Confirmed opt-in as defined by SpamHaus, who is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world:

Known as “COI” in the legitimate bulk email industry, also known as “Confirmed Opt-in”, “Verified Opt-in” or sometimes “Double Opt-in”.

With Closed-Loop Opt-in the Recipient has verifiably confirmed permission for the address to be included on the specific mailing list, by confirming (responding to) the list subscription request verification. This is the standard practice for all responsible Internet mailing lists, it ensures users are properly subscribed, from a working address, and with the address owner’s consent.

In the event of “spam” accusation:

The Bulk Email Sender is fully and legally protected because the reply to the Subscription Confirmation Request received back from the recipient proves that the recipient did in fact opt-in and grant verifiable consent for the mailings.

Source:Spamhaus Website

Numerous myths have circulated regarding confirmed opt-in and its effects. There are many misconceptions out there, and we’d like to help clear those up.

Myth 1: My List Size Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Some addresses entered into your form will not confirm — that much is true. The percentage of addresses that don’t confirm depends on many factors, including the quality of your traffic and how effective your thank-you page, confirmation message and incentive for confirming are.

Percentages aside, there are compelling reasons that having fewer addresses on your list is a good thing.

Sometimes Less is Better

I know. You may be asking, “How can a decreased list size be a good thing?” Well, let’s consider:

5-20% of all web form submissions are undeliverable right off the bat.

This means that of your total list size you can cut that by 5-20% because these email addresses are simply dead. Remember these are not temporary undeliverable but permanent dead addresses.

Now, add on the bogus and malicious sign ups that undoubtedly will happen. For example, someone comes to your website and decides to put in bob@aol.com. Well, bob@aol.com was once a real email address and because you were not using confirmed opt-in you are now classified as an unintentional spammer.

A recent study by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm found that only 68% of users always enter a valid email address.So, nearly a third of respondents knowingly enter bogus email addresses.

- Source

ISPs do not differentiate between unintentional spammers or actual spammers. The potential for you to be blocked or even worse, blacklisted, remains the same.

Myth 2: My Mailing List Is Different! I Don’t Need Confirmed Opt-In.

Let’s be clear, confirmed opt-in is for all businesses, plain and simple. Anyone collecting subscribers and in turn sending email needs to confirm that those people intended to sign up to your mailing list and want to receive your email.

In this age of email regulations and massive volumes of spam email, deliverability can be an issue. Why increase your chances of not getting delivered by putting yourself at risk.

Myth 3: No One Else Uses Confirmed Opt-In. Why Should I?

This is simply not accurate. Our own campaigns here at AWeber use confirmed opt-in for all email marketing activities. When someone signs up for a Test Drive of AWeber, they must confirm.

After setting up an account, if they want to receive our customer training email course, they must confirm. The same goes for our affiliates and their email training. Even when someone subscribes to our blog, they must confirm.

Ok, but AWeber must practice what they preach, who else?

If you want to sign up for the mailing lists of these organizations you will need to first confirm:

CNN	Microsoft
Oprah, CNet	bellagio.com
IRS.gov	weather.com
ign.com	maxim.com
tgifridays.com	olivegarden.com
pbs.org	visitpa.com
Whitehouse.gov

The list goes on and on…

Myth 4: Subscribers In My Market Don’t Know How To Confirm.

The simple solution is to tell them. The first page after someone fills in an opt-in form, commonly called a “thank you page” should tell the visitor exactly what to do next. Often this is done most effectively with a picture showing visitors what the confirmation email will look like.

An excellent example is our test drive sign up video on the thank you page showing visitors what to do.

Honestly, if they can’t click a link then you probably should be marketing your business offline. If someone can find your website online I guarantee they can click a link.

Myth 5: My Sales Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Have you tested this assumption? The answer is always, “No, but I just assume” or “No, my colleague told me it would hurt sales”.

It’s best not to assume anything, but rather to seek out your own answers by testing and observing your own campaigns. We have found from our own testing that while the raw number of email addresses on our list declined when we switched to confirmed opt-in, sales did not.

This means that the people who did confirm were the ones that truly wanted the information that they had to offer and the ones that didn’t were not left to bloat the mailing list.

Grow Your Business Without Risk

Will your results be exactly the same as AWeber or even anyone else? This can only be determined by proper testing and measuring.

Use confirmed opt-in as an opportunity to make sure that your lists are 100% clean and that you know without a doubt that 100% of the people receiving your mail have specifically requested it themselves.

Spend your time and energy building your business with subscribers who want to hear from you rather than dealing with issues created by people who don’t want to hear from you.

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An email auto responder is the software program that takes over as soon as one of your potential customers opts in to receive your newsletter, information or products/services. As the name hints, it will respond automatically, sending the requested information, and whatever else you tell it to. When it comes to making the purchase of an email auto responder, there are quite a few options to choose from. You could even decide not to purchase one but instead use one of the many free autoresponders available on the web.

Some free autoresponders include FreeAutoBot, SendFree, GetResponse and Responders.net. Keep in mind, however, that the free autoresponders don’t offer many necessary features and they often make their money by sending out advertisements with your outgoing emails. These can be a good place to start if you are just starting to build your list but later on you will definitely want to try a more effective service.

There is at least one problem when using free autoresponders. Sure, you can start building your list with a free autoresponder but when it comes time to using a real & professional autoresponder (which everyone does at some point) the process of transfering your list of names and email addresses creates much chaos! In fact, some autoresonders will not let you transfer names and addresses unless they are double optin and they make those list members go through the double optin process once again.

For the reason above, I always suggest that anyone starting an online business make purchasing an autoresponder account with a company like Aweber. In fact, setting up an Aweber account is one of the first things you should do if you are serious about making money online. You can use free hosting to get started, you can use a free blogging service like Blogger.com and you can use Paypal to process your orders……but you must use an autoresponder to start building a list. If you start with Aweber, that list will be with you the rest of your life!

One of the most highly reputable services on the web today is Aweber which offers a free 30 day trial. It’s important to note that Aweber does require the double-opt in before you can send your list programmed emails. This basically means that your leads will opt-in once to whatever form you have on your website, blog, lead caputure page, etc. and then Aweber will send out yet another “permission confirmation” to the the opt-in email address. There are pros and cons to the double opt-in. The pros are that you retain higher quality leads who are definitely interested in what you have to offer and your emails will not be considered spam. The con is that you will lose leads this way because not everyone will re-confirm. Pricing with Aweber starts at $19/month and is based on total number of subscribers you obtain. Aweber also offers an affiliate program so you can make money when you refer others to them.

IContact offers the best starting rate at $9.00 per month, but this only includes 250 subscribers. The price goes up from there. Depending on your viewpoint, an advantage of IContact might be that it doesn’t require you to use the double opt-in feature.

Traffic Wave also offers a 30 day test drive period. This service costs $17.95, which is fixed regardless of how many subscribers you have. The price also includes unlimited autoresponders and click track reporting. You also get unlimited ad trackers, a WYSWYG Editor, a lead generation page, several pre-built email templates and step by step tutorials to get you up and running quickly. Traffic Wave also offers a 10 tier affiliate program – you get paid commissions ten levels deep by promoting their service. Traffic Wave is also a double opt-in service.

These are just some popular choices of the many email auto responders available to you. You can also check out GetResponse (at the paid level), Oprius (another double-opt in service), and StreamSend, all of which offer free trial periods.

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When you’re just starting out in internet marketing, you don’t really think about having a system that will communicate with your leads automatically. You are thinking about how to get your leads and probably even focusing on some one-on-one attention with them all. But as you go on, your list builds and you realize that you can’t keep up with all of them, you then know that choosing one of the many email auto responders is a necessity. Autoresponders are also referred to as “email responder”, “mailbot”, or “autobot”. But they all do basically the same thing. They allow you to obtain and communicate with your potential customers and customers on a regular basis.

Email autoresponders allow you to send information to a large mass of recipients at the pre-scheduled intervals that you decide on. Their common key features allow you to:

1. Get automatic insertion of leads into your data base once the opt-in form has been filled out. The forms that you create can be customized according to the type of information you want from your customers. Keep in mind that the less information you ask from them, the more likely they are to fill out the form. The form graphics themselves can be customized on some autoresponders so you can change the color of the outline or even the text on the SUBMIT button. Once your form is created and placed on your web content, when someone fills it out, they will automatically be placed in the list that you have specified when creating your form. So, if this form is destined for your “business clients”, then, once someone fills out the form, he/she will be automatically be placed in that group of contacts.

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Aweber is the Choice of All Successful Internet Marketers
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2. Automatically deliver information at the times you have programmed. Once you have obtained your lead, they will be connected to the email series that you have programed them to receive. As soon as this person has opted into your form, he/she will automatically receive a Welcome email from you which you have already created. In the case of double opt in email auto responders, you will first send the opt-in a “permission confirmation” email which asks them to verify that they are indeed asking you for information.

3. Record your exchange of communication. Each contact will have a record that indicates the emails that were sent to and from this person.

4. Have the ability to instantly create and send your “blast” messages to the recipients of choice. If something comes up that you feel is important to your subscibers and it is not in the programmed messages, you can still let them all know about it at the same time. This is called a blast email. You can write it once and “blast” it to your whole list.

4. Create many specific lists and organize leads. Autoresponders also can be extremely useful with the administrative functions as they are very organized. You can formulate multiple lists to maintain a record of leads and even organize data according to last message number, country, e-mail, status, and etc. just by clicking a button.

Email auto responders, such as Aweber autoresponders,  are the tools that you can’t afford to not have to succeed in internet marketing.

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I’ve been keeping my eye on some of the new Aweber features over the last 6 months or so and have to say they have done a terrific job of adding features to their autoresponder service. The training is suburb, seems like they’ve been adding video tutorials and webinars on a daily basis!

One of the new features is the form that you set up on your website for collecting names and email addresses. It looks like they have 100’s of new looking forms that are just awesome! If you’re using Aweber as your autoresponder service, check out features in the “web forms” area.

If you think you’re saving money by running your own autoresponder script on your own domain…..you are dead wrong. First I guarantee you are not getting anywhere near the delivery that you would get with Aweber, second when you finally realize that you need a professional autoresponder service you’ll end up losing at least half if not more of your subscribers.

So, quit wasting your time, efforts and money…..get yourself an account at Aweber and check out all the new features….do it today!

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I’ve noticed more and more internet marketers using e-junkie and paypal to process their online digital sales. For a long time I was under the impression that e-junkie was a second rate payment processor and definitely not a world class solution for managing online sales.

Times have changed!

I’m finding more and more internet marketer’s using e-junkie to manage their affiliate programs along with processing their online digital sales. Most people originally started using e-junkie for protecting their digital download locations and a quick and easy way to set up an affiliate program.

Did you know you can start using E-junkie for only $5 a month.

E-junkie has really grown and you can sell physical as well and digital products.

Here’s some of e-junkies features, but you should really go to E-junkie and get detailed specifications and benefits of the below features.

Easy to use, centrally managed service
Digital storage & delivery for files & codes
Supports multiple payment processors
Copy-paste Buy Now and Shopping Cart buttons
Supports variants for tangible products
Shipping and packaging calculator
Sales tax and VAT calculator
Packaged products
Inventory management
Product promotion
Discount codes
Affiliate management
Autoresponder, updates & newsletters
Sales tracking, built in support for Google Analytics
Customization
Download link renewals
Easy integration with 3rd party and custom services
Logs & e-mail notifications
Globalized
Extras

One problem I had with e-junkie was the seemingly lack of autoresponder integration. One of the first things you learn about internet marketing is the importance and need to start building a list of buyers and or prospects. The process typically goes something like this. The buyer clicks on your paypal button and is immediately sent to a product download page where you can give them an option to sign up to your list….most won’t. Or they make payment and are sent to the download page and then behind the scenes their name and email is automatcially added to your list.

This second option is what you can now do with e-junkie! I had no idea we could start building lists with aweber or other autoresponders

Well….I didn’t discover this my self but Jenn Dize who offers Ghostwriting Course and Coaching from Earn1KaDay super forum posted a small video on how this is done and I include a small portion of her post and video below:

I had just gone through the process before launching my Power Ghostwriting course, so thought I’d make a quick video in case anyone here would want to do some list building with the things they are selling on e-junkie. Keep in mind that the people who are auto-added to your list will need to confirm their opt-in, which is a good thing IMO Smile

Tags: paypal, e-junkie, earn1Kaday, aweber, payment processor

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Here’s the Question regarding setting up paypal buttons in Xsitepro

I have some software with resell rights that I want to sell on a website I have already built. I also already have paypal buttons set up for my own personal “website building” services. The problem is… I have to re-contact these people. This will not work if I am selling a software package with several different downloads. Does anyone know how to set up automatic download after a purchase is made through a PayPal button? You know… so I don’t have to manually send the stuff.

I answered and offered a free ebook about paypal below.

First you create a download page with xsitepro. On the download page you have links to the files that will be downloaded….ie, the products that were purchased.

When you make your paypal button…there is an option that will ask where you want the customer to go after making the payment…..you would enter the full url of the page you created in the first paragraph.

I put a paypal book up in this post, it’s free….plus the entire thread has some good conversation paypal buttons and how to download a product.

Something you might want to think about. Instead of sending your customer directly to the download page, you should create a page that has an autoresponder form on it so you can capture their name and email address….. now you can start building a marketing list. Once they fill out their name and email address they would automatically receive an email from you with the link for downloading the product they purchased.

You can use a product like Aweber or Getresponse for an autorepsonder. This is the way the big guys do it

Hope that helped

Scott

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