RE: [epub] Various Things - List Management & Free Newsletters

[Brian Alt <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Steve,

At 12:02 PM 4/12/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>On the free vs. paid.
>
>I am interested in a fee based subscription e-mail service.
>I believe I have an audience for which the content has value.

Do you have a free list already? What plans do you have to
market the paid-subscription list? I'm curious about what you
mean by you "have" the audience.

>Is there a method to construct the e-mail, either text or HTML,
>to prevent the free exchange of the content? That is prevent
>and/or monitor the forwarding of the e-mail message?

Nothing is coming to mind. Such are the tribulations of an
intellectual property owner on the Internet.

In an HTML email message, you could use an image to track
which (or at least how many) of your subscribers are opening
the message, and this could also tell you the IP address of
those opening the message. But chances are that this function
would break if the information was forwarded.

See: http://ezine-tips.com/articles/management/20010112.shtml
(ProLinkz would tell you how many users are opening your
message.)

And: http://ezine-tips.com/articles/management/20010115.shtml
(The Lyris Click-Through Tracking Module actually tells you
_which_ subscribers are opening the message... assuming of
course that you're on the Lyris platform.)

This might help you notice "trends" among your users, but
wouldn't really tell you much beyond that.

I'll try to come up with a way to "booby-trap" your content to
prevent email forwarding, but I somewhat doubt if I'll come
up with anything. Good question, though. If anybody else has
any ideas, I'm all ears.

It would actually be easier to prevent content
distribution/theft if you maintained the content on a Web
site rather than in email. You could use username/password
pairs to restrict content, then track what IP addresses are
logging in under each username. (Too many different IP blocks
_might_ mean someone is sharing their login info.)

Of course, none of this prevents the old copy/paste routine.

Cheers,

Brian Alt
http://EmailPossibilities.com/
Comprehensive Email Publishing Solutions




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