Hi Jared,
When you see references to bulk mailing online, it's usually referring to purchasing a list of email leads from a company and them mass
mailing them. You DON'T want to do this unless you are EXTREMELY experienced!!! If you try it, you run the risk of being accused
of spamming.
The best way to explain single opt-in and double opt-in is by example:
Let's suppose you publish an online newsletter (a.k.a ezine) and have a form on your website for interested visitors to sign up by
providing their name and email address. The information they provide is sent to an autoresponder and their address is now in your
database and ready to be sent messages.
The double opt-in method adds one more step to that. When a visitor submits their information, a confirmation email is sent to the
email address they submitted first, asking them to confirm that they did in fact request to join your newsletter. This is the common
method used by nearly all publishers today. When someone submits their information and then confirms their request, the odds of
you being accused of spamming are greatly reduced.
As far as you purchasing a .com domain name and forwarding it to your GDI affiliate link, why would you want to do that? If you
don't want to use your GDI hosting to create your own website, you can just use it as is and it. Please see my previous post
concerning my feelings about GDI affiliates not using their hosting service here:
http://talk.ws/index.php?topic=7068.0I hope you find it useful.
Cheers,
-Ed