Just because you have a website about your business does not mean you actually own it.
I ran into a situation recently where a client had this problem.  Their website was built for them by an out-of-state company.  It was a nice looking site but they were looking for some local help to make some changes to it.  As a standard practice I checked the WhoIs listing for the site.  I found that the domain name was set to expire in a few weeks.  I also found out that the domain name was actually registered to the company that developed it for them.

I recommended that they get in contact with that company and get the registration changed to show them as the domain owner.  They tried several times to contact this other company with no response.  It turns out that the other company has gone out of business.  Now their domain registration has expired and they are having trouble getting the name back.  They are working with the domain registrar but it will take them awhile.  Meanwhile their website is in limbo.

If you or someone you know has a website and they did not register the domain name personally, they should check this right away.  Go to Whois.com and click on the link that says Whois lookup.  It will take you to a page that has all of the important information about the domain registration.

If you have any experience o war stories on this issue, please comment below and share it with us.

One of the mantras in Internet Marketing circles is “The money is in the list”.  The reasoning behind this is that a visitor to your website may or may not purchase one of your products on their initial visit to your website.  Even if they do they might not come back to your site in the future.  If you can convince them to give you their email address on that first visit you have the opportunity to build a relationship with them.

The common practice is to offer what is referred to as “an ethical bribe”.  In other words, offer the visitor something of value in return for their contact information.  Once they accept this you can offer them other items in the future emails.  The majority of these emails should be valuable free information in your area of expertise.  If you concentrate on trying to sell them something with every email you will be seen as the spammer you are acting like and they will unsubscribe from your list in a heartbeat.  A newsletter with good information is a common practice.  You can highlight a product or two in the newsletter.  Just don’t make them the focus of the newsletter.

The easiest way to manage an email list is through the use of one of the Email Marketing services that are available on the Internet.  Three of the major companies are AWeber, Constant Contact and iContact.  AWeber and Constant Contact have been around for over twelve years.  iContact has been around just over seven years.  AWeber is touted as the favorite of Internet markets but all three have very similar services.  Each service provides you with the code you need to insert into your website for the sign up form that your visitors will use.  They also provide auto-responder service to automatically send follow-up emails to new subscribers.

The tables below show their rates as of the date this article was written.  The numbers across the top column is the maximum number of names in your list at that price.

Paying month to month

Monthly cost if paying on an annual basis

As you can see in the table all three services are priced roughly the same.  If you don’t currently use an opt-in list on your website I highly urge you to start.  Successful business is all about building a relationship with your customers and this is a highly effective way of doing it.  The images below are links to each of these services and I suggest that you check out all three and make your own decision as to which one fits your needs the best.

And please leave a comment below and let my readers and I know which you chose and why to help them make their decisions.