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Tip #9 – Set Up a Separate GMail Account
By Mike Mindel | August 17, 2007
This is really, really important.
So listen up.
A GMail Account of Your Own
I think it’s very important to setup an entirely separate email account for each project you do.
Otherwise you risk cluttering up your own personal email account with mailing lists, newsletters.
I suggest using your ‘umbrella phrase’ as your GMail address.
So head on over to GMail
Select ‘Sign Up For Google Mail’
and enter the shortest form of your ‘umbrella phrase’.
For example, if your umbrella phrase is ‘unusual properties for sale’ then use the shortest sensible version which is ‘unusualproperties@gmail.com’.
Why?
A few reasons.
Reduce Clutter
You have a separate inbox for the endless stream of newsletters, mailing lists, autoresponders etc
Makes it Easier to Type
You don’t want an email address that is too long to type. So ‘unusual properties for sale’ is too long to type but ‘unusualproperties@gmail.com’ is probably just fine.
Helps Your Ranking
It always helps to have your umbrella phrase visible as much as possible on your web pages for extra ranking power.
Anytime your email address appears on the page (and it should) is more keyword rich content for Google to enjoy.
Helps Your Authority
The umbrella phrase email address gives you credibility with both Google and your customers.
Helps When You Sell Your Business
When it comes to selling your empire, your name is not plastered all over your various accounts (GMail, Tumblr etc). Which makes transferring to the sellera breeze!
You did think you were going to make money didn’t you?
So Sign Up Already!
So sign up with GMail and you’ll see ‘Congratulations!’
That took all of 30 seconds but think of the benefits!
The Power of Labels: Separate Our Your Conversations
Lets head over to the inbox
Look at all those emails after just a few minutes work.
See why you need a separate email account?
How do you sort all your mail?
With labels.
Instead of folders, GMail uses labels to give you the functionality of folders, but with more flexibility.
A single email can have several labels so you don’t have to force an email into one particular folder.
If a conversation spans more than one topic, you can retrieve it with any of the labels you’ve applied to it.
Lets take a look.
Label My Squidoo Emails
Click on ‘Edit labels’
and up comes the labels box
Lets create a new label: squidoo
Hit create and squidoo appears in your labels
Back to your email to select the Squidoo emails
apply the ’squidoo’ label from the dropdown
and notice that the squidoo labels pops up next to each message
Now you can select the ’squidoo’ label
and only those emails labelled Squidoo appear
Cool, huh?
Separate Your Incoming Emails
You can also filter incoming emails as they arrive based on their content. Lets say we want to send all incoming emails from Squidoo
Click on ‘create a filter’
and add the Squidoo email in the From: field
Note: The filter is quite flexibly. You can filter based on the to line, the subject line, words in the email, words not in the email.
Click on ‘Next Step >’
You are presented with a choice of actions.
Since we want to send the emails to our label, select ‘Apply the label’, then select ‘Squidoo’ from the dropdown.
Hit ‘Create Filter’ and check the box that says ‘Also apply filter to 3 conversations below’
and the filter is now applied to all incoming mail
So anytime you get an email from squidteam@squidoo.com, it will be tagged with the squidoo label.
You can then click on the label and show only those emails from ’squidoo’.
Which is great when you want to separate out your web 2.0 properties, mailing lists, newsletters etc.
Trust me. You’ll love it!
-Mike
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Topics: Tips | 7 Comments »
August 17th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
[...] Tip #9 – Set Up a Separate GMail Account [...]
August 18th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Cool tips. I label my emails manually and I didn’t know that this could be done.
It saves me tons of time, Mike.
Thank you.
August 19th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Great tip, Mike. Just like to add one suggestion, if I may.
If – as well as the filters you suggest – you add a filter to send all mail with “yourumbrellaphrase” in the To: field (so including all plus-addressed emails) to FORWARD to your main/personal Gmail address, you don’t have to login to Gmail multiple times, or have multiple Firefox windows open.
You could do this for each phrase/account you set up. You could also add filters in your main account to label them according to where they have been forwarded from …
Etc.
August 25th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Mike,
Do you do this within your google account (just get a new gmail) or do you set up a whole new account.
I’m thinking more of when you sell it.
Thanks
Sean
August 25th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I set up a whole new gmail account. With its own analytics, adwords etc.
Much easier to pass on when you sell.
Mike
August 25th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Did you mean a whole new “Google” account? (or just a gmail account?)
Sean
August 28th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
[...] You’ll notice I’m using a feature of GMail here which is turned on via the settings. I’m using filters. All of the Google Alerts come from a specific address inside Google so I have a filter set up for those Google Alerts. Please refer to Tip #9 – Set Up a Separate GMail Account for a brief tutorial on how to setup your own filter. [...]