If you’re anything like me you’ve probably left your Christmas shopping to the last minute (as I write this post there are less than 3 hours left til the shops close here in Australia and I still need to get one more gift)!

If you’re still searching for a great gift for that special blogger in your life (or perhaps a treat for yourself) we’re happy to provide you with a solution here at ProBlogger – the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook.

While an e-book is a little hard to wrap I’ve had a lot of readers from both ProBlogger and DPS email me today to tell me that they’ve just bought copies as gifts for family and friends. It’s particularly good because you don’t have to leave your house to get it and there’s no delivery fee – just pay for it and download.

Some are being quite creative in how they give them too with many burning the PDF onto CDs/DVDs so that they’re able to wrap it up. Others are buying them and then forwarding the download link onto the receiver of the gift via an email.

PS: In mid January I’ll be offering a special limited time bonus for all buyers of 31DBBB. I’m not ready to announce it yet but both those who get a copy that week and those who already have at any time in the past will get the bonus. Just a little extra sweetener for buying the e-book – stay tuned.

PS(2): Of course if you’re buying a gift for a photographer – you should look no further than the Essential Guide to Portrait Photography :-)

OK – last year I did an impromptu ProBlogger ‘Christmas office party’ on Christmas Eve. It basically involved me drinking beer and eating some chips sitting in front of a webcam while Twitter followers dropped by to say G’day. We did a bit of Q&A and had some fun for an hour or so.

This year I want to open it up to everyone and give you a little advanced warning.

This year I’m going to do it a little earlier in the day (I’ll swap out beer and chips for coffee and a muffin) and it’ll be on at 9am this coming Thursday Melbourne time.

This will make it:

• 2pm Wednesday in Los Angeles
• 5pm Wednesday in New York
• 10pm Wednesday in London
• 6am Thursday in Singapore
• 3.30am in New Delhi (sorry friends!)

I’ll Tweet out a reminder in the lead up and when we start but it’ll be at the ProBlogger Show channel on Ustream.

This is just a short note to update readers on ProBlogger.com – the ProBlogger Community area.

In the last 24 hours I’ve added a new area to the forum area where I’ll be releasing monthly ‘featured content’.

Each month I’ll be releasing a podcast interview with a successful blogger – looking at how they got started, how they got their break, how they keep creating compelling content, how they monetize their blog and more.

Each of the interviewees will be given a membership of ProBlogger.com and invited to come and interact with our readers in the weeks following the podcast release.

The first interview is now posted – it’s with Gala Darling from Icing.

Gala has built her blog and associated freelance writing into a business over the last couple of years. In the interview we cover all of the topics mentioned above plus we look at a new monthly podcast that she’s successfully started as a way to monetize her blog.

This interview is a little over 30 minutes – others will be around this length/depth and longer.

Future interviews will be with a variety of bloggers from different niches and with different areas of expertise.

ProBlogger.com is a paid subscription area and currently has around 2300 paid up members from a large variety of niches and levels. Join us here.

PS: Members also currently receive 50% off the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook.

As a quick update to my post over the weekend about Aweber’s system being compromised and spam emails being sent out to those that subscribe to Aweber lists – Aweber have today released a statement acknowledging the problem and talking about what they have done as a result of it.

A quick summary:

• They’re putting it down to vulnerabilities in two third party software systems that they use.
• They’re saying that the hack was limited to areas where subscriber email addresses were stored.
• They believe that the attack was done but an ‘overseas organised group’.
• They state that no other information was taken including information about customers accounts or affiliates accounts.
• They say that Aweber’s system was not used in the spamming and as a result deliverability rates have not been impacted
• They’ve closed the vulnerabilities.

Of course the reality is that while Aweber customers own details and information have not been compromised (this is a relief) – our lists have. While there’s nothing that Aweber can do about this now – the reality is that we as their customers do have to live with the knowledge that our readers, those who trust us with their details, are now getting spammed and that this spam could continue indefinitely.

While I understand Aweber’s statement, feel sorry that they went through this, am happy that it’s not as bad as it could have been and know this stuff happens – I do have some mixed feelings on this:

• Firstly I’ve got over 333,000 subscribers who have potentially been receiving spam in the last few days. This makes me feel ill and embarrassed. I’ve fielded many many emails in the last few days from angry and confused readers. While not all will realize why they’re being spammed now some who have set up specific addresses for my newsletters have – and they’re now angry and have a damaged view of my brand (and some have unsubscribed*). If you’re one of these subscribers – I’m truly sorry – I wish there were something that I could do except suggest you mark the spam as spam and/or resubscribe with a new email address.
• Secondly I’ve been actively recommending Aweber for a year or two here on ProBlogger. I personally want to apologise to my readers who have acted on that recommendation who have been impacted by this. While by no means is it my fault that there was this flaw in Aweber’s system I acknowledge that my genuine recommendation has led to these implications.

I think Aweber has an amazing service. They’ve become an integral part of my own business, have always given me amazing service and I will continue to use them. However I guess I wanted to also acknowledge to others hurt by this that I’m sorry for my part in it (indirect or not).

While Aweber does not apologise in their statement (I guess the lawyers might have had a part in that) I certainly want to express my sorrow for this event to those of you impacted by it.

Update: Aweber have since updated their statement to express that they’re sorry.

There is no perfect system. Over the years my own sites have been hacked (as have many many successful businesses). It is just a pity that this particular instance has impacted so many people.

* as I’m about to hit publish on this I thought I’d check out how many of my subscribers have in fact unsubscribed over the last few days. What I found in the reports section was very odd – for the last 3 days Aweber is reporting that not a single person has unsubscribed from my lists. The blue part of the chart is the unsubscribers – you’ll see in the last three days it is not there at all).

This is bizarre – in the last month of the stats there has not been a single day that I’ve not had someone unsubscribe – in fact I can’t remember a day that there wasn’t at least 10 for much longer than that (it’s just a natural part of having a list of the size that I do) – to have 3 days in a row with no unsubscribers is very very odd. Hopefully it’s just a glitch!

Updated: this post has been updated – twice.

I don’t want to cause alarm on this but today I’ve had emails from 11 subscribers to two of my different email lists that I administrate at Aweber complaining that they’ve been inundated with pharmaceutical spam. In each case the subscribers have set up email addresses especially for my newsletters which they use for no other purposes.

In each case they’re complaining of getting the same types of emails – up to 20 of them in a few hours.

At first I thought perhaps my account had been compromised – but I began to do some investigating and am beginning to see some others talk about the same problem. For example @planetmike tweeted about a similar problem here.

I’m not sure if he’s talking about my newsletters – that’s a possibility.

Further searching in a few webmaster forums turns up similar discussions.

Webmaster World – “Today I got pharma/ED spam to various of those unique addresses. After a little research, I found the common thread: The companies I gave those addresses to use AWeber’s services. (AWeber provides mailing list services to businesses, e.g. sending newsletters to a company’s customers.)”

WarriorForum – “Today I am getting deluged with spam to addresses that are on aWeber lists, including a couple of email addresses that have ONLY been given to aWeber.”

From another user in the WarriorForum – “I’ve been having EXACTLY the same issue.

I have some test e-mail addresses that I ONLY use within AWeber and just today I’ve started receiving lots of spam to them.

These are e-mail addresses across multiple domains including my own and others such as GMail, etc.

These e-mails are only housed within AWeber so I know that the problem is somewhere within their systems.”

AWeber takes our security measures very strongly and employee tested technologies and measures to make sure that our system is not compromised. After receiving your email our team went through an exhaustive list of checks just to make sure that there are no indications that connects this spam message you received to an issue with AWeber. All of our tests have come back secure with no reports of intrusion or compromise.

Also note that after looking at the spam message in question we see that members of our teams have also received this same message to their personal addresses that have never been used in conjunction with AWeber.

We’ll continue to monitor our system. And of course if you have any further questions, please feel free to let me know.

I’m hesitant to make a call that Aweber has been compromised (I know they wouldn’t have played a part in this, they’re reputable and it’d be business suicide for them to be caught at that) – perhaps it’s a problem with some email service provider (although from the emails I’ve received it’s impacting people who subscribe with a variety of email providers) but something does seem to be wrong here.

I’ve got emails into Aweber and will update you with their response.

In the mean time – if you have received this spam and you’re on the ProBlogger newsletter list (as some are reporting) I sincerely apologise and hope we can get to the bottom of it.

PS: I’ve sat on this story for 18 hours hoping to get a response from Aweber but it seems that their support don’t work weekends (I’m actually a bit surprised that they don’t seem to have put any response on their blog or Twitter account as I’m now seeing more and more buzz about it in forums and on Twitter). I’ve since had another 10 or so angry complaints from readers and have seen the same thing happening for another list I have on a separate account which I use to promote the ProBlogger Book with Chris Garrett. That account is completely separate to my Aweber account and I don’t even have access to the password of it meaning that it’s not just my Aweber subscribers who are being hit.

Again – this could be a wider issue than just Aweber – perhaps some spammer is using some kind of system to target a whole lot of random email addresses – but it does seem that perhaps it’s somehow more centred around Aweber. Time will tell.

I don’t like to post this as I really love Aweber as a service (they’ve been brilliant since I switched to them) – but because readers seem to be unsubscribing and blaming me for it I wanted to make sure word was out that there may have been a problem.

I’d love to get comments from anyone who has similar experience with this in the last few days. Are your lists complaining of spam at the moment too? Hopefully in getting people’s experiences we’ll be able to help Aweber get to the bottom of what’s happening.

Update: Within half an hour of posting this Aweber got in touch. They’re not ready to make a public statement on this but are happy for me to pass on that they’re aware of it and are “doing extensive investigations into any possible issues.”

From what I can tell they’re collecting lots of data – perhaps if you have any specific data from those in your lists including header information of spam emails it could be worth emailing Aweber to let them know of your problem and any data that you have. I’d suspect that specific information would be helpful to them.

Update 2: Aweber have now made a statement about the compromise of data from their system. You can read my initial reactions to that here.

Thanks to everyone who entered this week’s ‘win a book’ competition here on ProBlogger.

It’s been a while since I ran any kind of competition so to have over 1500 entries was a real rush (and quite overwhelming).

I’ve just closed off the competition and randomly drawn the winners. They are:

1. Susan Geene – Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
2. Chris – Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for effective Internet Marketing
3. Sandra – Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success
4. Stephen – Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share their Secrets to Creating a High-Profile High-Traffic and High Profit Blog
5. Randy Hawes – Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What it’s Becoming and Why it Matters
6. Donna – ProBlogger the Book

If you share a name with one of these people check your email to confirm if it was you – I’ve emailed all 6 to get their delivery addresses.

Thanks again everyone – to the 1506 people who didn’t win – better luck next time!

UPDATE: This competition is now closed and I have closed comments on this post. Thanks to everyone for entering – it’s been amazing to see so many entries! I’ll notify winners of their win shortly!

OK – I have a pile of books that is growing beside my desk (and on my desk… and on my bookshelf) made up of books that I’ve either finished with or that I have multiple copies of.  

I’d like to do a bit of a giveaway today of a few of them and all you need to do is leave a comment saying which one you’d like.

Below I’m listing 5 6 books (I’ll link to them on Amazon so you can read more about them) and I’m asking you to nominate ONE (not more than one…. just one) that you’d like to be in the running for.

This Wednesday I’ll randomly choose a winner for each book, contact you to get your mailing details and pop them in the mail for you (I’ll pay for the shipping).

Here are the 5 books:

1. Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
2. Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for effective Internet Marketing
3. Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success
4. Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share their Secrets to Creating a High-Profile High-Traffic and High Profit Blog
5. Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What it’s Becoming and Why it Matters

Oh and for a little extra I’ll throw in a copy of ProBlogger the Book as a 6th Alternative.

Remember – you can only choose 1 – just use the name of the book in the comment – (this way I’ll know you’re getting a book you don’t have) so choose carefully!

UPDATE: This competition is now closed and I have closed comments on this post. Thanks to everyone for entering – it’s been amazing to see so many entries! I’ll notify winners of their win shortly!

Over the coming weeks I have lined up to record audio interviews with a number of bloggers who have been making a living from their blogging and related activities.

The first 3 are:

• Leo Babauta – from Zen Habits
• Gala Darling – from iCiNG
• Aaron Wall – from SEObook

Each has had success in their own niches and each has expertise in different areas of blogging and I’m really looking forward to exploring some practical tips with each.

Ask a Question Here

I have a lot of questions already lined up to ask them but would love to also include a few questions from readers in the interviews. This post is simply an invitation for you to submit a question to one or all of the bloggers.

If you have a question you’d like me to ask please leave it (with the name of the blogger you want me to ask it to) in comments below.

PS: I can’t guarantee to ask every question you submit – but I will try to get as many as I can included!