Yep that’s right, my laptop is so hot you could fry an egg on it.  Sadly, that’s not a clever euphemism for “wow, my laptop’s on fire cos I’m churning out so much work”!

My laptop really is like Mount Vesuvius, waiting to erupt at any minute!

For the past month or so, every time I put my laptop on my lap, I ended up with scorched thighs, which I can assure you, isn’t a pretty sight! I know Rod Stewart opined on the virtues of Hot Legs, but this is ridiculous!

I’ve never really been a `laptoppy’ person until August last year, when just before I was due to whizz off on holiday , my PC decided to  have a hairy fit and start spewing blue screens of death at me and all sorts of other technical unmentionables -arrghh!

So I took the bull by the horns and steamed into my nearest store and grabbed a laptop that I thought looked rather attractive. I know, attractiveness is not a good criteria to choose a laptop but I was pretty desperate and it was just as good as Eeny Meeny Miny Mo!

Now up until a couple of weeks ago, all was well with Lysander the laptop, he was a rather spritely boy and I became rather addicted to him. In fact, he encouraged me to become terribly lazy. Who could be bothered to fire up the old PC and sit perched there as winter was approaching, enduring frozen fingers and toes, when Lysander was beckoning me enticingly; positively luring me to jump on the couch, cover my feet with a quilt and flip his enormously attractive lid?

But, suddenly, inexplicably I thought, the laptop started to cut out.  Black screen… nothing! Bizarre. I couldn’t start him up again he just wouldn’t put out.

At first I thought I’d got one of those deadly viruses – blamed Thing 1 and Thing 2 for downloading dodgy games and getting me infected.

Every day, this would happen more and more. Depending on what I was doing on the `puter, it would just shut down with no warning. If I was watching a video I could hear the fan chugging and working like a Trojan. If I was running a few programs at once, woah, the fan was working overtime and that thing was heating up like a pubescent boy at a Miss World beauty contest.

The mouse pad was turning into a ceramic hob and the underneath of the laptop was growing more pyroclastic by the minute giving me more than just a sharp crease in my trousers!

Time to hit Google, type in my model name and number and see what happens.

Phew. How comforting. there were tons of people who were all experiencing the same problem as me.  It’s odd, isn’t it, how you always feel better when you find other people that are having the same problems as you – you just don’t feel so alone, somehow!!

What Causes a Laptop to Overheat?

• Using your machine intensively, makes the hard drive, the central processing unit (CPU) and video systems work at a high capacity. If you do a lot of gaming on your laptop, or run a lot of programs at one time such as Photoshop or Dreamweaver, these will be causing the CPU to work some overtime. I particularly notice my lappy heating up when a virus scan is running. So, the harder your laptop is working, the hotter your processor will get.

• Keeping your laptop in an hot environment, very hot room, near to a radiator/heater etc. contributes to over-heating

• The make and model of your laptop determines whether it may have a propensity to overheating -  i.e. if your model’s design does not allow for adequate ventilation.

• If you obstruct the existing ventilation in any way e.g. use it on a bed, blanket, quilt etc

• Allowing fibres and dust to enter the ventilation area.

• Plugging in USB devices such as dongles and external hard drives puts a load on the processor

How Do I Know if I Have an Overheating Problem?

It’s important to remember that there is a difference between your laptop getting hot and actually overheating. If you aren’t sure if your laptop is truly overheating, look out for the following

• If your laptop suddenly shuts down for no reason – this often means the fail safe system in the computer has kicked in when it hits a certain temperature

• Blue Screen of Death often signifies you have an overheating CPU problem

• You may become aware of the fan working more often and sounding louder and/or more vigorous than normal as it tries to cool the computer down

• Memory operation errors

• Your laptop is scorching hot to touch in certain areas

• Your laptop is running slower than usual

What Damage Can Overheating Cause?

• Your laptop can suffer quite extensive damage and require you to replace major components, which could prove to be expensive.

• You can actually cause damage to yourself. My report of singed thighs was slightly exaggerated but, believe it or not, cases of burned genitalia and legs are common. Some medical reports also attribute fertility problems to excessive heat from a laptop.

What Do I Do if my Laptop is Overheating?

• Try to keep your laptop on a cool, hard surface. The majority of models have their ventilation underneath, so if you were daft enough to think that because it’s called a laptop it’s ok to have it on your lap (doh), think again. You may well be in danger of obstructing the ventilation. Ensure that air can circulate all around the laptop, especially underneath.

• Keep all the vents clear of dirt, fluff, dust and fibres.

• Only connect USB devices when you need to use them.

• Use the powersaving functions of your laptop, helps to prevent overheating and also extend the battery life

• Use a laptop cooling stand, a gel cooling pad or a 3-fan cooling pad

I hope this helps any of you who are experiencing similar problems. I’m pleased to say that Lysander is behaving perfectly once again after I ordered him this nifty new notebook cooler and my legs are now recovering from that motley, corned beef look :0

Yes, I’ve finally cleared my desk and am ready to launch myself into 2009! A very happy New Year to all my readers. I can feel it in my water that it’s gonna be an exciting year

I expect you think it’s a bit odd that I’m launching my New Year when we’re already half way through January? Well, I have to come clean and tell you that when I look back at 2008, I was a bit skittish; a bit flighty; a bit of a flibbity-gibbit.  I don’t know why but I just couldn’t settle down and finish many of the things I started.

I’m sure you know the scenario…. you have this brain-wave, this fantastic idea for a product or a project, you get all excited about it and you rush off and buy the domain name — you get started, then something else grabs your attention and you’re off on another tangent. And by the time you get back to that original idea, your enthusiasm has wained, or the project doesn’t seem like such a good idea after all!

Well, I feel as if this happened to me quite a lot in 2008 and it bugged the hell out of me all year. It was like I was floating outside of my body and watching myself doing it; being aware of it, knowing that it was gnawing away at me but refusing to do anything to put a stop to it. I was just coasting along.  Not a great feeling!

Of course, I was still making money from my products and projects that were completed but I wasn’t pushing myself to go on and `rinse and repeat’, which is what I talked so much about in my first post of 2008 when I was looking back at what I’d done in 2007.

It was only when I was chatting to my friend, Peggy Baron, on Twitter and she told me that that post was her favourite and she asked me if I was going to make a similar post looking back at 2008, that I started to really assess my performance last year in the cold, hard light of day.

I wasn’t impressed and I have to say it was quite uncomfortable!

Too many half finished, half realised projects – that’s what last year was all about for me. So, that’s why I’m only now saying that I’m ready to launch myself into 2009.  Like an office worker who has to clear their intray by the end of the each day, I couldn’t say goodbye to last year until I had cleared my 2008 intray. So, I’ve spent couple of weeks going through all my stuff – my online real estate, as some people like to call it.

I’ve scrapped some projects that were half started, so they won’t bug me this year, they won’t be at the back of my head yelling “finish me”.  And, most importantly of all, I’ve taken steps to go ahead and finish other projects that are viable and that I still have enthuisiasm for and that I still believe in.

I feel that I’m starting 2009 with a great weight lifted off my shoulders.

So for me, 2009 is all about

• Discipline and planning
• Following things through to the very end
• Staying focussed
• Risking failure
• Bursting through that membranous wall that is my comfort zone and surprising myself

How about you? Can you relate to some of the things I’ve mentioned? Were there things you did in 2008 that you’re determined to kick to the curb this year? Are you starting this fresh New Year of 2009 with optimism and enthusiasm? Do leave a comment and tell me how you’re going to be moving forward this year.

You may remember back in July that I alerted readers to Seth Godin’s new Triiibes project.  Seth Godin, the creater of Squidoo, writes such an inspirational blog – indeed it’s one of my favourites – I always come away from it shaking my head in sheer admiration.

Seth has posted his most popular blog posts, (measured by click popularity) over on his blog – starting with

1. Are You in the Tribe?

2. Email Checklist

3. Scarcity

Why not check out the other 17 here and if you’re not already an avid reader of Seth’s blog, why not add it to your feedreader?

Well, it’s Christmas Day, the waiting is over…. Santa and his reindeer have been and gone, leaving half a mince pie and a few crumbs of chewed carrot behind them. 

To say that I’m totally exhausted by it all, is putting it mildly.  Thing 1 and Thing 2 decided that 5.30 this morning was a suitable time to wake mum and dad (and probably the rest of the street) and now our sitting room resembles the aftermath of an explosion in a paper factory.  Both Things are ultra-hyper on chocolate!

Thing 2 is bouncing around the house headbanging to Pink on his new iPod, yelling tunelessly “na na na na nana na I wanna start a fight“.  I am sure he must have it on at full volume, cos I can barely hear the TV over that deeply annoying fizzing, tinny sound coming from the headphones.

Thing 1 is making in-roads into his £10 airtime that came with his new mobile `phone, by send text messages to everyone he knows. His thumbs are made of steel and they’re flying – are kids born with the ability to text at the speed of light? And why does that bleeping “you’ve received a text message” sound every 2 minutes make you want to drop the `phone in a bucket of water?

My husband is in the kitchen, cooking a ridiculously large turkey (I suspect he’s trying to keep out of the way);  Shark Tale is on the TV, and I’m seriously contemplating pouring myself a sneaky vodka, even though it’s only 3.30 in the afternoon!

I’m proud to tell you that today I’ve been a Guitar Hero, found out that I’m not so Wii Fit, shot basketballs at a net in the freezing cold and played Pro Evolution Soccer on the Playstation.

After all that, I’ve realised I’m still in my PJs, so I’m off to take a hot bath and relaaaaaaax.

But before I do, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a happy and joyous Christmas.  I do hope you are all having as wonderful a time with your families as I am.  And for all those that can’t be with their families this Christmas, I sincerely hope you’re reunited with them very soon.

Happy Christmas!

No, that’s not me barging into some plush restaurant, being refused a table and demanding “Do you know who I am” like some publicity-crazed reality TV Z-Lister!

I had never really thought I was that elusive, (obscure, maybe), until my friend, ghostwriter to the stars, Pat Graham, referred to me as “one of those hard-to-find Internet Marketers” on her “Pay It Back With Gratitude” section of her just-launched site, Kitchen Blogging.

I mean, I’m not exactly the shy and retiring type and I always thought that I put it about quite a bit! You couldn’t exactly put me in the pigeon hole of “most private internet marketers on the net” in the same league as the recently “self-outed” Tony Shepherd – and no, before you get hold of the wrong end of the stick, I’m not saying he’s outed as in `gay’ outed…. not that I would have a problem if he was gay…. but he’s not…. he just has a big wooly beard…… so, perhaps we do have something in common after all!! Hmmm, best stop now before I dig this hole any deeper…..

Anyway, back to ME and the whole point of this post… to let you know about the release of `Real Life’ blogger, Daniel Flower’s warts and all, no holds barred, kiss and tell interview with little old moi!!!

So if you want to know how I muddle through in the I.M. world and other stuff, you can download it here

Oh, and don’t forget to download Tony’s interview — the link’s in PDF above ^^^ (Phew, think I might have got away with it!!!)

Do leave a comment and let me know what you think, I can handle it!

More and more of my I.M. colleagues and indeed new people that I meet on line are `getting into blogging’. And why not? Blogs are relatively easy to produce and use, no matter which platform you choose, and they can be a brilliant tool for internet marketers.

However, no matter how easy they are to install and use, and no matter how helpful they can be to your business, the one thing that I’ve noticed more frequently is that many people are neglecting the security of their blogs.

Now I’m actually talking in particular about Wordpress blogs here. Yes, I have used Blogger blogs in the past, and I know that many people swear by them, but I found Blogger a bit too restricitive for my liking (though I understand that things have changed a lot at Blogger since I first used them).

Because Wordpress is an open source blogging tool, meaning that it’s free and available to everyone, it’s a prime target for hackers and ne`er-do-wells. Of course, the Wordpress development team are tireless in constantly working on the script for our benefit, but none of this is any use if we don’t actually get up off our backsides and do a bit of work on our blogs behind the scenes.

It’s par for the course to worry about your blog theme, your next blog post, your readership, attracting subscribers to your RSS feed etc. etc., but do you actually think very much about your blog’s security?

I suppose that I might perhaps see more Wordpress blog security problems than most, being in the hosting business.

Did you know that probably the biggest cause of server compromisation is actually people who install Wordpress blogs and other open source scripts and don’t keep them up-to-date with the latest versions and patches?

Hackers find it easy to search around, find a way in through an old script, hack your blog, access your email accounts, start sending viagra and cure for baldness spam emails `from you’ and generally get up to all kinds of nasty things.

I can’t tell you how many panicky emails I’ve had to answer from people who’ve logged into their blog one day and have been smacked in the face by a skull and cross bones proudly proclaiming that their carefully crafted, lovingly nurtured blog has been hacked by Hound Dog Horris the Hardcore Hacker!! Great!

So I’ve put together a few suggestions that you might like to implement to help keep your Wordpress blog `safe’

Keep Up-to-Date

First of all, the most obvious fix is to ensure that you keep your blog up-to-date with the latest version released by Wordpress.

Most Wordpress blogs display a little warning in the Dashboard that tells you when a new version is released and a link for you to click to download it. If yours doesn’t, then it’s worth checking the Wordpress website fairly regularly for updates. They also invite you to sign up for email notification of updates.

If you feel a bit daunted installing updates via FTP, or you installed your blog initially using Fantastico in your cPanel, so are not sure how to install the updates, Wordpress offer quite a good set of instructions for this.

Alternatively, due to high demand, we are now offering a script up-grade service at D9 Hosting (you don’t have to be one of our hosting clients to use this service, either – everyone is welcome!)

Plugins

It’s a good idea to hide the list of plugins you are using.  Any known vulnerabilities and bugs that may occur in some plugins can be used as tools to harm your website.

Check out your blog, now… http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins

The chances are, you will see the full directory of all of your blog plugins, and in some cases, the date they were installed.

To hide your plugins, simply create an index.html file and upload it to the wp-admin/plugins folder. This index file can be blank or you can be really creative and add some promotions to it.

Another way that Hound Dog Hacker uses to determine whether your blog is furtile ground for hacking is to check which Wordpress version you’re using.

So, if you’re one of those that has put upgrading on the back burner, then you could be announcing that you’re ripe for a hack harvest with a huge magaphone!

How so?  Well, go to your blog… go on.. open a new tab in your browser and type in your blog’s url.  Then right click on your blog with your mouse and select View Source, View Page Source, or similar, from the drop down menu.

Check out the coding….. about 10-12 lines down, you will see something like this

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.6.3″ />

Obviously the 2.6.3 version is the latest version as I’m writing this post today, and your one, hopefully, tells you the latest version on the day you check your code. However, there’s a possibility that you’ve not updated your version and an old version is showing. Naughty, naughty!  Talk about dipping your cut finger in shark infested water and inviting all the sharks for a slap up meal!!!  Slight exaggeration, there, but I’m sure you get what I mean?

Why advertise that you’ve been a bit too busy to update your blog to the latest version, or that that upgrade keeps getting shoved down your list of things to do?

I’ve been using an excellent plugin by David Kierznowski, which removes the display of your Wordpress version to help deter attacks.

Check out this page you are reading now, do the right mouse click and then view source code, you should simply see

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress ” />

So no-one knows I’m really a lazy mare who hasn’t updated her blog for about 3 years!!  Only joking, Hound Dog…

The plugin is merely one small .php file that you upload to your plugins folder, and then activate it in the usual way in the plugins section of your Dashboard. You can download it here

Block Access

A folder that Hound Dog Hacker likes to have a good old nosey around on your blog is your wp-admin folder – this is the storage place for all your blog’s most sensitive data. So here’s a quick tip to secure this directory…

Open notepad or wordpad on your computer, and add the following code:-

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

If you don’t know your IP address, you can find it here http://whatismyipaddress.com/

Next, save your txt file as .htaccess and then upload it to your wp-admin folder.

NOTE: This method might be a pain in the neck for you if you don’t have a static IP address, however, if you are with an internet service provider that has a range, you can add the range.

I have to say that my IP address isn’t static BUT, I’ve only had to add extra IP addresses twice in the past 6 months or so, to allow me to login.

I did wonder why, when I went to my blog login page whilst on my laptop that I was denied access……. doh, then I realised that my .htaccess file was denying me access from this computer. I now keep the .htaccess file on my desk top and just add an IP address, if and when it changes, to the file and upload it in seconds. So your file might look something like this

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE
allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

I hope this has helped give you some ideas, or at least galvanized you into taking a closer look at your blog security.

Does anyone use any other methods to protect their blog, I’d love to hear about them and I’m sure others would too… so don’t be shy, let us know.

Open Source stuff on the web is basically FREE stuff!

It could be a computer program, operating system or even a piece of software that is publically available for anyone to use and it’s free.

Open Source items in general can be freely modified and developed and redistributed.

Some of the best known Open Source products include:

	Web Browser
	Wordpress – blogging platform
	Gimp – Image manipulation program
	Filezilla – FTP client
	Productivity Suite
	Cross platform sound editor
	Email application
	Web authoring system – HTML editor
	Anti-virus software
	File archiver with high compression ratio
	Cross platform media player Related article: Problems with viewing videos or listening to audios?

I’m sure you have more on your list — why not leave a comment below and tell us what you use?

Just tried to login to my Aweber account, but I can’t. Are any other Aweber users experiencing similar problems?

I first noticed problems yesterday when I had a few emails from subscribers to my 7 Magic Steps eCourse, saying that they hadn’t received Lesson 1 – similarly from subscribers from a couple of days ago saying they hadn’t received Lessons 2 or 3.

When I logged in there was a big message displayed

Temporary New Subscriber Delay

We are currently experiencing delays with new subscribers being added to your account and the initial confirmation message being sent to subscribers.

Our techs are acutely aware of the issue and are working to resolve it as fast as possible.

Now, today,  I can’t even login. Has anyone heard anything? I’m sure I’m up-to-date with my bill!

EDIT: Ah, now the maintenance page displays, which it didn’t before – so I DID pay my bill

Well, I’m fresh back from my Florida whirlwind holiday! Did ya miss me? Did ya, did ya?

I actually got back a couple of days ago but the jet-lag has hit me much harder than I expected, and I’ve got some dreaded lurgy from breathing in everyone’s recycled germs for 9 hours on the plane, so this post has been added to a bit at a time, in between dropping off to sleep and whinging about how bad I feel.

I did take my laptop away with me with all these good intentions of being a roving reporter from Florida… you know the kind of thing -  a postcard from America every day on my blog… but unfortunately, I was so knackered schlepping around those blimmin’ parks every day that it was all I could do to turn my laptop on in the evenings!

Our holiday didn’t get off to the most auspicious start.  As we filed through the departure lounge to get on the plane with the other masses, who should get picked out for a quick strip search? Yes, you guessed it, the Adams Family a.k.a. The Bretts!! And this was before we even left the UK!

We all had to take our shoes off, including the boys, who thought it was all great fun. They were most disappointed that they didn’t get patted down like my husband and I did.

I was lucky enough to have a rather eager, mature lady allocated to me who seemed to take her job very seriously — I’m sure she thought she was onto something, as she spent rather a long time feeling around under my belt and my bum area.  Sadly for her, instead of discovering a kilo of Semtex buried in my knickers it was just the result of a few too many cream cakes bulking me out.

Goodness knows what they expected to find hidden in the leaves of my sons’ colouring books that they’d packed in their bags to keep them occupied on the plane, but they had a good old leaf through those too. Maybe they were art lovers, who knows!

Once at the other end, in Orlando airport, we dutifully queued for an hour or so to get our fingerprints taken.

Again, the boys were gutted as they were too young to have their dabs taken – kids have to be 13.  My husband and I were visibly relieved partly because we didn’t want our little babies to have their prints on  some database somewhere at their age… but mostly because we’d used them both to do the dirty work in the international bank heist we’d masterminded a couple of months before. Phew! A close call!

Next it was `hunt the car rental outlet’.  So off we trotted in the direction the signs pointed to for `car rentals’… and we trotted, and trotted and trotted and trotted – down this seemingly infinite corridor with about 10 million different rental companies – but could we find our one? Nooooooooo, of course not, that would be too easy!! So we trotted back again, to double check, and then my husband decided to do a bit of trotting on his own, without the baggage (i.e. me and the kids).

So he disappeared off for about 20 minutes and came back bearing news, which was exactly the same news that I had gleaned by picking up a courtesy telephone that I happened to be standing next to with our car rental firm’s name on it, much to his aggravation!!

We had to catch a coach outside which would take us to the car rental office somewhere in the backlot of the airport.  By the time we lugged everything outside and waited 15 minutes for a coach we were sweating like pigs! Well, actually, that’s a bit crude – horses sweat, men perspire and women glow…. so I was glowing like a pig!

It didn’t help that I’d bought the boys two cute bags to keep their colouring books, pencils and Nintendo DSs in, so I wouldn’t be lumbered carrying all their gear as well as my own… the only problem was, I’d asked my sister-in-law to nip into the Pound shop and buy them a nice little colouring book each and she’d bought them two each. But they weren’t the slim volumes I’d been expecting, they were… well, one can only describe them as being the exact same dimensions and weight as the London Phonebook!!

So we arrived at Swifty Nifty car rentals, the boys skipped lightly off the bus and my husband and I not so lightly as we were suffering from heat exhaustion and chronic lumbago after carrying their phone directories for them!

Iffy Shifty car rentals were very nice people and were mortified when they had to ask us if we objected to being upgraded to a 7-seater people-carrier-van-type-thang. “Oh, no”, we said, “that’s just fine, we’re just happy to be here”.

So off we zoomed in our articulated people transporter, huge carbon footprint stomping behind us, sat nav plugged in ready for that calm and sexy sounding woman to direct us straight to the house we had rented in Kissimmee. The only problem was, she was far too efficient and it took us a couple of days to get used to the fact that she would say “right turn ahead” about 10 minutes before the right turn, then she would say “after 800 yards turn right” and then when you were right on top of it “TURN RIGHT”.

So for the journey home, not being used to her wiley ways, as soon as she said “Right turn ahead” we would screech on the brakes and immediately turn right… not knowing that she would give us several warnings before the actual right turn. As you can imagine, this sort of behaviour caused several screaming rows, particularly when we drove in a circle around a Wal-mart car-park, oh, at least 5 times!

And because I was laughing at the total ridiculousness of it, my husband accused me of tampering with the sat nav (because I am computer-minded, he said) and doing it all deliberately. Wish I had been clever enough to think of it, but I really just wanted to get to complete our 35 minute journey in less than 4 hours.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth and cursing and swearing at the still calm and sexy but by now rather irritating sat nav woman who insited on repeating “MAKE A U TURN, MAKE A U TURN”, we eventually made it to our holiday home, just as it was getting dark.

And there I must leave it for today… I need a little nap again… how long DOES it take to get over jet-lag and cabin fever? Jeeez, it’s floored me.

I’ll add another embarrassing “The Bretts on Holiday” installment tomorrow, if you can take it. Does anyone else have ridiculous things happen to them on holiday, or is it just us?

I’ve been meaning to post this little bit of information for a while now, but it keeps getting pushed down my list of blog topics…..

Did you know that you could be paying more for your Aweber subscription than you need to?

Did you know that when people unsubscribe from your list(s), Aweber DOES NOT remove them?

Did you know that undeliverable emails – e.g. perhaps someone subscribed and changed their email address – are not automatically removed from your list of subscribers?

Yes, of course, when you send out a broadcast or add an autoresponder message to Aweber, those who have unsubscribed or who have an undeliverable email address are not included in the `send out’ but THEY ARE STILL INCLUDED in your list of subscribers as far as Aweber’s billing is concerned.

Take a look……

You might have 513 subscribers, but 15 have unsubscribed, leaving you with 498 subscribers, but you won’t be paying $19 a month…. no, you will be paying an extra $10…. those 15 unsubscribes are still attributed to your account and therefore your bill, even though they unsubscribed and you can’t send emails to them.

What about if you know you have 5,050 subscribers, but you know that over the past few months, 50 of those on your list have become undeliverable? You will still be paying $69 instead of $49, that’s an extra $20 for having people on your list with undeliverable email addresses.

So here’s where you need to do a bit of housekeeping in your Aweber account - you need to regularly spring clean your lists and rid yourself of all those people that unsubscribe or become `undeliverable’. And here’s how you can do it…

1) Login to your account and choose which list you are going to start with from the drop down menu (if you only have one or two lists, this won’t take too long, but if you have loads, it could take a little while)

Click on the Leads tab

2) Select Unsubscribed Leads from the drop-down menu (it’s the one at the very bottom!)

3) You’ll see a bit of whirring going on and then your unsubscribed details will appear

Simply check the Erase box to check all the boxes, then click Save – that’s it… GONE!

If you’ve got a quite a few unsubscribes that have built up over time, you may have a number of pages with details to erase.

4) To do the same for the undeliverable leads, go back to point 2) and select Undeliverable Leads from the drop down menu and repeat the same process

If you have loads of lists, or indeed a large amount of subscribers and have built up a mass of unsubscribes and undeliverables over a long period of time, an alternative method is to telephone Aweber, or contact their support desk and ask them to remove all your unsubscribes and undeliverables.

Et voila… I hope you’ve saved yourself a bit of cash, and if not, well… it’s something to keep an eye on as you grow your lists.

Edit 21st Aug 2008: To answer the question that John asked in the comments section below:

I contacted Aweber and asked them if they charged on a monthly average subscriber count or the number on a cut-off date?

Their reply was that they billed retroactively (after the fact), on the number of leads in your account when you reach the cut-off number.

Aweber: Backstage, Behind The Scenes

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