I cycled miles and miles every day, and even ran a couple of 9 mile (about 14 Km) charity fun runs.
* When I met my wife, I was in my early 30s and very fit. I was going to the gym several times a week and was at my peak of fitness at around 90Kg (198 lb).
Then it happened….
Around my mid 30s, I started Internet Marketing as a full time job.
That’s when the weight started to pile on.
At my heaviest I was 115 Kg (253 lb), which equates to around 25 Kg excess weight (when you compare it to my fit 30s weight).
That was about two years ago. With a lot of exercise and sensible eating, I got lost 15Kg (33 lb) to scrape below 100Kg for my 42nd Birthday.
With job done, I returned to my sedentary lifestyle, and the weight started to creep back on. I gained another 7 KG (15 lb) in the last year to put me back up to 107Kg.
A couple of weeks ago, I started my exercise again. I also wanted to try to find a diet that allowed me the occasional day off, but most importantly, did not slow my metabolism down.
Everyone knows that when you restrict calorie intake, your metabolism slows, and when you come off the diet, you gain back more than you lost in the first place. I didn’t want that.
I think I found a great diet.
Its called the Every other day diet, and it allows you to go off your diet every other day (though there are some guidelines you need to follow as to when you can eat that chocolate cake). The idea behind the diet is to vary calorie intake from day to day, meaning your body gets fooled in to thinking food isn’t in short supply, and metabolism does not get put on the low burner.
Of course, with any diet, you really have to add exercise, but walking is something most people can do, so that is one form of exercise I do about 3 times a week.
Anyway, the first week has flown by, and it was very easy to follow. There is no calorie counting, and no complicated calculations on portion size etc.
At my first week weigh-in, I had lost 3 Kg (6.6 lb). I am currently back to 104 Kg.
Everyone is already commenting on how much thinner I look. I think that leaves me another 14 Kg to lose. I’ll keep you updated every once in a while as to how my weight loss is going. Its always good to put goals out there so other people know them, because you are then kind of held responsible for succeeding or failing.
Incidentally, this is the diet I am following:
If there was enough call for it, maybe we could setup a weight loss community for Internet Marketers. Shhhh…. Don’t say it too loudly though or someone may steal my idea.
Also, be aware that what we are talking about here is more of a long-term "change of lifestyle" than a short term quick fix. Geting the weight off, as any dieter knows, is easy bit. Keeping it off is what causes the problem.
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3. The Long Tail is Growing?
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Here is an interesting article for you to read. It’s a little old now, but interesting:
Number of Words Per Query are Increasing
If you don’t have the time to read this, let me summarise.
It appears that:
1. The average search at Google is now 4 words in length (up from 3 for the first time ever as of Q4 2007).
2. 25% of Google?s user queries are unique, meaning no other user has used the same query previously.
Since this data is quite old, I did a little searching and found one article which suggests that today, up to 50% of queries are unique. That’s quite an astonishing fact, if true.
There you are paying for keyword research tools, and many of the queries people are typing in will never be found by these keyword diggers.
If the average number of words per query ARE increasing over time, then the numbers of unique queries will increase as well (because of the possible word combinations).
So what does this mean to you?
Well, it means that you should keep on doing exactly what I have been telling you to do for the last few years.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose you want to write a web page on Halloween Pumpkins.
To be found for the phrase Halloween Pumpkin, you would obviously need to have those two words on the page, wouldn’t you?
Also, with 161,000 competing pages (searched with quotes), or looking at it another way – 17,400 pages with that phrase in the title, its quite competitive. You would need to heavily optimize off-page factors as well.
However, with the average search phrase being 4 words, not many people are searching for just "Halloween pumpkins", are they?
So what are they searching for?
Well, keyword research tools will tell me some of the more common phrases people are searching for, but we cannot optimize for all of them, and what about the long tail unique phrases that people are searching for?
The strategy I have been telling you to follow is a themeing strategy. Create content that contains a range of highly related words and phrases.
Here are some theme words and phrases for the main phrase Halloween Pumpkins:
pumpkin how to carve, carve a fancy pumpkin, pumpkin using a pattern, carve great jack o’lanterns, free pumpkin carving patterns, jack o’ lantern, how to carve, carve a pumpkin, pumpkin carving patterns, story of halloween, jack o’ lanterns, pumpkin carving templates, halloween pumpkin carving, pumpkin carving stencils, pumpkin carving tools, pumpkins for halloween, printable pumpkin carving, decorate a pumpkin, pumpkin carving, halloween pumpkin, giant pumpkin, carving patterns, family crafts, pumpkin patch, giant pumpkins, carving templates, monogram templates, halloween crafts, jack o’lanterns, carving essentials, fancy pumpkin, pumpkin, halloween, pumpkins, carving, games, carve, crafts, lantern, design, templates, seed, card, pattern, lanterns, holidays, seeds, family, information, patterns, stencils, videos, costume, creative, decorate, monogram, party, recipes, shapes, traditional, tutorials, carved, culture, decoration, spirits, spooky
If your page on Halloween Pumpkins had all of those words and/or phrases in it, it would be able to rank for a huge number of long-tail phrases, probably even the unique ones that are typed in every day.
Imagine someone typed in:
printable halloween pumpkin monogram template
Now, nobody is going to optimize a page for that term. If someone does search for it, it’ll be once in a blue moon.
However, by themeing your page with the words and phrases mentioned above, all of those words would be on your page, so you could probably rank for that phrase. The same goes with thousands of other long tail phrases typed in every day.
I have recorded a video for you showing you how I found those themes keywords and phrases.
I also recorded a short video with proof that this system does work. I’ll show you some pages of one of my sites, and the number of keyword phrases these themed pages get found for every month.
Video One: Finding Theme Words for the Phrase "Halloween Pumpkin"
Video Two: Proof that themeing works!
If you want to see step by step how I built the site shown in the video, check out my WordPress For Affiliate Sites Course.
If you want to learn more about KRA Pro, the tool I used to create the theme reports for every piece of content I write for my own niche sites, check out:
Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
Have a great week!
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The contents of this newsletter is copyright 2009 Andrew Williams. If you want to republish any of the articles, you must get permission from the author.
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About Andy Williams
Hey Andy
Regarding Godaddy’s email services, I had issues with them about 4 years ago. They began blocking emails from one of my major multi-national clients. They claimed that the email had a virus in it. This particular client controls their networks like Fort Knox, so I had my doubts. When I received a copy of the same email at another email address, there was no virus. I complained and they were not very helpful, so I moved my email services to Google.
I must say, I have been very happy with them. On my main email account, I do have a paid Google Apps account so that I can get support if I need it (support is still not great). So it comes with both the Google excellent spam filters and Google’s Professional Spam Service, POSTINI. I get a daily email summarizing all the SPAM emails that were blocked. At least that way, I am not wading through all the SPAM in my inbox (about 65% of all my email). You get the option to deliver something if it was falsely tagged as spam and whitelist them if you want.
GMail also only allows you to send out a few hundred emails per hour – Not a great host for spammers. So there is less concern about getting lousy neighbors that impact your IP address.
The major thing I appreciate about the service is that I have control of all the email, not Godaddy. Even if it is blocked, I still see it and can choose to keep it blocked or deliver it to my mailbox.
On a sidenote, I have heard some scary stories regarding hosting your own email service on a Godaddy domain. The owner had a few spam complaints and Godaddy shut down ALL the domains they had registered with them. This person’s business evaporated overnight.
Regards
Paul
Thanks for all the info Paul. Certainly not a good advert for GoDaddy. Yes, I have heard some stories too about hosts closing people down because someone falsely cried spam. Its just not safe to host your own newsletter.
I’ve also seen the weight pile on over the years as I’ve continued to sit in front of this infernal machine.
Thanks for sharing (admitting) that you experience the same struggles. You’ve inspired me (and this isn’t the first time) to try to do something about it.
I’d be very unhappy if your newsletter was blocked from reaching my inbox.
Thanks
Andy,
My husband and I have seen the email blocking. Our company’s domain has “marketing” in it and we work with clients locally.
Almost none of them ever get our emails with responses or proposals…even when we tell them to look for them.
We use Mediaserve for our hosting and have always been pleased with their customer service, but we sure would like to know how to fix this mess we’re in. Not sure what to do about our business email except possibly just use a Gmail account. I know it’s not terribly professional, but we don’t know what else to do.
Susan
ISP blocking your email. Some of it could be our new S***ist govt trying to make it easier to track people. It is hard to track someone behind an autoresponder email. But more likely is Godaddy is running their own autoresponder and does not want the competition. Call up support or Bob Parsons office and ask. Or send an email to Bob’s office, leave a comment on his blog about it.
Find a new webhost. I recommend http://www.hostmoster.com and I am not an affiliate. Been with them almost 2 years now and overall service has been good which I can not say about my hosting experience with godaddy.
No wonder that the long tail is growing. Every day millions of new pages are uploaded, the Internet is growing like mad. The more pages are online the harder it is to find what you want. I guess people are just forced to redefine their searches again and again. Maybe in 10 years the average search query is 10 words long
Gunter