Turn Down The Hustle: Empowering Online T-Shirt Sellers
Are you a t-shirt maker or a seller of handmade products? Are you trying to turn your creative passion into a thriving business while balancing your 9-5 job? You're in the right place!
I'm Amy, and I've been where you are. I know what it's like to have a million ideas but limited time in the day. That's why I created the "Turn Down The Hustle" podcast – a weekly show designed to help busy creatives like you.
Join me as we dive into practical tips and actionable insights. We'll cover marketing strategies that work specifically for t-shirt makers and simple techniques to enhance your craft. But that's not all – we'll also have honest conversations about the real challenges of being a creative entrepreneur.
So, grab a cup of coffee and hit play. Listen to "Turn Down The Hustle" while you're fulfilling orders or taking a well-deserved break. Together, we'll navigate this entrepreneurial journey and find harmony between creativity and business.
For more information, show-notes & to join a community of t-shirt makers like you -- visit: www.sunkissedva.com/podcast
Turn Down The Hustle: Empowering Online T-Shirt Sellers
28 | Branded Custom Domain Emails
Are you ready to elevate your business image and communication? From @gmail.com to @(yourwebsite).com -- Discover how a branded custom domain email can transform your professional presence, enhance trust, and ensure brand consistency. In this episode, I dissect the critical shift from generic email services like Gmail and Yahoo to custom domain emails. You'll learn how this transition not only boosts your credibility but also prepares your business for future growth, allowing better management control and operational efficiency.
I also explore tangible steps for securing and setting up your own custom domain email address. From improving email security to building a robust email list, we cover the essential tools and strategies to get you started. Tune in to understand why a branded email is more than just a professional upgrade—it's a foundational element for your business growth. For additional resources and detailed guides, head over to www.sunkissedva.com/28
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I am digging this summer weather. Summer is my favorite season and in Florida it's in full swing, so I definitely had to cool off to come record this episode. This is a good one. Today, we're going to be talking about going from at gmail to at your websitecom for your emails. If you've ever wondered, how is someone sending an email from their website? Or I don't have a website. How could I possibly do this? What are even the steps to get started with this? Stay tuned, I'm going to cover all of this in today's episode.
Speaker 2:You're listening to Turn Down the Hustle, the podcast dedicated to transforming how you run your creative online t-shirt business by working smarter, not harder, so you can spend more time with your why, people and passions that matter most in your life. So throw on your favorite graphic tee and turn up the heat. Press, because it's time to turn down the hustle. Here's your host digital marketer. Cold brew lover, t-shirt maker, freckled hype girl and owner of Sunkist Virtual Assistant, amy hype girl and owner of Sunkist Virtual Assistant, amy.
Speaker 1:Let's start off with the problem with sending emails from at gmailcom or at yahoocom. These generic email addresses may not be the best choice for your professional business. Now don't get me wrong. We are all side hustlers here. We all are self-taught. We started somewhere. All of us have started off with an at gmail, at yahoocom. But if I could tell myself something back then, knowing what I know now, I wish I would have started sooner with a branded domain email address, which we'll talk about later on in this episode. But I wish I would have ditched the at gmail, at yahoocom earlier, sending emails from at gmailcom or at yahoocom. It lacks a level of professionalism and misses out on opportunities to gain your subscribers trust, like what a branded custom domain email address can do for you. Also, it's hard to recognize your brand. Whenever you're sending something with the Google logo, the Yahoo logo, the purple Yahoo. It's hard to recognize who is this actually coming from if you're not clear on the first half of your email address. Also, there's a higher chance that your emails will be marked as spam sending from one of these domains. What is an example of a branded email address? It would be something like amy at sunkissvacom. So my email address is my domain on that second half, after the at that's what we're trying to change. So right now yours might be your business at gmailcom, at yahoocom. So this episode, I'm walking you through how to get your website at that second half no more Gmail or Yahoo.
Speaker 1:Let's move into some of the benefits of having a custom domain email address. The first thing it does for you is it builds that professionalism and enhances their trust. Why People do business with business. This is why I am a big advocate for changing your social media profile picture to a picture of your face. Why? Because they're not doing business with a picture of a t-shirt or a logo. They want to see who they're doing business with. By having a custom domain email address, you're starting to enhance this by showing them who they are doing business with. Also, your custom domain email address enhances your ability to keep your brand consistent. So we like to keep all of our fonts generally the same our colors, our tone. We want it to be recognizable.
Speaker 1:Think about the last time you were in the car starving. Or maybe someone in your car was starving and you are just looking for something to eat. What do you do? You start looking down the road ahead trying to recognize the signs up ahead. You're looking for a certain color, a certain logo or a certain font, certain words that will give you the indication that the restaurant or the fast food joint that you're interested in is up ahead. That's what's helping you make a decision. Also, think about a road lined with fast food signs, and there's a lot of options to pick from. What are you doing? You're scanning and skimming these signs for something that's recognizable or familiar that you want to pick from. Only one restaurant's going to jump out at you and ultimately that's the restaurant you're going to go with.
Speaker 1:So let's start doing the same thing with our emails. By having that custom domain, we're starting to create that familiarity. Our customers are going to start looking for it in their inbox Whenever we reach out to them. We're going to start gaining that trust with our consistency and our branded emails. So that's a benefit of how it would help your brand and some recognition.
Speaker 1:But what about the control your custom email gives you? You may not be to a point right now where you're hiring on help, whether it's independent contractors or employees, or maybe even just asking a family member to help out. What you can do today is prepare your business to scale, how you can start to create different email addresses for different segments of your business. Now, don't get crazy with it, but think about things like if someone needs help with their order, is there a certain inbox you would like that to go to, like info at your websitecom. Or if you are big in collabs or affiliate marketing, could you have people send inquiries to collab at customemailcom, right? And then also, what you can do is, whenever you do get employees, you can set them up with their own branded email, such as employee name, at your websitecom, and then, if they ever go to leave or maybe you just have a generic VA one then you can easily keep all of the records that doesn't go with them, and then you can put somebody else in the seat. The last thing you want is trying to communicate with your customers, to stop emailing a certain email and the next thing you know, the person who is no longer with your business is now getting all of your business, because that's who your customers are reaching out to. We don't want that, so keep it all in-house.
Speaker 1:How do you get started? Let's move into how to set up your custom domain. First things first, you actually need to own a domain, which technically is not correct terminology, because you're technically renting your domain. If you don't renew it, it's no longer yours. So you're not technically buying a domain, but you do need to secure one to start. Some examples of domain providers are Bluehost, godaddy, Squarespace, hostgator. A few of my domains were under Google domains, which Squarespace recently acquired, so you can also check out Squarespace as well.
Speaker 1:Now, before you pause this episode and go skip to another one, because you're thinking I don't have a website, I am not going to go secure a domain. I don't even have a website right now. I'm still selling on Facebook. People message me their orders or they just send me money via Venmo with their order in the comments Like I just I don't need a website right now or I'm overwhelmed, I don't know where to start. There's no point in me doing this.
Speaker 1:I highly encourage you to go ahead and secure your domain today. Why, if you don't, there's a good chance the name that you want, that you're currently working so hard to build your brand around right now, could be taken, and then you're going to have to pivot and your website's not going to match your Facebook, it's not going to match your Instagram and you're just going to have all different variations of the name, some dashes, some money signs. You want to go ahead today, start from the ground and build up and ensure that you have all of the names that you're going to want to build. I promise you, if you stay in business, you're not far off from a website. It's actually easier than you think to build.
Speaker 1:But the first step is to secure your brand domain. So go ahead, check that out and make sure you go ahead and grab one today. Keep in mind that if yours is already taken, can you use like a dash, or can you add the word the something very simple, that it doesn't really change your business name and it's easy for your followers, subscribers, customers to remember. I do recommend trying to keep the com to the best of your ability versus going off to a netshop. Com is the most recognizable domain, so if you can keep it there, it's going to ensure that you're customers can remember that. But if you can't, for whatever reason, and you are going to go with a shopnet, go ahead and type in your domain with the com. See what website is going to be your sister domain, meaning if they were to visit this website, ensure that it has appropriate content. Also, is this website that they could mistakenly type in, thinking it's yours? Do they sell something similar to you? The last thing you want to have is your website be I don't know the t-shirt makernet, and because com is already taken. But if they type in t-shirt makercom and they go to that website and it could be mistaken for your business, now you just sent people to somebody else, so just keep that in mind. Again, I highly recommend you secure thecom over thenet, et cetera, even if you have to add a dash or a the.
Speaker 1:Now, how much does this cost? Majority of your domains can be secured for roughly $20 for the first two years and then it could be $20 each year going forward, which, if you divide that out per month, it's actually really not bad at all. Now, depending on how popular your domain may be, that's where it could get more expensive if it's expected that it could gain traction or they assess that it could be highly visible. Also, you may notice that maybe a domain was not available before, but maybe somebody didn't renew it or they canceled their domain purchase or renting it and now it is available, you may see that happen quite a bit, but either way, I would not plan on changing it. I would buy the domain today or rent it the one that you plan on using for years to come about and you can go ahead and start sending emails from this custom domain email address, starting to gain awareness, starting out your email marketing even ahead of this website. So you're already starting to build that brand consistency.
Speaker 1:It's time to move into setting up your custom email address now. So you're sending emails from your website at gmailcom. It's now time to transition. So there are a few providers that can do this service for you. I prefer Google Workspace it was formerly known as G Suite if you are an OG user. But the reason why I really like Google Workspace is that I can still use like the Google interface, especially if you were using Gmail before. However, now you can just transition it into a custom website domain provider for you. Now I'm going to link in the show notes. If you go to sunkissvacom forward, slash 28, I'll have all of the how to links secure for you, along with how to purchase your domain, different options. That way, you'll have all of the steps in one place that you can click through, work through and follow those how-to steps and once you get this set up, this is where you're going to start to create those branched off subdivisions of your business. Now, if it's still just, you don't get crazy with it.
Speaker 1:I'd recommend two, maybe three max different inboxes and at any time if you decide to change these up, you can always forward those inboxes to each other. So if you start out with a inbox that is like info at your websitecom and you're like I no longer want to do that. I want to just streamline that to support at my website, all you have to do is just forward info at into that new email address. So think about the different functions of your business. Look at your current inbox right now. What are the majority of the emails that you're getting? Can you start to categorize them to where it would make more sense for them to email different departments of your business? Also, not to mention, some of your customers may not know that you are a one-man show and so when they're starting to email these different departments reference my air quotes it also starts to give this stronger appearance level of professionalism of your different departments working. Little do they know that you're working in all of the departments Life of a small business owner and the last step is now connecting your custom email to your email marketing provider.
Speaker 1:Having a custom domain email address is crucial if you want to start to work on building an effective email marketing strategy. Many of our email service providers, also known as ESPs, actually require a domain email address to send these marketing emails. Why? Because if you're sending emails from Gmail or at Yahoo, anyone can build one of those. Any spammer can just decide oh, today I'm going to create a Gmail address and I'm just going to blast emails to all of these people. The end user inboxes recognize that and there's a higher likelihood that they're going to throw those emails into spam, whereas you're a small business owner, you're like no, I've been using this Gmail address for years. Trust me, they're like nah, fam, you're going to spam. So if you take the time to build out a domain custom email address, you are increasing your chances of landing in that main email inbox.
Speaker 1:My ESP of choice is Flowdesk. I've been using them for just shy of three years now, and the reason why I really highly implore you to sign up with an ESP, even if it's not Flowdesk, is because they're going to ensure that your emails are following compliance and the legal guidelines as prescribed for the CAN Spam Act. If you have not read that, I highly recommend you go. Take a look at that before you start sending email marketing emails out, because you do not want to get hit with a violation for the canned spam act. The fines are hefty. What's really cool about sending emails from your custom email address as well is every time it hits their inbox, they are reminded of your website to go shop. So, even if they're sending in a question or an inquiry or asking questions about their order, whenever they type out your email address, they are being reminded of where they can go shop, whereas for Gmail or Yahoo not necessarily doing it for them. So you're inevitably increasing your SEO by having this custom email address.
Speaker 1:It's time to recap this episode. It's short and sweet because I want you to get into action. So we discussed the issues with just having a generic email with Gmail or Yahoo. We talked about the benefits that you could have by setting up and securing a custom domain email address. We went through the different places that you can go secure and rent a custom domain email address. We went through the different places that you can go, secure and rent a custom URL which eventually you can turn into sending emails from and then bringing it all back full circle to connecting it to your email marketing.
Speaker 1:Starting with a Gmail or Yahoo email address is fine If that's where you're at we've all been there but I'm encouraging you to move in to your next step today by securing that domain and then moving all of your emails over to a custom email address, preparing you for business growth. Start building your email list. If you had only time to build out your email list or build a website, I'm going to tell you to start growing your email list first, because then you'll have an audience to email and share the good news when you have that website ready to launch. To grab all of the links we discussed today, go to sunkissvacom, forward slash 28 to grab those links and get started with building out your custom domain email address today.
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