It appears that Mr. Gates prophetic prediction that charging marketers to send email across the Microsoft email networks (MSN and Hotmail) to cut down on Sp*m is about to come true.
According to CIO Today, Microsoft is now employing IronPort Anti-Spam Technology.
IronPort is a paid white-list for people who send mass email (including newsletter publishers, ezine publishers, affiliate managers, mini-course operators, and basically anyone who has a list of opt-in emails).
If you send any type of email where you do a broadcast to everyone on your list, this applies to you.
If you want your email broadcasts to get through their filters, you must pay a hefty fee and post a bond.
Here are some facts about this developing story:
1. They charge by how much email you send a month, but the minimum charge is a:
$375 Application Fee, plus
$500 Annual License Fee, plus
$500 Bond fee.
Thats $1,375.00 just to get in the game.
If you want to see the complete breakdown, go here
2. If you go over the complaint threshold of 1 complaint per month, then they will debit $20 from your bond fee for each complaint to fine you for being naughty.
Now that sounds good on the surface, but heres a scenario to try on for size:
Your competitor / enemy / Net psycho signs up for 50 fr~e email accounts at HotMail and complains about you every month when you send your newsletter.
49 complaints (50 - 1 allowed complaint) times $20 a complaint comes out to $980 in fines.
Now, can you dispute the fines Sure, absolutely!
But how much will you lose in time, energy and effort disputing the allegations (My guess is, a whole lot more than that.)
You can check out all the rules here
Here are the details of the program straight from the horses mouth...
Heres my take on this whole thing (which dropped on me out of the blue today):
First, dont get me wrong... I hate sp~m with a passion!
I spend at least an hour a day fighting it (down from 3 hours a day just a few weeks ago before I shut down about 2 dozen email addresses that got harvested by spambots over the last few years).
With that said, this whole IronPort thing sounds and smells to me like white list extortion.
Why
Heres the basic premise: Pay to get your email through our filters, or else you run the very likely risk of not getting your email through at all.
In fact, heres a *direct quote* from their website :
What happens if I dont bond my email Youre rolling the dice and taking your chances with spam filters, black lists and bulk folders. Some days all of your email may be delivered; other days 30-50% could be blocked.
Kind of reminds you of a cheesy mafia movie on late night TV:
Me: Hey Bugsy, what happens if I dont pay my protection money this month What if I stand up to you and refuse to pay
Bugsy: Well, maybe nothin will happen to you because the Boss aint payin attention when I tell him you decided not to pay. On the other hand, maybe Ill just smack you around a little bit... or maybe-- Ill BREAK YOUR LEG with this baseball bat! Go ahead and not pay us... then well see what happens!
Now, back to my question: Why should I have to pay a huge fee to send email to people who have opted in to my lists
The argument from Microsoft (and soon to be other ISPs) is that the uncontrolled sp~m on the web is costing them a lot of money to deliver email nobody wants to read.
Well, if thats the case, arent email users shelling out cash or credit to pay their ISPs for email services (mine charges me $40 a month for cable), or paying for free services like HotMail or Yahoo Mail through viewing advertising on every page
I was under the impression we were already paying to receive email... and last time I checked, there was no place to put a stamp!
Okay, even if we make it past that and we accept the argument that legitimate emailers should have to pay a fee in order to get on that big whitelist in the sky somewhere... there are still two very important considerations here:
1. First, what about the little guy who starts doing really well
You know, the small newsletter publisher who puts out a great ezine or fr-e report or whatever, and gets a lot of subscribers and then wants to broadcast email to them on a regular basis
Lets say they start making $20,000.00 a year from their ezine... are they now supposed to shell out 6-10% of their earnings in order to get their messages through (And thats if they never get a fine!)
Do they have to be penalized for being successful
Apparently so if this system gains widespread acceptance by all the big ISPs and email service providers!
2. Second, what about the high potential for abuse at the hands of unethical competitors and just plain jerks that populate the Internet!
I know it might seem hard to believe, but there are psychos out there who will sign up for a bunch of free email accounts just so they can make trouble.
(This is not paranoia! I had a user who signed up, definitely opted-in from my website, had the emails routed through a SpamCop address so I got blacklisted by SpamCop until I could get it straightened out. Oh, and guess who owns SpamCop... IronPort, thats who!)
Now, some idiot making waves with 100 email accounts wont put a dent in the pockets of most big players in the email arena... for them itll just be a business expense.
But for the case of the little guy, fighting that potential abuse and those fees could seriously cripple and even kill a fledgling enterprise... and that, in my opinion, is a serious problem.
In my opinion, all this is going to do is cut out the little guy and make it easier for big companies to email the hell out of the rest of us.
A small newsletter publisher will find it cost-prohibitive to pay for the service, and some giant company will just keep pumping the email out because they have the staff and resources to fight the inevitable complaints.
And lets face it, if a big company is paying a $10,000.00 a year licensing fee plus posting a $4,000.00 bond, how aggressive do you think the IronTrust people will really be to get rid of them
In my opinion, not very.
In conclusion: Despite my ranting, I actually think this is a step in the right direction (albeit a wobbly, drunken, and inconvenient step).
Something has to be done to fight spam.
However, at this point, this whole system has (in my opinion) too many unanswered questions, especially for us little guys.
Namely:
To their apparent credit, Yahoo! is also trying to pioneer a solution, but this one doesnt appear (at this point) like it will cost publishers or subscribers any money (and I like the sound of that). http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
But with so much at stake (on both sides), this issue is a far cry from any satisfactory resolution.
Stay tuned for further updates as events warrant...
About The Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links Turn Words Into Traffic reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here>
A lady emailed me yesterday very upset over the fact that her friends Internet Service Provider (ISP) wasnt delivering important email messages.
This lack of delivery caused a real problem for the two of them with ruined plans, missed appointments, and just plain inconvenience.
If you dont use email, this might not sounds like a big deal.
But this problem of non-delivery has dramatically affected the way businesses use email and is now about to reach epidemic proportions for consumers using email.
To put things into perspective, imagine if every time you dialed a friends phone number you had no idea whether it would ring or not.
Now imagine how frustrated you would feel over time if you kept dialing the same number and it never rang for you, but others could get through and your friends phone number never changed.
Thats exactly how youll feel when your personal emails start getting blocked for seemingly no reason.
The problem of legitimate email messages not getting through stems from the uncontrolled and unstoppable onslaught of spam that currently grips the Internet with seemingly no end in sight.
The fact that viruses can now spoof email addresses and make it look like someone sent a virus to thousands of people doesnt help matters either.
In an effort to cut down on spam, ISPs implement a number of counter-measures, including: text filters, spam databases, and IP blocking.
If your email message doesnt get delivered, most of the time it means you inadvertently got caught in an ISPs defense system.
If you ever find your email messages dont get through, or if youd like to head off problems before they occur, the following tips should help.
Encourage all your email contacts to whitelist your email address in their email program.
Just like you can say which email addresses you dont want to get messages from, you can specify a list of email addresses you always want accept.
In Yahoo or Hotmail you can set up your filters to accept email messages from a certain source regardless of the subject line or content of the message.
It takes a little patience to set up, but it pays big dividends by not losing important messages.
With Outlook and Outlook Express, you can set up message rules to always accept messages from certain senders.
If you send messages to people who use AOL, try this technique. Get them to add you to their address book safelist or approved senders.
This helps AOL identify that the message recipient knows you and has a higher likelihood of actually wanting to receive your message.
Email AOL tech support for help on this if you encounter a problem.
If filtering and white listing dont work, then your friend needs to contact their ISP to sort out the problem.
Their ISP can certainly figure out why messages dont get through, but it may take some concerted encouragement to get the ISPs customer service to take the time to investigate the cause.
About The Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links Turn Words Into Traffic reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here>