NEVER NEVER NEVER use formblasting !!!!!!

shmerns

9 years ago

Agreed. Learning from our own "mistakes" is the best way to educate others. Thanks for a great post!

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htenbyslide 9 years ago

Thank you. I wonder if anyone will report any positive experiences from form blasting. I'd be amazed and shocked.

I am in Vancouver, Canada .. and the form blasting offer came from a company in Ontario. So I just thought "it looks legit" ... so I purchased 50,000 for $29.

Nothing happened for the first two or three days .. and then my inbox literally exploded. I was being flooded with newsletters.

Luckily, for the most part .. they used services like Constant Contact so there was a means to safely unsubscribe.

It took a lot of time and a lot of stress dealing with the fall out from this.
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javrsmith

9 years ago

Thanks for the tip. I have done the same sort of thing manually, signing up for too many lists. I have been unsubscribing to pare down my inbox.

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discrat

9 years ago

Originally Posted by htenbyslide

I would like to share this information so that other people will not make the same mistake I did.

Several weeks ago I received an email promoting the services of a company doing formblasting.

They explained that formblasting sends your message to website owners via the contact Us page on their website. Essentially, the formblasting service provider has a script or bot that trolls thousands of websites and completes the Contact Us page with your message.

They tout this as a great way to promote your business or service to website owners. For a fee of $20 or $30 they will send your message to 20,000 website owners. It seemed like a good idea to me so I went for it. What a HUGE mistake!!!!!!

What will happen is that in the formblasting process, they will sign up your email address up to thousands of lists.

You won't generate a single valuable contact for your business from any of the thousands of websites that were blasted, but your inbox will be filled with many emails (that come daily) from all the lists you were signed up for.

And it will take you weeks to unsubscribe from each of the lists.

I was stupid and did not research the pitfalls of formblasting. If anyone sends you an email offer form blasting services, STAY AWAY and RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!!!!!

I sure hope you have learned your lesson !
There are no shortcuts in this business.

And this is not only a shortcut, but this very, very Unethical

If anything I hope your experience serves a notice to others here to NOT do this silly stuff

- Robert Andrew

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htenbyslide 9 years ago

Totally agree Robert. If it is too good to be true ... then beware.

I was a sucker. This what they advertised on the home page of their website ... total BS:

"What are "contact us" pages? Virtually any website has them, it's the method any website will use to allow you to contact them. It's usually a simple form that asks for your name, email address and message and once submitted will result in the person or business receiving your message instantly! Unlike bulk emailing, there are no laws against automated form submission and your message will never get stuck in spam filters. We can't think of a better way to quickly reach a large volume of people and at such a low cost!"
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adwaitk007

9 years ago

Actually the main mistake you did is I guess you used your personal email address. For such "trials" you must create a decent professional looking email address. So if things don't wok , you can simply ignore the email address!

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htenbyslide 9 years ago

I thought of that after the fact too.

But they claim you're not spamming, their services is legit etc, and with 50,000 blasts I thought it would generate at least a few honest leads.

But it did not. Not even a single one.

It boils down to the fact that I need to create my own list the old fashion way.
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Jack Gordon

9 years ago

Originally Posted by adwaitk007

Actually the main mistake you did is I guess you used your personal email address. For such "trials" you must create a decent professional looking email address. So if things don't wok , you can simply ignore the email address!

You are absolutely right.

The mistake here was in using your actual identity to spam and inconvenience tens of thousands of website owners.

You should have done it under adwaitk007's name. Then it would have been fine.

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htenbyslide 9 years ago

In all seriousness .. I was looking for a way to reach a lot of business owners quickly with my message.

In the email that the formblasting service sent to get me signed up, they said ... "we're using formblasting to contact you. And as you are reading this message, so imagine, it will work for your message too when it reaches thousands of business owners."

Even here on this forum ... you see ads that say "Autopilot System Builds 10,000 List in 10 weeks" ... It sounds very appealing.

Probably 95% of the offers that you receive or see on sites like this do not provide real service and real value.

If you want to build clients, create squeeze pages, pay for traffic, and get people to legitimately sign up to receive info about your service, end of story.
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adwaitk007

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Jack Gordon

You are absolutely right.

The mistake here was in using your actual identity to spam and inconvenience tens of thousands of website owners.

You should have done it under adwaitk007's name. Then it would have been fine.

Why I smell sarcasm??

Anyways from now on instead of wasting your time on "unsubscribing" just select all these and add them to "spam". Unsubscribing doesn't work on these spams. They should be treated as spam only!

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htenbyslide 9 years ago

I agree ... "blasting" = "spam" + "headache" + "time suck"

As for marking all the newsletters I was receiving as spam in my inbox, as they were all originated by me with my email address, I was kind of scared to do that. I did not want Google to link it all back to me and blacklist my gmail account.

So I just unsubscribed for each and every one that I could. The Constant Contact, Mad Mimi and Mail Chimp type services I do believe actually did unsubscribe me.

But there were a number in languages I do not understand (like Russian and Chinese) so I could not figure out how the unsubscribe those.
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David Keith

9 years ago

well, i learned something myself today. i have never even heard the term formblasting before.

I thought i had seen just about everything in the online marketing world.

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htenbyslide 9 years ago

Thank you David ... I actually Googled the term and found the company offering the service but no substantive comments from people who had used the service.

By having this discussion archived here on the Warrior Forum, it will show up in future search results, and people will know to stay away.

So if people can learn from my mistake, then that really does bring some good from all this.
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Jack Gordon

9 years ago

As the owner of several business entities, I can tell you that I have been getting spammed with an increasing number of these formblasts across the board. Here are my thoughts on them...

1) I would never respond positively to a spammer, and this is spam

2) When one of my businesses gets an inquiry from a form, that is usually a good thing. When I open it and see it is spam, that makes me even less inclined to be receptive to whatever message is in there

3) Gmail has just recently begun successfully weeding these out of my inbox, perfectly threading the needle between legit inquiries and spam

4) I do get legitimate non-sales related inquiries through my forms, and I do at least read and consider them every time. Unless they are spam, of course.

If someone has ever had any kind of a positive response to being formblasted, I would love to meet that person and see what makes them tick.

From my marketing perspective, it is a disaster from every conceivable angle.

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maxsi

9 years ago

A little secret... (think it will work).
1)) Create an email account for these replies/newsletter that you will get back from the service

2)) Create an "AUTOREPLY" message with your website link (inside your new email account), so when you receive new emails they will receive your promotion too ;-)

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Jack Gordon

9 years ago

Originally Posted by maxsi

A little secret... (think it will work).
1)) Create an email account for these replies/newsletter that you will get back from the service

2)) Create an "AUTOREPLY" message with your website link (inside your new email account), so when you receive new emails they will receive your promotion too ;-)

Brilliant. Pissing contests with professional lowlife spammers.

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htenbyslide 9 years ago

Very smart! I wonder if anyone will respond that they received value of some sort from formblasting. I would never use it again.
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Tara Garmon

9 years ago

As someone who has received those messages, I would never buy anything through them because I don't like being spammed. Even if I got an offer I would have been interested in, I wouldn't respond because of how it was sent.

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Raydal

9 years ago

I have been a victim of that same form blasting as well. Didn't even know there
was a term for it. I would get queries from my copywriting site, only to see that
it is SPAM. I could see that a bot filled out the contact form with some gibberish.
That's why webmasters use CAPTCHA to prevent this.

-Ray Edwards

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agmccall 9 years ago

Any time you see the word "blasting" in a product or service, just walk away

al
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- Winning34 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by agmccall
  
  Any time you see the word "blasting" in a product or service, just walk away
  
  al
  
  or "autopilot"
  
  Thanks
  
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pizzatherapy

9 years ago

This is a helpful thread in what to avoid. You can learn a valuable lesson here.

Don't do this!

I never knew about form blasting, but I have gotten numerous emails through forms on my blogs promoting services.

If I get one of these forms, I just delete, regardless of the service being offered.

This is just SPAM, regardless of how it is packaged. Plain and simple....

No good can ever come from contacting businesses or websites through this method.

This is a slime tactic method of doing business and should be totally avoided...

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Rory Singh

9 years ago

For a fee of $20 or $30 they will send your message to 20,000 website owners. It seemed like a good idea to me so I went for it. What a HUGE mistake!!!!!!

Anything that sounds too good to be true like 'send to 20,000 for $20' usually is. Anyway thanks for sharing. The only way to learn is by trial, error and adjusting.

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selfdisciplineacademy

9 years ago

Thanks for sharing this..

Yes, mailing lists which didn't sign up though your landing pages..

Just doesn't work

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NEVER NEVER NEVER use formblasting !!!!!!

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