How to Automate-import from all sources and maintian an opt-in list, newsletter

My suggestion is to import all of your contacts from everywhere into two places:

1. Plaxo - online contact management with birthday notifications, ecards and many wonderful algorithms built in, not to mention online backup of everything - syncs perfectly with Outlook and most all other mail clients and imports easily with wizards.

2. PHPList on your own website - your contacts, and especially your double and triple opt-in list (the people who will read whatever you send because they like what you have to say) are your biggest assets. PHPList is a content management system for email lists, opt-in, opt-out, updating all done by the recipients, also excellent for using blind mailings to build this list from scraped or purchased targeted lists. Lists can be imported in almost any common format - this is free, open source software installed easily with a push of a button on any server with Fantastico in Cpanel. (Hostgator, Bluehost, our servers, many others, most good servers use this software) See a living example where I have recently done exactly what you are saying imported all my contacts from 10 years here:

http://rothmanmarketing.com/lists/

You will notice that it feeds the website by linking to past issues in HTML format and making available as RSS feed that can be syndicated through Feedburner (also free! owned now by Google)

Past issues are made available on my blog: http://rothmanmarketing.com/10/the-rothman-letter/

I added this comment I added to another persons blog because this is something where many people are spending good money on bad soclutions, when tech-savvy novices can do it all for fee ;-)