This week I had quite a scare. I was going to share this only with my upcoming group but after seeing yet another horror story about someone’s hard work and great content being shut down, I just have to.
A few months ago, there was Shoemoney’s blog post, How Infusionsoft cost me 50k but gave me a great education (warning – Shoemoney doesn’t pull any punches; pretty graphic language you may not used to seeing here from me). He talked about how in just a few short hours, “the company we use to process our orders and handle all affiliates, had blocked all of our affiliate links”. This resulted in serious loss of revenue ($50,000!!!) and of course, it wasn’t resolved easily. Shoemoney got the message that he was just one of many people out there so basically, just deal with it. What???!!! What about the money you invested? What happened to the referrals you sent? Don’t they know who you are?…no, no they don’t apparently.
Next, a good friend of mine had all her websites shut down in one blow and it took her about a week to re-create everything and get back to some sense of normalcy for her business. She lost thousands of dollars in the process – nobody compensated her for that loss.
I’ll get to me in a second.
Today, I read from Jeff Herring, all around good guy and internet superhero. What does he say? Read this post – Dear YouTube – Breaking the Heart of a Long-Time Supporter @YouTube. Jeff had hundreds of videos and subscribers out there and all in a “poof”, that’s off the internet radar. Here’s what the banner says at the top of the page “this account has been terminated…”
So now let’s get to me. I’m a pretty tame internet marketer. I wouldn’t consider myself to be aggressive or spammy. Maybe somebody would say differently? but I’ve never heard it.
I get an email yesterday morning from Mailchimp that says basically – so long, it’s been nice for awhile but we don’t want to play with you anymore. At least, that’s how I read it. In reality, I don’t know what it was saying because the letter threw out some pretty generic terms that probably go to anyone who gets shut down.
After my initial freak-out (after all, I’m smack in the middle of promoting Spicy Hot Systems That Sell) I’m thinking fast – about things like how do I get my optin lists back, how can I move myself to a new provider, how many people have I missed in a whole day. What does that do to my newsletter subscribers.
You know … stuff that makes your head spin.
I considered writing a scathing email since I couldn’t find a phone number for them anywhere. I thought about really making my head spin like that girl in The Exorcist (the first one that wasn’t cheesy, but scary). Then I came to my senses.
I ended up writing a polite email on the contact form and said something simple like, “I need your help. I’m willing to make whatever corrections need to be made and by the way, can you tell me what I did wrong?” Within a few hours, I got a reply asking a few questions about where I got my list, did I buy it from a 3rd party, how long did it take to develop, yada yada yada — stuff I guess was important to them. I answered every question and offered even more than they needed to know.
Within minutes, I was back on – list fully intact.
I have to say I love Mailchimp for this. Why? Because even though it was like living in a horror film for a day, I got a response and the remedy before I lost significant time. But most of all…
I learned a valuable lesson that is certainly what I’m hearing in the other stories I shared too – host your own stuff & have a back-up plan.
Tell me about your own personal scare with hosting online.
About Tanya Smith
I really appreciate you sharing this story Tanya, especially what you did about it and the result. I use MailChimp too, and recommend it to my clients. I’ll definitely be sharing this post with them too.
As a geek, I’m constantly called on to help folks with something that goes haywire with one of their online presences. My best advice is to backup regularly. There are so many tools and backup options that make it an easy task. And, you’ll be sorry if you lose something as significant as your list or site.
MaAnna, you always have the best feedback. Thank you for your comments. I really had a moment of desperation this week and I know others have been through it too. Fortunately, Mailchimp came through for me. Phew! You must share a post on backup tools – I’d be happy to include it as a guest post. Open to it?