By Stephen Bucaro

If you publish an e-newsletter or e-zine, you know that administering your subscriber list is a big chore. To maintain list, you may be using an email program on your computer or a CGI program on your server. One advantage to maintaining list yourself is that you know it is not being shared by anyone else.

However, there are four good reasons why you should host your list on a list-server.

1. People can subscribe or unsubscribe from your list automatically with absolutely no work by you.

2. People often subscribe with an email alias or forwarded email account. You send your newsletter to one address, then receive a delivery failure or unsubscribe from an address not on your list. You can’t delete it from your list.

3. People subscribe to list and then forget that they subscribed. They accuse you of spamming. This can’t be avoided entirely, but if your list is hosted on a list-server, you can respond by saying “all subscribes and unsubscribes are handled automatically by list server, you have no control of it.”

4. If you plan to sell advertising in your newsletter, most advertisers and advertisement networks will require you to verify your subscriber count. If you maintain list yourself, only way you can do that is to share your list with them. You don’t want to do that.

If your list is hosted on a list-server, number of subscribers is there for all to see, provided by an independent third party.

Choosing a List-server

Many list-servers disappeared in ".com" bust. The best one, listbot, was bought by Microsoft. It is now called bCentral and costs $30.00 per month. Being a list owner, it is your responsibility to keep your list private. With well publicized ethical problems at Microsoft, I would not put my subscriber list in their hands.

Most of lists ended up on Yahoo. They are in domain http://groups.yahoo.com. I find yahoo groups very complicated to configure. I also worry about Yahoo’s privacy policy. Yahoo Group Help states, “If you use Groups, it is very likely that other users will be able to see your email address.”

Some e-zine writers are particularly guilty of crossing line between good touch - bad touch. I've noticed a trend lately towards using business newsletters to share writer's most private, intimate troubles, deviating entirely from focus of publication.

For example, here are excerpts from three highly- respected, high-circulation online marketing newsletters, all published within a few days of each other. Names have been omitted to protect those guilty of sharing too much:

Exhibit A: "If you're wondering how mom is doing, she went through round one of chemotherapy. No problems. Not bald yet. It takes more than one treatment to lose your hair! Overall in excellent spirits, feeling quite well. Thanks for your prayers on her behalf."