I always find it amusing when I get emails like the one below. Obviously, this is not a real person and even if it was they never looked at my website. Unfortunately too many people who get these spam emails actually reply to them – and that only encourages these spammers.

Sometimes they even send emails that have been personalized with your name and website address, but rest assured it was an email automatically generated by software probably on a computer located in a dark dusty closet in Turkey, china, or India.

The software behind these emails uses publicly available information on domain name owners to get the contact emails.  Or, your contact info may have been just on a list purchased by the spammer.

When hundreds of thousands of emails are sent – they only need a handful of gullible people to take the bait.

From: Caroline Vance <vance _caroline@ aol.com>;
Sent: Fri, May 29, 2020 5:38 am
Subject: Re: Website Designing

Hi,

My Name is Caroline, and I design great look websites for small business owners with my cost effective service. I'm contacting you to see if there are changes or enhancements that you'd like to make to

Scammer's website Www.internetnetworx.net
Scammer's address PO Box 957268 Duluth, Georgia 30095
Scammer's email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Type of a scam Fake Invoice/Supplier Bill

Scam artists often send fake invoices to businesses hoping to trick them into paying for products or services that they did not order, that have little or no value, or that are never delivered. Many of these “invoices” appear at first glance to be legitimate bills.

One of these is a website listing scam by Internet Networx. They send solicitations disguised as bills for website listing services.  If you receive any mail from Internet Networx asking you to send them a check – throw that mail in the trash where it belongs.

Internet Networx has an F Rating from the BBB

BBB Pattern of Complaints

According to information in BBB files, this company has a pattern of complaint regarding invoices being sent to consumers. Specifically, complaints allege the invoices being sent look like they are coming from a government agency or other agencies.

Federal law prohibits any mailing which is “in the form of, and reasonably could be interpreted or construed as, a bill, invoice, or statement of account due” but is, in fact, “a solicitation

Let’s face it, most customers, happy or otherwise, don’t leave reviews, but why?

Understanding a few of the more common reasons why customers don’t leave reviews will help you overcome those barriers and get you more 5-star reviews.

Reason #1: They forgot what you did for them.

Customers are far more likely to forget the good things you did than the bad so make sure you ask for reviews before they forget what a great job you did.

Reason #2: They can’t find your business on the popular review sites.

Make it super easy for them by providing links to the right pages.

Reason #3: They are secretly unhappy…

For every customer who bothers to complain, 26 remain silent* and 91% of those unhappy customers will never do business with you again.** Providing a forum for unhappy customers to privately share their experience will give you an opportunity to regain their business. 

Our automated Review Management tools will help you follow up with customers, while the experience is fresh in their minds, they provide links to your company’s page on the most popular review sites so your customers don’t give up before leaving a glowing review, and they direct unhappy

Why should you spend money on business email hosting?

For starters, @gmail and @yahoo (not to mention @AOL) addresses just scream “Unprofessional!”, but there are many other reasons why you owe it to your business to have email using your domain.

1. Credibility
Free email addresses make potential customers wonder whether you’re a “real” company and they make you look cheap. Plus, why would you want to advertise Google, Yahoo or your internet or cable provider on your business cards and collateral materials?

A “real” email address gives your company credibility (maybe it shouldn’t, but it does). Savvy consumers aren’t comfortable sending personal information to jimmydogg69 @yahoo.com or even YourCompanyName @gmail.com. Branded email addresses give customers the added assurance that your business is legit and their information is secure.  If you don't care what your own email address looks like - how are you going to treat your customers? 

2. Control
If an employee uses their personal email address for business and they quit or get fired, you lose access to those emails – especially, if they leave under less than amicable circumstances. With premium email hosting, you can easily redirect those emails to yourself or another employee.

3.

There is an email scam that seems to pop up every couple years. The sender poses as a Chinese registrar company and attempts to convince the receiver that a company is trying to register variations of the receiver’s domain name.

Here is an example:

Subject line: It's very urgent, please transfer this message to your CEO. Thanks

We are the domain registration and solution center in China. On Oct 24, 2019, we received an application from Kangwei Ltd requested "conceptdigitalmedia" as their internet keyword and China (CN) domain names (conceptdigitalmedia.cn, conceptdigitalmedia.com.cn, conceptdigitalmedia.net.cn, conceptdigitalmedia.org.cn). But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it's necessary to send this message to your company and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?

Best Regards

***************************************
Adrian Liu | Service & Operations Manager China Registry (Head Office) | 6012, Xingdi Building, No. 1698 Yishan Road, Shanghai 201103, China
Tel: +86-02164193517 | Fax: +86-02164198327 | Mob: +86-13816428671
Email: adrian @ chinaregistry .org .cn
Web: www. chinaregistry. org. cn
***************************************
It might look like a legitimate domain name registry, but it is not.

This fake site sends

What customers say about your business online… is powerful.

Reviews give your business credibility and help new customers find you online.

It’s no wonder 92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than any other form of advertising.

This Makes customer reviews the single most effective piece of marketing you can invest in. 

Concept Digital Media can help you harness that power with our complete solution for review management and local search marketing.

Our review management platform provides an easy and unobtrusive way to ask and remind customers to review your business on the sites that matter most to you.

Now you can amplify the voice of happy customers by making it easier for them to leave reviews…

Reach unhappy customers to improve their brand experience…

Monitor all of your reviews…

…and share your great reviews on your website and social channels.

Contact us today and learn more about the #1 review management and marketing platform for your business.

I just received the following email this morning – it has been cut and pasted with nothing added or removed.

He (or she) forgot to set up the form email so it would auto populate the fields. Maybe they are just getting lazy – or maybe this is done on purpose because unfortunately, I’m sure someone somewhere will still reply to them.

No one online knows your business exists...

What do I mean by that?

I did a quick Google search for [Name] in [City] and I noticed your business is not in the Google 3-pack.

The "3-pack" is the place on Google that shows 3 businesses in a specific area at the TOP of the search results.

If you aren't in the 3-pack that means your competitors ARE.

54% of your customers will do a Google search at least once per month to find a local business - although it's likely more.

Most business owners have no idea how to get into the 3-pack, but I've mastered the art of ranking there and I can help you...

If you'd like to know how it's done and maybe even have me just do it for you -- simply reply to

The following is just one of many spam emails that are sent to anyone who has registered a domain.

The spammer gets the name and email address from domain information on file and never actually visits the website. This is the same email that thousands of people will get.

Hi Sir/Madam,

I was looking at your website and realized that despite having a great design; it was not ranking high on any of the search engines (Google, AOL and Bing) for most of the keywords related to your business. We can bring you more clients and customers. I will do this by advertise your business structure and its merits on different social media platforms with the help of my SEO skills. I will put you on the first page of Google; this will help clients and customers to find you more easily. This will be done within your budget which doesn’t affect your business a little.

I am affiliated with a SEO company that has helped over 200+ businesses achieve (1st Page Ranking on Google) search result page for highly competitive keywords.  Let me know if you are interested, I will send you our SEO Packages & price list and our

If you got a bill from Sunshine Biz Services – It’s a SCAM! The fake invoice looks like a real bill

The invoice is a fake renewal notice for annual website hosting. It shows a bill of $180 payable to “Sunshine Biz Services Inc.” It also says: “To pay with a credit card or to avoid receiving paper invoices in the future, please sign up for paperless billing at www.trendywebsolutions. com.”

Unsuspecting businesses may get an invoice like this and pay it – that’s what Sunshine Biz Services is hoping you do!  Scams like this try to confuse people by sending these type of invoices knowing that people usually don’t read the fine print.

While this looks like a bill, it does say : “You are under no obligation to make any payments on account of this offer unless you accept this offer. This notice is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to renew your web hosting with Sunshine Biz Services.”

But if they aren’t hosting your website to begin with how can you renew hosting with them? Trendy Web Solutions does have a website that appears to offer various hosting packages.

Yelp is an influential site but also tends to continually stir up controversy and disillusionment among business owners.

Love it or hate it - Yelp has the potential to be a force for good but sometimes ends up being one of the worst things that has happened to small business in the last few years. Both reviewers and businesses complain about the filtering algorithm which often hides good reviews while showing every bad one. There have been to accusations of extortion by Yelp, if you pay they claim they will remove competitor’s listings that normally appear alongside your business.

According to Yelp:

“Every Yelp review is automatically evaluated by Yelp’s recommendation software based on quality, reliability, and user activity on Yelp. More often than not, those useful reviews come from active members of the Yelp community.”

Yelp usually puts more weight on reviews left by people who have a lot of friends, and who have left many reviews for businesses. Could it be possible that some customers find if they want to promote businesses they like, they must leave bad reviews for other businesses to make their good reviews look legit. Is it possible that these people will leave much