Website Development, Email Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Tools & Resources

by Scott F. Geld
http://www.MarketingBlaster.com

You realize that it’s important for visitors to your Website to be able to contact you by Email, and you want to provide easy Email access for customers and potential customers. Somehow though, you need to protect yourself from a ton of unwanted junk mail (Spam) arriving in your inbox. With a little forethought you can minimize your vulnerability.

There are people who compile Email addresses just for the purposes of selling them to spammers. It’s hard to control Spam when this happens. To fight back against Spam, the first step is finding out how the spammers got your Email address in the first place.

A wise Internet marketer uses a Website host provider that allows unlimited Email addresses or aliases. An alias refers to an alternate email address that forwards email to your real address. When you use an alias, you’re ‘real’ Email address doesn’t have to be generally available and susceptible to Spam. If you have several employees in your company, you will need multiple aliases.

You have to provide a contact Email address when you register your domain name. If you use your real Email address, then it’s readily available to everyone, and that means the spammers too. When you set up your domain, use a portable Email address, for example Hotmail. If you have multiple domains, you should use an alias (domains@domain.com) on your primary domain for all registrations . This allows your email software to filter and save any legitimate Emails that come to the alias from your registrar’s domain.

You are asking for problems if you use your real Email address when filling out a Web form or when you subscribe to a newsletter. It’s better to create an Email address that is unique for each Website or newsletter. In fact, many Email users create a customized email address for each newsletter they receive, or for each Website that they filled in a form. If for example, you subscribe to a newsletter from Greatideas.com (fictitious site name) create an Email address of “greatideas.com@yourdomain.com”, and route the email that this address receives to your real Email address. That way you will always know where the Email originated. If that address starts getting Spam or junk mail, you can simply filter it out with your software. Use a unique Email address if you submit to search engines or free-for- all pages (FFA.s).

Your own Website can be the biggest source of Email addresses used by junk mailers. Many Websites list multiple Emails in their contact details, and any time an Email appears on your site in plain text, even hidden in a Javascript or form field, that address can be captured.

If you want to avoid being the victim of spammers, always think about where and how your Email address is broadcast and consider if you are making it easy to be a victim of unwanted junk mail.

Scott F. Geld is the Director of Marketing for MarketingBlaster.com, a company providing targeted traffic and direct leads starting at only $5. For more info: http://www.marketingblaster.com/

Filed under: Design & Layout, Harvesting & Phising on April 23rd, 2005 No Comments »

Satellite radio has been a godsend to people in remote locations, or even just those who travel long distances. In the past while on a long car trip, every hour or so you’d have to start fiddling with the radio, as the station you were listening to turned to static after up to an hour of fading in and out. Then just as you’d find a new one, it, too would go to static, and so it would go on. Now with the advent of satellite radio, that static and fiddling will be a thing of the past.

The conventional radio that we have grown up listening to carried radio signals that could only be transmitted to only 30 or 40 miles from their source. Hence traveling away from such radio transmitters would fade the signals received by the radio. On the other hand, satellite radio waves travel from a space of 22,000 miles above. Hence you do not have to bother to change radio stations while traveling long distances and without the endless commercials bothering you.

Cars, with satellite radios, have been coming for many years now. But as the service takes off many more drivers will be making use of the new technology and be grateful for the flexibility it provides. At present there are only three space-based radio broadcasters, but many more are in the pipeline, as the Federal Communications Commission sanctioned a sum of $80 million to give licenses to companies to make use of the specified radio band for digital satellite radio transmission.

These three different satellite companies have done research and development in different areas and this has led to the offering of different services by them. No doubt the VHS Vs Beta type of battle would continue to intensify in the time to come as the technology progresses. Only time and sponsorship would decide who the winner of this battle would be. But whatever happens, it would only be good news for travelers as more and more companies are waiting to join this exciting field.

Two of the companies, XM Radio and Worldspace, already have an agreement with each other to share new technological developments and to continue to work together to create further innovations in this expanding field. This can only be good for consumers, particularly those who frequent remote locations on a regular basis.

Distanza Betrachtung is the owner and operator of Rob Satellite, Inc., a leading Internet portal for satellite information. For more satellite information and resources, be sure to visit: http://www.robsatellite.com

Filed under: Multi-Media on April 15th, 2005 No Comments »

We were going to spend a lot of time customizing a new layout for our Blog, but AlexKing.Org had a Theme and Style contest. So we figured why waste the time building our own, when these are free (as long as we don’t care about the developer getting credit, which we don’t).

We will make a few minor modifications to this theme, but the author deserves some codos! This is the best themes for wordPress 1.5 that we have seen. The look is clean, the styles are smooth and it was easy to get up and running. If you would like to use this theme for your WordPress blog, download Neuron from the AlexKing theme link above, and give a Shout Out to Blue Gator

Filed under: Site Notices on April 13th, 2005 No Comments »

Question: I have a major problem with newsletter (ezinedirector.com) sign ups for my site. I have people who have signed up more than once, but never get the verification email. Could this be because they have a Spam blocker that is keeping that email out? Is there a way I can manually insert them? I couldn’t find one. I suppose there should be somewhere that I can email a Help section. I’ll have to look for it.

Answer: When they subscribe to the newsletter, they should receive an auto-responder, if they don’t it is most likely they are running some kind of spam filter.

If you need to ad someone to the newsletter, login into ezinedirector, and go to list options and then choose import. Add one e-mail address per line.

Filed under: Newsletter Servers on April 4th, 2005 No Comments »