5 Good Reasons For Using Yahoogroups To Start Your Own Ezine

List servers and list serving software can be a TOTAL NIGHTMARE. Trust me, I know ...

If you are new to Internet Marketing, or just new to the way of web business, and there's all these other things to learn and think about, there are five VERY good reasons to leave commercial list serving software systems alone for now and simply use a Yahoogroup to do all the work for you.

1. EVERYBODY Knows ...

... what a Yahoogroup is, and even if they don't, they'll soon pick it up. By using Yahoogroups, you are tapping into a long, long established institution that is globally known and trusted; this will make it much easier to get people who don't really know you yet to subscribe to your ezine or newsletter.

2. Yahoogroups are very easy.

Even for absolute beginners, Yahoogroups are easy to set up and easy to manage. You don't have to worry about the vagaries of AOL emails, double opt in procedures, anti-spam declarations, unsubscription features or any of it, it's all taken care of for you. They also come with little sign up boxes and buttons, and the admin interface, although not exactly intuitive, can soon be worked out by trial and error.

3. Yahoogroups messages don't get caught in spam filters.

Spam filters are the SCOURGE of ezines and email delivery. When you send your messages via the Yahoogroups delivery system, this is not a problem; as Yahoo is such a mega beast, it has its own exceptions in mostly all spam filters known to mankind and your messages WILL at least reach their intended recipients.

4. Yahoogroups have useful extra features.

You can do a lot with a Yahoogroup if you are willing to spent some time on it. Weblinks, an attractive group page, bookmarks, file downloads and more are all available for the beginner web entrepreneur to optimise and use, easily at that.

5. Yahoogroups are FREE.

Alright, so the group messages carry third party advertising, but that is a very small price to pay for access to a system that can easily and very elegantly serve hundreds of thousands of messages, that is reliable and steady and so well known. Other than that, there are no set up fees, no ongoing charges, and it's there for you whenever you want it.

Once you are ready to do so, you can export your list and put it on your own personal commercial list server systems, complete with technicians who take care of everything behind the scenes - until then, and if you haven't done this before, to simply use Yahoogroups for ezine delivery is a really good way to get started with your ezine and to build up your subscriber base.

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Top 10 Ways To Protect Yourself From Online Identity Theft

Identity theft is becoming a bigger problem as more and more people are making the internet a bigger part of their lives. People who are new to the online medium often fall prey to ‘phishing’ or other internet identity theft schemes. In many cases the ‘phishing party’ uses your credit card to order goods for them selves, in other cases they will apply for credit cards, set up bank accounts, and take advantage of your good credit rating. Correcting these issues involves a lot of time energy and stress, so here are ten tips to help you from becoming a victim of identity theft.

Use a disposable email account. Keep your business or personal email account just for business or personal communication. If you are going to be making purchases online, joining newsgroups, or subscribing to mailing lists and ezines use a disposable email account. There are many online free accounts such as yahoo, hotmail or grail, and most of them can interface with popular email clients like outlook or outlook express. Use one of them for all of your shopping transactions.

Disguise your online identity. If your real name in Mary Smith try to avoid using email accounts with name like msmith@example.com when dealing with people you don’t know and trust. If you were born in 1972 don’t chose msmith1972@example.com as your email account.

Use different level passwords. Use one password for your personal information, use another for your business accounts and a third for your disposable email accounts or mailing lists you sign up for. Don’t use sequential passwords like password1 for personal use password2 for business, and password 3 for disposable accounts.

Use strong passwords. Don’t use your birthdates, year you were married, or your children’s birthdates. Avoid choosing passwords that consist entirely of letters or numbers. Also try to avoid using passwords that are actual words. The best passwords are mnemonic phrases like “my father ate three apples for breakfast”. Take the first letter of each word and convert the number into numbers and you end up with “mfa3a4b”.

Rotate your passwords. You should change your passwords every 6 to 12 months. If you suspect your passwords have been compromised change them as a safety precaution.

Use only one credit card for all of your online purchases. If any of your other credit cards have online transactions you know they are fraudulent. If you see offline purchases for your online credit card you also know they are fraudulent.

Use credit cards instead of debit cards. While many debit cards now offer online purchase protection it’s easier to dispute fraudulent charges than to recover debit card funds that have already been spent.

When you make purchases online make sure your transactions are secure. In the address bar you should see “https” and not “http”. There should also be small lock icon in your browser. If this is your first purchase from the company make sure the issuing company is someone you have heard of like Verisign, or Thawte.

Check a company’s privacy policy. When you make your first transaction make sure your check the privacy policy, look for logos from consumer groups like Trust-E and the better business bureau. Click the logos to make sure they are authentic.

Never open or fill out email requests for you to update you account or credit card settings via email. These are ‘phishing’ scams people use to try and secure your personal information. Many of them are growing increasingly sophisticated and go to great lengths to look exactly like the companies website using their exact logo.

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Unique Features that leading Web Hosts Are Now Offering

Some web hosts are offering more than others for the same price or even for a lower price. There is no denying the fact that as competition increases amongst web hosting services, many are looking for ways and means to stand out and be different from their competitors. The result is that web hosting service standards are constantly on the rise and webmasters are constantly enjoying amazing new features that were previously not there. Let us take a look at a few that some web hosts are now regularly offering to their clients.

There are website hosts that help clients publish and manage their own email newsletters or ezines. This is a powerful marketing tool that helps increase sales. Some hosts go further and also offer an unlimited number of auto responders. This helps a site owner automatically follow up with prospects and thus dramatically increase the chances of making a sale.

We also now have hosting services that help you set up set up your own affiliate program. Affiliate programs are the proven most effective way of getting traffic and profits for webmasters. Pioneered by sites like Amazon.com, this is where you enable other website owners to promote your site and products on their site and in return earn commissions from the sales that result from traffic that they have referred to your site.

Another popular emerging new feature from hosts is the service that helps you protect your download page where you are selling digital products like e-books or software from your site. The number of hackers is on the increase and this is an increasingly vital service for many webmasters.

Some hosting services are also addressing the rapidly increasing menace of junk mail and provide quality filters to protect your email accounts. Some even provide built-in anti-virus software so that email that arrives with viruses, is automatically deleted.

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Skyrocket Website Traffic With "OPT"

by: Jim Edwards

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
=====================================

If you are looking for an immediate increase in your website traffic, and you don't want to shell out a lot of money for pay-per-click search engines, I'll let you in on a secret that has helped me make many sales and build large lists very quickly with zero cash up-front: it's called "OPT" (Other People's Traffic).

Other website operators have the targeted website visitors you need right now - you just have to convince them to funnel some of it your way. Your mission is to find people who can refer you their traffic either for a percentage of the sale, a flat fee, a trade for services, or on a per-click basis.

NOTE: I prefer to pay people a big percentage of the sale - as much as 50% - because it has the lowest risk for me as the merchant. I only pay when a sale is made and, therefore, I make it well worth someone's while to work with me. That's the whole idea behind a successful affiliate program.

The quickest way to find people who can refer you traffic is to take inventory of whom you know. Who operates a site drawing the type of visitors you need?

For example, if you have a website that sells fishing lures, then you want to find ezines, websites, and discussion groups dealing with fishing rods, tackle boxes, fish hooks, fishing trips, fishing supplies, etc.

Get the picture?

Once you have exhausted the list of people you know, go to the search engines and do a search for the keywords that would bring targeted traffic to your site. Make a list of the websites that rank well in those searches and approach those individuals with related, but non-competing sites about a traffic deal.

To continue the above example, that means go to the search engines and do searches for "fishing rods", "fishing trips" and related keywords to your site to find others who already have the traffic you need, but who don't directly compete with you.

Try to work all your agreements on a traffic trade or per-sale basis first so you won't have to pay any cash out of pocket until after a sale is made.

If you don't have any traffic to trade, or they don't want to get paid by the sale only, then you should negotiate a per-click or per-signup deal.

Paying by the click or by the signup means you only pay when a visitor comes to your site or signs up to receive your newsletter or other information. With this structure you only pay for performance and don't waste any money on advertising that doesn't directly result in bringing visitors to your site.

You have 3 main choices for funneling another site's traffic to yours: endorsed mailings, pop-up windows, and link trades.

1. Endorsed Mailings

Endorsed mailings are by far the best way to funnel traffic from another site. A well-written endorsement letter by a website operator who already has a relationship with people who can buy from you is often worth its weight in gold. An effective endorsed mailing can result in traffic, sales, and money in your pocket within just a few hours of sending it.

2. Pop-Up Windows

Focused "pop-up" windows represent the next fastest way to funnel traffic to your site. When used incorrectly, pop-up windows create an annoying distraction for web surfers. Make sure your pop-up windows are relevant to exactly what visitors came to your site for in the first place!

My experiments have shown that a "pop-under" works best. This is where your website pops behind the other person's page. Go to http://www.7dayebook.com for an example. You'll see my other ebook, "eBook Secrets Exposed," pop *under* the 7 Day eBook site.

When the visitor is finished viewing the main page and closes it... your page is right there!

TIP: For maximum sales, make sure that your page is closely related to the page that is referring traffic to you.

3. Link Trades

The next way to funnel traffic from other sites is using "Reciprocal Links" - which is a fancy way of saying trading links with someone. Make sure you negotiate a high profile spot for your link on the other person's site.

Creativity is key when negotiating with other websites to steer some or all of their traffic your way. Show them how sending you traffic will make them money through affiliate commissions, how their readers will appreciate being introduced to new and valuable products (yours), or how you can open a new stream of income for them by paying them a few cents for every unique visitor they refer to you.

They win by making extra money and making their customers happy. You win by attracting traffic to your site that is focused and highly targeted to your offers.

Creating win-win scenarios like these will cause people to jump at the chance to work with you and send you all the "OPT" you can handle.

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