I have been a full time web entrepreneur for just over 4 years now. In that time I have I had to deal with dozens of separate companies. Some good and some not so good. However, the really frustrating thing is dealing with companies that have previously provided exceptional service and then fall far short. So, today I am going to talk about a bad experience I had with GetResponse (They provide e-mail newsletter and autoresponder services) and what fellow entrepreneurs can learn from it.

When I first got into internet marketing, I was told e-mail marketing was a good way to make money. So, I signed-up with GetResponse (over 5 years ago) both because they were cheap and all the reviews I read had good things to say about them. Lesson #1 Reputation and price matter for attracting new customers.

Over the next year or so, I found that e-mail marketing just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t make it work in a way I enjoyed. I had built a few somewhat profitable lists but wasn’t really sure what to do with them. I hated sending regular updates, which is what is required to get the most out of a list. Lesson #2 Make your business work around your strengths (at least at the start). You can always outsource/hire people to do the things you don’t like later.

Yet, since GetResponse was pretty cheap I decided to keep paying my annual subscription fees. I thought I may want to use them later and it wasn’t costing me a whole bunch. The lists I had built made just enough money to cover the cost anyway. This was good for GetResponse because I kept paying my annual subscription fees each year. Lesson #3 Recurring subscription based businesses can be a goldmine if you are the one selling them.

What follows next really impressed me. At some point (I am not sure when exactly) GetResponse significantly raised their prices, but kept all existing customers on the old pricing plan. What was even better was that my subscription lapsed for 4 months around this time. This was due to me not paying attention to a credit card’s expiration date. When I contacted them and told them I wanted to renew, they not only allowed me to do so at the old rate, they still had all my data. I was very impressed by this and recommended them to people looking for a newsletter and/or auto responder service. Lesson #4 Treat existing customers well and not only are they more likely to stay loyal, they will tell others about you as well.

Now we come to my recent problems with them. My account was renewed at the start of December. Like most years I didn’t really think too much about it and probably would have let it slide. However, a the end of December I got charged for my renewal again, plus the cost of the more expensive package. They did quickly send and e-mail to apologize for the mistake, but instead of refunding the money they said it would be used for future purchases (about 2.5 years worth of renewals in my case). There was no offer of a refund. Lesson #5 When you make a mistake it is not always good enough to admit it. You should make sure you do what you can to make it right. For example, if you bill someone accidentally, make sure to offer a refund.

At this point I realized that dealing with GetResponse was not worth the trouble anymore. I was irked that they did not immediately offer a refund when they changed my card for 2.5 years worth of service. So, I decided I was going to cancel my account. I sent them an e-mail asking to do just that and for a refund for the extra money they charged. I did immediately get a refund for the accidental charge and they did apologize. However, I wanted them to cancel my account and refund the unused balance (the 11 months worth of service I still have left). Lesson #6 Pay attention to angry or dissatisfied customers. If happy customers will tell a few people about a good experience, angry ones will tell everyone about a bad one.

Now, if they had refunded the last bit of money you would not be reading this. When GetResponse refunded the extra charge they forgot that I had already paid for another full year of service at the start of December. So my account went into suspension mode. I didn’t really care too much at the time, just as long as I got the rest of my money back. So I e-mailed them yet again and asked for the last of my money back and told them my account was not working. They fixed my account and then told me they were not going to refund my money because the terms of service state you can only cancel an account no less than 2 days before the renewal date. This is different from most online services which will give you a refund up to 30 days after renewal (which I was still just within when I started the whole refund/cancellation process) Lesson #7 Have an easy and clear refund/cancellation process. It sucks giving refunds, but you are never going to please all your customers all the time. How you deal with the unhappy ones will determine the impact they have.

Thus, GetResponse is technically in the right for not canceling my account. I did agree to the terms of service when I signed up 5 years ago. Therefore, I will not attempt a chargeback with my credit card company. However, by not simply canceling my account and refunding the 11 remaining months of service they have encouraged me to tell as many people I know not to use them. If I convince even one person not to use them, then it will cost the company money. And keep in mind with subscription based businesses you can easily keep customers for years. For example, I have been a customer at one webhostng company for 6 years and just renewed for my 7th. Lesson #8 If you are going to lose a customer anyway, don’t make it worse for them and drag it or by hiding behind terms of service agreements. It will just make the soon to be ex-customer frustrated. Any additional money your business gains is likely to be offset against the potential loss of future business.

TL;DR – Had a previously good relationship with GetResponse, but because of their recent actions I would advise other people to stay away from them. There are better and cheaper alternatives out there. The good news is that the way they conducted themselves provides some good lessons in what one should and should not do in business.

I would love to heard what other entrepreneurs think about this.

Before I begin listing off a bunch of new features I will just briefly recap what Site Build It is and isn’t. As I have stated before SBI is NOT a get rich quick scheme. In fact, I can’t even guarantee that you will make money using it.

You will get out of it exactly what you put into it. If you are looking for empty promises of fast money then you will be sorely disappointed with SBI. However, if you are willing to work towards your own success then I think Site Build It is probably the best tool out there for you.

To put it more simply Site Build It can help you to build a long term successful online business. BUT only if you are willing to commit the time and effort to make it one.

Site Build It is a tried and true way of making quality niche sites that the search engines love. It includes everything you need to be successful right out of the box. Not only do you get web hosting for your web site but you also get a step by step action guide explaining exactly what you should be doing to start and then grow your own internet business.

I have built two successful sites using the Site Build It process. However, I recently sold one of them and agreed that I wouldn’t disclose what topic either site were on. I did this because the new owners don’t want lots of new people competing with them. But, I can tell you that both sites together were earning me as much as $500 a month with little effort beyond creating the sites in the first place.

And while I can’t show you my sites I can show you lots of other great sample SBI sites here. I can tell you first hand that these sites a good example of what you can accomplish with Site Build It. Without the Site Build It action guide I am sure I would not be where I am today.

The reason I haven’t build more websites with SBI is because at the time when I first started using it there were certain technical limitations to their platform that wouldn’t allow me to create blogs. However, this has been one of the first major improvements to SBI for 2009 is that now you can now easily create a blog for your site.

A second important new service offered by Ken Evoy is SiteSell Services. This is for people who have an existing business and need a web presence. Not only does it offer the complete Site Build It package but also includes a complete content writing service for you. You can find out more about this option here.

The third great feature added for 2009 is that Ken is now offering all his ebooks free of charge. These are great guides that used to cost up to $49.99 each. Each one deals with a different aspect of starting a business online. The fact that he is now giving them away free shows me how confident he is in his product. Click here to see all the great free ebooks he is offering.

Now all of these great new features are on top of the already existing ones. You can use Site Build It to start almost any sort of internet based business. For example you can create a website that takes advantage of Google’s Adsense program as outlined here. Or, you could use it to grow an online auction business as outlined here. Or, you can even use Site Build It to expand your local business: either on your own as outlined here or through SiteSell services as outlined here.

So there you have it. If you want to start an internet or online business in 2009, Site Build It is the platform to do it with. But, don’t take my word for it click here for proof that Site Build It works. Or, click here to watch videos of people who love SBI. Or thirdly you can take a video tour of all that SBI has to offer by clicking here.

Remember, that you can try Site Build It totally risk free. The only person who can make you a success is you. Take the first step today by seeing how you can try Site Build It risk free only by clicking here now.

To find out more about this you can read the Site Build It review I wrote about 10 months ago or you can go directly to the Site Build It website by clicking here.

Second of all, Ken has also updated his Affiliate Masters Course, and guess what? It is now entirely free! If you have any interest in affiliate marketing from learning what it is, to how to do it right, you need to download and READ this ebook today.

It explains in plain, straightforward and usually funny ways how you can make money online through affiliate programs. Moreover, this not some puny 40 page ebook. It has 152 pages of real and honest information that will help you make money online.

Competing products often sell for as much as $97, and even then don’t even do as thorough a job as the Affiliate Masters Course does. So do yourself a favour and download the Affiliate Masters Course here (right click to save to your desktop).

I will be doing a more complete analysis of the Affiliate Masters Course in an up coming post as well as an updated review of Site Build It, where I will actually show you two sites I made with it years ago. Stay tunned and until then good luck.

I have decided to re-examine and re-evaluate the 3waylinks.net program. When I wrote my initial review of the program back in October of last year I was extremely enthusiastic. All my initial test sites I created to be used with the 3waylinks.net program got indexed by Google very quickly and got PR 2 rankings right off the bat. This was archived with no other promotion besides 3waylinks.net.

Better yet, was the fact that the sites were actually ranking really well in Google, sometimes even on the front page. Needless to say this resulted in pretty good AdSense revenue relative to the amount of work involved.

However, all that began to change in January. My sites began dropping off the font page of Google and then I couldn’t even find them in the top 100 search results. I was told at the time that this was normal and that my sites would come back in the rankings.

I can say now, 5 months later, that this has not been the case. My rankings for those sites has never come back and I have taken the 3waylinks code off my more important sites. I am still subscribed to the program but I am going to be canceling my subscription once I can replace most of the incoming links to my remaining sites.

So, my verdict is that I no longer recommend the program. If you are a member and are getting good results then I recommend you stick with it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t waste your money on it. This has been disappointing but I try to look at it as a learning experience.

This has been a good lesson for me. It has taught me that I should not be afraid to experiment and invest money into new programs. Some of them will work out and some (like 3waylinks) won’t. The thing is, if you want your internet business to be successful, you have to keep trying and not let small set-backs get in your way.

If you have any comments please leave them below. I am interested to know what people think.

Yaro is a professional blogger who runs multiple blogs such as entrepreneurs-journey.com. That blog alone currently makes him over $10,000 per month, which is pretty good money. Better yet, is the fact that he claims it only takes him 2 hours a day to make that much.

You can find out how he manged to do that for free by downloading his Blog Profits Blueprint. The guide itself is a great primer on how to start an Internet based blogging business in your spare time. It is filled with very useful advice.

My personal take on Yaro, is that he rare among Internet marketers because he actually over delivers on what he promises. With the obvious exception of Ken Evoy and Site Build It, I can not think of many other people in the Internet marketing community who honestly deliver more than they promise.

That being said, I don’t agree with everything Yaro has to say. My main beef with him is the fact that he claims you can earn full-time income as a blogger working as little as 2 hours per day. Now, I am sure that there are many days where Yaro works 2 hours or less and still earns a decent amount of money.

The problem is that you have to put in a lot of work until you can get to that point. Once your blog (or website or other Internet business) reaches a certain critical mass it is easy to take time off and still earn a decent income. BUT, it still does take a lot of effort to reach that point.

The good news is that you can save a significant amount of time and effort with this step, if you know exactly what you need to do. Here again, Yaro can help you. Blog Profits Blueprint will get you started on how to set up a blog and how to start generating income from it.

To get to the next step though Yaro also offers a paid coaching service called the Blog Mastermind mentoring service. Until, recently it has been closed to new members so Yaro could focus on the existing ones. This is not one of those mentoring programs where there are 10,000 members. Yaro keeps it small so he can give his attention to those who pay.

Nevertheless, this mentoring program is not for everyone. I would not even consider joining unless you can realistically devote at least 2 hours a day to it. If you don’t have this much time to devote to it, then you are not going to be successful with it and then it will just be a waste of money. Also, you should probably already have a basic understanding of how to create a blog or better yet already own one.

This last step is not critical but will greatly increase your odds of getting something out of the mentoring program. If you don’t know how to do this then you should really watch Yaro’s free videos at Become a Blogger. It shows you how to easily set up your own money making blog.

So how much will the Blog Mastermind mentoring program cost?

Well as I understand it, it is going to cost $97 per month. As I stated previously this is probably going to be too much for some people, but I think if you want to become a professional blogger it is a valuable investment. However, only you know know if that applies to you.

In any case even, if you are not interested in the mentoring program but do want to learn how to make money blogging, you should download the Blog Profits Blueprint and visit Become a Blogger to learn how to set up a blog.

If you are interested in learning how to make serious money online blogging, then you should visit the Blog Mastermind mentoring program sign-up page to get information on when he is reopening the doors to the program. Yaro is one of the few good guys when it comes to making money online and I wouldn’t recommend his products if I didn’t think they are worth it.

Finally, as a special bonus over the next two days I am going to publish two articles written by Yaro to demonstrate the quality of information you can expect from him. So, be sure to check back soon.

Update [May 19, 2008]: You can read his first guest post here on: Reporter vs Expert – Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting.

Update [May 20, 2008]: You can read his second post here on: 10 Blog Traffic Tips.

Update [July 28^th, 2008]: You can read the latest on Yaro Starak, Blog Profits Blueprints and the reopened Blog Mastermind Program here.