Services
RSS to Email Services – Followup
Well, my little project for the daily tips from PCMech is being a little delayed by my frustrating search for a good RSS to email service. When I last posted about this whole email thing I’ve been up to, I mentioned that I was going with FeedBlitz. However, I am having second thoughts about that which is why I have not yet uploaded my mailing list over there and started broadcasting. FeedBlitz is a bit of an enigma for me. I like the service and am willing to pay for it, but their interface has got to be one of the worse I have ever seen. And its not a matter of me just wanting eye candy. The interface is actually frustrating. Being logged into the “control panel” looks no different than the actual site. That is except for the fact that NONE of the top menu links work. So, once I perform some action on my account, I have to navigate back to the HOMEPAGE for me to get back to the main area of my account (known as the Dashboard). Then, today, I went to modify the text of the confirmation email and there was no button to save it. I mean, come on guys! After firing off an email to the owner of the company, I cancelled my subscription to them and decided to wait them out.
The deal is that I really want to like FeedBlitz. Their service seems solid and this review I read ranks their email delivery rates at the top. But, their interface is horrible. Unlike most of the other services, these guys actually charge money for their advanced features. But, I am totally willing to pay. Just give me a system I can use. This thing is full of roadblocks that I have to find ways around.
The site that rated the email delivery rates also posted reviews of several RSS to email services, including Squeet, FeedBlitz, Feedburner, and Zookoda. Very good reads.
For now, I am testing Zookodo. I have some concerns about delivery after reading the post above, but I’ll see how it goes. Seriously, smack the Zookodo interface onto FeedBlitz, I would be one very happy man. I’d even send flowers to the president of FeedBlitz if they would do that. My other option, though, is literally to program something in-house. My tips have been sent from my local server for some time anyway…there is no reason why I can’t continue to do that even with the tips themselves being posted to a blog.
My Favorite Web Services
Working on the internet means that I’m online all the time. Or at least it seems that way. The saving grace is that I am online with a purpose, not just wasting time surfing Myspace. Being that I use the internet to serve an end, I am always looking for web-based services that can make my life easier in some way. Never more than in the last year or two, the internet has sprung up with some great web services that really make life easier. And the great thing, too, is that many of them are totally free. Let me share with you the ones that I use:
Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/)
For those operating a website, Google Analytics is a great option for capturing site statistics. The service is derived from Urchin due to Google’s purchase of that service in 2005. And in true Google fashion, the service is completely free. When first launched, Google ran into unexpected demands on this service and they had to severely limit the amount of sign-ups. At this point, though, I think they have things in order and, to my knowledge, you can get an account quite easily. I am using Analytics to track traffic on every one of my sites. For a freebie, the service is amazing, but true stat hounds will quickly see it’s limitations. One of those limitations is that it’s information on search engine keywords is a little limited.
FeedBurner (www.feedburner.com)
Feedburner is a service which allows webmasters to “burn” RSS feeds for their website. Of course, it is pretty easy to have your own RSS feeds independently of Feedburner. Most blog packages and CMS packages all generate RSS feeds. So, why would you want Feedburner? Because Feedburner not only ensures that the feed format is correct, they also offer a variety of add-on services to track readership, promote your feed, email items from your feed to a mailing list, etc. Feedburner is a good all-in-one kind of service for RSS feeds. And, of course, it is free as well.
DNSStuff (www.dnsstuff.com)
This site is a great, free tool for doing things like IP lookups, WHOIS lookups, pings, traceroutes, etc. Getting a strange e-commerce transaction and want to see if the guy is in some foreign country? Run an IP check on his IP address and find out their geographic location. Want to find out who owns a domain? Run a WHOIS report. This is a good site to bookmark for those times you need it. It looks like they just recently launched a membership service, however they still have free tools.
iWebTool (www.iwebtool.com)
These guys have a variety of web-based tools at your disposal, almost all for the webmaster. Things like domain checkups, SEO diagnostics, etc.
Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com)
Basecamp is a web-based project manager by 37 Signals. This is a great service, too, which emphasizes easy of use. As a developer, I admire the way this company approaches the field of application decvelopment. They focus on simplicity and the user experience, and that is the key to their success. But, if you need to coordinate with other people on your web projects, Basecamp is a nice option for you. There are some short-comings to the system, in my opinion. In some ways, its actually a little too simple. But, powerful nonetheless. I should note that I no longer use Basecamp mainly because of those shortcomings, but I still very much admire this service.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets (docs.google.com)
This is a free online word processor and spreadsheet app by Google. There are better ones out there, such as ThinkFree, but there is a certain stability to Google. For those in business, the great feature of this is the ability to easily share and/or collaborate on documents. So, it can be used for team collaboration. It can also be used to quickly write documents when you don’t have access to an office suite. There are easy options to save as standard documents (such as Word).
These are some of my faves, but I know full well that there are a bunch of great web services out there that I don’t use or didn’t mention. So, feel free to comment and let everybody know about your picks.
Another Good PHP Email Application
As a quick followup to the last post, I have since come across another PHP-powered software package for running an email list locally from my server. That package is oemPro, from octeth Technologies. It runs a little more expensive than 1-2-All ($268 versus $189). It seems to have all the capability I would need, however. I have tried the 1-2-All Trial locally and it is robust. The database synch (ability to connect directly with a separate database to import email addresses) is included with oemPro and not with 1-2-All (it is available as an add-on), however the add-on capability for 1-2-All allows running those synchs on a cron schedule, which is certainly convenient. Interface is important to me with good software, and both packages have a nice user interface. I like the large icons in oemPro, so interface-wise, oemPro comes across as a little more user-friendly. Capability-wise, it is on par. I like the fact that it has survey/poll add-ons available (1-2-All) does not, however 1-2-All has plug-ins (such as the EmailCheck plug-in to evaluate spam scores) that oemPro does not.
Overall, the price difference between the two is enough that you could grab 1-2-All and one of their plug-ins for about the same amount as you would pay for oemPro itself. But, I thought I would mention oemPro. It looks to be quite good. They don’t offer a trial version, unfortunately.
As I was about to post this, I got a phone call from ActiveCampaign (the folks behind 1-2-All) just asking if I had any questions on the trial, etc. Impressive. Aweber did the same thing.
Search For Email Mailing List Solution
I have spent several hours last night and this morning investigating email list services. Since one of the founding philosophies of this site is that you can learn by what I am doing, I thought I would post where this search stands. My situation is this: I have a large mailing list over on PCMech. The tip of the day is around 31,000 subscribers and the newsletter is higher than that. And, of course, I have the newsletter here at WebbyOnline. These email lists have been managed in house. I want to move away from the in-house system to a more dependable system. Either a third-party software solution to run locally on my server, or a hosted solution. I have not made up my mind on what to do yet, however here’s where I’m at.
The major software solution I am looking at is 1-2-All, from Active Campaign. They have been advertising in the Sitepoint forums for a little while now and they offer a free trial, so I checked it out. Good, solid software. I have not yet tried it in a production setting (sending any emails), but it looks to be pretty robust. It also has autoresponder capability, which is something I am looking for. The base license install is $189, and they offer some valuable add-ons for additional coin.
There are a lot of hosted solutions out there. I am looking at two types: (1) your standard email list service, and (2) the RSS feed-to-email services. I have two weekly newsletters (currently) and am seriously considering siwtching our Tip of the Day over to a blog format. So, the RSS-to-email services would be a great way to switch to a blog while still offering the daily tip in the email inbox. The hosted solutions I looked at so far are:
- Aweber – Comes in highly recommended. They offer auto-responder service and solid delivery rate. They do not offer a free trial, so I had to actually charge my card to get an account for trial purposes (however, they offer a no-hassle refund within 30 days). The interface is not very polished and is a little hard to figure out for me, but I can tell this is a solid service. It’s also very affordable. The real kick in the groin here, though, is that they are very limiting when it comes to importing an existing list. They limit the import to 2,000 addresses per day. After 5 days, if the imports go well, they will allow you to import the rest without restriction. However, during those imports, if they find a bunch of undeliverables, they will reject the whole list. Additionally, they will send an email to every subscriber, forcing them to re-confirm in order to stay on your mailing list. So, essentially, this is like handing your whole list over to Aweber and then having them likely throw away half of it. Even if your list is pretty clean, people are people and you’re very likely to have alot of subscribers fail to re-confirm themselves for one reason or the other.
- Constant Contact. Another solid service. Very nice interface, and a free 60-day trial. However, it’s coming in as pretty expensive for a list of the size I have. I am in the “call for prices” range, but judging by the published rates, it’ll probably run me $250-$300 monthly to operate this list. Considering I’m paying nothing now (its all in-house), that’s a large chunk to chew.
- IntelliContact
- GetResponse
- Campaign Monitor – Expensive, in my view. $5 + 1 cent per subscriber. That means every tip I send would cost me over $300. I don’t think so, scooter.
- NetAtlantic – Uses Lyris software. Solid service. I actually used to use these guys and, in retrospect, probably should have stayed. In looking at their rates now, they have apparently gone up for a list my size. But, they do offer an ODBC connection option in their Enterprise accounts for synching with an external database. That would make the job easier, for sure.
- Vertical Response
Now, the RSS-to-email options are a LOT cheaper, many even free. Since my feeds are all managed using Feedburner, there are a few services which Feedburner offers right in their own interface.
- Feedburner. That’s right, they have their own service. Unfortunately, the only way to get a list imported is to email it to them and they do it themselves. Not very helpful.
- FeedBlitz – Looks to be very robust and they do offer list importing. I exchanged emails with Phil over there and they seem to be friendly and would be able to handle my tip list. They just apparently imported a list of 100K addresses for another account. They offer some paid services which I would probably use, however they are cheap compared to the options above.
- Zookoda – Nice, Web 2.0-ish looking company offering a free service. Their system looks a little simplistic, but it would probably work.
- Aweber – already mentioned, but they actually also offer an RSS-to-email option in their accounts.
So, I will post a followup when I finalize on this. As of now, I am leaning toward the tip blog with FeedBlitz, then perhaps either Aweber or the in-house hosted 1-2-All software for the weekly newsletters and auto-responder. Aweber is attractive, however having to re-confirm every subscriber again is a major drag I may not be able to get over.
Paid Software – Given Away
I was doing a little of my usual net surfing tonight while I watch the season premiere of 24 and ran across a resource that I want to pass on. It doesn’t have a whole lot to do with internet business, however anybody with a computer might find this interesting. The site is Giveaway of the Day.
Presented as “a win-win solution for both publishers and clients”, the site gives away a new software title every day. The software they are giving away is typically pay-for software, but for the 24 hours that the software is featured on the site, you can get it for free. For most people, this simply provides a way to get free software. For the developers of that software, it provides a unique way to get the word out on your software and get a lot of promotion. The company behind the site says they do pay developers for the free licenses. And, after the day is up, the software remains up on the site as advertising.
This is a very interesting business model. Tonight, I tried out the True Launch Bar from the site. The way it works is you download from their site and un-zip the file. With the installation routine, you will get a file called Activation.exe. You run that file first, which basically sets up your license for you. You then install the software. Very easy.
AdBrite Launches Video Ad Service
For those who work with a lot of online video (like I do), you may be interested in a new service which AdBrite has just soft-launched. The service is called InVideo. They’ve created an embeddable media player (just like Youtube) which allows you to have your own videos played on your website, but allows AdBrite to embed advertising into the video. And, we’re not talking about a bumper video (which plays before the main video). The way it works is a split-screen ad, where a small-form ad shows up at the top of the player for a finite amount of time and then disappears.
And like Youtube, the videos are portable and shareable. So, essentially, you would upload your video in FLV format and the AdBrite player would wrap around it. If a user shares the video, the link goes back to your own site (rather than Youtube).
This is a cool service and I may very well use it myself. Being that it is in private beta testing, you can’t just sign up and go. You get in by private invitation. However, you can fill in their form telling them you’re interested. Techcrunch is pumped about this product, however Mockriot isn’t so enthusiastic, saying it could lead to bandwidth theft and content theft. I guess it could, but I’d be surprised if AdBrite doesn’t build in some kind of safeguard in that regard. Perhaps it’s a little early to be judging this as “flawed”.
Accessing Your Remote PC, GotoMyPC and LogMeIn
Many of us reading this newsletter have more than one PC, often in different locations. In my case, I am about to set up an outside office, but I am leaving a PC in my home office as well. I have been putting some thought into how to go about keeping things synched between the two computers. My goal is to be able to work at the office just as I work at my house, and vice versa.
I could always go the old-school route. Some people use removable storage to bring files back and forth. If you use CD-RW, DVD-RW or (god forbid) floppies, then shame on you. This is an incredibly out-dated and inefficient way to work across two PCs. If you, like me, have a hard drive enclosure, you can pop one of your old hard drives in there, plug it into a USB port and move files around that way. In my case, I popped an old 40 gig hard drive into my drive enclosure and I can easily plug it into any of my PCs. It is an easy way to move files around. But, again, it requires work. Another way is to use FTP. Since many of us are webmasters with access to servers, we can use our server as a go-between. You simply upload files to your server and download them again when you get to your other computer. Technically minded people can even write a series of batch scripts to run automatically and synch files overnight via FTP while you snooze. Doing it this way might take some of the mental component out of it, but using a go-between medium is still a bit of a chore because you need to worry about potentially overwriting a file. Click Here To Continue Reading »
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
