Mailing lists … they’re one of the most popular, and easy, methods of using your website to make money. I’ve used a few different list manager systems over the years, but they all seemed to miss (at least) one thing that I found useful or needed to make the list behave the way I wanted it to.
So — being the code junkie that I am — sat down to roll my own. I opted to build the system from open source technologies. Why?
- I’m familiar with the tools.
- You get the source code.
- You can’t beat the price.
Gathering up the tool set, I installed the necessary software on my Fedora server. I chose to use the following tool chain: Python, PHP, ActiveMQ (with Stomp adapter), Procmail, and Sendmail.
The system is designed to be a multi-user email autoresponder. In plain English, that means it will be able to manage email lists for multiple users. It’s also designed to allow multiple email “campaigns” per user — so you can have separate email lists for different websites or products.
Ultimately, the system will be a for-pay endeavor. But, for now, I need to work out the UI kinks. I also need to gather some meaningful metrics and information about how much the whole system will impact my server, and the overall resource usage.
What does this mean for you, the reader? Well, I’m going to be doing a beta-test of the system, and the “early adopters” of the my autoresponder will receive a reduced (maybe even free, haven’t decided yet) subscription cost as an incentive to stick with the program when it goes live.
The beta, like most betas, will be free to join. If you want more information about the email auto-responder service, you can sign up for the beta now.
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