Ricky’s Online Business Blog

I received an enquiry on email hosting. The company asked me whether my server could support mass email broadcasting. They just want to send out emails to promote their training courses to their tens of thousands of email addresses in the mailing list. Upon further probing, they just want to find an email server that allows them to spam.

Receiving spams is a reality nowadays. How many spams do you receive each day? We know most spams are about “sexual health”. But I found more and more spams related to training and education these days.

These are subject titles of some spams on training courses received in my spam folder recently. I have never subscribed to any of their mailing lists before:

• How To Sell Successfully To Corporate Customers
• Train The Trainer
• Enhancing Interpersonal Skills
• Corporate Social Responsibility For Competitive Advantage
• Public Speaking & Presentation Skills
• Planning For Strategic Marketing (do they teach us to spam for marketing?)

One of these spammers is even more “sophisticated”. They know how to use a different email address to spam each time to bypass spam filter and to hide their real identity!

But do you really need to spam in order get the words out about your products and services? Nowadays there are many ways to do Internet marketing, such as search engine marketing and blog marketing. Unless you are in fly-by-night business, sending spams will not only not work, but backfire on your reputation as well!

So I advised that company not to spam but consider other ways of promotion that could be more long-term and beneficial. Unfortunately, they said they want “fast results” and will go on shopping for another hoster who allows them to spam. But as I understand, no legitimate hosting provider allows customers to spam. So good luck!

This is again a post related to the recent offer to BizPartner customers to migrate web and email hosting to the new Linux server running cPanel free of charge.

Some customers are very technical inclined, even more knowledgeable than me on server matters :-)  No surprise if they want to do the migration themselves.  So if you are interested in DIY migration, here is a summary checklist for you.

To start with, please make sure your web site can run on Linux server.  Web sites using ASP or .NET technologies will not run and should stay with your current Windows server.

Please also have your domain name control panel login details with you.  You need the username and password to login to change domain name server (DNS).  The details were sent to you when you first registered the domain.  Please contact me if you need help retrieving the details.

After you have decided to migrate, please let me know and I’ll create a hosting plan for you on the new server.  I will send you the hosting details with access to your cPanel.

Please carry out these three things before migration:

• Your web site - Please backup your web site from the current server and upload to the new server, using the temporary FTP details given to you.
• Your database - If you have any MySQL database on the current server, please backup and upload it to the new server using PhpMyAdmin in cPanel.
• Your email accounts - Please retrieve your current list of email addresses from the current server, and recreate them on the new server using cPanel.

However, your emails on the current server, if any, cannot be migrated over.  Your users need to download the emails to their computers.  But you can keep on sending and receiving emails during the migration.  Read here for more information.

Finally, at the migration date and time of your choice, just log on to the domain name control panel and change DNS setting according to the hosting details sent to you.

You can do it!

I’ve been receiving enquiries from customers and visitors on building blogs for their business, products and services.  Some even ask me to blog for them.  Good that you believe in business blogging!

I’m not a professional blogger and don’t have too much time to blog for you.  Normally I suggest you get a domain name and hosting service, install WordPress on their domain name (can be done easily from web-based control panel called cPanel) and start to blog.

Believe me, it’s good to learn how to blog yourself (or your staff).  Unless you really don’t have the time to blog, blogging yourself is the best option because you are the one who is most knowledgeable on your business, and more importantly, you are the one who is most passionate about what you offer, not any paid professional blogger!

Another way is to team up with me in blogging.  I can get your hosting and/or domain name free of charge, install the blog for you and maintain the blog platform.  All you need to do is just login and blog.

But it depends on what you are selling, your business model, and your commitment to blog.  Contact me if you are interested in further discussion.

Either way, you still need to blog yourself (or get a knowledgeable and passionate staff to do it).  It’s quite easy actually.  But as your provider and friend, I’ll be glad to pass on what I have learned to you out when you need help!