How to avoid spam complaints?

EttiennevStaden

Hello,

been using the software for a month now, but clearly wasn't careful enough. 

I received a warning from Hostgator today that someone made a spam complaint, here is their email:

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Our Abuse department has received a report regarding a domain under your control being spamvertised, hosted on your account. We have provided a copy of the complaint for you to review.

Advertising via email is a violation of our Zero Tolerance Spam Policy as outlined in Section D of our Acceptable Use Policy. We encourage you to use alternate methods of SEO to advertise your site rather than send mail. Please note that repeated reports of spamvertising a domain on your account within 60 days of an initial notice will lead to further action being taken, including permanent suspension.

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The only thing I'm randomizing is the "from" email. I also blacklist every successfully sent message to ensure I don't contact the same site twice. 

I'm using one bit.ly link straight to my offer (which is obviously a problem I guess, as my domain also got blacklisted on several spam filter sites I see).

So my questions are:

1. How can I avoid getting complaints to my hosting company?
2. Do I have to comply with the "CAN-SPAM act" now? Will that help matters in any way?

I responded to the email from hostgator saying that it wasn't a direct email, but through a contact page, but had no response yet. The guy who complained received my mail via gmail (UK user), so guess that's seen as email spam.

I'm too scared to run the software now and hope some of the more experienced guys here can help me out. Thanks.

loopline

If you are encoding the domain into the url that they click on with the %domain% then request host gator to give you the actual complaint. 

if they balk, just say that "how am I supposed to investigate the cause if I can't see the full complaint" ?  Im almost always able to get the full complaint and then find the domain that filed the complaint and blacklist it.  Thats why I started that google sheet I shared for complaints.  Im happy to take your complaint submissions and add them to the list for the community. 

That aside, I always play it as I hired multiple marketing companies and I need to track down which one, thus I need the complaint.  Don't ever tell them what your doing. 

Also only 1 time ever have I had a compliant get passed thru to the end domain like this and it was with host gator as well. 

In every other case the forwarding url takes the complaint, that said I Don't use bitly I use self hosted domains and forward thru them so not sure if that makes a difference. 

The end site can get on a blacklist, but it really doesn't matter so much, its part of it, and your not promoting the end site directly anyways so it has less effect, but it is what it is.  

You can't totally ever avoid complaints or blacklists, its the nature of the business, you have to roll with the punches basically.  Or in other words, "its the cost of doing business" in this way. 

But the cost of paying facebook or google for the same traffic is a much higher real world cost. 

Anyway, I would always try to comply with CAN SPAM anyway, but I live in the USA, so its important.  Its not so important for you, but probably not a bad idea anyway.  I also comply with GDPR, even though I dont' live in the EU, its a good idea I think. 

But CAN SPAM compliant or not, your going to get complaints and blacklists.  Its not a mater of avoiding them or a matter of if, its a matter of when, how often and how badly it affects you. 

I have multiple hosts for my redirects and multiple hosting accounts for my sites.  I keep my non contact form sites like autoapprovemarketplace.com (sells here on the forum) on a separate hosting account in case it gets taken down it doesn't affect the other. 

I keep daily backups of the site so I can deploy it on another host in minutes and be back up as fast as dns can propagate.   But its never happened yet where I got a money site taken down, but has been threatened. 

On a side note I have had mutliple/several of my redirect sites taken down due to complaints, in fact Ive had mutliple entire VPS hosting said redirect sites taken down.  It will happen again too, its just a matter of time. 

Thats why I keep everything redundant and backed up, I can move from one to the other in minutes/few hours and just like it never was interrupted. 

So in summary

• Don't tell them what your doing, blame it on marketing companies and use that as leverage to get the full marketing report. 
• Blacklist the domain that filed the complaint and then share it with me so I can do the same (the sharing part is optional but preferred, lol ) 
• Apologize to the host and tell them you fired the marketing company that did it
• Make sure you have daily backups of your site that happen somewhere off your host so that you can deploy to any host if needed
• If possible have a backup host on hand, if not no worries, it doesn't take long to get a shared hosting account setup. 
• Do everything you can to minimize this but expect it to happen at some point no matter what. 
• Reap the large profits and realize such problems on the scale of things are small and don't let it bother you just keep on moving forward. 
• Oh and smile and have a great day.  

ahmethann

Hello, I am totally new to software but this topic got my attention. EttiennevStaden says:

"I'm using one bit.ly link straight to my offer (which is obviously a problem I guess, as my domain also got blacklisted on several spam filter sites I see)."

So is there any automated way that your site is blacklisted if you use randomized email addresses? I mean it is not a direct mail coming from your domain or it is not a direct mail coming from your email address. Then how can they AUTOMATICALLY detect your domain and add to spam list?

Again as loopline said:
"Make sure you have daily backups of your site that happen somewhere off your host so that you can deploy to any host if needed"

Making a copy of site and moving to another host is not a problem BUT if your site is added to blacklist automatically, then this is bad and you can not recover your domain easily.

So could you please explain how this autoblacklisting system works, who add our site to spam list (does gmail or hotmail do that? ) , is this an automatic or manual process (does the receiver of message do this?). Can we avoid this if we only give phone number and doesnt give web site address?

Thanks