Starting E-mail Marketing: Aweber alternative

Free sounds good but in the end it comes back to bite you. Aweber has a 30 day trial for 1.00 and after that the prices are very reasonable. If after 60 days you aren't making the cost of your list then it's time to figure out what's going wrong.

Before starting your list put down a plan for building and monetizing it. Have the emails written or planned. That way you aren't spending the first week of your 1.00 trial doing nothing with building or monetizing.

There are two things that I would NEVER mess with - your list and your hosting. Those are basic business expenses that you should be able to recover monthly (because they aren't very expensive) and which should be done with reputable companies. If your email isn't delivered because you are using a free service then what good are the emails you are collecting? If your site goes down for hours a day and no one can see it - can it make you any money?

The parts of the business that make the money should be the places your put your investments.

For $9.97 per month you can get hosting for four domains and it comes with an autoresponder account at GVO.

There are free ones but I wouldn't advise them, Aweber is good and $20 will get you 2 months service and if set up right you should be making at least the investment back in that time.

What have you been doing for so long in internet marketing without getting involved in email?

Usually it is something people discover pretty quickly with everyone preaching the money is in the list, which is partly true but you do need to get it well targeted and know how to convert them.

The best low cost alternative is running your own autoresponder mailserver. You just need to make sure you're properly setup to reach the inbox. There's a great WP plugin called MyMail that can function like Aweber on your WP installation.

I second this. If I wasn't using aweber I would easily go back to GetResponse.

It is free for the first month and after that the prices are pretty good for what GR has to deliver.

I found my first years in IM that's what I had the most trouble with - making a plan and sticking to it. Shiny Object Syndrome was a problem

Despite what others might say, I'd recommend starting with Listwire. Once you get familiar with email marketing and managing a list or two, you can then upgrade to a paid autoresponder service.

When I first started out I used Mail Chimp. It's free for smaller list sizes. When I decided to do this full-time I switched to Aweber because it was the best value and ease of use.

I was able to switch my list over from Mail Chimp to Aweber easily, but people had to opt in again via email and I lost some of my contacts in the switch over.

I wish I had started with Aweber just to make it easier on myself later. However, if your budget is really tight you can start with something free.

I use Mailchimp and it's great. Although it's not as cheap as Aweber, it does many things very well and always coming out with beautiful new features and quite fun to use. And yes, it offers a free option to start you out.

Yes, there is free alternative: No Mailing list.

It's free, does not require any work. No hassles.

But, if I'm not mistaken MailChimp doesn't like affiliate marketing. Check the terms of service; you can lose your whole list quickly if they decide that what you mail doesn't fit their business model. Terms of Use | MailChimp Part 1; 11f

Go with either AWeber or GetResponse. The free alternatives are free for a reason. Once you have more than 1,000 people, the paid subscription will have paid for itself many times over.

Also, if you were to start with a free service and move to AWeber, you will always lose a large proportion of your email list who just won't choose to do the opt-in required by AWeber.