Catch-All Email Accounts
If you have a web hosting account, with one or more domains hosted on it, then you probably have several email accounts set up, too.
Let’s say that you have a domain, www.MyDomain.com, and have created a few mail accounts; your.name@MyDomain.com, sales@MyDomain.com, and support@MyDomain.com.
What happens if somebody sends an email to accounts@MyDomain.com? There is no email account with that name, so there is no mailbox to store it in.
The answer is that it goes into the hosting account “catch-all” account mailbox. The mail account name is usually the same as your hosting account name, so if you log in with the name “johndoe”, then your catch-all email account will be johndoe@MyDomain.com.
You will find that once you’ve had your domain for just a few weeks, you’ll start getting spam messages sent to non-existent email addresses at your domain. These messages will end up in your catch-all mailbox.
I usually set up my email program to delete the messages in the catch-all account. Whenever I pick up my email, the catch-all account gets emptied, and I never see all that spam. (Take note, spammers – it all gets deleted, so why bother sending it?)
When I upgraded my PC with a new hard disk a few months ago, I forgot to set up the catch-all account handler. I finally remembered yesterday, and discovered there were 83,331 spam messages in there, occupying some 231Mb of disk space.! It took about 2 hours to delete them all.
Most catch-all accounts have an unlimited mailbox size, so if you don’t empty them regularly, they will just eat up your hosting disk space. I estimate that my catch-all account is receiving about 1000 spam messages per day, so it soon bulds up if not cleaned out regularly.
So if you don’t do it already, check your catch-all account and clean it out regularly. You don’t want to fill your hosting account disk with spam.
Google Webmaster Tool Verification Update
If you use Google Webmaster Tools to find out information and statistics about your websites, you’ll know that to access that information you must Verify that you are the owner of the site. You can do this in one of two ways:
- By adding a META tag to your home page. This will include a code that uniquely identifies your Google account. If you are able to edit the home page, then you must be the owner (or authorised user)
- By uploading an HTML file to your site’s root directory. The name of this file is your unique code, with an HTML extension. For example, it might be googlec9e7c4d1799410bc.html. Again, if you have the privilege to upload his file, then you must be the owner or authorised user.
There are advantages and disadvantages to using the two different methods.
META Tag
Using the META Tag means that you do not have any extra HTML files lying around in your root directory. It’s really not important except for the sake of tidiness.
The disadvantage is if you decide to completely renew your web home page. If you forget to include the META tag in the new page, then you will have to re-validate the site when you log in to Webmaster Tools.
Similarly, if you use something like WordPress, you might be unsure about editing the WordPress theme files to iniclude the META Tag. And if you switch to a different theme, you’ll have to go through the process all over again.
HTML File
This is my preferred method, because you only have to do it once. As long as you don’t delete the file, then you can change as much of your website as you want without having to re-verify it.
The disadvantage is that you might accidentally delete the file, especially if you do a site-wide rewrite.
Having said that you only have to do it once, though, I recently found that I had to re-verify all my sites because Google changed the mechanism slightly.
Originally, all you had to do was to create a file with the name Google specify, and upload it to your site’s root directory on your host server.
I always used an empty file with the correct name and it worked just fine.
Now, the file must have some content as specified by Google. In fact, they now supply a file for you to download and then upload to your server. The file now contains a line of text that looks like:
google-site-verification: googlec9e7c4d1799410bc.html
So unless you verified your sites recently or use the META Tag method, you’ll probably find that you’ll need to re-verify your sites next time you log in.
Fortunately, the code that they give you applies to your user account – not to the site. This means the same file can be uploaded to all of your websites for verification purposes.
Top Tips for Selling on eBay
I’ve been buying and selling on eBay and other auction sites for many years now. As I browse the various lots up for sale, I never cease to be amazed at how badly some people present their items.
Having created a really terrible auction, these people wonder why their item goes unsold or for a ridiculously small amount of money – well below its true value.
So I’ve written this short article to give a few hints and tips for making a sale on auction sites.
Auction Title
This is very important. Most buyers don’t use the Advanced Search options, or even check the “Include title and description” box. This means that the search is carried out based on the words found in auction titles. If buyers are going to find your item, you will need to keywords that that most people are likely to use in a search.
Think about what you would use to search for that item if you wanted to buy one. Try searching in eBay using those words to see if you can find items similar to yours. Check the keywords that other people are using.
The title space is limited in length, so think carefully about the words that you use. Check spellings before you submit your auction. Thousands of items have gone unsold, or sold for the starting price because the seller mis-spelled keywords in the title and very few people actually found the auction.
Category
Choose your Category carefully. Some people seem to choose the first category they see that relates to their product. As an example, I have often seen accessories for PDAs listed under “PDAs” instead of under “PDA Accessories”.
Some Categories on eBay contain some fields that you can select from to provide specific information in a standard format. For example, Womens Clothing has fields for Size, Material, Colour etc.
My previous example, PDAs, has a field for screen size. If you don’t specify these fields, buyers become frustrated and move on.
Description
I have seen some incredibly bad descriptions of items – some consisting of a single line of text or even less. You’re trying to sell this item to people who can’t actually see it, touch it or pick it up. In your description, you need to be their eyes and ears. If you don’t provide the information, people will want to ask questions, or they will just ignore the auction and move on to one with a better description.
Another common mistake is to write a single block of text. Divide your description into paragraphs, with each paragraph covering a different topic.
If your item is available in a variety of different variants, specify details. Colour, size, model number etc. Using my PDA example again, I have seen auctions for a “Pocket Loox PDA” with no details as to the model number (there are many – each with very different specifications). Usually the photograph isn’t good enough to determine the model number, either.
Details. Make sure you know as much about the item as possible before typing in your auction details. Continuing the PDA theme, I have seen an auction advertising a “Dell X51v PDA” with a screen size of 640×480. The Description then went on to say that it was a “Dell x50″, which is a different model with a much smaller screen size. The seller had then blindly pasted in the specification from the Dell website which contained information about both models.
Photographs
Always, without exception, provide a good quality photograph of the item you are selling. Remember, buyers cannot see the item you have for sale.
Take several pictures and choose the best one (or more).
There are a lot of common mistakes made with regard to photographs on eBay auctions.
Focus. All digital cameras have autofocus. Learn how to use it properly and make your picture as sharp as possible. A blurry image tells the buyer nothing except that you couldn’t be bothered to make a better picture. Use a proper digital camera or the camera in a mobile phone if it’s of decent quality – borrow one if you don’t have one. Webcams are notoriously bad – they’re not really designed for taking high quality images.
Lighting. If you take a photo of your item indoors under artificial light, the colours in your image may look strange. If possible, set your digital camera for the relevant lighting conditions – incandescent light (conventional light bulbs), fluorescent (including energy-saving compact fluorescent) or daylight.
Use natural light if possible – take your pictures during the daytime, near a window, or even outdoors.
Rotation. I have seen many pictures on eBay auctions that are rotated by 90 degrees because the seller turned the camera to fit the item in. Many digital cameras come with programs to rotate images. If not, there are plenty you can obtain for free or at very low cost.
Size. A thumbnail image the size of a postage stamp is no use to anybody. Ebay allow you to use large images. Use that facility.
Presentation. Before you take the photo of your item, take a look what else is around the room that might end up in the picture. Buyers don’t want to see a pile of junk lying around. Tidy up so that only your item will appear in the picture.
If you’re selling clothes, put them on a hanger – maybe on the back of a door. A picture of a skirt lying on a bed doesn’t sell anywhere near as one with it on a hanger. Even better – use a mannequin (dummy) or a live model (You don’t need to take a picture of the complete person – just the item for sale). Clothes look so much better on a body than when flat.
Details. If the item has some distinguishing feature that is a selling point, why not add a close-up of that feature.
Link Cloaking
What is Link Cloaking, why should you do it, and how do you do it?
Link cloaking is a means of using a URL or web address to go hide another web address. There are a number of reasons why you might want to do this, which are explained below.
Cloaking Affiliate Links
The main reason why most people want to cloak their links is to hide the fact that it is an affiliate link. Again, there are a few reasons why you might want to do that;
The first is to prevent other people from removing your affiliate ID from the link, thus denying you the commission that you would usually earn from the sale of a product. In some cases, especially with ClickBank, affiliates have been known to replace your affiliate ID with their own so that they themselves earn the commission. All your promotional efforts and costs are in vain when this happens.
In reality, though, it probably doesn’t happen as often as some people would lead you to believe. Only a ClickBank Affiliate would recognise the link, and only a small number of them would replace your ID with their own. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with protecting your efforts by cloaking your links.
The second reason why you might want to cloak an affiliate link is to reduce the length and complexity of the link. For example, you might have an affiliate link that looks something like this:
http://www.somevendorsdomain.com/products/gizmo.php?affid=230561&tracking=4829
This doesn’t look too good. If it’s printed somewhere, people aren’t going to want to type all that in, and there’s a danger of mis-typing if they did.
By cloaking the link, you could give them a simpler link such as:
http://www.yourdomain.com/gizmo
The third reason why you might want to cloak your affiliate link is that you can make the link look as if it is in your own domain instead of somebody else’s. That gives your customers more confidence because it looks as though it’s your product, even though it’s not.
Other Benefits
I only realised this one myself a few weeks ago. I had an affiliate link for a well-known software product, and I cloaked it as I do for all of my links.
The vendor of the product released a new version of the software and at the same time, changed the affiliate system they were using. This meant that all affiliates had to re-apply for affiliate status and obtain a new affiliate link.
I thought that I would then have to go through all my web pages and advertisements, changing the affiliate links. Then I realised that I had used my cloaked link in all my sales pages and ads. So all I had to do was update my cloak with the new link and all my pages worked just fine.
It also meant that any links in emails I sent out still worked, because they all point back to my cloak.
More importantly, links contained within ebooks that I have written will also still work – they will just go to the new location.
How many times have you opened an old ebook or email, only to find that the links no longer work? As long as the vendor continues to sell the product and I am an affiliate, my cloaked links will still work just fine.
How Do You Cloak a Link?
Cloaking a link can be done in several ways, but my favourite, and the easiest is a simple PHP redirection.
- First decide on the link that you want to use as a cloak. In this example, I’m going to promote a product called “gizmo” and use this link:
http://www.mydomain.com/products/gizmo
to promote an affiliate link
http://www.somevendorsdomain.com/gizmo.php?affid=230561&tracking=4829 - Next I create a folder in my domain called products/gizmo.
- I create a file called index.php containing this code:
<?php header("Location: http://www.somevendorsdomain.com/gizmo.php?affid=230561&tracking=4829"); ?> - I then upload that file to the new folder that I created in step 1. And that’s it! All I have to do is promote my new link, http://www.mydomain.com/products/gizmo.
Article Marketing
