Well I’ll be… (No, really, I will be…)
Thanks to the good sense of the people on my mailing list, I made it to number 10 in the MembershipSurge.com sales results.
I’m both pleasantly surprised and grateful to those guys and gals who bought the excellent report by Chris Lockwood.
Here’s a screenshot of the final results that I’ll use to remind myself that anyone can do this. Look, if I can, then you can!
I was accused yesterday by one of my friends as being a slacker (hi Ray). He was only kidding of course – well I hope he was…
(More on Ray another time.)
It’s because I haven’t sent out anything useful this last week or so.
Well today I change that with a new video that if you follow it through will easily give your business more credibility and also make you look more professional in the eyes of your customers.
I’ve been helping quite a few more people than normal recently as there have been quite a few new members join the SmartDD site, and of course I always get lots of questions when that happens.
Some of the things I’ve been helping people out with mean I’ve been looking at their web sites, and web control panels. And seeing a disturbing trend there reminded me of something I’ve known for a while but then forgot about.
When someone buys something from you either from your website or via eBay, then it’s likely that there will be some kind of automated communication from you, (usually via email) to confirm their order.
Especially if you’re using SmartDD to deliver your goods.
And this is what I noticed a long time ago, and had forgotten about.
A lot of people are running their businesses using either free email addresses, or the email address from their ISP.
I’m sorry but I cringe when I see that, especially as it’s so easy to fix.
About a week ago I was at one of my son’s schools waiting to collect him at the end of the day, and I saw a big guy there (tall, wide) wearing a jacket with something like "easyfitwindows@aol.com" plastered all across the back.
(I made that address up as I can’t remember what it was.)
Now, exactly whose business is he promoting there? I say it’s AOL. There’s no mention of his business website.
Think about it, what looks more professional to your customers.
1) lunchtimereads@aol.com
OR
2) sales@lunchtimereads.com
And consider this.
When you’re using eBay, you’re allowed to put a contact email address in all your listings. If you use an email address in the style of option 1, you’re wasting an opportunity to drive traffic to your own website.
By using an email in the style of number 2, you could put something like this into all your listings instead:-
"If you have any queries, then please email me on:-
sales @ LunchTimeReads.com"
That makes it sort of a giveaway where your website might be, eh? And that will get traffic to your web site.
So anyway, back on track.
After looking at a lot of cPanel installations, I realised that many people don’t know how to set up an email address off their domain.
And let’s face it, most web hosts don’t tell their customers how to use cPanel, they expect them to check out the highly technical cPanel docs which are just filled with incomprehensible jargon.
So I thought I’d fix that for you.
I’ve put together a short video explaining how to set up a new email account in cPanel, and then it shows you how to best add that new account to Outlook Express without jumbling it in with your other email addresses.
If you don’t use cPanel or Outlook Express, the principle is no different with other hosting or email software, you just need to check out how yours works.
http://www.smartdd.com/special/email_cpanel_oe_imap_setup.php
Watch it, learn, and enjoy your new found skill and email address. And feel free to share the link above with your friends.
Two days after I posted about catch all forwarding, and I’ve just received two identical emails from UK2.
Here’s a snippet from the email…
Catch All Forwarding is an e-mail service provided on most UK2 Domains. This has been a standard part of our service for many years and can be very useful, but more recently has been abused by spammers. What Catch All Forwarding means is that all messages sent to any variant of e-mail address at your Domain Name (i.e. anything that precedes your Domain Name such as sales@yourdomain, example@yourdomain, blahblahblah@yourdomain) are delivered to an alternative email address. If you are actively using Catch All Forwarding this will be an e-mail address that you chose, or if you are passively using Catch All Forwarding this will be trashcan@uk2.net.
The new price for Catch All Forwarding is £4.99 per month and is already a chargeable option for new Domain customers. However, as an existing customer we are giving you a month of service for free while you decide on the best way for you to manage your e-mail. On Saturday 12th May 2007 the charging becomes applicable for existing customers.
If you would like to keep Catch All Forwarding:
If you’re happy to continue using Catch All Forwarding as a paid for service, you don’t need to do anything and our auto renewal system will start to bill you £4.99 per month for Catch All Forwarding. The first payment will be requested 7 days before the renewal date which is Saturday 5th May 2007.
And it then goes on to say…
If you have any queries or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact our Support Team. You can call us on 0905 168 0086 between 9.00am and 5.00pm, Monday to Friday (calls charged at 50p per minute) or you can submit a ticket at all times via our online support system located at http://www.uk2.net/support.
How many people do you think are going to read that? Not everyone is subscribed to their mailing list, so I can only assume they’re going to get an awful lot of angry customers calling them at 50p per minute over the next few weeks as credit and debit card bills drop on the doormat…
Tsk, tsk.
If it’s causing them a problem and they need to charge for catch all forwarding, wouldn’t it be more convenient for their customers to just turn off catch all forwarding like other domain hosts do?
And then if their customers actually *use* catch all forwarding, they can opt in to pay it?
I’ve just checked up on some of my domains on UK2.net. It turns out they’ve added "Catch all email forwarding" at £59.88+VAT (approx $144.00) to every single one of them.
When the domains auto-renew, then they would charge that automatically to each one of them. I’ve had to go in to every single one and remove the forwarding manually.
If you have domain hosting with UK2.net, you’d better check your renewal calendar, or you’re in for a very nasty surprise!
How can I put this? If you were ever thinking of using UK2.net…
DON’T!
Just in case you missed it, these are the same people who require you to FAX them when you want to transfer a domain away from them, they charge you £12.99 (approx $26.00) for asking them to do it, and they don’t even guarantee they *will* do it. Is it just me or are some of these registrars getting out of hand?
I am so sorry I ever used them. Don’t make the same mistake.
