I can’t believe how many times I see something like this. I get an email for a great promotion. The product seems to be top notch. I’m absolutely convinced that this is something that I have to have. So I look for the link at the bottom of the email, click on it and what happens? I get a 404 not found error. The idiot gave me the wrong link. And the way I know it’s that and not just the server going down is because I’ll notice there is a sub domain in the link that is capitalized. I’ll turn it into lower case and sure enough, the link works. There is no excuse for this.

Do you know how long it takes to check a link in an email ad? It takes all of five seconds to copy and paste the link into your browser navigation bar and click on the “go” button. Then at least you can see that your link is working properly. But some marketers just refuse to do this.

Okay, how did I know about the upper case problem? Normally, your browser doesn’t know from upper to lower case. It will simply direct to the proper site, if it’s a top level domain, regardless of what case you use. However, if you have a sub domain on your server that has an actual physical folder such as “myfolder” and in your URL you spell it MyFolder, the DNS will not find it. That’s just the way these things work, which is why you always have to test your links. This is how it works in the Linux server world. Get used to it.

Another problem is with file extensions. Yes, they do matter. If your page is index.html and you enter the link as index.htm, the page is not going to be found. Same thing with php or any other extension. Extensions matter, so pay attention to them. And if you have more than one index page on your site, such as index.html and index.php, then you’re going to have to designate which one you want the site to direct to specifically. Just putting in the domain isn’t going to work.

Bottom line is this…there is no excuse for a prospect to go to a web page and find it’s not there unless the site is actually down. In that case, there is nothing you can do about it until the site is back up. But for crying out loud…check your links before you click send on that email.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of busting your behind for peanuts online? Go to my web site and find out how I earn a monthly income that exceeds 5 figures and how I can help YOU do the same. Get your free report at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/report.html