Money is short and times are changing

The current economic downturn has seen the internet take a dramatic turn in presentation and content. Web Hosting companies are noticing an increase in the number of daily sales as more and more folks are launching websites in the hopes of making money.

eCommerce sales are stable, with a dramatic increase in new online e-stores, and affiliate marketing web sites. More and more families are feeling the crunch with unemployment and day to day living expenses.

We are now seeing a rising increase in the number of "work-at-home-mums" or WAHMS, with the internet being an obvious work choice for these people. In the majority of cases these people are "salt of the earth" battlers who are more than prepared to invest modest amounts into a new online adventure.

Sending Profitable Newsletters to your Customers

These days I think nearly everyone is familiar with receiving spam emails for online pharmaceuticals, software, and other junk, not to mention Nigerian and other scams.

Most of us compromise these spam emails by setting our spam-filters higher, and in the process we also miss out on a lot of important mailings and newsletters that we have actually subscribed to.

Unfortunately, the same applies to your eStore newsletters that you send out to your customers, advising them of the latest specials, pricing updates and new items etc etc. Too often, your customer never sees the newsletter as it is gobbled up by your anti-spam filters as junk mail.

There-fore, it is very important to consider the layout of your newsletter just as much as the content you put into it.

1. Ensure that your eStores "from" email address is a valid one for a starter.

2. The title of your newsletter will appear as the email's subject, so make sure it reads like "Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008" rather than "Doohickeys are only $19.95 this month".

3. Make sure you have a clear opening statement in font-size 10px and not 6px, that states that this is the "Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008" that you are subscribed to.

4. Ensure that you have an unsubscribe option clearly positioned at least at the bottom of your newsletter, or better at the top and bottom, with a direct link to your http://www.yourshop.com/login.php. Make sure you include instructions on how to unsubscribe.

You must ensure that your newsletter complies with the regulations found here at The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy .

The three key steps involved are:

1. Consent - you need to have consent from the person to whom you are sending your message.
2. Identify - you should clearly identify who is responsible for sending the message and how to contact them.
3. Unsubscribe - your messages should contain an unsubscribe facility to enable the recipient to unsubscribe.

Notify your customers that they should check their "junk mail" box for your newsletter, and to include your sending address in the "white-list" of allowed addresses in their spam filters.

Try to make your content exciting, new, interesting and brief. If you have a new product to shout about then, run a dynamic heading for it, perhaps with a single image, a special or introductory price, and have it link to your products description page. Do NOT over elaborate in the newsletter, let them get the main story and the features list from your site.

Kepp that newsletter short and to the point, not a 1000 word boring essay!
Good Luck.

Totally off-topic, but relevant to some

Congratulations to Tola from our accounts department, and her partner Michael, on their brand-new baby daughter Elizabeth, born 11/11/2008 at 4.14pm tipping the scales at only 4lb 13ozs. Both Mother and Daughter are doing fine!

PS. Can you hurry back to work, we all miss you!

All the technical mumbo-jumbo from auStores is here

We have stopped posting technical information and site tips at the auStores News Blog and will post it here instead. This will free up the auStores site as a source of news and updates pertaining directly to the day to day operation of our servers.

All service difficulties, updates, upgrades, and network outages will be published there. The ideal solution is to track our RSS data feed, which will always contain the top five latest articles. Windows Vista users can easily add the feed to their windows sidebar, and will see upto the minute scrolling site news and notifications. A very very handy solution for Hosting Re-sellers and business accounts.

This blog site is now fairly well established as a great source of information for webmasters and estore managers alike. One should check in here regularly to stay abreast of all the latest developments, and our tips n tricks to help improve your sites ranking.