Last week I was visiting my Mom back in my home country
of Costa Rica. I now have a new level of respect for folks
who are successfully marketing from countries outside
of the “main stream”.
I sent out an email to you all (my email list subscribers)
and I received a 0.12% spam complaints according to Aweber.
Meaning a few folks hit the spam button vs. just hitting
the unsubscribe button.
That happens from time to time but never that high. So I
was thinking why and here is what I came up with and what
I’m doing to avoid it.
1. Costa Rica IP Address – This was a pain when I was trying
to access my accounts, get an affiliate link, etc.
Yes, making money online can be tough but if you’re in a
country other than the USA, UK, Canada, etc., it’s even
tougher! I have IM friends in Singapore, Pakistan, and India
and my hats go off to them.
If you’re in a country like the USA, you do have an advantage
so get to it.
If someone can make it in Pakistan where
they can’t even sign up for PayPal, your roadblocks in the
USA or Canada are nothing compared to the hoops they have
to go through.
2. iPad follies. I love my iPad. Maybe a little too much.
I was too lazy to whip out my laptop so I composed my email
using my iPad… well the Aweber HTML editor thingy didn’t
work very well generating a butt-ugly, spammy-looking email.
I did test it and I decided, well, it’s not too bad. It was.
It looked horrible.
It looked spammy so people hit the spam button. I should have either just used my laptop vs. iPad or just used the text only version inside of Aweber
when using the iPad.
3. URL shortners. Ah, when will I learn? Practice what you
preach should also apply here.
I didn’t heed my own advice AGAINST using URL shortners, you know, like Tiny URL.
They are conversion killers. And worse, a lot of them now
put up warning signs that you might be a spammer or a
scammer (seriously).
I was in a rush and I wanted to get my email out and let
my subscribers know about Rosalind Gardner’s special offer for
the Super Affiliate Handbook (a classic).
So I just used Google’s URL shortner service: http://goo.gl/
I do use it for but big mistake using it for
shortening long affiliate links.
Once my email went out and people clicked on it, not only
did they see a warning page, worse, Google told them the
link looked dangerous, scammy, so they disabled it!
Ouch. I suspect it was the Costa Rica IP address and the fact
the affiliate link was to an eBook sold on ClickBank that
was the double whammy for them to not just disable it
but to warn folks that I might be a scammer.
Here is a screenshot of the”warning” they got:
Ouch, again.
Avoid using URL shortners like the plague! Only on Twitter
and still be careful.
So there you have it. My little adventure trying to do
send a promotional email from Costa Rica.
I’m off to lick my wounds and recover.
