This scam is not new. In fact, it has been going on for years even after the courts have stepped in. If you receive the letter below from the Domain Registry of America, toss it. It is misleading and gives the false impression that your domain name will not be renewed.

This letter states that this particular domain name (grayed out) will expire on April 22, 2010. In fact, the domain name will not expire since it is set up on an automatic renewal with GoDaddy.

Domain Registry of America calls this a renewal. The wording is misleading and I consistently get calls from my clients. What the Domain Registry of America is doing is, in fact, a domain name transfer. The FTC has stepped in and filed this injunction.

Perhaps this letter now satisfies the legal aspects. However, it does not change the situation that they want you to pay more for your domain name than necessary. Domain names currently cost about $10 a year through GoDaddy/NameCheap…

Okay, don’t let the title scare you! This is a problem EVERY one will face eventually when they work with websites.

I recently worked with a client who had an error that prevented him from posting new information to his website. The error said: “XML-RPC Response Parsing Failed: Operation could not be completed. Extra content at the end of the document”

This client was using MarsEdit. An excellent blogging software for the Mac.

We spent some time trying to find this “extra content.” However, when looking at the code, we could not find it. It was hidden very well. This person copied text from PowerPoint and pasted it into MarsEdit. Why would that cause a problem? Enter Microsoft…

This is not another one of those blog posts which disses Microsoft Office. It is an indispensible software package, but it is known to create issues when copying and pasting into websites. The reason is, Microsoft Word (and its siblings) uses hidden code to send documents to a printer. If you have ever copied a paragraph from Word and pasted it directly into a website, you may see a bunch of code that misbehaves. Sometimes, this code is elusive and you cannot see it.

If you get this error or your newly published content to a site is scrambled, hidden or simply messing up your page, then you need to refrain from copying and pasting directly from a Microsoft product.

How do you overcome these errors?

You can either retype the material directly into the website editing program. Or, if the material is too long, then copy the material and paste it into a program like Notepad (Windows users) or  TextMate for Mac users. Once pasted into Notepad/TextMate, copy it once again and paste into your website.

Or, you need to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007. I have tried to replicate these errors using Office 2007 and it appears that Microsoft has “cleaned up” the extra code issue.

Why does this help?

Text editors do not bloat the code of your document with margins and printer codes. When you paste Microsoft material into one of these editors, all of this extraneous code is stripped away. Note that you will lose your bolding and italic.

Conclusion

When you publish a page on your website and you notice that the page simply will not behave. Understand that the problem may be related to copying and pasting from an older Microsoft product.

Receiving 100s of emails daily can create a nightmare! If you are like me, you dread the menial task of deleting, sorting and handling of these emails.

For some time now, I have used a great system that combines the same principles the relate to physical mail.

Here are a few tips that will help you with an inbox that is out of control.

1. Make sure you have a good spam filter. Handling spam is an absolute time waster.
2. When you get email, try to handle it only once. If the request takes less than a minute for response, then it is the best practice to handle the request immediately. Revisiting emails that require minimal action causes that email to become an unnecessary time waster.
3. Microsoft Outlook provides a way to flag important emails with a color so you can go back to it. You may find that only a handful of a 1,000 emails really require this flag.
4. About once every 4 months, I clean out my inbox. I go back 30 days delete everything older. Voila! Now you have accomplished a great deal! If you have a good handle on steps 1, 2, and 3, then you have little concern about losing good emails…
5. At this stage, I can go through the last 30 days in a matter of minutes.
6. It is my practice to leave 6 months of deleted emails in my delete folder just in-case I lost something important or overlooked something.

These are my suggestions and they have worked well for me. Do you have any to add?

Did you know that editing your website is now possible as long as you have an iPhone/Smartphone? With well over 100 clients, we specialize in teaching website management. This is critical. While we do provide contracted services to make updates, many like to have a more “hands on” approach.

An effective website is one that is updated frequently. Making frequent updates can be costly if you contract. Since our website programming provides a very user-friendly option, consider our company for all of your website needs.

Want more information or have questions, please call or email!

The Water Lilly: Pond Supplies

We have a client who wants to sell pond supplies throughout the United States.

The Water Lilly
8340 South State Road
Goodrich, MI 48438
810-240-1515
thewaterlilly1@gmail.com

Hunting Shows.net

Evmikna Graphics has been a lifesaver for my business. Tom Antor, Grand Rapids, MI

Tom Antor, the organizer for the largest hunting shows in Michigan, chose Evmikna to help him redesign his website and gain control of it. Many of our clients came to us because they wanted control of their website. In 2008, we helped Tom secure control of his domain name and deployed his website into WordPress so that he can make edits on his own.

If only Google would remain static! It is always morphing…it makes our job strategically interesting as we are having to morph right along with it. In the last couple of months, Google has made some important changes related to your local listing. Below is a Google Local Listing.

Since 2008

Google introduced local listings with a map to the left and businesses to the right. These are commonly called the 10 pack. It gets that name from the fact that the top ten businesses in the local region are listed. In some cases there are 3 packs.

When Google started using these listings, it showed the top ten businesses located in the geographic center of town. (See A) We are on the edge of town, therefore, our listing was considerably down the list. This was a frustration. At that time, all we could do is get ourselves above the 10 pack or just below it. (See B) Well, the frustration is gone

Since June 2009

The 10-pack has changed! As you notice from the above graphic, we are now letter B. We are the second listing. What you should note is that there are at least 4 other website design companies in Davison, Michigan that are closer to the geographic center of town. Yet, we are ahead of them. We don’t really mind being listed #2. Why? Because at the time of this posting, we have 11 reviews. Those reviews get us traffic.

Enough Said Publicly

Okay, we don’t want to publicly say anything more. We are leaders in this region for Search Engine optimization and our competitors want our information. There are a number of factors that Google considers today. If you are not in the 10 pack, and are currently one of our clients, contact us today for a free strategy to improve your listing. If you are not currently one of our clients, we will schedule a meeting for a nominal fee which can be converted into the over all charge if you want us to do the work.

We want to highlight two words that get people to the top of the search engines and make your website profitable—Consistent and Intentional Promotion.

With every website, we do the right things to make sure that your website has potential to be found in the search engines. From the menu coding to on-page content, we build potential into every website. The days of simply building a website correctly and getting results are nearly gone. It used to be that all you did was put content on your site and you are done. However, with the competition on the WWW, more must happen to get your site to the top of the search engines and to see results. You need to be consistent and intentional if you want your website to produce results.

Consistent Website Promotion

Consistency is the key to success in nearly every area of life. Failing to be consistent only leads to frustration and eventual failure. In the world of website promotion, Google (et al) take into account freshness. If you are consistently adding new information to your site, you will see results. Also, consistently building links to your site through other websites, blogs and forums are the keys to success.

Intentional Website Promotion

When you have a plan for promoting your website, you will do more than the one who sporadically adds information. Consider your website as an ongoing experiment. We have over 100 clients and a number of our own personal websites. Through this vast experimentation, we are finding a number of ways to intentionally promote your site. We have clients that secure articles written from their own clients. Another has 10 years worth of print articles in their filing cabinets. Getting this content on their own site is intentional. Why not consider writing a “Top 10” list for your own website. We have and we get traffic directly to that page.

Summary

Every industry can benefit from a consistent and intentional promotion of their website. If your website has become “stale” let us work with you to find ways to freshen it up. If you are beginning a website, keep in mind that if you want your website to be a top producer, it will be a continual project, not simply a one month endeavor.

This week, we are purchasing a new server which improves the hardware and software. We are happy with our current server, but things have improved to such a degree that we chose to implement a new server instead of upgrading our current one.

As a result, this new server will be faster and more secure than ever. There will be no downtime for either website or email. We will take care of everything “behind the scenes.”

This will be a month long process for us. There will be no cost increase for hosting. We may ask you for access to your domain name to point it to the new server, but for most of our hosting clients, we have that information. You will simply be notified by email when we change.

We anticipate only one change that will affect you—strong passwords.

If you have access to the CPanel and/or use WordPress for your site, we will increase the security of passwords. The days of simple passwords are about over. This is unfortunate, but unavoidable. With scammers and hackers, no amount of advanced technology can ever replace the need for a strong password. Of course, having a notebook full of passwords and usernames may not be your desire, there are online password vaults and browser tools (e.g., Roboform) that can store these for you.

Email marketing is very effective! Did you know that one survey, research company finds that email marketing is now ranked above the search engines for helping your business. Let us introduce you to iContact, a very easy-to-use email campaign management program.

For some time, we have recommended AWeber and Constant Contact as our favorite campaign resource. However, a new company is now offering better rates and has some advantages.

iContact Fits Budgets Better

From the table below, you will find that iConstant is either cheaper or the same price as the cheapest solution. The great thing is that iContact offers more flexibility due to more pricing levels.

iContact is Easy-to-Use

With pre-filled templates, you do not need to know how to code. You can choose WYSIWYG [fn1 “What You See Is What You Get] templates.

The charts and reporting features are very clear. You can see instantly how many email subscribers added and dropped as well how many opened your email.

Constant Contact is as easy as iContact, however you will pay more for that service. AWeber needs to make some progress here.

Summary

We are very happy with the flexibility and pricing structure of iContact. Consider enhancing your marketing with iContact. Click here to start a free trial!