internet business

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. 

I don’t believe in co-incidences, I firmly believe everything happens for a reason.

I use a tool called Camtasia Studio to make desktop videos.  I also use Demo Builder 5 for some videos where I think the content will change often enough for me to need to edit individual segments without having to make the whole video over again.

I find them both useful in different circumstances.  And I also have my eye on a couple of other video tools.

Well, I just received an email from a SmartDD customer telling me that what made the sale of SmartDD to her was the video on the home page.

And *then* I received a forum message from someone else who said he *would* have bought SmartDD JUST ON SEEING THE VIDEO ALONE if he had more than one product to sell at this time.

He decided to use the free version – that’s what it’s for.

And that got me thinking.

See, this year is no doubt going to be the year of the video. Thing are changing and now there are lots of free or near free video (and audio) tools available which will do what some of their more expensive counterparts will do.

Anyone can use video to create a product, just by recording their desktop actions and describing what they’re doing.  Just like my PayPal button generator video.

It’s just another form of info product.

Consider this.  While a lot of people like the good old ebook, there’s an equal amount of people who like to learn by being *shown* how to do things.

So what if instead of using just desktop recording tools, I used my camcorder to video stuff in the real world, and present it just like you see on the TV…

I think I could do that.  The problem as I saw it was where and how to get started.  So I started looking around to see if there was anything out there that would help me learn more about it.

And here’s the kicker…

While I was searching, Jason James contacted me *out of the blue* to let me know that he has a new product launch this coming Thursday which explains how to use  audio and video to create info products.

If you have any interest in this topic at all, you’re going to want to see this!

Jason James Audio Video Riches.

Watch Jason as he does his sales pitch, but then hang around after he stops talking.  It certainly made me chuckle, and got me thinking even harder.

I could definitely do that.

And if I mixed video footage with slides and desktop video, that would make for an impressive presentation or learning tool.

The problem’s been that in the past it would take a studio and some very expensive kit to produce quality video footage.  But that’s changed…

See, I’ve now had a sneak preview of Jason’s new product.  Thanks Jason!

It’s a total audio-video tutorial in video form, with everything you need to know, from what DV camera to buy, what software to use, and how to put it all together. Watching it made the subject very clear to me.

Now this may not be for you.

As straight forward as I thought it was, I *am* a bit of a propellor head, and it just clicked with me as I watched it.

So you should take careful consideration before making a decision.

At any rate, it’s well worth a look to see Jason "doing his thing".  Very professionally done.  This should give you a good idea of what can be done after learning from his course.

It’s just too damn complicated! I’ve had an AdWords account for about 3 years now, and what started off as a nice and simple way of paying for traffic has turned into a no go zone.

This is my latest experience with Google.

A few days ago I started a new campaign. I did a little research, found some low priced and well related keywords and put them all in one campaign. I figured to leave them a few days to see which were working and which ones weren’t, and then do a "peel and stick" into another more highly targetted campaign.

I set my budget low and started it all off. I checked after the first day and increased the bid on some of the keywords, and deleted a couple which had mysteriously jumped to 50p (USD $1.00), and another one which had jumped to £2.50 ($5.00).

This just set the trend.

I now find that most of my keywords are inactive for search as they have all increased to either 50p or £2.50, with a cryptic message telling me to improve the quality of the words.

Well last time I checked in the dictionary, a word was a word. And if there’s somehow a new and mysterious way of increasing the quality of that word, it’s beyond me.

After already spending a couple of hours setting it all up in what has become the most tiresome interface I have ever seen, I now can’t be bothered any more.

Google, you’ve lost my business. Forever. Your PPC is just a waste of space, and it now matches the increasingly poor quality of your search results.

Take a hike. There are plenty of other ways of getting traffic without you.