Content Policy:

The purpose of "Melt It Off - Keep It Off"  is to help you get more from your diet, whether online or off.

This entails a number of types of content:

1. News: Hence the name. Current events and issues that are important to understand or be aware of in losing weight, especially online.
2. Articles: Explaining the who, what, when, where and how of weight loss and dieting. That IS what you wanted, right?
3. Product reviews: I occasionally publish reviews of products that I believe provide exceptional value. Some of these will include affiliate links, some won't. Under no circumstance will I endorse a product that I don't believe is useful, commissions or not.

   Note: I may mention free products or services that sound interesting without having tried them personally.

4. Recommended resources: These may be commercial products, articles by other publishers or authors, free services, software... whatever I feel will be helpful to you in keeping slim and healthy.

   Or just fun or personally gratifying. Weight loss is serious, but you should lighten up. It makes it so much easier. 

5. Editorials: Yes, you'll get opinions. I have a surplus, and I'm delighted to share.
6. Direct product endorsements: I don't accept paid advertising, and don't foresee doing so any time soon. I may, however, send out product endorsements as solo mailings, if I think the product warrants special attention. These may include affiliate links and may not.

   If you want to keep slim and healthy, you're going to need products and tools. Some of these cost money. Get used to it.  

7. Miscellaneous: Who knows? If I think it's interesting, I might include it.

Note that there is no fixed publishing schedule. I don't send issues out just to stick to an arbitrary plan.

If I have something to say that I think will benefit you, I'll send it. If not, you might not hear from me for a month at a time.

Feedback Policy:

I read ALL email sent to me by subscribers. All of it, all the time.

I try to reply to it all, but I don't always have time. If you'd like to make the decision easier for me, there are a few things you can do to make it less likely that I'll answer you.

They're true of most publishers, so I'll list them here:

1. Replying to an issue of the newsletter and leaving the entire content of the issue in your reply.
2. Being insulting. (Unless you're especially creative or entertaining about it. I appreciate intelligent humor, even when I'm the butt of the joke.)
3. Defending spam in any way, shape or form. That qualifies you immediately for the Unsolicited Unsubscribe Award.
4. Subscribing with an address that automatically replies with something stupid like "We've received your email and will respond within 24 hours." NUKE!

   That might be fine for addresses that only get personal or customer/support emails, but don't use them to subscribe to lists. It's extremely rude.

5. Trying to get me to join your network marketing program. I don't have a problem with MLM in theory, but it's not my style. Don't waste your time. I'm not a prospect.
6. Asking for free consultation or free review of your site.

   I have, at the time of this writing, over 130,000 subscribers to various business lists of my own. At just 10 minutes each, it would take me over 10 years of 40 hour weeks to do that favor for each subscriber.

   It's not that I wouldn't like to. I simply can't do it.

7. Correct my grammar or spelling. I know the rules. I also know why they exist: To make communication clear. If a choice of phrasing breaks the rules but helps make things clearer, the rules be damned.

On the flip side, there are some things you can do that dramatically increase the odds of your getting a response. And maybe even a mention to all those people.

1. Offer additional information or alternative (yes, even disagreeing) viewpoints that are civilly phrased and make me think. Make sure you let me know if you don't want them published. The assumption regarding "Letters to the Editor" is that they're intended for publication.
2. Offer well-considered suggestions for improving the newsletter for everyone who reads it. I have used many of these suggestions since I started publishing in '96, and they've been greatly appreciated.
3. Point out (or offer) useful resources that are appropriate to the purpose of this newsletter - helping readers to get more from their businesses.
4. Offering a useful freebie or significant (and exclusive) discount to my subscribers.
5. Make appropriate and relevant joint venture offers.
6. Make me think.

Subscription Management Policy:

Every issue of the newsletter will contain a simple mechanism for unsubscribing. Either an email address to which you merely need to send ANY email at all (meaning: no confusing commands), or a clickable link, or both.

If you send an email to the subscribe address, it's not going to get you unsubscribed. If you send an email to my personal address, it's not going to get you unsubscribed.

The ONLY exception to the latter is if you can't send mail from the address you used when you subscribed, and you include the address you want unsubscribed and the name of the publication you wish to unsubscribe from. (I run more than one list.)

Again, this isn't a matter of personal preference. It's simply a function of not having enough time in a day to do everyone else's stuff for them.

Privacy of Email Addresses:

I do not share addresses. It's important that you understand how far that goes.

There's been some assertion in various quarters that, because of CAN-SPAM, unsubscribing from a list after an issue that mentions commercial products might require that the unsubscribes be shared with the companies who own/sell those products.

The idea is to make sure that you can avoid hearing about them again from other publishers.

This would be an extremely ill-advised policy, if applied to content-based publications.

I've been doing this long enough to know that people unsubscribe for various reasons, many of them having little to do with content. Most of the time, it's a matter of not having enough time for all the publications one receives.

I also know that people don't read every issue as soon as it drops into their mailbox. Unsubscribes can come in from issues that are literally months old. (For example, I still get occasional unsubscribes to an address that hasn't been used for well over a year!)

I also know that unsubscribe requests are more likely to be due to frequency of publication or a disagreement with editorial content than anything related to products that might be mentioned.

I'm quite uncomfortable with passing along email addresses of subscribers for any reason at all. I simply will not do it without a demand from law enforcement personnel, even if the purpose is supposedly to protect you from other legitimate publishers who might mention the same product I mentioned in some issue.

Therefore, by subscribing to this publication and/or remaining subscribed after the posting and announcement of this policy, you agree that I am not to give out your address for any reason, specifically including your having unsubscribed.

The only exception, aside from a request from law enforcement personnel, would be if I sold the newsletter. In such a case (very unlikely) I would not keep your email address or mail to it again unless you had subscribed to another publication I produce, and the new publisher would have to agree to continue operation under the terms listed here.

In short, you'd keep getting just the one newsletter, on the same topic. Nothing would change except the person or company that produced the thing.

You also understand that considered and objective product endorsements and reviews are a useful and essential tool for any growing business, and are thus part of the content of the subscription you've requested.

Any changes to this policy will be posted here, and will be announced at least 10 days before taking effect, so you can unsubscribe before they go into effect if you don't like them.

Tracking Policy:

Occasionally, the links in the newsletter are coded so that they identify who clicked on them. Under no circumstances will this information be shared with anyone else.

It's coded in a way that makes it impossible for anyone else to get any information about you, even if they got the tracking files, without having access to my database and the means to correlate and extract the right entries. The database is not stored on any public machine or server.

This is done for a number of reasons.

1. Sometimes I'll want to ask questions of and get feedback from the people who looked at specific resources. I'd prefer to only email those people, rather than sending mail to all of you that's only of interest to a specific smaller group.
2. There are a lot of specific topics in this business that are of importance to smaller subsets of the group. Over time, knowing which of these you're interested in will allow me to deliver information that's much more relevant to your personal goals and strategies.

   Again, without sending you a lot of stuff that's of interest to only a limited group.

3. I get a lot of articles submitted by outside authors that would be interesting, again, only to a portion of the good folks who subscribe. Occasionally, these are good enough that I'd be willing to send them to folks that have expressed an interest in those topics, but not to the entire group.
4. I am often approached with special deals that I don't think are appropriate to the whole group, but might be of interest to a smaller number of you.

Essentially, it's all about making the newsletter and the content you get from me more useful to you, while not bothering you with a lot of stuff you couldn't care less about.

If you have any comments on any of these points, please zzz let me know. Like it says early on... I read EVERYTHING you folks send me.

Thanks,