I’ve had a few questions being asked quite a bit by those participating in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge so thought I’d post here some answers:
1. Missing Emails – I’m afraid that for some reason a number of those participating are reporting not getting emails. There are a number of reasons for this:
- New Signups – if you signed up since Monday it takes up to 24 hours for the sequence of daily emails to kick in. New signups will be put into an email sequence where you’ll be sent daily emails starting at Day 1. This means you’re a little behind the main group but means you don’t miss anything that the main group has covered already.
- Spam Filtering – some people are finding our emails in their spam/junk mail folders. Please search for them there and mark them as ‘not spam’ and you should get future ones in your inbox.
- Missing Confirmation – some people did not confirm/verify their participation by clicking a link in the email that we sent you soon after you signed up. We need this confirmation before we can send you anything else. Search for this and click the link (it could be in your spam/junkmail folder). If you can’t find it try subscribing again on this page. If you still can’t find it – contact Aweber.com who are managing our list.
2. Email Delays – a few people are concerned that they see posts go up on ProBlogger for days but don’t get emails until hours or even days later. As mentioned above the main reason for this is that emails are sent out in a sequence. Most people reporting this problem have signed up since the program started and will be a day or two behind the main group. You’ll get the emails eventually but will be taken to the start of the sequence of emails.
Other people reporting shorter delays in getting emails will unfortunately just have to wait as we don’t have complete control over when emails will be delivered. Aweber queues these autoresponder emails so that they go out usually 1-3 hours after the posts go live on ProBlogger.
If you want notifications as posts go live please subscribe to our RSS feed. This way you’ll see posts as they go up on the blog. You’ll still get the emails eventually and can see any other information I’m including there.
Apologies for those experiencing delays but there isn’t a lot we can do about it at this point.
All in all though it seems that the project is being well received. We just passed 10,000 registered participants and many are reporting that they’re enjoying the tasks being set so far. Thanks for everyone’s involvement!
Darren,
I think one of the main issues with your “spam filtering” problem is you have no published SPF record on ‘problogger.net’ allowing ‘aweber.com’ to send emails on your behalf..
You are sending the email from ‘aweber.com’ mail server but claiming mail is from ’[email protected]’..
Steve..
Good post idea. :) My first email was a bit delayed. I was surprised to see it send so close to day 2’s email! Luckily, I got the second one on time. It happens, I suppose!
So many people are involved in this project, I think it’s amazing, and it’s helping tremendously. Thank you.
This was helpful info, clears up questions that most anyone would have I think.
I had no problems receiving the emails on 31 Day project,though they are a bit delayed at least I am getting the info through emails .I don’t want to miss a single post on that project.
It seems I missed the 31 Day Project. Is it still opened currently or has it ended?
I can’t imagine what a headache this whole 31 day challenge is to coordinate and maintain. Thank you for making it happen :-)
I would encourage people who use twitter to make sure you are following Probloggers tweets, as he tweets the new posts too. That’s how I found that Day 2 was up long before it landed in my inbox.
I didn’t have any problems with the emails.
How are the forums coming by the way? Any news on that?
I (@Stretsh) DM’ed you on Twitter about a Facebook suggestion. DM back please, cause it can be used for a greater good than I anticipated.
I realize I have not created the custom email field for this and somehow I missed to notice the first day email…now I’m on it.
I haven’t signed up for this 31 day challenge via email
But I am reading all the posts and doing all I can to make my blog better.
I know that I can build a growing and successful blog…I won’t give up until I do
I’m really enjoying the process but a few days before I started our foster child arrived as an emergency placement so.. am just running a little late! The intention is there though!
Darren,
I got the first day email at 4pm (CET) and the second day email at 9PM (CET), and both the posts where published around midday (CET).
I guess this is not a very good service being done by your email service (aweber.com)
For a website I worked on, we had more than 100k email subscribers, and the sending process sent around 10k emails per hour.
They’d better work to solve this issue, otherwise they will not get good publicity from this “fiasco”.
My emails are arriving a day behind. I tried resubscribing as suggested and got an error message that I was already subscribed and verified…guess your sever just does’t like me
me too >> I didn’t have any problems with Emails ..
Congratulations on passing the 10,000 mark!
FYI, I received an email from a friend suggesting I sign up for “31 Days” even though my blog is not yet up and running. These are FANTASTIC tips to have as a treasure-trove of information while I set up shop. Perhaps you could write a post encouraging the other “blogless” among us to sign up anyway as a road map to getting started…
Just marking at as “Not Spam” isn’t enough to get it “trusted” by Gmail.
One way I’ve found (with Gmail) is to set up a filter that moves the email in question to it’s own label, and make sure to click “Never Mark as Spam” in the rules for the filter.
This has stopped legitimate emails from getting shuffled into the SPAM folder (at least for me)
So unfortunate that I missed the 31 Day Project. But I am subscribing to your RSS feed.
The thing I can make out is that there are many people involved in this project. It’s truly amazing.
thanks again for this program.
i was getting my emails earlier but the last two didn’t come through till late in the day. like someone mentioned earlier, i’m following you on twitter so no worries.
i can’t even imagine sending out 10,000 emails out daily anyways.
reading everyone’s comments has been great, looking forward to the rest of the challenge.
Thanks for the update darren. Any news on forums getting up and running for the challenge?
Well subscribed both ways, but only RSS alerts come. No email by Aweber.
Sorry Darren its 6.00 EST in the evening and have still not received my post. Can u help .. sorry about that.
Thanks for this article – it highlighted some of the link building aspects I thought were important. In as much as quality link is relevant, content is still king.
When are we getting the forum?
Content first. Links Second. Appreciate you help
Good Luck
Congratulations on passing the 10,000 mark!
FYI, I received an email from a friend suggesting I sign up for “31 Days” even though my blog is not yet up and running. These are FANTASTIC tips to have as a treasure-trove of information while I set up shop. Perhaps you could write a post encouraging the other “blogless” among us to sign up anyway as a road map to getting started…
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I have several followers on Twitter and Facebook. One way to see how many people are at least clicking on my posts is to sign up for a Bitly account. http://bitly.com
After I write a post, have your post showing in your browser, I have Bitly in my toolbar and click on it. The post URL shows up in the shorten box, and bitly shortens it.
Copy and paste the new URL and post in a tweet or on Facebook. Then you can go back to your stats in bitly and see how many clicks you had on each bitly shortened post.
Not sure if widespread or isolated problem, but my emails stopped after day 10. Just reporting in…
Got days 1 thru 7 and today got day 11. I’m missing days 8 thru 10. Where can I find them?
I’m having same problem, any solution for this???