Will The Real Spammer Please Stand Up!

by: Mustafa K.
If you have been using opt-in email marketing for sometime, I'msure you might have got accused of spam at some point, evenafter doing everything right. Yes, I'm talking about people who actually agreed to receiveyour email, blaming you for sending unsolicited mail.According to me it's not their fault, as nowadays it's very easyto mistake an 'email marketer' for an 'email bomber'. The web has grown so wide and huge in the last couple of yearsthat it has become hard to differentiate between a spammer and alegal email marketer. Spammers just didn't disturb a regularemail users life but also wrecked havoc in the Internetmarketing community. Day after day it's becoming devastatingly difficult forpermission based email marketers to use email legally and notget slammed for illegal mailing. Even after making sure your email looks, sounds, smells andtastes 'Legal', you run a high risk of either getting blocked orbeing labeled as a spammer. On the other hand, if luck favors you and your mail does make itto your subscribers' inbox safe and sound, what's the guaranteethat it'll get opened and read?It's a nightmare every marketer would love to avoid.Well, you can stop worrying now and have a sigh of relief. It'sabout time all the hardcore spammers out there had their lastlaugh. The Internet marketing world is abuzz with a brand newtechnology, which could finally send spamming back to the darkages, big time.If you still don't have a clue of what I'm talking about, it'scalled RSS and it's turning heads all over the web. RSS, which stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' is a newtechnology, which enables anyone to syndicate his or her contentonline.A lot has been written on what is RSS and how it works. So Iwould like to keep it short and sweet, as I'm sure you toowouldn't really want to get into the unnecessary technical stuff.In simple words, RSS is a way to publish and receive contentelectronically. RSS files are XML based and are popularly knownas RSS feeds. What's revolutionary about RSS is, it can help you distributeyour content directly to your subscribers, without any spamfilters interfering. To subscribe and read your RSS feeds, all your subscribers needto have is an RSS reader, also known as an aggregator. What's more, they don't even have to worry about giving out anyof their personal details to subscribe to your feed. And with a screaming bunch of RSS readers available on the webright now (most of them being free), it wouldn't be very hard toconvince your subscribers to get there hands on one. RSS readers are available in both versions, desktop andweb-based, of which the latter seems to be the most popular. Once your subscriber adds your RSS feed to their favorite RSSreader, you go 'live' and instantly establish a directconnection with your subscriber. Whenever you have somethingnew to publish, all you have to do is update your alreadypublished RSS feed with your fresh content. As soon you load your feed with new content, walla! Your feedautomatically gets updated everywhere it's subscribed. No mess, no fuss. Just content that works.Pretty neat huh? That's the beauty of RSS. No wonder it's currently beingemployed by web honchos like Yahoo! and MSN to deliver contentto their users. They even allow their members to add any RSS feeds of theirchoice to their members' area, making them perfect examples ofweb-based aggregators.Syndicating your content can mean a lot to you and yourbusiness. By publishing your own RSS feeds, you could eventuallyend up with more leads, more subscribers and not to forget, moremoney in the bank.Happy syndicating!