JohnDough@MadeOfMoney.com
by Mike Banks Valentine
If you are a typical entrepreneur online operating a
small business website from your office PC there is now
a very effective way to increase the visibility for your
site with very little additional work. Did the title for
this article catch your attention? Typical email addresses
rarely grab anyone's attention with domain extensions of
aol.com or mylocalISP.com and especially yahoo.com or the
most common of all, hotmail.com
How do you seize the attention of jaded surfers and wrench
their perception with an email address? Simple, get your
free email from sites like:
http://www.ArtCity.com
http://www.MadeOfMoney.com
http://www.DoItYourself.com
How much more likely will someone be to actually want to
read your email if your email address showing in their
list of received mail makes them smile or mentions their
profession or their interests before they even open it?
Obviously it would serve your business to offer free email
from your own domain if your domain name is generic and
represents an entire industry or is funny or descriptive
like those listed above. Free email accounts can be set up
through several companies that provide a list of specific
names they've reserved for their company, such as the lists
at:
http://www.myownemail.com/ and
http://www.netforward.com/
There are multiple options to consider depending on how
you and your free email subscribers would prefer to receive
email. If you'd like a simple explanation of the three most
common types of email service available online, go to:
http://www.emailaddresses.com/guide_types.htm
This page helps you to understand the difference between
POP3 email, web-based email and email forwarding services.
Each have pros and cons depending on your preferences.
If you want to set up a free email account from your own
domain which will allow you to offer free email to your
web site visitors try visiting:
http://www.everyone.net
Everyone.net lets you set up your existing domain name for
free web-based email
for your visitors. This has the added
benefit of potential customers seeing your domain name every
time a user of your free email sends email to anyone they
communicate with. It also allows you to insert a line or two
of promotion for your free email service and thus promote
your own web site to recipients of that email.
Be aware though, that you must set aside your existing
email addresses that you already use through your own site
for business purposes as you set up that free email. If you
forget that important step in setting up those accounts, it
could be possible to lose your existing addresses to new
free email sign-ups and your clients and contacts will lose
the ability to contact you!
The sign-up process is fairly straight forward with most of
these services and you'll be up and emailing with your new
promotional tool quickly.
Now you can promote within your targeted industry with your
highly targeted email address. Don't hesitate to obtain a
more generic or entertaining email address than the one you
use for your company or personal email. The email address
you set up this way can be a secondary address for you and
it's possible to set up several for different purposes. I
use
MoneyMan@MadeOfMoney.com for posts to the Motley Fool bulletin
board and some finance related discussion lists but change
to
Professor@WebSite101.com for posts to small business sites
and signature lines at AskMe.com and WZ.com where I discuss
small business web techniques and tools for home business.
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WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet
Ezine emphasizing small business online http://website101.com/arch/
e-tutorial online at: http://website101.com/shortcourse.html
By week's end you're ready expand your business to the web!
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