Why You May Not Be Receiving My Blog Posts By Email Anymore, and What To Do About It

This post is broken into three parts: 

1. For Blog Readers, 2. Gmail Forwarding Instructions, and 3. For Other Bloggers

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1. FOR BLOG READERS

First of all, I recognize the irony in writing a blog post about why you are not getting my blog posts, which will then be emailed out to thousands of people but probably only seen by those who do not have a problem. Unfortunately, it is the only way that I know of to try to get the word out about why so many of you are not getting my blog posts or those of other blogs that you follow by email.

What I have heard is that some email service providers, most notably Yahoo and AOL, concerned about spam, changed their DMARC settings in early April. There were absolutely no problems with Blogger, the platform that I write this blog on and the platform that millions of other bloggers use, concerning spam. The concerns also had nothing to do with any particular blog or the bloggerosphere in general, as far as I know. It is confusing and I doubt that you need to know the details, but specifically, the new settings block email sent by the most widely used email delivery service for blogs, which is called Feedburner.

Not every single AOL and Yahoo customer has been affected for some reason, but it is my understanding that the vast majority have been. Unfortunately, AOL and Yahoo customers have no control over the settings and cannot change them. In another strange twist, the new settings were only supposed to block emails sent from Yahoo or AOL email addresses. However, I have always used a Verizon address and some of mine are getting blocked. No one at AOL or Yahoo has been able to explain that.

I do not think this decision by AOL and Yahoo was widely publicized at first. I certainly didn't know about it until I started receiving emails from individuals saying that they were no longer receiving my blog. It took a while for me to put together on my own that the common theme seemed to be that they were AOL and Yahoo users. Once I realized that, I turned to Google and read what I could about it, which is what I described above.

Here is how I personally would handle the situation if I were a reader no longer receiving blog posts by email:

1. Go to Gmail.com and set up a new Gmail account.

2. Have all of your Gmail emails forwarded to your primary inbox (instructions will follow in Part 2 of this post if you don't know how to do this). 

3. Go into each blog that you want to receive by email and resubscribe with your new Gmail account.

You can resubscribe to this blog with your new Gmail address by clicking HERE

[Note: It is my personal belief that Google is taking over the world, and it is wise to have a Gmail account, even if you don't use it much. I think it is a matter of time before we are forced to use Gmail in order to use other Google products. And in fact, AOL and Yahoo have just forced millions and millions of people to open Gmail accounts, thereby only making their biggest competitor stronger! I opened Gmail accounts for my kids when they were born just to preserve their names, or "good "email addresses.]

Your other option is to wait. I am diligently working every day trying to find a workaround. One thing that I did was change the email address from which I send my blog, hoping that that would work. Honestly, I do not know whether it has worked because I have not heard from any readers on that yet. But, if you are an AOL or Yahoo user and are not receiving emails, you can try to resubscribe now and see whether you receive a post tomorrow. If you do, then it means that my workaround did in fact work, and I would so appreciate if you would let me know!

Please know that I have also contacted both AOL and Yahoo webmasters and have asked that they resolve this problem. However, I only have standing to ask them to unblock my emails, and not those of all of the other blogs that you follow. Hopefully, all of your favorite blog writers are doing this and the issue will be solved eventually.

My personal opinion is that this was a very shortsighted move by Yahoo and AOL, and the fact that they are losing customers every day over it may prompt them to take a more informed approach. But that is a waiting game, and I can't predict what will happen.

To my loyal readers who do receive this post – liking it on Facebook, sharing it on Facebook, sharing it on Google+, Twitter, or by email is the very best thing that you could ever do for me and your fellow readers. I don't come right out and ask that very often, but this time I am.

Thank you so much for your patience everyone.

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2. GMAIL FORWARDING

This is to get your blog emails at your new Gmail address to be forwarded to the inbox you already use. Here's how:

1. After you have set up your new Gmail address, enable forwarding by clicking the Setting drop down on the gmail.com homepage (you must be logged in):

2. Click "Forwarding and POP/IMAP"

3. Click "Add a forwarding address"

4. Enter your old/primary email address and click "Next"

5. Click "Proceed"

6. Click "OK"

7. Check your email.  You will receive something like this.  Click the first link to confirm:

You will now receive all gmail emails in your inbox. You can disable forwarding later if you need to by going into the same settings and following the process backwards.

** Remember that this tutorial is just for forwarding- you still need to go to your blogs and sign up to get the posts by email! 

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FOR OTHER BLOGGERS:

1. For fellow blog writers, you are free to cut and paste this email into your own blog posts and adapt it as necessary with your own subscription links, etc. I only ask that you link back with credit to this post, but otherwise, feel free to use it as you see fit.

2.  Here are the ways that you can contact AOL and Yahoo and ask them to unblock your emails. You do need to know your IP address and Feedburner's IP address, which is 173.194.112.41

1. For AOL:

Go HERE and you'll see this screen. Click the drop down and the option for "Other Requests". Follow the instructions and send them an email asking them to allow emails from your blog. You'll need the Feedburner IP address above to do this successfully:

2. For Yahoo:

Go HERE and fill out the form. It is complicated, but since you write a blog I know you can figure it out!

Note: these DMARC changes were only supposed to have affected blogs that sent emails through Feedburner using an AOL or Yahoo outgoing email address. However, I have always used a Verizon address and mine were being blocked. No one at AOL or Yahoo seems to be able to explain this. I did do what everyone has suggested, and changed my outgoing email address to a dedicated address. That does not seem to have solved the problem for all of my readers, which is why I took the additional steps above.

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Never in a million years did I think I'd have to write a post about email delivery! But I hope it helps, and I hope to see everyone who wants my posts by email to be receiving them in the very near future.

Stacy