Review of MailChimp

One of the topics that has arisen in TrafficLeads2Income is that of Free Autoresponder services… You can read what I posted there at RobsNetworkers Forum .

MailChimp is a Autoresponder Service that offers a Free Account giving you a 500 Subscriber Limit and a 3000 Email sends per Month,

So if you were to get to your 500 Subscribers you could email each of them 6 times per month making this a program worth further investigation.

Once you go over the 500 Subscriber limit – its $15 per month up to 1000 subscribers and then it starts getting more pricier than the Awebers and GetResponse Services that cost around $18 USD per month for up to 10,000 Subscribers.

Compared to other services like GVO’s EResponder which is included in your Titanium Hosting package, giving you **unlimited hosting at $44.95 USD per month with a limit of 20,000 Subscribers and **unlimited campaigns, MailChimp becomes far too expensive and GVO becomes even more attractive.

Changing Services with an existing List.

So for a service to get started out with, it might be an option. But what if you wanted to change Services once you get over your 500 or 1000 subscribers?

You could export your subscribers into another Autoresponder Service? That can be a painful experience. The worst case being the new service requiring that each imported subscriber be sent a new “Confirmation” Email where they’ll have to open it and click on the link to join the new list. This is a process the new Autoresponder Service will provide once you import your list.

You may loose a few subscribers who don’t get to see your email during the changeover, but you will be keeping those that actually read your emails. So the damage may not be that great. You could consider it as a process of cleaning your list.

Another, wiser option would be to email your list from your old Autoresponder service, advising them of the upcoming change and over a few emails , ask them to join your new list. If you have a responsive list, you should get a much higher subscription rate.

The Pros

Apart from the aspect of the high cost of having a 1000+ list, the sites user interface is one of the best I have seen.

There is help everywhere and for someone starting out, this would be of great value in learning the in’s and out’s of an Autoresponder.

It might be so attractive and easy to use that you may even stay with them and pay the extra.

They have an extensive list of plugins for the popular website scripts like WordPress, Joomla, and some Ecommerce Scripts. Making it very “plug in and play” without the need of having to write any HTML or PHP. But then so do Aweber and GetResponse.

It’s really a matter of what you are comfortable using.

There are, of course, many other Service that offer a Free Entry level subscription. When I find those that I consider worthy of note, I’ll talk about them.

You can of course add those that you use in the comments. So please feel free to tell us about the ones you are using and how you rate them.

Note: **Unliimited is used to mean – Alot.. In the case of the webhosting that’s 75Gig of diskspace at the time of writing. Which is Alot!

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This is a story about WordPress 3, that had me head scratching till a little after 3 [am that is, EST Time...] ( sing that to the theme of the Beverly Hillbillies, it’s fun, I promise!) I’ll be hearing banjos playing all night now!

Ok so what inspired that moment of madness, well I’ve been pluging away writing WP Plugins like a mad thing and going great guns till I decided I had best stick to the rules and use the $wpdb->prepare Statement. After all it takes care of all the escaping and htmlspecialchars ( I think ) which keeps my code nice and clean and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling my SQL is a little more protected. ( You do , do those things don’t you?) MySQL Injections are much nastier than the real kind of injections.

Traps for Old Players.

So the database stuff was working like a bought one, using a looong sprintf affair using ( the field names have been changed and reduced in number to protect the innocent!)

$sql = sprintf(“INSERT INTO %s (id,name,event) values (%d,’%s’,'%s’) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE name = %s, event =%s”,

$table_name,

$row['id'],$row['name'],$row['event'],

$row['name'],$row['event']);

The ID is defined as UNIQUE so if I try to insert the same ID, it will perform an Update Instead. A really nice feature , Well I think it is! Don’t you just love Databases?

And if you squirt that into a $wpdb->query($sql); all is happy.

But replace the sprintf with a $wpdb->prepare and……

What the prepare does is it wraps the strings in single quotes as defined by the presence of the %s (string place holder) , which is good ( so you can remove them or leave them in – the wp code figures that out.) But it also wraps the table_name in single quotes. Now apparently mysql gags on this Well it chokes really badly. Instead, you can just toss in the tables variable name without any fuss as the function does all the magic ( or is it because I’m using double quotes…. I’m not sure – it’s late!)

WordPress simply smiles if you have dodgey SQL statements.

So the quotes around the table name was the first thing… Now WordPress ( by default) simply smiles at you if your SQL has errors and shows you nothing. You only know there’s a problem  on inspecting your tables only to see that things aint quite right. So I found a function that lets you “Turn on” Error Reporting for just these occassions.

Actually I had resorted to using the GUI Mysql Browser tool ( which I love ) and figured out the ‘table_name’ as being the issue.

$wpdb->print_errors() cause a slight moment of panic.

The function is $wpdb->print_errors() which you can use after a call to $wpdb->show_errors(). This will print any errors generated on the last mysql call. Basically it’s a wrapper for the standard mysql_error() function. And it worked… it was whinging ( in it’s own uninformative way ) that something was wrong. That was the apostrophes around the table_name being the culprit.

So I was happy and I ran my plugin again to update it’s database only to be greeted by a bunch ( cause I was looping ) of the following message. WordPress database error: [] in the plugin page accompanied by the SQL statement it was using. Which at about 3am has you wondering “what the….”. Anyway I dove into the file – wp-db.php in the includes folder and saw what was going on. Actually nothing…. This $wpdb->print_errors() prints a response if there is an error or not. At first the word BUG lept into my sleepy mind but on further thought it’s just showing what’s going on, Error or Not.

So it will display the “Error” with the SQL statement.
The WordPress database error: [] is a Non Error cause it’s lil square brackets are empty.

And it’s not a WordPress 3.0 thing, it’s been there a while, it’s just I’ve never used it before.

Whats the Plugin I’m writing?

Well that’s for another post -plus it’s got a bit further along than 3am so I had best be going.

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Hold the Press, I’ve gone and made a Squeeze Page!

I’ve been attending the majority of Conferences Rob Gehring holds on a weekly basis come rain, hail or shine , that’s Rob being consistent as he’s a stickler for giving support.

And I also haunt the Skype Group and in both of those I keep seeing people talking about and showing off their newly made Lead Capture Pages which is a part, and an important part of the system.

So it’s a little embarrasing when I’ve been a part of the development team and not to have mine up and running.

So I made a Plan. As I’m already a happy camper at GVO, I decided to try out their new Autoresponder that is called the “EResponder”. I’ve not been a big fan of the previous incarnation of their supplied Autoresponder and I actually went as far as going for a Third Party Option at GetResponse.

Anyway, it seems they have got this new Autoresponder RIGHT! I actually quite like it. It gives me easy to view Stats… Something Getresponse is lacking in. Let’s me easily create campaigns.  Has Video tutorials to assist in the setup. But what I really like is the default “Thankyou” Page.

It’s professional, to the point and you can choose between Female and Male speakers as a little voice that gives you an audio version of what’s going on. A very very nice touch in my opinion.

It also has the ability to send back the posted information to a thankyou page of your choosing so you can “personalize” it… Something I like a whole bunch and something I can do some magic with my TrafficLeads2Income Lead Capture pages. But that’s for another post.

Definitely something we hadn’t realized when we were developing this system…

Anyway, getting back to my new Lead Capture Page… I actually made a few of them but this is the one I’m now sending out among the Few Traffic Exchanges I’ve been using for years…

My New TrafficLeads2Income – Lead Capture Page

My New TrafficLeads2Income – Lead Capture Page is… http://www.trafficleads2income.com/members/lcp.php?rid=6

I’ve customized it quite a lot from the default page you start off with.  I also took an unusual step in throwing in a note and a disclaimers on the bottom.

On Traffic Exchanges you see so many of these sort of pages promising the earth I thought I’d make it little “in your face” and personal.

After all, if you are going to be inviting people into programs, you want to be brutally honest with them and get things straight from the start as I’ll be working with them. You can’t build a business behind a mask and lies ( or lack of the truth ).

So I might not get lots of people leaving me their name and email address. Maybe I will.

I have found in the past that being upfront does alot in making people feel more at ease with you. Plus you stand out as either a “nutter” (pass you by) or someone that they can trust ( and want to work with you). Better that they work that out first.

And Trust , as in any relationship, personal or business, is vital.

So does the system work?

Yes, it does. I’ve found the support and encouragement from the members amongst each other to be one of the programs mainstays. When someone new comes along, and is bewildered by everything, the members get in there and help them out.

Which is happening more and more in a lot of the better programs out there. Hmm maybe that’s why they are the better programs. This is opossed to joining up to some program and reading the ebooks , watching a few videos and being left to do what want which usually results in “not much”.

With a Forum, 24/7 Skype Group, Weekly Conferences involving a driving force like Mr Gehring, whuch rubs off on us all, you’d be hard pressed Not to Succeed. But if you do nothing, that’s what you’ll get.

So if you are wanting to get into some kind of program where you are actually going to be Achieving by doing and you start seeing results… Well that becomes as infectious as “Failing” but with much better results.

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As you may have noticed I’ve already posted about this great program and as it’s very much on the move and improve I thought I’d start up some update posts.

Myself and a few others are having a chat in the TL2I Skype Room – which is one of the many ways we can keep in touch and inspire and help each other out with the system, marketing in general and whatever else arises… It’s actually quite active.  Along with the weekly Online conferences we all get to know each other pretty quickly which is a great way to learn and network.

Skype Chat rooms can be very Grand!

I had considered Skype Chats as something of a toy early on but get a few people in a room all with the same aim in life, to develop and grow an online business.

I had really experienced the full benefits of Skype while I was involved in my small part in developing TL2I. If there was an issue, we’d jump on a Skype Group Call and get the issue cleared up and march onto the next thing. It worked really well.

So whats new in TrafficLeads2Income?

The Weekly conference calls are still going and the attendance each week is slowly on the increase as people find out it’s a great place to learn some new tricks or hear one of the guest speakers. There have been a few great ones of late. I’m not going to elaborate on those, you’ll just have to join and find out about them yourself. Some have been recorded so they’ll be accessible in the members area. Yes, even if you join for Free.

All 10 Steps are now available to Free members. In the recent past, the 10th Step was only available for paid members. So now, you can join for Free and use the whole system including the LCP system which is so great for anyone starting out to the seasoned Pro. They are geared to be used on Traffic Exchanges, ie A Quick View by someone surfing the TE , Grab their attention and get their name and email address.

Oh and now the GVO EResponder system has been incorporated into the LCP ( Lead Capture Page ) creation. Select your Autoresponder, fill in the info, upload your image if you wish, even add Video using EasyVideoProducer and save it and Bingo, instant Lead Capture Page.

Now there is Step 11.

One of the things you can do with Step 11 is to choose your LCP Template from a selection. Which is a nice feature so you can stand out from the rest. Also the commissions on promoting TL2i Increase from 20% as a Free member to 50% as a paid member, so there is definitely an advantage and the Paid Members Fee is priced just right! In fact, the number of people who upgrade from the Free Membership is quite high. Why? It’s value for money.

Follow the system and Win.

Like with anything, these kinds of programs only work IF you follow the system. And it is a good system. Each Step is clearly laid out. If in doubt there is live help in the Skype Room, or in the conference room or in the Forum or you can “Ask Admin”, a nice feature to get in touch with Rob himself and get any problems sorted out.

The emphasis is – To Work with your Downline.

When you get someone join you in any program, it is very very important to A) Get in touch with them and welcome them and thank them for joining with you and B) walk them through the system and C) Work with them to build their business using it…

Think you can’t get the parts B) and C) under your belt… Fear Not! The TL2I community will help any member, but it is preferred if you do make an attempt at assisting where you can. And remember, you’ll get shown the ropes and whatever else in the way of useful information that might come up…

Why Would You Want to Join Traffic Leads 2 Income?

A very good question! Number One reason would be that you’ve already joined a zillion programs in the past and never got anywhere… I will say this for the folk at TL2I, you won’t get left out, you won’t be allowed to fail but they can’t make you do it. But you’ll be prompted in a friendly way like “Hey Tim- What Step are you upto…?” , “What are you stuck on”, “What do you mean you aint got time…… it just takes a few minutes to do this step…”

The Other Good reason is – it has a Systematic Approach in getting You up and running. It’s Step by Step system, follow it and if it don’t work, we’ll all jump in and see what you can do to improve upon what you are doing wrong or not doing! It’s one of the best systems I’ve come across and as you may know, I’m an easy target for getting distracted. Well Mr Gehring will make sure you keep focused, in a nice way of course! You could think of it more as a Buddy System with live mentoring from someone that knows his stuff.

And finally, it’s affordable and will have seeing success which isn’t the case in a lot of other programs. I was going to say “Similar” but Rob has got this figured out and has come up with a very unique system.

Anyways, we’re talking about creating videos for our pages now, so I’ll jump back into the conversation and hopefully see you at one of the online conferences or in the skype room.

All you need to do now is join up as a member and start implementing the system. Hope to be saying Hi to you real soon.

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