This really is the bottom line...

Regarding Yahoo Groups, you said...

> Actually, I started to do that several months ago, then I decided I was
> just finding yet *another* excuse not to do a proper mailing list.
> (I could make a book out of all the excuses I've created over the years.)

Exactly! If you are serious about having a newsletter in order to help increase your revenue, then you can't be relying on free 3rd party services like Yahoo Groups. Will it be there forever? Maybe it will. But you have no control over Yahoo or the way they run their service. You are at the mercy of Yahoo. Using Yahoo Groups for newsletter hosting for business use is like relying solely on ebay to sell products and like relying solely on Adsense for income. IOW, you are building on a foundation of sand - a house of cards.

Now lets tackle the other things mentioned in this thread...

Direct mail. Well, It may be true that direct mail will get you a better response than email newsletters, but not only does that matter on a bunch of factors but it also costs you a lot of money. Do you really want to spend money on a per mailing basis at this point? Your answer is probably "no" and rightfully so. Not to mention that it may not be the right way for you to go. Again, this is dependent on too many factors and will vary from business to business, from business model to business model, from product to product, etc, etc, etc.

Using a self-hosted script. Well, for starters, do you really want to bother with the hassles? I mean, sure, everyone will tell you that this script is easy and that script is super easy, but make no bones about it, it takes some time to learn and there will be problems at some point. Are you a marketer or a techie? If your answer is "I am a marketer" then spend your time marketing and reduce the amount of tech work that you need to do as much as possible. But that's not all you have to worry about on a self-hosted script. When you use a self-hosted script, you are using 2 things in order to send out your newsletters...

1. Your ISP Internet connection

2. You host's server

The problem here is MANY-fold and i will only touch on a couple...

Do you currently have enough bandwidth with your hosting account to, say, send out a weekly newsletter to 500 subscribers on a self-hosted script? If not then you will need to pay your host a little more money a month in order to increase the bandwidth allotted to you. So much for just a one-time cost of a script! Now you have to pay more on your hosting account – and MONTHLY.

Does your ISP allow you to send out newsletters? Better check that. Most ISPs don't and it does not matter if you are complying with CAN-SPAM rules or not. Now, they will allow you to send out a newsletter for a monthly fee. But then, there you go again, so much for the one-time cost of a self-hosted script. Now, not only are you paying more in hosting fees but your ISP is now also costing you more. And there are limits. A monthly price will only get you so much bandwidth. When and if you exceed that allotted bandwidth, you will need to upgrade to a larger package if they have one. If they do not, then you are SOL.

Another issue of using a self-hosted script is your deliverability rate. If you use the top autoresponder services out there, then you will get reliability and deliverability rates that are very good. Not so with your own self-hosted newsletter. Many ISPs like AOL have whitelisted the domains used by the big autoresponder services and therefore newsletters sent using these services will have a MUCH better chance of actually arriving in your subscribers' mailboxes. This is not so with if you use a self-hosted script, which means you will be using your own domain in for the return email address. AOL is never going to whitelist your domain anytime soon no matter how honest you are and no matter how much of a spammer you are NOT. It will cost you time and money to get whitelisted and that is not worth your time or your money. Again, are you a marketer/newsletter author? If so, then use your time for marketing and newsletter authoring. This is what brings in the revenue.

And the last issue I want to touch on here is about being accused of being a spammer. If this happens, and at some point it very well might (but it really depends on too many factors, though, many of which are beyond your control), and you are using a self-hosted script, you are on your own, man. You have no one to help defend you like you would if you had chosen to use a service over a self-hosted script. This is a big deal. If you are accused of spam (even if wrongfully accused) then you could lose your hosting account, your domain (the one used to send out the emails), and your Internet service. Do you really want to worry about this kind of stuff? I think that your answer is probably "no". Who does? Some will tell you that they host their own and have done so for years without any accusations of spam. That’s all well and good, but as I said, there are many factors that are beyond your control that will dictate whether or not at some point you will get reported for spam. All it takes is for an AOL user to hit the "spam" button in his mailbox and you are tagged as a spammer in the AOL system. Even if it was not intentional or if you are innocent. Do you really want that hassle and headache? Do you want to constantly be worried if you will ever experience any of these negative situations? As a marketer, the last thing you need is to have to worry about things like this. You need to spend your time on marketing, not on worrying about things like this.

The bottom line is, if you want to do things the RUGHT way and you want to alleviate as much worry as possible, you will NOT use Yahoo Groups or any other free 3rd party service and you will not use a self-hosted script. If you want to do things properly from the start, you will use a paid autoresponder/newsletter hosting service and you will use one of the top companies...

1. GetResponse (very popular)
2. Aweber (the most popular among smaller but successful marketers)
3. 1Shoppingcart (very popular)
4. EmailAces (lower priced on the lower packages but also limited)

I did not mention GetResponse because, well, it is much too high priced and very much limited.

So do the right thing and use a service, not a self-hosted script or a 3rd party free service. You will save yourself a lot of headaches and heartaches and you will have MUCH less to worry about so you can focus more on the things that actually make you money - newsletters and marketing.

If you cannot afford a service just yet (which will cost you around $8 to $20/mo) then, IMO, you should not even bother with a newsletter just yet. No point in building a list if there is a high probability that you will have to drop out at some point doe to lack of funds. It's going to take time to build a responsive list and in that time you will spend money. If you build a list and later decide you have to drop out, then when and if you decide you want to startup again you will have a list but it will be useless since you will need to have that list opt-in again in order to comply fully with CAN-SPAM rules. This is true if you go with a service. Not true if you go with a self-hosted script, but the downsides to using a self-hosted script FAR outweigh the downsides of using a service.

^_^