What’s Your Email Address Say About You?
Having your email addresses set up correctly will make a big difference to the perceived “professionalism” of your online business, and help you win the battle over spam!
For example, would you rather deal with:
1. someone @ your-isp.com
OR
2. yourname @ your-own-domain.com
I think you know which one looks better from a business viewpoint 🙂
Using ISP Based Email
[ISP = Internet Service Provider i.e. the people YOU use to connect by dialup or broadband to the Internet from home or work]
Your username @ your-isp.com is NOT good for business. It just doesn’t look “right” if you’re serious about doing business on the net.
And if you EVER have to change to another ISP!!!! Good luck with keeping your business going, because you LOSE your main email address.
Using DOMAIN Based Email
Far better it is to have your own domain name and set up email on your own server. yourname @ your-own-domain.com certainly LOOKS like you mean business, and avoids the complication of moving ISPs.
It should be dead simple to set up – but there are a few tricks to look out for!
NEVER use your server LOGIN username for an email account! This should be kept for login purposes only because if you ever get bombarded by spam, there is very little you can do about it.
Instead, firstly set up a PRIVATE email address (e.g. private @ mydomain.com) which you use ONLY for checking email with your email client. NO-ONE will EVER know this address – it’s THAT important.
Then set up multiple FORWARDERS or ALIASES like
yourname @ mydomain.com
paypal @ mydomain.com
sales @ mydomain.com
info @ mydomain.com
news @ mydomain.com
web @ mydomain.com
so that ANY mail which goes to these “addresses” get redirected over to your PRIVATE account.
NOTE : most GOOD hosting accounts allow you to set up UNLIMITED aliases.
See that “web” alias above? It is used ONLY on your site for your contact/feedback form. Because “comment spammers” like these forms, if you start getting spam to that address, you just change it to say, web1 @ mydomain.com, and that spam problem is fixed!
There are a few more aliases/forwarders you can set up too!
If you subscribe to lots of newsletters to feed your craving for learning about the ‘net… then seriously consider setting up DIFFERENT aliases for each one you subscribe to.
That way, if they ever do the dirty on you, and sell your email address to spammers, then it’s easy to control – just KILL the alias, and your problem is gone! And it’s a painless way to unsubscribe as well if all the “normal” methods fail.
Here are a couple of recent posts I made on the spam issue:
- lots of EXTRA hints for dealing with spam
- and a report on the spam I got over Christmas/New Year 2007
OK… While it DOES takes a little bit of fiddly time, and logging into your server control panel to set these things up, when you consider how much spam you can end up with… it’s well worth taking such easy preventative measures.
So put it on your to-do list to do today 🙂
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