Common Writing Mistakes--Part 2

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This is the second and last part of our 2 part series about some of the common mistakes people make when writing articles, web site content and email.

Last week we talked about 3 common types of improper word usage.

This week we'll discuss the punctuation rules and recommendations for online writing.

11 Punctuation Rules and Recommendations for Online Writing

7 Rules:

1. Periods, exclamation marks, question marks and commas always go inside of quotation marks.
   


2. There is never a space before a period or before a comma.
   


3. In hyphenated words there are no spaces on either side of a hyphen.
   


4. Use a question mark only after a direct question.
   


5. If the last word in a sentence ends in a period (a.m.), do not follow it with another period.
   


6. There is never a space before or after punctuation marks included in a number ($2.97, 1,234, 10:05).
   


7. There are no spaces before or after an apostrophe used in a contraction (don't).

4 Recommendations:

1. Only 1 space only is required after every punctuation mark (period, exclamation mark, question mark, colon, semicolon, commas, etc.), including bullets and numbers.
   


2. Don't use Excessive Punctuation (!!!!!) in the content of your articles and web page content. Headlines and Sub-Headlines may violate this rule occasionally but not too often.
   


3. Only use 3 dots when doing this "..."
   


4. When using dashes, use two in a row like in the title of this tip.

Unfortunately HTML editors and word processors won't help you catch punctuation errors. I typed "this is a test to see . if twenty - five" into both Frontpage and Word and neither of the violated rules (2 and 3) were caught.

The best way to verify your punctuation is to carefully proof read what you've written and check your punctuation marks.

Remember, when writing for the web you want to write as if you're talking to someone however you must also remember they are actually reading your words. And to have them read what you're saying you must use the correct words and punctuation.

If you liked today's tip or would like to add to the list please leave a comment. - Thanks.

To Your Success,
Susan

Tags: proof read, punctuation errors | mistakes | rules, common writing mistakes, word processor, frontpage, nvu, conversational writing

1 Type of Email List Anyone Can Start

Whenever I ask my readers why they haven't started building a list the most frequent answers are:

• I can't write and


• I don't know what to write about

Well I've found an article by expert list builder Jimmy D. Brown that I am sharing with you today because it explains 1 type of list that requires almost no writing, gives you a working example of 1 he built and gives 10 ideas for the types of lists you can start.

How To Create A "Buyers Only" List
By Jimmy D. Brown,
PLRSO Club

Content is king. It gets to wear the crown. And sit on
the throne. And rule the world. When it comes to
establishing credibility, gaining trust and producing
sales, content is royalty.

While I would never suggest abandoning the concept of
delivering high quality content to your subscribers, there
is another type of list composed of subscribers who couldn't
care less about content.

"What is this type of list?" you ask.

- > The "announcement list".

I've been teaching about the "announcement" list since
at least 2002 (on record at an event). And, yet, it's a
widely untapped asset in most email marketing circles.

The main reason is: nobody's teaching it. And so,
nobody knows anything about it, let alone how to effectively
create one of these lists.

So, we're going to revisit it.

-------------------------------------------------------
What Is An "Announcement" List?
-------------------------------------------------------

DEFINED: An announcement list is a list whose sole purpose
is to "announce" (I.E. Inform, notify) when something new
is available for review, consumption or purchase.

In other words, it unapologetically says, "Hey, I just
released XYZ. Come check it out!"

Now, at first glance you may be thinking, "Who would join a
list that offers no content and only sales pitch?"

If you say it that way, it doesn't sound too good to me
either! That's why you don't say it that way. Let's take
a look at HOW to "say it"...

-------------------------------------------------------
How About An Example "Announcement" List?
-------------------------------------------------------

If you go to this site you'll find a textbook
example of this concept. PLRSO stands for "Private Label
Rights Special Offers" I established this list for the
sole purpose of informing people anytime I have a new PLR
offer available for them to buy.

That's it.

I don't send out ezine articles to them. No newsletters.
They don't get blog posts. There aren't any special reports.
No content of any kind. What they get, in essence, are
sales messages.

And there are already 2,822 subscribers, many of which
have already purchased some of the PLR special offers that
have been "announced" to the list.

Why does it work? Let me give you plenty of reasons...

1. I took something that was "in-demand" (PLR) and I allow
people to get a head-start on the world by knowing about
new releases FIRST by joining this list.

2. It's not billed as an "announcement list", but rather
a "Free PLR Club". Big, big difference in perception.

3. It has it's own domain name, further adding to the
perceived value and importance to those who join.

4. There is no requirement to buy once you join. Buy the
offers that you want, pass on the ones you don't want.

5. A cost example is provided to show what you can
buy immediately, further illustrating the value of the
complimentary "membership".

And here's the big twist that makes this idea of creating
an "announcement" list a complete no-brainer...

I allow my affiliates to "give away" no cost memberships
to the PLRSO club!

When someone they refer buys one of the offers, they earn
a commission. And I get other people to promote and build
my list for me. We all win.

So, you may be thinking...

-------------------------------------------------------
What Kind Of "Announcement" List can I Build?
-------------------------------------------------------

There are a wide variety of "announcement" lists that you
can build. Let's briefly look at ten of them...

* PLR List. You can swipe my idea and create a list of
private label rights buyers.

* New Offers List. Build a list of people who love your
work and want to be notified any time you have a new
offer available.

* Pre-Launch List. Create buzz and anticipation for an
upcoming new product release by building a pre-launch
list several weeks (even months) in advance.

* Ezine Publishers List. Build a list of publishers who
want to know any time you have a new ezine article
that is available for reprint in their ezines.

* Bloggers List. Another idea is to allow bloggers who
are looking for ready-made content to post to their blogs.

* Industry News List. How about becoming the "go to"
guy or gal to share breaking news about your industry?

* Joint Venture List. Develop a list of partners and
affiliates who are ready to promote anytime you have a
new offer.

* Incentives List. Here's a great idea - create a list of
people who you offer "incentives" to when they purchase
someone else's new product through YOUR affiliate link.

* Freebie List. Regularly give away rebrandable content
(reports, articles, videos, etc.) to these subscribers
to earn commissions.

While all ten of these lists aren't necessarily "buyers"
up front, they each can certainly lead to buyers and revenue
for you if you implement them.

Content is king. But let's not forget that there are alot
of queens, princes, dukes and earls out there too.

-----------
Jimmy D. Brown, one of the most respected marketing teachers online,
has been fine-tuning what and how he teaches when it comes
to Internet Marketing since 1999. Now you can benefit from
those years of experience and also get full PLR rights to
many of his best-selling products - at ridiculously LOW
prices (I'm talking Ten Bucks).
Run, don't walk to this website --> PLRSO Club

I hope you learned from today's tip. Please leave a comment to let me know - Thanks.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. In case you're worried about the technical parts of building a list like creating your opt-in page and setting up your autoresponder I recommend you watch "List Building Tutorials for Newbies." These things really aren't that hard.

Tags: targeted list, list of buyers, type of internet marketing list, how to build a list, Jimmy D Brown, how to create a buyers only list

Those Nifty Special Email Notification Sounds

If you've been doing business online for awhile like I have then you probably receive hundreds of emails every day. And hopefully you're using email software that will automatically move some of your email straight into the special folders you created to hold the ones that are important to you. Creating the folders and writing rules for incoming email is a great time saver.

Unfortunately, after a lot of your email is tucked safely into the proper folder you still have to sift through everything else and then check all your folders to see if anything new and important has come in.

But what if there was a way to tell you which folders needed to be checked?

Oh, you only check these folders when you have time? That's great! Except, what if it's an email from a family member or a special friend? Don't you want to know about those when you receive them so you can read them right away? Or how about those specially marked messages from your customers and subscribers? Don't you want to read and respond to them quickly? Or maybe you've made a sale and received a payment? Wouldn't you like to know you've just made some money.

If you're like me then you want to know when someone near and dear to you has sent you an email. Also, knowing when you've just made a sale is a great motivator to keep you moving forward in your business.

So how can you know when you've received a "special" email?

Simple, use those nifty email notification sounds.

As you set up your rules for putting your important email into the proper folders, simply include playing a sound as part of what is to be done when the message is received.

Now you won't want to play a sound for messages going into every folder since both you and your computer may get overwhelmed with all the noise. However, for the really important ones like family, customer problems and money received, you may want to have your computer let you know.

Since I use Outlook I'm including the link to the Microsoft page that tells you how to set up email notification sounds for individual messages that come into your inbox. I don't know how it's done for other email programs however I'm sure it's possible for many of them.

When you go to set up or modify a rule to play an special email notification sound you can use the .wav files that came on your machine. You can find free sound files online and download them. Or you can even make your own for free.

Here's a video showing how to make your own short sound file for a Windows PC.

Just think how nice it would be to hear your special person telling you they've sent you a message. And you can with email notification sounds.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. In case you or someone you know doesn't get much email and they would like to hear an email notification sound when they've received new email I've included 2 videos. The first one shows how to set up email notification sounds for new email on Windows machines before Vista and the second shows how it's done for Vista.

Before Vista:

Vista:

If you found this tip useful please let me know by leaving a comment.

Tags: email notification sounds, special email, important email, know when I've got mail

"Current Email Scams"

It seems I write a tip about email scams (i.e. phishing) every year and this year is no exception.

Usually the warning about the current email scams being sent are for Paypal and banks. This year however I am writing about the most recent US email scam supposedly being sent by the Internal Revenue Service.

Now you may have heard on the news that people are trying to steal the current US tax rebates by making phone calls and sending fake emails. Let me tell you it's TRUE. Yesterday I received in my personal email inbox a message with an official IRS logo at the top and it said,

"Over 130 million Americans will receive refunds as part of President Bush program to jumpstart the economy.

Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund.

The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by direct deposit to your checking/savings account.

Please click on the link and fill out the form and submit before May 01th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be processed as soon as possible.

Submitting your form on May 01th, 2008 or later means that your refund will be delayed due to the volume of requests we anticipate for the Economic Stimulus Refund.

To access Economic Stimulus Refund, please click here. http://newsar.us/edcart/prodgfx/help.php

© Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved."

Did I click that link? NO! And neither should you.

Because you're a savvy internet marketer you're probably already aware of these types of scams. You already know not to click the links in emails that say your Paypal account needs to be updated or verified. You never click email from banks and credit card companies saying they need you to re-enter your personal information for some reason. If you want to check and make sure your accounts are up to date you always go to your account's site by typing in the url you always use to login.

However just because you already know how to avoid being a victim of the current email scams doesn't mean everyone does. So today I'm asking you to spread the word to your not so computer savvy friends, relatives, and readers. These scams only work on those who are less knowledgeable and less experienced than you.

The victims of these scams are usually those who can afford it the least. They are trusting individuals who believe that every email they get has been personally written to them. They are people who use a computer for email, shopping and maybe online games. And of course, the elderly make up the largest percentage of this group.

So let's make this year the last year I have to write a tip about the current email scams by spreading the word to everyone.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts about this tip.

Tags: current email scams, tax rebate scam, phishing

How To Convert Your Blog To Email

If you look at the right sidebar of the blog you'll notice that I've just added a subscribe form. Now this is not just any old subscribe form because it does something special. You see, when I add a new blog entry those who've signed up via this form will automatically get an email telling them of the new article without me doing anything. In other words, the subscribe form on my blog works much like an RSS feed.

Now you're probably wondering why I've added this type of form to my blog since people can get blog update notices via the RSS feeds already available. The answer is - because a lot of people don't use RSS readers.

So how can you add a special form like this to your blog?

There are 2 ways:

1. You can use a free service like feedburner.com


2. You can use a paid service like aweber.com

Now I won't go into the details of setting up a form via a free service since I used my aweber account to generate my form. However I will tell you why I went with aweber rather than a free service.

• As a respected online responder service I know aweber will make the mailings can-spam compliant. The others may also be can-spam compliant but I don't know that as a fact.


• I have control of the subscriber list. I can email them, delete them, move them, etc. With a free service I may have access to the list so I can move it but I can't do anything else with it.

Now if you choose to add a blog to email form to your blog aweber has a video to help you get it set up. Unfortunately blogger.com has changed since the video was made so here are the 2 important things you'll need to know when you set up your form.

1. If you're using the new blogger you won't see a site feed as shown in the video. You'll need to get a site feed and I used feedburner.com to get mine. You can then enter your feed address created by feedburner.
   


2. To add your form you no longer have to edit the blogger html template. You can simply use the add page element feature to add the code to your sidebar.

To learn how to automatically send email updates about your new blogger posts to your blog subscribers watch this video.

And for those of you hosting your own WordPress blogs, you can read the instructions for setting up the broadcast feature for your blog here.

To Your Success,
Susan

Feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts about this tip here.

Tags: blog, email, broadcast blog updates, convert rss to email

"Are You Boring?"

If you're writing classified ads, articles, blog posts and emails and still not making any sales or getting anyone to join your list the reason could be ...

You're boring! Well, not you personally but rather your writing.

I know you don't want to use a lot of hype or make false claims but still ...

You do want to get your stuff read.

In last week's tip item #6 said, "Focus on your headline because your headline is…an ad for your ad. It's your headline that convinces people to read your advertising or not."

Let's expand that item to include things like articles, blog posts and email. In other words, when writing an article or blog entry, focus on your title. Likewise, when sending an email, focus on your subject line. Titles and subject lines are what gets people to read your articles and open your email.

Let's look at a couple of examples to see what I mean.

Say you write an article about the importance of sleep while trying to lose weight. You could write a title like:

"The Importance of Sleep To Weight Loss"

Now if someone is looking specifically for the importance of sleep to weight loss and yours is the only article they find then you've got a reader. But what about all those who are just looking for a good article on weight loss and they come across an article titled:

"Lose Weight Sleeping More"

Don't you think more people will stop to read the article?

Now what if you're sending out an email about a new product you're hoping your readers will buy. You and 10,000 other online marketers are flooding everyone's inbox and you're all using the same subject line:

"Would You Turn Down 10,000 Subscribers?"

How many of these emails do you think are going to get opened and read?

So why not shake things up a little and use a different subject line like:

"Have Your Own Giveaway Next Month" or
"Why The Big Boys Hate Giveaway Manager 2"

Think more people will open those emails?

And when they do, don't disappoint them by offering the same pre-written sales letter.

The important thing to remember when you're writing titles for your articles and blog entries and the subject line for your email is to think like a marketer and not like an author. You've got to grab the attention of your potential reader. If you don't then you won't make any sales.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Leave a comment and let me know what you thought of this tip.

Tags: article writing, blog post, email, get people to read your article, get people to read your blog, get people to read your email

"Better Safe Than Sorry!"

Since about half of my online income comes from my list, losing my list would be a serious blow to my business. And that's exactly what happened to me last week.

For 5 years I used the same autoresponder system and although there was an occasional problem, those problems were always fixed quickly. So even with occasional problems and only getting basic features, I was happily building my list and my business.

Then last week the 1 thing that everyone who has a list dreads happened to me. I went to my autoresponder to send out a broadcast that the newsletter was ready and discovered ...

All My Current Subscribers Were Gone!

Now unless you've experienced something like this I can't describe how it makes you feel. There's shock, there's bewilderment and there's depression all rolled up together in that first instant you see what's happened. It's a feeling much like the 1 you get when you discover ...

My Site Has Been Hacked!
(Yes, this has happened to me too.)

So what do you do when something like this happens? Do you give up? Do you start over? Or do you fix the problem and move on?

The correct answer is ...

Fix The Problem And Move On!

And how do you fix the problem? Well, first you must decide if you want to stay with the service where the problem occurred and this decision is based on how happy you've been in the past with the service and how well they respond to the current problem. Then you restore your list or your site either using the same service or a new one.

And how do you restore your list and your site? With your backups of course. You are making backup copies of all the important things for your business aren't you? If you aren't then you should be because having backup copies of your list and your site are extremely important.

Now incase you're not familiar with the term "backup" it means saving a copy of a program or file and storing it separately from the original. In other words, having a copy of your list members and site files stored somewhere other than where they are in use, usually on your own PC.

In this particular instance I decided to change services since my previous autoresponder system is still looking for my subscribers and a new service was very responsive to my problem and allowed me to import my list since I could show them that all my subscribers actually do have to request my newsletter mailings. Yes, my subscribers were caught without warning and had to re-confirm and I've lost some. But those who actually read my mailings are back with me.

So even though I "lost" all my subscribers last Wednesday, I had many of them back in less than 2 days.

And it's the same for restoring your site if it gets hacked. Yes, it may take a day or 2 to get your pages uploaded again but better 2 days than the weeks it took you to create those pages originally.

Oh, in case you're thinking these things won't happen to you. Please, please think again because things like this happen every day to lots of people. It doesn't matter how big or small your site, list or business is. It doesn't matter what service you're using or how long they've been in business.

Losing things and getting hacked are a fact of life
for online businesses!

So be prepared for the worst and give yourself some peace of mind by making periodic backups of your important business files. As they say ...

"Better Safe Than Sorry!"

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. I've now moved my subscriber list to 1 of the oldest, largest and most reliable autoresponder systems available. And even though I trust them to be responsive and dependable, I still plan to make periodic backups of my subscriber list because this is how I feel about you ...

Feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts about this tip.

Tags: email marketing, subscriber list, backup online business files, backup subscriber list, lost subscriber list

"A Quick And Easy Way To Save Time"

I've written several articles about spam and how it wastes our time. I even wrote about a mistake I once made that caused me to waste several days.

Well today I want to share something I discovered, tested and found that it really does cut down on the amount of spam you have to delete in your site's email inbox. But before I tell you what it is I must tell you that all the hosting services I use use cPanel for site administration. So if your host uses something else you'll have to look around and see if your host allows you to do what I did.

Most hosting services give you a default email address for your domain when you create your account. And in an earlier tip I recommended that you create your own email address for those emails from your site visitors that you really want to read. By creating your own email address you were then able to separate the valid emails from most of the spam since most spam will end up in your default email inbox. (Your default email inbox will contain all the email sent to your domain except those sent to the email addresses you've created.)

Having most of your spam in an inbox that you know you don't need to read does save some time however you must still go into that inbox and delete them unless you want to re-live my mistake.

Recently I discovered a way to save the time I was wasting deleting all the email in my default inbox and here's how I did it:

1. Create your valid email addresses. (Hopefully you've already done this but I'll list it again just-in-case.) If you don't know how to do this you can watch the free video provided by DiscoverCPanel.
   


2. After you have your email addresses created, go back to your Mail Manager Menu. Below the link for "Add/Remove/Manage Accounts" you'll see a link for "Default Address." Click "Default Address."
   


3. You now see the address where all the email that isn't going to the email addresses you've created will go. Below that information is a link "Set Default Address" and you need to click it.
   


4. You now see where you can define the name for your default email address but before you do read the "Hint." I've included the important part of the hint here:
   
   "Hint: You can enter :blackhole: to discard all incoming unrouted mail or :fail: no such address here to bounce it."
   


5. Enter this bolded text in the "to" box
   :fail:no such address here
   and click change. (Be sure to include the colons.)

After you've made this change you will no longer receive any emails that are not sent to the email addresses you've created and you will no longer have to go into your default email inbox to delete unwanted email.

Before I made this change I was receiving between 300 - 2300 spam emails every week for 1 of my hosted accounts and removing them took several minutes. It was so bad I was considering hiring someone just to delete the email in the default inboxes for my hosted accounts since I have several! But now I don't have to :-)

So if you're wasting time deleting spam from your domain's email accounts try doing what I did. Then let us know if it worked for you too by leaving a comment here.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. BTW, I have 1 hosted account where I never received any spam to my default email address. At HostGator they have turned the default email address feature off because...

"The Default E-Mail/Catch-All feature has been disabled by default due to it contributing large amounts of e-mail flooding from Spam."

So if you're using HostGator you don't need today's tip because you're using a great service that works hard to provide the services you need and to protect you from the things you don't want.

Tags: spam, delete spam, save time, default email address, how to stop spam

Affiliate Marketing For The Holidays

With the holidays coming you may find that your usual sales are going down so this week I'd like to give you the free report "Affiliate Marketing For The Holidays." Inside this report you'll find:

• How to think outside the "gift box" to find profitable markets where money is already being spent


• How to use your existing contact list for quick holiday cash


• How to turn your recommendations into pure profit

This is a free report offered by AffiliateCashSecrets and holds some good information.

So this week's tip is:

1. Get and read the free report - no sign up required.


2. Sign up for the AffiliateCashSecrets 7 day free trial and start using some of the free reports to generate some affiliate payments to your inbox.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Comments are always welcome.

Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate cash secrets, holiday marketing report, free marketing report, holiday marketing free report

An Old Business Secret Many Have Forgotten

You've probably heard that it's much easier and less expensive to get existing customers to buy from you than it is to go find new customers.

And it's a true statement for all businesses whether they are on or off-line.

Yet many businesses take the approach that getting new customers is their number 1 priority. They actively seek out those interested in their wares, entice them to buy and then after they make the sale...

They treat them like D.I.R.T.

D - Disposable
I - Insignificant
R - Removable
T - Trivial

One of the things that has always confused and irritated me is how some businesses penalize their customers for their loyalty.

Here's an example of what I mean -

We used to live in the Denver, CO metro area and subscribed to both of the Denver newspapers. (Yes, there used to be 2 large, popular newspapers in Denver.) Almost every year we received notices that the subscription rates were going up. This went on for several years and we didn't think much about it since it seemed the price of just about everything was always going up.

Then 1 day I received a sales call for 1 of the newspapers. Like most telemarketing phone calls, they went through their entire sales pitch and offered me a "special rate" if I would subscribe before I had a chance to tell them I was already a subscriber. When I did tell them I was a subscriber they thanked me for subscribing and were just about to hang up when I asked - "Since I am already a subscriber can I get the special rate?"

This question seemed to shock them when they stuttered, "no."

I then asked them why not and their response was that the special deal was only for "new" subscribers.

Since the special deal was for more than 60% off the normal subscription price of several hundred dollars a year, I was, shall we say, slightly perturbed.

When we hung up I immediately called the subscription department for the paper and asked them about getting the discount that new subscribers were getting. They also stated that I couldn't because it was "only for new subscribers."

As soon as they finished the statement about only new subscribers getting the discount, I replied, "I see, then cancel my subscription - TODAY."

Did I ever take that paper again? Yes, 1 year at a time.

You see, I knew that every 6 months there was a subscription drive to get new subscribers. And even if I didn't get a phone call, I'd see a table set up at any of the grocery stores I visited where I could get a new subscription with a new subscriber discount. Plus, if I signed up at 1 of these tables, I'd get an additional gift.

Now I'm not opposed to giving gifts to get new subscribers. I do it myself. What does upset me is having a business that I'm paying on a regular basis tell me I have to pay more because I am already 1 of their customers.

To this day I don't understand why that newspaper and many other businesses treat their loyal customer base so badly.

The point I am trying to make is: while you're working so hard to gain new subscribers and customers, treat your existing subscribers and customers like the precious gems they are. Don't forget about them and don't penalize them.

As online marketers we are always looking for new and better ways of doing things so we can increase our profits. We look for ways to increase our traffic and ways to increase our conversion rates. We look for ways to build our lists and then for ways to get more of our subscribers to buy from us. Unfortunately, some of us forget that making our loyal subscribers and customers feel special is 1 of the best ways to keep and profit from them.

Over the years I've offered several different free gifts to gain new subscribers. However, when I put the gift online I also either send out a mailing to my list giving them the same gift or make it available inside the member area. When I've sent a mailing about the addition of a bonus on an existing sale, I've included information about how those who had already purchased the product it could also get the free bonus.

Am I obligated to give my existing subscribers and customers the new free gift. No, it's not an obligation. It's just good business.

Uunfortunately, too many businesses have forgotten the old business practice of: take care of your customers and they will take care of you.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Please feel free to leave a comment about today's tip.

Tags: online business, customers, new customers, subscriber list, new subscriber, free gift, bonus, business practice, business policy, good business

A Mistake No One Ever Talks About

This week I discovered I had made a dumb mistake with 1 of my web sites...

probably the dumbest one I've ever made.

Think you can guess what it was?

Did I not back up my web site in case the hosting company lost everything?

Nope, that wasn't it.

Did I forget to encrypt my email address so it couldn't be harvested?

Naw, I know better than that?

Did I leave my login information where someone could find it or have an easy to guess password to make it easy for someone to hack into my site?

Been there, done that and have already learned my lesson.

Since you'll probably never guess what I did, I'll tell you.

You know the default email address you get with a hosted site? Well, I've got 1 I've never used and since I don't use it, I never check it.

That is, I never checked it before this week.

You see, a few years back I got a domain name and a hosted site that I've never really gotten around to using very much. Oh, I put some affiliate stuff on it so it wouldn't just be sitting dormant and I've occasionally uploaded products that I was selling since it has tons of space and I've tested and debugged scripts on it. But I've never really used the site for it's intended purpose.

Well this week, I ran out of space on this site so I started to do some housecleaning. First I removed all the old products I was no longer selling and some of the pictures I no longer needed. That didn't seem to do much so I decided to remove everything except for the 5 pages of affiliate stuff.

Imagine my shock when I still had no space on this site. A 500 megabyte site holding 5 web pages and totally out of space!

So I started checking everything. I checked the file structure - only 5 small web pages. I checked the database area - no databases were there. I checked all the packages offered by the hosting company - none were in use. In desperation, I finally checked my email account...

More than 23,500 emails and more than 400 megabytes of space used!

And every bit of this email is - SPAM - !

In other words, this is unwanted email sent to some undefined email address on my domain. (Remember, I never created any email addresses on this domain.) And every email sent to my domain ended up in my default inbox - the 1 I haven't been checking.

Now I am virtually out of space since this inbox is grabbing everything I free up as new spam arrives. And because it's already taken over my site, it's got to be removed before I can place a limit on the size of my inbox.

And if you think removing 23,000+ emails will take a lot of time, try doing it when it takes 20 minutes to remove 40 of them at a time. (40 is what the current page size is set at.)

Actually, it's not quite that bad any more since I've gotten it down to just over 20,500 using 276 MB so it's only taking about 10 minutes per page.

So here are my tips this week.

1. Don't use the default inbox on your host as your real email address and inbox. If you do you'll have to sort through all the email to find the good ones.
   


2. Even though you don't use the default inbox as your real inbox, go in and clean it out regularly. (I've been doing this on FriendsWhoCare and will be doing it on all my sites in the future. Fortunately, my other sites are newer and it only took about an hour to get them cleaned up.)
   


3. See if you can set a limit to the amount of space used by your email accounts. If you can, set it to something appropriate for the amount of space you've got. Since I've got 500 MB on this site, 10% should be sufficient if I really expected any email. Since I don't, I'll set it for the smallest amount possible.

I hope after you've read this you'll check any inboxes you don't use regularly before it's too late. Learn from my experience and don't make my dumb mistake of thinking that if you don't use an email inbox, no one else will.

To Your Success,
Susan
Tags: email, spam, spam email, junk mail, internet marketing mistake

If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

"Answers To Your 5 Most Recent Questions"

It's a well known fact that if 1 person asks a question then there are others with the same question but afraid to ask. So today I am going to answer the 5 questions I've received over the last few days.

Question 1: How do I post comments on your blog?
Since Alan and Paul have both asked this question and because posting comments on blogs is a good way to get links back to your site, everyone needs to know how to post comments on a blog.

Answer: - For my 2 blogs where I've asked for your comments you simply go to the bottom of the article and find the line that has:

Comments (xx) Trackback

(The x's above are a number.)

Click the word Comments and a popup box appears where you can read the current comments. Scroll to the end of the box and that's where you will find the form to fill out to leave your comments.

The form has a place for your name, email address, URL (that's the page you want to be your "Homepage" in your comment) and, of course, your comment. When you click the "Publish" button, the name you entered, the URL and your comments are added to the article's other comments. Your email address is optional and if you include it, it will not appear in your comments. Your comment will appear on my blog almost instantly and you can read it if you click the "Comments" link again.

As for other blogs that accept comments, their method of getting your comments may be slightly different but it will be very similar. Just look for a place at the end of their blog post that identifies the comments for the posted article and click the link. Then follow the directions for posting your comment. Because some blog owners must approve all comments before they allow them to appear, it may take some time before you'll see your comment.

If you search a blog and can not find a link to read the posted comments then you are probably reading a blog that does not allow comments.

Question 2: I've just taken over a site and need help getting members
While Chris's question was specifically about getting members for a new site, others have asked similar questions because they wanted help with getting traffic or conversions.

Answer (First Part): To get members/conversions you must first get some targeted traffic to your site and because most of those who write don't have money to spend to get targeted traffic I usually recommend the following free methods of getting traffic:

1. Writing and submitting articles for article directories.
2. Free or inexpensive ezine ads.
3. Offering something in a give away (this is a form of Joint Venture).
4. Listing your site in a directory of similar sites if there are any.
5. Joining and posting comments on blogs and forums where readers are interested in things related to your site.
6. Do what you can to optimize your site for the search engines.
   
   Depending on the type of site the reader has, I sometimes recommend:
   
   
7. Traffic exchange programs.
8. Safelists.
9. Setting up an eBay store.
10. Finding sites offering related products/services and partner with them to promote each others site. (A Partner or Joint Venture, Not Just Adding A Link On A Links Page.) This may include putting a link on each others site and sending out a recommendations to their list.

Answer (Second Part): If you are getting some targeted traffic and not getting members/conversions then make sure:

1. Your site is focused on the 1 thing you want your site visitors to do. Do not confuse or distract them by making too many offers, posting a lot of banner ads or sending them off your site to check out other things of interest.
2. Your site doesn't have a lot of typos, bad grammar and misspellings.
3. You've got an attention grabbing headline that can be seen when the visitor first arrives on your site.
4. You've listed the benefits of your product/service.
5. You've told the site visitor exactly what to do.
6. You've made it easy for them to perform the desired action.

Question 3: My site has been hacked into, what do I do?
Since mine was not the only site hacked into recently, Gaida asked what she should do.

Answer: From my own experience, I found that the following steps worked the best.

1. Contact your hosting provider immediately if they have not contacted you first and work with them to get your site clean.
2. If your host hasn't disabled your site then you must while you're cleaning it up. The easiest way would be to set up a redirect link to another site or a page stating the "site is temporarily out of service" for your index page.
3. Before you start cleaning, make sure your pc is virus and spyware free and keep it that way. It's easy to re-infect your pc while working the pages of your infected site so you'll need to check it often.
4. When your pc is clean, immediately login to the admin panel of your site and change your password. You may have to do this again if you infect your pc while cleaning your site. Just make sure your pc is clean every time you do this.
5. If you have a clean copy of the pages of your site then you can simply upload all of them except for your index (home) page. Then check to make sure everything is working correctly. If it is then upload your index page and check it.
6. If you don't have a clean copy of all the pages on your site then kick yourself really hard because you should. But if you don't or if you have a really large site with lots of pages then you may want to do some spot checking and only replace the infected pages. Because it is easy to re-infect your pc doing this, you'll need to check your pc often.
   
   Since you know at least 1 of the pages that was hacked, start there by either reading the code or uploading a clean copy. Also, you'll want to either read or upload all the other files that may be used by this page, i.e. javascript, xml, shtml, etc. Then check to make sure this page works correctly.
   
   After you've gotten your corrupted page working properly, surf your site and see if you can find any other corrupted pages. If you do then clean them and their called files.
7. After you've gotten your site cleaned, contact your host provider so they can reactivate you site. If they did not deactivate your site, you should still contact them so they know you've worked the issue. (You should always try to keep a good working relationship with your host provider.)

Question 4: Will you join me or will you look at...?
These types of questions come in a lot, too many times to list all the senders' names.

Answer: I read them all, look at the offer and try to send a reply. Hopefully I haven't missed any. Usually the answer is, thanks for sending me the information however I am not joining anything right now. However, there are always exceptions.

If the offer is for something that would really benefit you, my reader, I usually accept even when I don't get anything more than you. Examples include the free hosting we had available for awhile and some of the free ebooks donated by readers.

If the offer is for something that I think can help me with my business but I'm not ready for it yet, I save the offer so I can use the sent link when I do join or signup. (Recently I pulled up an old email to join a paid membership site.)

Telling you this doesn't mean I want you to send me an offer nor does it mean I want you to stop sending them. It simply means that, like most people who have been online for awhile, I am already in a lot of things and have become more selective with what I join and do. Also, I know more about what works for me and what I am planning for the next step in my business. If I don't accept your offer it doesn't mean that I necessarily think your offer is bad (I'll tell you if I do) or that what your recommending is bad. Remember, there's only 1 of me and I can't do everything everybody does. So if something is working for you, stay with it.

Question 5: Solo Ad
This is not really a question but I get several every week from readers so I've decided to respond to these mailings.

Answer: When I receive an email with a subject line that looks like an ad from an email address I don't recognize I always delete it without even opening it and this may include yours. Sorry to have to admit this but I don't have everyone's email address memorized.

If you use my contact email address to send a pre-written solo ad I can almost guarantee I didn't read it. But whether I read it or not, I can guarantee I didn't click the included link unless I was somehow able to identify you as a reader. And using the standard statement of "I read your ezine and thought you would be interested in ..." doesn't work.

While I don't use a spam blocker of any type, I do have my email automatically sorted into the proper folders when it arrives. 99% or more of your email will find it's way into the proper folder and the remainder will land in my Junk folder. The subject line of all the email in my readers folder gets read and unless its a pre-written solo ad subject line, it will get opened. As for the ones that make it to the Junk folder, most of them will get automatically deleted unless you are using a subject line I've directed you to use. (Some of your classified ads go into the Junk folder but I retrieve them and file them correctly. It's because of these ads that I post the classifieds online rather than email them since the classified announcement has a better chance of not being filed as Junk.)

The reason I am mentioning the solo ads from readers is so you'll know that you are wasting your valuable time sending them to me. While I love getting personal messages from you, solo ads I can live without.

I hope the above answers helped you. If your question didn't appear then send it to me and I'll get back to you.

Remember, there's no such thing as a dumb question if you don't know the answer. And if more people asked these questions there would be a lot less confusion in working your business.

To Your Success,
Susan

A Habit, An Addiction Or Both?

This month's poll question was, "When you go online, is checking your email the first thing you do most of the time?"

100% of those who voted said, "Yes."

There were also some comments.

• "yes - it's usually the first thing that I do."
  
  
• "Yes, email is the first thing I check when I get on my computer.Every time!!! I have a 'thing' about mail. I'm not able to drive pastmy snail mailbox either! I pick up snail mail and then check myemail!!"
  
  
• "and then it's "which email account do I check first?"
  
  
• "Of course, because I have to look for your mail! :)"

Of all the comments received however, Mitch had the best since he shared the secret of how your email should be read.

• "I check it, skim it actually, but only for a message from someone who may be on my list. Everything else is put on hold until I finish my work pertaining to my sites, etc. Trying to read all that mail is a huge time waster. I think it's why many folks never make it on-line. They get distracted joining one new thing after another and never have the time to implement any of it. They kill their own success. Any mail after a couple of days should be deleted. It takes away any attempt to 'catch up' which isn't going to happen. There is no doubt, another one covering the same thing that just came in." Mitch

Now I want you to read the last comment again and this time pay close attention to the second paragraph because Mitch is right on target.

Breaking the habit of reading your email first is hard since we adopt the misconception at a very early age that we must check our mail immediately or we'll miss out on something important. As a child we ran to our parent's mailbox to get the mail in the hope that someone had sent us something.

As adults, however, you know that your mail consists of bills, advertising and occasionally a personal card or letter. You learn to collect it, sort it and fill it accordingly.

Then you go online, get an email account and revert back to your child like dream that someone is going to send you something good and you must read everything immediately. This is especially true when you get your first email account and not much email.

When you're only getting 10 or fewer emails a day it doesn't take much time to read them all and it may even give you some pleasure knowing that at least 10 people know your email address and want to send you something.

But soon hundreds of people know your email address and all of them want to send you something. Some of them may even be sending you multiple emails every day. Suddenly you realize that your inbox is filling up and you need to keep it cleaned out. Nobody wants a cluttered inbox!

At this point it's time to apply your snail mail method of checking and filing your mail to your email inbox. Like Mitch, you need to see if there's an email from a subscriber or a customer that requires an immediate response and then leave the rest of them alone until you've finished your assigned business task for the day.

To help you sort and file your email you may want to set up some folders and have your email sorted automatically. Most email readers allow you to create sub-folders and will automatically sort your incoming email.

If possible, you should create a folder just for your subscribers, customers, affiliates and jv partners. This will help you identify the email that requires an immediate response.

You may want to create 1 or more folders for some ezine mailings since the you always want to read them. (Like mine, I hope!) Others may be routed to a generic type of "read when there's time" folder since these senders only send "good stuff" occasionally.

As for the rest of your email, these can wait until you "really" have nothing else to do since you're probably just going to delete them anyway.

Once your email is sorted you must learn to only read the "really important" ones at the beginning of your work day. The "really important" ones are those from your subscribers, customers, affiliates and jv partners because they are the ones helping you with your business.

As for the rest of your email, read them according to the priority you have given the folder where it's been filed and only after you have finished your planned task.

After a few days you may find that you're getting a large backlog of email in some of your folders and unsorted email. Then, again at the end of your work day, you should spend a couple of minutes to do some massive deleting since you will never have the time to read it all. Sure you can skim the headlines and check some of it. If you find something good then keep it but I am betting that 99.99% of it will go straight to the trash.

Here are a couple of questions to help emphasize how important it is to not read all your email when you first logon.

1. When are you the most productive, at the beginning of your workday, the middle of your workday or at the end of your workday?
   
   
2. Of all the email you check when you first logon, how much of it was worth reading and how much went straight to the trash after you'd wasted your time checking it out?
   
   
3. How hard is it for you to stop reading your email before you've looked at all of them?

Many find that reading email is like an addiction because once they have read one they want to read another and then another and then ...

So as much as I hate to say it, if reading your email is the first thing you do when you go online, stop!

Stop wasting your most productive time with the mindless activity of reading all your email and undermining yourself and your business.

To Your Success,
Susan

6 Ways To Avoid And Filter Spam

1 of the complaints I hear a lot about is the amount of email people get - especially the unwanted kind.

Well I hate to be the barer of bad news but ...

If you're going to have an online business then receiving a large number of emails daily is 1 of the things you'd better be prepared for.

Signing up for ezines, reports, special deals, free giveaways, traffic exchanges, membership sites, updates, etc bring in a lot of legitimate email. (Not to mention the email you'll get from your subscribers.)

And after you've joined a few lists, had your site up for awhile and kept the same email address for a couple of years you'll also notice a greater number of "not-so-legitimate" email.

And we're not talking about an extra 5 or 10 -
We're talking about "Hundreds" of email messages to your inbox every day.

Now I can tell you that when you're a 1 person business having to clean out the "junk" and wade through the good stuff can really eat up your time. Time you should be using to build and grow your business.

So today I am going to offer you a few suggestions on how to save some time in handling all that incoming email. I don't claim to be an expert at how to receive less "spam" or how to get off of mailing lists or even on how to effectively filter all your incoming email. But since I don't pay for any mail filtering services I've developed a few techniques to help avoid some spam and filter some of it out of my inbox.

6 Ways To Avoid And Filter Spam

1. Never ever post your email address as a clickable link on your or anyone's web page. Clickable email address are gathered by email harvesters who then sell them to anyone wants them. So unless you're really looking for dates, body part enlargement pills, a loan or cashing in on someone's hidden money in some foreign country I'd recommend you not post your email address as a clickable link. Instead, encrypt your email address. You can find a free tool, SpamStop, inside our members' area to help you.
   
   
2. When you identify an email message as spam don't click any of the links it contains - not even the unsubscribe link! While a lot of spam does not contain an unsubscribe link, much of it does appear to have 1. The problems with clicking the links are: 1) It may or may not unsubscribe you from that list (since they sent you unsolicited email you can't trust them to unsubscribe you) and 2) It validates your email address as a good address and puts you on a more expensive list to be sold. So instead of getting less unwanted email you'll probably start getting more.
   
   
3. When you create your contact information for your site use something other than "admin" or "webmaster" as your name in your email address. Because these names are commonly used many lists are created by gathering domain names and then attaching "admin@" or "webmaster@".
   
   
4. Most web hosts allow you multiple inboxes and have 1 already set up for your use. The 1 that's already created is your default inbox and will receive all the email sent to your domain - no matter what name is used. If your site allows you to have more than 1 inbox create another inbox for your contact information email address. Then all your legitimate email will go to that inbox. When you check your default email inbox you may find that your site is receiving a lot of unwanted messages you'll have to delete it but you don't need to read it.
   
   
5. Try using the built in spam filters for the mail service you're using. Recently I switched to Outlook 2003 and it has many new features to block junk e-mail (spam). The most notable feature is Microsoft's Junk E-Mail Filter. There are 5 key features in Outlook® 2003 to help you combat spam:
   
   * Junk E-Mail Filter
   * Safe Senders List
   * Safe Recipients Lists
   * Blocked Senders List
   * AutoUpdate
   
   I keep my filter set to low so the messages identified as Junk will be saved in the Junk Folder. That way I can save the legitimate ones before I delete the rest. And every time I identify a valid email I add it to the "Safe Senders List." While this filter is not 100% effective it does identify between 95% - 98% of the junk and move it out of my inbox. For directions on how to use Outlook 2003 go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011590551033.aspx
   (Yahoo and other mail services also provide spam filters. Try turning it on for a week and see if it will work for you.)
   
   
6. Whether or not you use the spam filter provided by the mail program you're using you will still want to set up some personal mail rules for directing certain messages to specified folders. Since I get a lot of unwanted email to my web site's default email inbox I've set up a rule to send it all to my deleted email folder. To do this I have it catch all email to my site "friendswhocare.us" and then defined the exceptions (the valid email names I don't want deleted). And of course you can set up rules to send mail from specific senders to a special folder rather than have them deleted. (You'll still have to add these senders to your "Save Senders List" because the junk/spam filters usually run before your rules.)
   
   You can watch this video to see the easy way to set up rules in Outlook. ( You may have to click the Play button twice to get it to start.)
   
   

While the above suggestions will keep most of you unwanted email from getting to your inbox, some will still make it through. Also you will still have to clean out your Junk or Bulk folders. So here are a couple of shortcuts on how to delete email quickly.

2 Shortcuts for Deleting Email (Outlook)

1. If you have a lot of unwanted messages grouped together then you can delete them all at once by:
   
   * Click on the 1st message to be deleted
   * Hold the Shift key down and
   * Click the last message to be deleted
   
   All the messages - 1st, last and all those in between should be highlighted so when you click the delete button they will all be gone.
   
   
2. If your unwanted email is scattered throughout your inbox you can use the Ctrl key.
   
   * Click on the 1st message to be deleted
   * Hold down the Ctrl key and
   * Click on each of the messages you want deleted
   
   All the messages you have clicked on should now be highlighted and you can delete them all by clicking the delete button.

Yahoo and other email services usually have you check a box to mark messages you want deleted. Look around and somewhere they usually provide a place where you can "check all." If most of your messages are to be deleted then "check all" and uncheck those you don't want deleted before you click the delete button.

When you're first starting you may not be getting much email and be tempted to look at some of the unsolicited email. But after you've been doing business online for awhile you'll discover that not only do you not have time to look at it but that it also steals much of your precious online time. So take some steps to avoid getting spam and learn to use your email program. You'll be glad you did.

To Your Success,
Susan