What’s Up With Mike Filsaime’s ListDotCom?
by Antone Roundy | 5 Comments | Mailing Lists
A few years ago, I had an email that I'd send out through ListDotCom twice a week (if I remembered), and, despite incredibly low response rates, it would make me $20 each time.
Not a fortune, by any stretch of the imagination, but considering that it took me all of about 30 seconds to send, my hourly rate would have made a lawyer salivate. (Too bad I couldn't sustain that hourly rate for a few hours!)
Anyhow, a few months ago, I tried sending an email (using my List Mailer GT tool), and got an error message. So I checked the site and saw this:
Okay, closed for maintenance. That's fine.
...but when I checked again a few weeks later, it was still "closed for maintenance." And it's still "closed for maintenance" today.
From what I can tell, looking at Alexa's traffic graph for the site, it looks like it was shut down mid-February -- about 3 1/2 months ago.
Mid-March, I speculated in the comments of one of my old posts that perhaps the site's traffic had been slumping, and so it had been shut down. But a look at the Alexa graph today suggests that traffic had been fairly steady for years.
Which raises the question: what's going on?
Of course, traffic doesn't necessarily equal revenue. So perhaps it was consuming more resources than it was bringing in. (Given that the site made money both from membership fees and by including ads in the emails that it sent, I wonder whether that says more about trends in email marketing in general, or just about the audience of this one site.)
Or maybe it's getting sold...slowly.
Or maybe it really does need maintenance, and will eventually get it, but isn't a high enough priority to have been fixed yet.
Of course, all of this is pure speculation. If this is the site getting shut down, it's an..."interesting" way of shutting it down.
What a disappointment especially for those that have invested in the site. I didn't find it THAT useful but Mike could, at least, have made an announcement that he was not supporting it anymore rather than saying it was being "maintained".
July 2nd, 2011 at 10:55 am
Listdotcom is still in maintenance mode ;(
Like you I use to get some results from my mailing. I find a thread on the warrior forum but the thread is now close for new comments.
It's sucks when you pay for a lifetime account and they shut down the site.
Something similar about to me with another of Mike Filsaime site. (http://free-advertising-blog.com) for some reason they close my lifetime account without any notice.
Next time I'll think twice before I join one of Mr.Filsaime sites.
August 12th, 2011 at 9:54 am
Site still down, now August still no explanation from M Filsaime. I too paid for lifetime and used regularly, I feel we deserve a bit better than this.
Needless to say my Filsaime purchases are now on an indefinite hold.
February 14th, 2012 at 11:37 am
Still "being maintained"!! I could have built a house with my bare hands in that time.
October 25th, 2012 at 9:27 am
The listdotcom.com domain now redirects to one of Mike's other sites.
October 25th, 2012 at 9:43 am
What a disappointment especially for those that have invested in the site. I didn't find it THAT useful but Mike could, at least, have made an announcement that he was not supporting it anymore rather than saying it was being "maintained".