Some basic questions;

1) how many link requests did you send?
2) were the requests personalised in any way?
3) where did you get the names & addresses from?

- Tony

I've never heard of this, I think we could do with some more information, I also would contact the hosting company about this, as it seems very unfair

as it seems very unfair

I agree.

Did you by chance send repeated mails?

> I've never heard of this ...

This is the third such posting that I remember, there may have been others.

One fairly recent one, the webmaster admitted that he sent out over 100 emails every day, and did not check to make sure there were no duplicates; he got little sympathy here :)

Details would, of course, add much to the value of this thread.

I used Zeus to send out 275 emails. We checked each site for suitability. The site who reported us to Spamcop had a link section with about 10 links.

My understanding is that I did not exceed the permitted number of emails sent out per day from my host.

We could have added a unique comment in each email address. But surely that is just adding superflous comments with no value to the person at the other end - in my view anyway.

Exchanging of links is such common practice nowadays. I don't see why it should be considered spam.

Jon

> Now, my host has suspended my account. They also say the suspension is permanent >

Spamcop is an organization and only the associated members reject mails notified as "spam" (they have a centralized database).

Usually the suspension lasts two days.

You should refer to your host about the permanent suspension: they got the spam information by Spamcop and probably they decided that your spam policy is too much aggressive...

Here is the message I sent out...

> Subject: RE: I have already placed your link on our website

> Hi,
>
> I recently visited your website, www.xxxxx.com. I have added your site to
our Link Directory found at [msaccessrepair.com...]
>
> Your website has been categorized under the Database and Windows theme at
the following page:
>
> [msaccessrepair.com...]
> [msaccessrepair.com...]
> ..
> In return we would appreciate being added to your Links Page.
>
> The html for our preferred wording can be found at
[msaccessrepair.com...]
>
> Our website is: [msaccessrepair.com...]

My host said: "The following account has been suspended due to spamvertising."

After questioning this, they said:

Time: 23-7-2003-08:42
: The suspension is permanent due to spamvertising. The site was listed with
Spamcop at the URL as advised in the email that I sent to you also.

Who reported the spamvertising, we don't have that information, all that we know is
that the site was reported to spamcop and as per our terms and conditions of service,
the site has been permanently suspended.

Please refer to the spamcop listing for further details and the example email that
was reported.

Well, this is all new to me. Are most hosts this strict?

Jon

More info here:

[spamcop.net...]

Jon12345, that e-mail has a very "zeusy" feel to it. Past posts here show that many webmasters think Zeus is a spam tool, even though it can be used to good effect if properly employed. One of the influencing factors is that some webmasters get very similar mailings frequently. "Your Link is on My Site!" mailings hit these people nearly as often as "Enlarge Your <insert gender-inappropriate body part here>" spam. So when yours hits their inbox, they may not even check out the quality of your directory, they may just say, "$#%&@! Zeus spammer!" and report you. Keep in mind that your e-mail is, in fact, unsolicited, even though your directory is super (I hope!) and your intentions are pure (they are, right?).

Blasting out a few hundred nearly identical mails to people you don't know is risky. One thing that I've seen happen is that a webmaster may manage related sites and get a blast of multiple e-mails. Zeus follows links, right? Hence, it frequently discovers networks of related sites. Sometimes they are obvious clones, easily spotted by design or name similarity. Sometimes they may not have much in common other than linkage. So when you send e-mails to professional-bowling.com, bowling-usa.net, mybowlingball.com, and bowlingsupplies.biz, you may end up pumping almost identical e-mails into the same inbox. Looks kind of spammy...

I get Zeus e-mails too, but I usually check them out. Often, the directories are PR-challenged and/or ugly, but once in a while I'll find a good site with an attractive, well-managed directory that is worth exchanging links with.

If you intend to continue to use Zeus, I'd suggest doing individual e-mails. Be careful to not hit commonly-owned sites with more than one, and personalize the e-mails to show you actually reviewed the site. Make your business case for linkage with that particular site. Keep your link directory looking sharp and make sure the titles and descriptions are good - the data the spider brings back is often junky because of poor site design. Your objective is to craft your e-mails and directory so well that even an experienced Zeus user won't know that's the tool you are using - if you reach that point, your link response rate will go up and you really will have a quality directory.

Thank you for your detailed reply.

The problem I could potentially face is that even if my link directory looks less Zeus like, even if my emails look less cookie-cutter...someone can still report me to Spamcop for unsolicited email requesting link exchanges.

Do most hosts use Spamcop?

My account is now permanently disabled and I need a new reseller host. I want to avoid this if at all possible.

Jon

You are likely to find hosts with varying degrees of flexibility. I find places like SpamCop terrifying, as users are now resorting to blocking or reporting e-mail that they requested in the first place. I have a forum with an e-mail notification feature. In the last two days, two morons who signed up for lots of notifications then blocked the e-mails via AOL. Another site has a 25K mailing list - I wonder how many customers decide to block or report the e-mail they signed up for rather than following the simple unsubscribe feature.

We have had just one ISP contact regarding spam (another case of user laziness on a low-volume, low-frequency newsletter), and by handling the problem quickly and effectively we avoided any problems. People like SpamCop are worrisome, though.

If you don't want to change hosts, I'd contact management there, explain that you sent under 300 personalized link requests, and if this violates their TOS you won't do it again. Ditto with SpamCop. If SpamCop has banned your domain, rather than your IP address, changing hosts won't be sufficient. (If you are on a shared IP, your host's speedy action to block you would make sense, since any ban would affect not just you but other users.) Good luck, I feel your pain.

With the exception of open relay databases, this whole blacklisting thing is getting out of hand. And don't get me wrong - I hate spam and I get way to much of it myself.

From experience on the hosting side I can tell you that getting on some of these databases can be a major nightmare. Since more and more admins are blocking incoming email from IP/domains that are on the blacklists, if you get on one of these then ALL of your users are going to have problems sending email.

Spamcop is ok because if you show them that you took action to solve the problem (read: cancel the offenders hosting account) then they'll drop you off the list. The absolute worst for us, though, was spews. Check out their site and read what they say about getting removed. It basically says "good luck spammer scum, may you rot in hell and by the way there is no way to contact us". And here's the worst part about spews. You don't need to be hosting a spammer to get on their blacklist. If you just happen to be in the same IP block as a spammer you're lumped in with the rest of them. Nice huh?

So if your hosting company is taking a hard line, at least you can understand why even though you're obviously not a spammer.

I have just received this message when trying to send an email to someone at aol:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

liquiddre@aol.com
(ultimately generated from andres@comedymadhouse.com)
SMTP error from remote mailer after initial connection:
host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [64.12.137.152]: 554-(RLY:B1) The information
presently available to AOL indicates this
554-server is generating high volumes of member complaints from AOL's
554-member base. Based on AOL's Unsolicited Bulk E-mail policy at
554-http://www.aol.com/info/bulkemail.html AOL may not accept further
554-e-mail transactions from this server or domain. For more information,
554 please visit [postmaster.info.aol.com....]

Is this something to do with the spam cop thing? Are they looking at the IP address and banning anything I send from that IP address?

Jon

Ok, go to dnsstuff.com and do a "Spam database lookup" (top of middle column, enter your IP). This will query all (or most all) of the spam databases to see if you are listed.

If you are, you'll need to address it directly with the respective lists. Read their FAQs, etc very carefully, do your research, and then when/if you do contact them remember politeness goes a long way.

Most spam blacklists are IP based, so I'd start up with a new host. Read their TOS and make sure you can live within them, and avoid any mailings that could look like spam. Sounds like you really stirred someone up with your last one.

Everyone (almost) hates spam, but the steps that are being taken to control spam are getting out of control themselves. Spamcop-type listings will come down hard on a host to stamp out the problem quickly - there have been too many hosts that permitted spammers to operate for way too long. Unfortunately, innocent sites are injured, too.

> Read their TOS and make sure you can live within them, and avoid any mailings that could look like spam.

My ISP's TOS are rather general in this area:

The following constitute violations of this AUP:

...

g. Unsolicited commercial email/Unsolicited bulk email. Using the Services to transmit any unsolicited commercial email or unsolicited bulk email. Activities that have the effect of facilitating unsolicited commercial email or unsolicited bulk email whether or not that email is commercial in nature, are prohibited.

I have italicized the word "any". Also note that they lump "unsolicited commercial email" together with "unsolicited bulk email".

Clearly sending a single (unsolicited) reciprocal linking request is, in theory, against the TOS. I suspect that all ISP's TOSes will be similarly general.

Not much guidance about where the boundaries lie. Obviously they prefer it that way.

How about this as a solution...

You set your account up with a temporary host. Send out the link emails and then, once you have finished the bulk of your reciprocal link requests, you move it to your permanent account.

Benefits are that you do not risk your permament account from being suspended. In all likelyhood, the temp account is unlikely to be blacklisted to. It has only happened once to me but its good to have insurance.

What do you think?

Jon

I had simliar problem but not as serious as suspended.
I got warnings and I explained it to them

seems ok so far.
one thing is maybe your competitor reports you.

Jon12345, a temporary account kind of presumes you might get turned in for spamming. I've been doing link requests for years, and never ran into a spam reporting issue. What will make people mad are multiple e-mails and/or e-mails that look auto-generated. Stay away from these problems and the risk should be low.

As an alternative to a temporary domain host, a different e-mail account might be easier. An e-mail from bigwidgets@otherdomain.com won't look as professional as billg@bigwidgets.com, but it might be less risky to your hosting situation.

But how do you make an email look less cookie cutter?

But how do you make an email look less cookie cutter?

By all means use a program to figure out potential link sources, but for the love of god don't send out anything without first personalising it to the point that it doesn't look like a template based email.

Let me tell you a story...

I see a number of untargetted & unpersonalised link requests in my job, they get deleted just as fast as "generic" pharmacy spams, if its a particularly bad day they may get thrown through spamcop in an attempt to reduce the amount of daily spam. At home I see relatively few, although the obvious cookie-cutter spam ones always get spamcop'd.

Two weeks ago I saw one which was being flagged as spam (DNS blacklisted) and was set for auto-delete, however since they'd personalised it I sat down and read it properly because it piqued my curiousity, finally I decided that I'd keep it & replied. You want to know why I did this? Because it appeared that someone had sat down, had a look at my site and taken the time to write me an email which could convince me why linking out to them was worthwhile based on the content I'd created.

Personalisation is about more than just Dear Joe Public at the top of the email, it's about spending as much time creating the request as you expect me to spend reading & replying to it - personalise the content and there's a reasonable chance that people like me will make it to the end of the email without either deleting it or reporting it as spam.

- Tony

Personalisation is about more than just Dear Joe Public ...

Precisely!

Personalization means that you have actually (GASP) looked at the site that you want to exchange links with and know something about it (such as why the two of you would make good partners).

Jon, it sounds like you want to figure out how to get links without hard work. In fact, if you read past posts here, you'll find there are no shortcuts.

In your e-mail, you should try to make a good case for the synergy between your sites. Not "we'll both do better in search engines", but an explanation of why your visitors will be interested in the other site. Comment on some aspect of the other site to let the other webmaster know you looked at it. Perhaps even suggest a deep link. Or, tell him that the perfect place for his link on your site is your page devoted to "antique widgets", since his site is about widget history.

As DQ explained, if you can convince the other webmaster that you understand his site, your chances go up. Even better, the chances of being flagged as a spammer go down - even if the other guy doesn't want to link to you, he probably won't report a personal e-mail as spam.

Oy. As a site owner with a reasonably well-known and well-ranked site (although just within my little niche), I can tell you why I see link requests as spam.

I can't tell you how many emails I get that are along the lines of, "I'm collecting quality links for Harley_Davidson_Motorcycles_and_Free_Drugs.com. I came across your page Ballet_Lessons_for_Girls_Ages_5_and_Under.com and feel that it would be relevant to my collection. Please link to my site with the following HTML."

They're all like that so far. It's obvious to me that they've never even looked at my site at all.

I don't think I've ever received a legitimate link request through email unless it came from one of the forms on my site, and frankly, there are several of those where the person never looked at my site past the contact page.

However, if someone emails me from my site (or even through regular email) and gives any indication that they've looked at my site, at least I'll probably read it. Even if it's something like, "I read your bio. Never graduated from college myself, but good for you," or "I liked the yadda yadda on your blah blah page."

To make a long story short, I have to agree that personalized and/or individualized requests are the way to go.

You could just set up a "yourname@yahoo.com" or another free email account to deal with link requests only.

You could just set up a "yourname@yahoo.com" or another free email account to deal with link requests only.

Two problems with this;

1. Who takes professional business matters coming from a free email address seriously? In my mind this says two things about a business, firstly they are too cheap to get email associated with their domain and secondly they don't take other people's view of them seriously.
   
2. Senders address is only half the problem - to stand any chance of being dealt with professionally a link request needs to mention the site name they want linking. Therefore by extension you could infer that this site has some relationship with the spam and with a little extra work you could also prove beyond a doubt that this site was behind the spam - especially if they wanted a recip. link.
   

- Tony

If you setup something like @yahoo.com or something@hotmail.com or @someotherfreemail.com

taht will also be sent complaint and they take action imemdiately. Do you mean people can just start creating new emails and then sending new emails.

Now there are 2 things to consider.

1. Your email is closed for sure if you use Free Email.
2. In your email message, you refer yourdomain as, I have placed a link to your website at this_url.com

Now, when this spam is sent to spamcop, under their 3rd Party Spamming Policies, they contact the email server you used to send the email, the from or reply to email company, the website hosting company listed in the email message etc

Mass Mailing is always SPAM. This always creates trouble. If you check the homepage of Axandra, it also has a Google PR of 0.

Similar case with Web Position Gold Homepage, delisted from Google and PR0.

I'll echo JollyK's sentiment. I'd estimate 80-90% of the link requests I get are form e-mails from spammy domains with at least three hyphens. Most of these have no PR and no unique or useful content. The requests never demonstrate any knowledge of the site they want a link on or its visitor demographics. These requests are of no more use to me than solicitations for organ enhancements, and they end up in the same place.

While I don't bother reporting to SpamCop, I can understand how a busy webmaster would lump these in with the rest of the spam. (Particularly if he got more than one from the same site.)