How an opt-in system works in Java

Generation PDF 417 in Java How an opt-in system works

With an opt-in system, users enter their e-mail addresses in a form They then receive a message in their mailbox that asks them to confirm their subscription If they don t reply to that message, their address doesn t go into the system The problem with using other people s lists is that because you didn t run the opt-in service yourself, you don t know for sure that all the names on the list are legitimate And some of the companies that offer these opportunities also seem to be heavily into hype and get-rich-quick philosophies You have to be very careful not to get caught up in spamming The Emailxtracom service described in the next section doesn t adhere to get-rich-quick schemes and spamming It helps you run your own opt-in system from your own site, while handling most of the workload for you This setup gives you the best of both worlds Although you re using an opt-in system, it s still a good idea to begin your newsletter with something like this: For subscribers only You received this newsletter because you filled out the opt-in form for XYZ News at wwwxyznewsoptincom We keep our subscriber information completely confidential If you have any questions, e-mail us at subscriptions@xyznewsoptincom

Emailxtracom (found, as you might expect, at wwwemailxtracom) is a company that specializes in setting up e-zine newsletters for small to medium-sized businesses Its offerings range from self-service accounts where you do all the work to full-service ones where it handles everything To set up a free trial account with Emailxtra, follow these steps: 1 Go to wwwemailxtracom/free_trialhtm 2 Click the Click Here to Signup for Free link, shown in Figure 17-3 The pop-up window shown in Figure 17-4 appears 3 In the pop-up window, enter the required information: your e-mail address, your first and last name, and a password (entered twice for confirmation purposes) Then click the Submit button in the lowerright corner of the window The pop-up window shown in Figure 17-5 appears 4 In the next pop-up window, enter the requested information about your company (such as its name and phone number) When you re finished, click the Submit button Emailxtra then sends you an e-mail message about your new account

5 When the resulting e-mail message arrives, open it and click the link Clicking this link verifies that your e-mail address is correct and opens a welcome page in your Web browser 6 Click the Click Here to Start E-Mail Marketing link This takes you to a login page where your e-mail address is already entered 7 Enter your password and click the Sign In button

In the future, you can just go to wwwemailxtracom/account_loginhtm to log in The login screen is the same on both the welcome page and the regular login page

So you made some changes to your site You worked hard on them from the conception to the follow-through, and you re thrilled with the results Well, personal satisfaction is nice, but what about all those people who have already visited your site Will they know about all the improvements that you ve made Visitors will notice the changes if you use an update notification service such as ChangeNotes or ChangeDetectioncom

ChangeNotes (wwwchangenotescom) keeps track of your site and automatically e-mails your visitors whenever there s a change It performs this task by automatically downloading one copy of your page each day and comparing it with the copy it downloaded the day before If the pages are the same, nothing happens If the pages are different, the service sends an e-mail to anyone on your list of interested users ChangeNotes is an opt-in service, so you don t have to worry about a spam problem You put a link on your Web pages, and your visitors get to choose whether or not to receive update notices No matter how many times a day your site changes, your users will never receive more than one notification in 24 hours That notice contains all the changes noted during that time Adding ChangeNotes to your Web pages couldn t be much simpler Just follow these few steps, and you ll be up and running in no time: 1 In your favorite editor, open the Web page you want to add ChangeNotes to and (if necessary) select the option that displays the source code 2 Go to wwwchangenotescom/webmasterphp 3 Scroll down to the text box that s near the middle of the page, as shown in Figure 17-6 This text box contains source code that you can copy and paste into your Web pages