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A behind-the-scenes account of life as
an ezine publisher. The true story of how
an astonishing number of challenges were overcome
to re-launch the same 'e-profit news scanning
service' through a new domain, from a new
webhost and with a new level of knowledge
to serve our readers.
The Story: From 1ClickProfitSt.com to eProfitNews.com
Once upon a time (as all good stories start),
1 ClickProfit St ezine had a circulation of
1423. Not huge, but it lived happily with
a website of the same name on 100 Mb of diskspace
at a server used by CyberHostPlus.
Then one dark night the server threw an
almighty tantrum and killed the poor little
list of 1423 names and email addresses.
"Never mind," said I. "My trusty back-ups
will win the day!"
You see, I'd been faithfully clicking on
the "Automatic backup" button every now and
then and downloading .tar (tape archive) files
to my home computer. This reassured me. I
felt secure knowing that I had my backups
ready if ever I needed them.
What I didnt know was that the "Automatic
restore" function on the CPanel system would
fail me at the very time I absolutely needed
it. That was when Marina the friendly lady
at CyberHostPlus told me that no, she didnt
trust the automatic backup system and she
did all of her backups manually.
"Now you tell me!!"
Ah but the techies should be able to restore
the file from their server backups, I thought.
Yes, at US$80 hour! With no guarantee of results!!
While I argued my case with the techies
and waited for them to agree to fix the problem
that *their* server caused, there was this
flash of electricity from an over-heated transformer
-- and my old laptop also died.
Knowing the old girl was on her last legs,
I'd already transferred most (but not all)
of the key files over to a new computer (a
super beast with a 40Gb hard drive and 512Mb
of memory).
But how to extract email addresses from
a .tar file? I managed to convert the files
to text form but they were sooooo long. You
see, each of the backups I'd done had saved
a copy of every email that had ever come to
me through that server. So the text files
were miles long.
Dmitry Nanev to the rescue
I was daunted by the prospect of going through
these long text files manually when a good
friend by the name of Dmitry Nanev of Profit-Position.com
came to the rescue. He had an email address
extractor program! Whacko!!
Now you'd think it would be as simple as
running the latest text file through extractor.
Not so. 1: Some of the backup files were corrupted.
2: All of the backups had saved various viruses
that people had kindly sent me. Plus 3: Various
porn sites had subscribed - they load every
email address they can find into their mailing
programs.
Anyhow Dmitry kindly extracted email addresses
from the various files I sent him. (And no,
he didnt add those names to his list.)
Meanwhile my friendly host Marina was not
able to fix several other server issues I
had. And I got the definite impression that
she too was highly frustrated with the lack
of tech support she was getting as a hosting
reseller.
And time was passing.
Meanwhile the search engines and a few of
my articles posted all over the internet were
continuing to bring a steady flow of traffic
to 1ClickProfitSt.com
(which now is redirected
to the new site at eProfitNews.com). So, as
a temporary measure until my end was sorted
out properly, I signed up at Topica.com and
began gathering the names of new subscribers.
A new web host
After the unhappy experience with Marina's
server company, I decided that I had to move
the list and the website to a new host. So
the time-consuming search process began. Let's
skip the details and go straight to the conclusion.
I signed up with eHostingBiz (but later they
refused to pay me several commissions so they're
not my favourites anymore). There was, as
always, a learning curve.
Settling in took time.
A new domain name... eProfitNews is born
I realised that there would never be a better
or more natural time to make one more much-needed
change. It was time to get a domain name that
meant something. What does 1 ClickProfit St
mean? To some people, nothing. It did hit
the top of most alphabetic lists but that
was all. It didnt seem to mean anything --
and names are supposed to signify meanings.
Especially on the web where the first thing
we know about a website is its name. If the
name doesnt attract clicks, that name is a
liability. Not an asset.
So that launched me into a bit of self-analysis.
"What's my ezine all about, really?"
e is
for electronic, as in e-books.
Profit.
That's straight forward... how to make money.
This ezine is dedicated to helping you do
that.
News. "Do
what you love to do", they say. I realised
that the unique service that I'd been delivering
was a sifting and scanning one. I go through
a mountain of internet marketing news and
ezines in order to send my readers just
the very best bits. The best links. The
best new business opportunities. The most
useful freebies. The news that's most relevant
to home-based business people.
And so it was that the meaningful name "eProfitNews"
was chosen and the domain name registered
through GoDaddy for just $8.95. (Update: Stoco.net
offers cheaper domain registrations, using
a Godaddy clone.)
By now, I had a new host, a new name. All
I needed was someone to install the Optin
Lightning script and we'd be back on the road
again. But who to install it?
One of the many emails I receive led me
to cheapscripts.com who were offering script
installation for $25. So I emailed them and
promptly had a courteous professional response
from their Robert Truesdale. I was wasnt just
satisfied with our negotiations, I was pleased.
So I paid and Robert installed. But when I
tested it, there was a wrinkle. He said it
worked fine from his end, but somehow it didnt
work for me. Anyhow Robert said he would fix
it. I believed him. But shortly after that,
he stopped replying to my emails. All I can
figure is... he died.
That left me *still* needing my mailing
list script installed.
But I didnt want to pay the US$100 fee that
the recommended installers were charging so
I posted a notice on Anthony
Blake's popular internet marketing forum
and received several prompt responses.
Script installer #3: Michael Ambrosio
(Success!)
One reply was from Michael
Ambrosio who had successfully installed
the Optin Lightning script for several others
and would be pleased to help out. Excellent
offer indeed, which I accepted.
(I didnt mention earlier that Marina had
valiantly tried to install the Optin script
on her server. It seemed to do the job okay
but dozens of readers were receiving my ezine
with the "From" address panel indicating that
I was mailing it from *their* server! The
first thing I knew about this was when upset
readers emailed me asking why I was "stealing
their bandwidth". Fortunately the Optin
Lightning subscription management system
sends a "mailing completed" email each time,
which I was able to send to those unhappy
readers to show them that it was in fact mailed
from my host's server. Marina was never able
to fix that problem and to her credit she
refunded the $50 script installation fee.)
Back to Michael. He'd successfully set up
the Optin Lightning script on Unix servers
but eHostingBiz uses a different machine or
a different configuration, so a job that should
have taken an hour or so dragged on for days.
Then weeks. Again we found ourselves waiting
for response from the tech support people.
While we emailed and waited and emailed
again, Mike suggested I move my site to his
servers and he could have it up and running
in one night. "Love to, Mike, but I've just
paid for a year's hosting in advance."
A bit more time passed, then Mike suggested
another solution -- the one we have implemented.
"Why not buy the new domain name eProfitNews.NET
(I checked and it's available) and host it
on my Unix server?"
Well, Mike offered me a deal I couldnt refuse
and to cut an already very long story short,
I am delighted to report that everything is
now working just dandy. And if (when?) a problem
arises, I'm confident that Mike has the skills,
persistence and professionalism to resolve
it.
What a relief!
Meanwhile, a tree fell on my car. But that's
another story entirely...
Continuing to up-skill
So now you know two things about me. I'm
persistent. And I'm in this for the long haul.
Hope you are too.
During all this "time out", I havent ceased
learning. One of the best things I read was
Michael Campbell's new ebook "Clickin' It
Rich".
Are you online to make money?
You do know Michael Campbell, dont you?
He's the Canadian guy who is making $200,000
a year from his home using nothing but affiliate
programs. He has no stock, no deliveries to
worry about, no staff to supervise. He just
drives ready-to-buy traffic to other people's
websites and they pay him handsomely for the
results.
Frankly I learned so much from this ebook
and I highly recommend it to you. I really
do. If what you need is the confidence of
knowing step by step how to create a profitable
affiliate marketing minisite, this ebook is
just what you need. And it's not at all expensive,
$19 from memory. The best $19 I've spent in
a very long time.
Clickin'ItRich gave me the knowledge I needed
(and the inspiration and confidence!) to launch
my own affiliate marketing minisite. And soon
there'll be a second one, then a third, etc.
If you're online to make money, you can
do no better than to download Michael
Campbell's affiliate marketing secrets
and study them very carefully.
Since launching my first Michael Campbell-type
site, I've also bought two ebooks from the
highly-regarded Ken Evoy. "Make
Your Site Sell! 2002" and "Make Your Words
Sell!".
But I'll write about those later. In the
ezine. Talk to you then.
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