And yet I keep recommending Aweber. Here’s why:

Deliverability. As someone who depends on your email list to make money, this should be number one on your list of requirements. Sure, you can send email from your shopping cart or even from your own server, but at least some of those emails are going to end up caught in the spam filter.

Why? Because email providers use (among other things) the IP address of the originating server to determine if the email is spam or not. Your site is very likely hosted on a server with many hundreds of other sites. If one of those sites gets flagged as a spammer, your domain will very likely suffer the same fate, and all your emails will be sent to the spam folder.

Aweber works hard to keep their servers free from spam, and has a team of experts who constantly monitor deliverability issues, so they can stop any issues before they begin. They stay in contact with the major ISPs and work to keep Aweber’s IP addresses off the blacklist files to ensure your email gets through. Do you have time to monitor each and every email provider?

Flexibility. I had the privilege of attending a webinar with Paul Evans in which he taught advanced listbuilding techniques, and one of the things he emphasized was having multiple lists for the same product. He recommends both a “prospects” list – those who sign up for a free introduction – and a “customers” list – those who buy – for each product you have. While I think that’s a brilliant idea, it could quickly get out of hand in terms of cost and maintenance.

Aweber allows you to have as many email lists as you like, so two for each product is not an issue. More importantly, though, they allow you to automate the process by which a list member is moved between lists. So someone who is on your prospects list can be automatically moved to your customer list the minute he or she makes a purchase.

In addition, you can segment your list based on actions they take on your site. For example, you might set up an upsell product on your thank you page. Aweber will track who clicks through to that page, so you can contact them with other, related offers later.

Tracking. Open- and click-through-rates are easily tracked in Aweber, giving you instant insight into what works for your market – and what doesn’t. You can even further refine your campaigns by using automated split-testing on email subject lines and opt-in forms. Simply set up two similar emails or forms, and Aweber will automatically serve each to half your readers.

Price. At just under $20 per month, Aweber is a great deal. You can have up to 500 subscribers and unlimited lists. Additional subscribers will run you a bit more – you can see the pricing structure here.

I know there are systems that are less expensive – MailChimp, for example, is free for the first 500 subscribers – but remember those “free” services come with a different kind of price tag. They often have restrictions (Mailchimp will close your account if they catch you promoting affiliate products), deliverability issues, and lack tracking and segmenting options.

Email Parsers. Do you use a shopping cart or membership script, but still want to manage your email with Aweber? Email parsers make it easy. Aweber comes with more than 40 pre-configured scripts that allow your software to automatically add members to your mailing lists, and remove them when they are no longer a customer.

The Downside to Aweber

With all that said, there are some things I don’t like about Aweber.

Opt-in forms. Frankly, they’re pretty rudimentary and rather unappealing. Most people use them because it’s easy (yes, I’m guilty of that as well) but if you want a form that really matches your site, you’ll need to have a designer create one for you.

Blog Broadcasts. One nifty feature I love and use is the ability to send out a broadcast to my mailing list whenever the blog is updated. You might even be reading this in a blog broadcast email. What I don’t like about them is the fact that only one feed is allowed. For example, if I want to send a broadcast with my latests posts from this blog, and in the sidebar add the latests posts from another site, I can’t do it with a feed. I have to input the sidebar information manually.

Ready to start building your email list, or looking to upgrade from another system? Aweber offers a trial price of $1 for the first month. That’s plenty of time to take it for a test drive to see if it’s a good choice for your business. Click here to sign up, and if you have questions about the service, let me know in the comments. I’ll be glad to help you out if I can.

Get more great self-employment tips by visiting Cindy Bidar.

As if I’d won the lottery.

I’ve got news for you. Luck had nothing to do with it.

I spent two years working 40+ hours per week and coming home every night to eat dinner in front of the computer so I could work some more. I funneled every spare dime into debts so we could reduce our expenses. We didn’t go on vacation (too busy working), we didn’t remodel the kitchen, we didn’t buy a new car. Instead, we saved money so we could withstand the income ups and downs of freelancing.

When the opportunity came along to get out of the corporate world, I was financially and emotionally ready, and I knew – from years of experience – that I had the self-discipline to actually do the work, even when no one was watching.

I’m not lucky.

And if you’re counting on luck to get you out of the corporate world and into your fuzzy slippers seven days a week, you’re going to wait a long time.

Luck has nothing to do with business. Work does. If you really want to leave the day job behind, then get to work. That’s the only way it’s going to happen.

What are you doing right now to help make the switch from day job to work at home life? Are you depending on blind luck or are you working at it? Let me know in the comments.

Get more great self-employment tips by visiting Cindy Bidar.

When I had a job I knew that on the first and the fifteenth of every month I would get a check. More importantly, I knew exactly how much that check would be. I’d take it to the bank, put it in the checking account, my husband would log in to our online banking, pay all the bills, funnel some cash into the savings account, and we’d live quite nicely until the next paycheck.

Now we face a whole new reality. There are no more regular paychecks. While I am lucky enough to have a few steady clients who pay me weekly or monthly, I’m not naive enough to believe that will continue indefinitely. Knowing this, we made preparations before I quit my job so we don’t ever have to be afraid to open the bank statement.

• Pay off credit card debt and make a vow to never carry a balance on any card that charges you interest.
• Refinance the house: That half a percent change in interest rate can save you hundreds of dollars per month. And refinancing without a job might be tricky.
• Pay off the car(s): Then start socking away the extra $500 a month you’re saving.
• Stockpile some cash: What would it do to your stress levels to know you can live for a year with zero income?
• Buy what you need now: If you need to refurbish your home office, do it now. Buying expensive computer equipment when you’re just starting out on your own will only add to your money stress.
• Pay your bills early if you can: Back when I knew exactly what my income would be from week to week, it was easier to plan my bill paying. Now, if a bill is due next month but I have the money now, I pay it.

No, living debt free is certainly not the American way, but if you want to make it in the self-employed world, it’s a damn good start.

What did you do to prepare yourself for going solo? How do you deal with the crazy ups and downs of a freelancer’s income? Share your tips in the comments.

Get more great self-employment tips by visiting Cindy Bidar.

If you had all your links redirected, they would all be in one place, making mass changes like this much easier.

Here’s an even worse situation, though, and one that’s not recoverable: You’ve distributed a viral eBook promoting a few high-converting affiliate programs. Thousands of people have downloaded your eBook and are actively buying through your links, when you receive an email announcing a change in affiliate tracking. In 30 days, your links will need to be replaced with a new format, or they will stop working.

If you had set up redirects, you would be able to fix this easily. As it is, there is nothing you can do. Anyone with an old version of your ebook will be clicking on broken links, costing you sales and making you look somewhat less than professional.

The good news: even for the non-techy, creating redirects is easy.

Automated Methods

Use your theme’s built-in tools. Most premium themes (like Genesis and Thesis) provide an easy way to create redirects. Simply make a page or a post as normal, then below the post editor, fill in your affiliate link in the field that says “301 Redirect.” Give the page a title, click publish, and you’re done. Whenever someone visits that URL, they’ll be automagically sent to the link you entered in the redirect field.

Use a WordPress plugin. There are several free and premium plugins that will help you create redirects as well. Some, like Pretty Link Pro and MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate offer advanced tracking statistics to help you discover which promotions produce the best results.

URL shortening services. Think Bit.ly, Ow.ly, and tinyurl.com. These services are simple and quick to use, making them great for or Tweets and Facebook updates, but their transient nature makes them a bad choice for permanent link placements.

GoTryThis.com. This is the ultimate in link-shortening and tracking. For a monthly fee, GoTryThis.com will allow you to shorten links for an unlimited number of domains, organize your links by category and campaign, and has sophisticated tracking reports. If you have a lot going on in your business and enjoy stats, this is the one for you.

Manual Methods

META refresh redirect. This is done using a simple HTML page containing the following code:

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><br /> <html><br /> <head></p> <p><meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http://www.YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK.com"></meta></p> <p></head><br /> <body><br /> Optional page text here.<br /> </body><br /> </html><br />
The number following “content=” represents the number of seconds you want to browser to wait before sending your visitor off to the next page. For affiliate links, you probably want to leave it set to 0.

PHP redirects. This is a similar method, but using php code instead of HTML. The code you will use is this:

< ?php</p> <p> header( 'Location: http://www.YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK.com' ) ;</p> <p>?><br />

Javascript redirects. Again, a similar method using the following code between the body tags on an HTML page:

<script type="text/javascript"> <!-- setTimeout("window.location = 'http://www.YOUR-AFFILIATE-LINK.com';",300); //--> </script><br />

The 300 after the link is short delay designed to allow time for any tracking script to fire before the page redirects. This is the only one I am aware of that will allow you to accurately track clicks using Google tracking code.

NOTE: This method will fail if your reader has javascript turned off in their browser, as some people do for security reasons.

To use any of these methods, paste the code in your favorite text editor and save the file as index.html or index.php (depending on which one you chose). Fire up your FTP client and upload the file to your server inside an appropriately named directory. So if your affiliate link is for AllQualityPLR.com, you might name your directory aqplr. That makes your redirect link http://yoursite.com/aqplr.

What I Use

I’ve tried them all, looking for the easiest, most reliable method, but I always seem to come back to the rather old-fashioned index.html file with a javascript redirect. I like to have the ability to track clicks all in one place (Google Analytics) and I don’t like to entrust critical business functions to third parties like Pretty Link or GoTryThis. Also, I don’t like my WordPress pages and posts listings to be cluttered up with empty files containing only a redirect.

Are you diligent about creating redirects? What method do you use and why? Share your thoughts in the comments.

PS – I was just talking to a client and she’s in the process of going through hundreds of Aweber emails to track down some affiliate links that have changed. It turns out Aweber does not have a find and replace (or even a search) feature for autoresponders. If she’d set all her links as recdirects this would be an easy job. As it is, it will take hours. So there you go – one more reason to redirect everything.

Get more great self-employment tips by visiting Cindy Bidar.

I know several beginning writers who choose to advertise on Fiverr for example, and justify it by saying that once they gain a few clients they’ll raise their rates. Unfortunately, that rarely works out. Those clients who are looking for $5 articles are not the type to recognize quality and stick with you through your rate changes. They’ll simply find another $5 article writer. After all, there are thousands to choose from. Sure, you’re better than most, but let’s face it: clients looking for $5 articles aren’t in the market for quality. They’re simply looking for search-engine fodder.

Does that mean you should never write for cheap? No. It just means you have to be strategic about it. It’s okay to write for low/no pay if:

• You’re trying to build a portfolio. Just remember, your goal should be to replace those low-pay samples with higher paid items as quickly as possible.
• You’re giving away samples as a part of your marketing plan. Providing a pack of articles to be given away in a high-profile contest is a great way to build links and goodwill.
• You’re writing copy in exchange for a link (“Article contributed by Your Name”) back to your website.
• You’re bartering for services like a website design or eBook formatting. Money is tight when you’re just starting out, but your time is plentiful, so take advantage of that.

Get more great self-employment tips by visiting Cindy Bidar.