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Managing Your Default Email Account

May 16th, 2006

Did you know that your domain name usually has a default mail account? Every time someone sends an email to a non-existing email account on your domain name, the email lands in the default email account unless you have specified what should happen in this situation.

Sometimes folks wonder why their website keeps growing and growing in size and they start getting notices that they are about to exceed their disk space limitation. If they haven’t loaded any files lately and they don’t have any scripts that add large amounts of data to databases, the default mail account is usually the culprit.

You can specify in your cpanel exactly what you want to happen if someone sends an email to a non-existing email account on your domain.

Let me explain what I mean…

If someone sends an email to joe@promised-land-services.com and I have not specifically set up an account named joe@promised-land-services.com then the email will be forwarded to the default mail account for promised-land-services.com.

The default is usually the account username@domain.com - so if my username for promised-land-services.com is pls then the default mail account would be pls@promised-land-services.com

If I want to use the default account I can - this keeps me from having to set up different accounts for everything if I want to get all the email myself. I can use sales@promised-land-services.com, info@promised-land-services.com, cindy@promised-land-services.com, support@promised-land-services.com or whatever@promised-land-services.com without ever setting up an email account for any of these addresses.

I can then set up the default account in Outlook or whatever mail program I’m using and get any email sent to any of these email addresses.

But, if I don’t want any email to come to my account unless I’ve set up an account, then I can set the default in cpanel to either delete the emails by sending them to the blackhole or I can make the emails bounce. Bouncing the email just returns the email to it’s sender telling them that this email failed.

You really have a lot of control over your email, but if you set up an email account for yourself and never set your default to bounce or disappear, then your default email account may just take over!! A lot of disk space can be saved by deleting the emails in your default email account, many of which are spam, and then setting it to either the blackhole or bounce options.

If you need help configuring your email, let me know - cindy@team-pls.com

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Use Keywords in Your Page Titles

May 15th, 2006

When you name your pages on your website, use those keywords! The search engines place a lot of weight on the titles of your pages. You should name your files with the keywords too.

Let’s say that your keyword is: affordable web hosting then I should name my page:
affordable-web-hosting.html

And in the head section of my code I should have:

<head>
<title>Affordable Web Hosting</title>
</head>

Make sure your keywords are words or a phrase that your customers will search for - don’t use your business name unless it’s something that your customers use in the search. You can find good keywords here.

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Keep Your Contact Information Current!

May 13th, 2006

It is very important that you keep your contact information current with your hosting company. The last couple of days I’ve had made enhancements to one of our servers and couldn’t not find contact information for some folks with websites on the server. Others, I found email addresses, but they returned because the email addresses are no longer active or are full. I have little to no way to contact these people now.

If your hosting plan allows you access to your cpanel, please make sure that your contact email is up to date at the top of the page. You never know when your hosting provider may need to contact you, so keep your contact information current!

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Check Your Stats!!

May 12th, 2006

Your website at PLS comes with good statistics scripts already installed - AWStats. But, sometimes you may need a little more. I found a great little page counter program that gives me some pretty awesome stats! You can check it out here

I don’t usually promote page counters - especially for commercial websites, but this little jewel really has some nice statistics, so if your website really depends on statistics, you should check out this little counter. There is a 30 day free trial.

But, to stay safe with Google, don’t use the invisible counter. Google has strict policies about hidden text and it may count against you in the search engines.

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Advertise in Forums!!

May 9th, 2006

Visit forums - get active in the discussions - and leave your website or affiliate links in your signature. The search engines will eventually pick up these links and count them as incoming links for your site.

Try to put a catchy phrase with your link that sparks interenst so that those that read the signature will be curious enough to click on the links. If the link is of interest to the target group in that forum, all the more better, because you may just get sales from the clicks!! But, even if it’s not, it can’t hurt you in terms of getting incoming links.

But, DON’T spam forums, blogs or other websites with your links!! This may do you more harm than good. It certainly ‘turns folks off’ to your product if you are spamming their sites.

And make sure you check the forum guidelines before you leave your signature. Especially when you are leaving affiliate links. Some forums don’t allow them!

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Advertise on eBay!

May 8th, 2006

Many folks tell me that you can’t put a link to your website from your eBay listings.

But, you can! Of course, you can link to your website if you host your pictures on your website. This may not give your website much publicity, but it does give you an incoming link to your website.

You can also link to your website if you link to a page that has more information about the item you are selling. The page to which you link can’t be a page that sells that item, but you can have links on that page to other pages that sell items.

eBay is a great advertising tool! Sell items on eBay and make sure you put your website address on the packing slip. Also put flyers and advertisements for other items you may sell inside the package when you ship the item.

Another thing you can do in your listing is add your email address so that the buyer can contact you. If I use my address: cindy@promised-land-services.com, someone might just be curious enough to go to promised-land-services.com to see what the website is about. It certainly can’t hurt!

And of course, you can have an About Me Page on eBay that points folks to your website where you sell other items.

Again, the more incoming links you have from reputable websites (they don’t get much more reputable than eBay), the better your chances of ranking well in Google!

And, eBay reaches the WORLD!!! How else can you market to the world with just a few minutes work??

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Multiple Domain Names

May 7th, 2006

I started a new website this morning. I’ll fill you in on the details of the site later, but what I wanted to share with you now is that I bought multiple domain names for the same site. My site will be my-financial-freedom-journey.com But I also registered myfinancialfreedomjourney.com as well.

Why? Because one is easier to say and the other is easier to read. When I put my URL in print, such as in one of my blog posts, I will use: http://my-financial-freedom-journey.com But when I use my domain name when I’m talking, such as in one of my classes or in a radio ad, I’ll use www.myfinancialfreedomjourney.com because it’s much easier to say than trying to add the dashes while I talk. The other rolls off my tongue much easier.

What I really should do is get myfinancialfreedomjourney.org, .biz, and .net while I’m at it so that no one else could get those names and use them for some site that either competes with me or contains unethical content.

I did register several domains for my name - I got cindycullen.com, cindycullen.net, cindycullen.org, etc. Who knows how many Cindy Cullens there might be out there that might make me look bad if they were to start a site with my name!

You can register all your domain names for $8.95 here

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Leave Your Link Everywhere!

May 5th, 2006

To make your site rank well with the search engines - AND to get your site indexed quicker by the search engines - it’s important to have incoming links.

This means that the more websites you have that link to your site, the better your site will rank for your keyword phrase.

Leave your links everywhere!! Go to forums and bulletin boards that are related to your site topic - post your messages and then leave your links in the signature. Join Yahoo Groups related to your topic and add your link in the signature. Leave comments on blogs that are also related and put your link there as well.

It takes HARD work and lots of patience to get your site listed and ranking well in the search engines, but it’s worth it! The better you rank, the more traffic you’ll get. The more traffic you get, the more money you should make!

So leave that link everywhere!!

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Hide Affiliate Links

May 4th, 2006

Don’t want folks knowing that your link is an affiliate link? There are several ways that you can hide it.

If you have a website, you can create a folder on your website and then make your index file in the folder redirect them to the affiliate website.

For example, let’s say my affiliate link is:

http://promised-land-services.com?id=cindy

And my website is http://cindycullen.com

I can create a folder in my public_html folder called hosting.

I then create a new file named index.php inside the new folder, named hosting.

I put the following line in that file:

<?php
header("Location: http://promised-land-services.com?id=cindy");
?>

(notice that this can all be on the same line, the lines wrap because of the limited space here in the blog)

Now, when I want to give someone my affiliate link, I use:

http://cindycullen.com/hosting

which doesn’t look like an affiliate link.

The problem with this technique is that once the user is redirected, the address bar in the browser will have the affiliate link instead. But, many people don’t look at the address bar and may not notice that it’s an affiliate link.

But, if this bothers you and you have a little extra money, or if you don’t have a website, you can buy a domain name and have it redirected to the affiliate site. You can mask the domain name so that it doesn’t show the affiliate link.

If you’d rather use this method, you can get domain names for $8.95 from PLS

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Setting Up a Blog

May 3rd, 2006

Setting up a blog can be really easy. If you have a website from Promised Land Services, then you can just go to cpanel and install your blog from there. My favorite is WordPress. It’s very flexible and customizable.

There are many options that you can set in your blog. You can change the title - you can change the sidebar - you can change just about everything with a WordPress Blog. You can also add Google Adsense to your blog to bring in some extra money.

Blogs are wonderful things to help your customers get to know you. And they help keep your customers informed about your business.

Some of the customization may require that you change some of the PHP or HTML code. But, you really don’t have to know any code to make your blog work. It’s the easiest way to start your own website.

For those of you that want your blog installed and customized but are intimidated by anything technical, can have us install and customize it for you! All you have to do is write in your blog - everything else is done for you!! You can check out this great service here!

The more content you can add to your site, the better you will rank in the search engines - not to mention, make your customers happy. Blogging is a GREAT way to do that!!

Start your blog today!!

Check out these blogs for ideas:

My Personal Blog
PLS News
My Book Reviews

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