Last week, Governor Rick Scott issued Executive Order 18-221 declaring a state of emergency due to impacts of naturally occurring red tide in Collier, Lee, Charlotte, Sarasota, Manatee, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. 

Following Governor Rick Scott's emergency order, VISIT FLORIDA launched two programs, the Tourism Recovery Grant Program for Red Tide and Red Tide Recovery Marketing Program, to assist the counties. 

Through the Red Tide Recovery Marketing Program, the following programs are available immediately at no cost to core tourism businesses located in the affected counties. For additional information about red tide, click here.

Complimentary Brochure Distribution at all

five Official Florida Welcome Centers

Available through February 28, 2019, businesses may ship a maximum of 2,000 brochures per Welcome Center for distribution. For more information and to secure your brochure placement please contact the Visitor Services Department at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Complimentary Lobby Booth Program at four Highway Welcome Centers

Available through February 28, 2019, businesses may schedule a time to participate in the Lobby Booth Display program. Please contact the Welcome Centers at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to schedule a

location and time. 

Complimentary VISIT FLORIDA Marketing Partnership

Core tourism businesses located within the affected areas of Florida have the opportunity to get a Small Business Marketing Partnership free of charge through February 28, 2019. With the Marketing Partnership, businesses receive an Enhanced Web Listing on VISITFLORIDA.com, the ability to submit social media posts for consideration, ability to promote Partner-to-Partner specials and more. To submit your enrollment application, click here.

Exposure on VISIT FLORIDA's Media Website

Businesses are encouraged to submit news releases to be posted on our media website. Press releases should provide newsworthy updates for the consumer travel media and offer a story idea that is unique and compelling to your local Florida area. All news releases are subject to review and approval. Please email your information and photos to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Additional Resources

If you are in one of the affected counties, please be aware that you are eligible for other assistance. Businesses are encouraged to visit VISITFLORIDA.org/work-together/red-tide-support/ to learn about additional resources.

Participation in these programs is limited to core tourism businesses in Charlotte, Collier, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Pinellas and Sarasota counties. If you are a business in a county that is not listed, but feel you should qualify, please email Industry Relations at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Be careful of cheap online web design companies that offer "free domians".

If you are dealing with an ethical web design company, and you prefer to have them manage your domain that’s fine. But be careful of shady companies that offer cheap web design and a “free domain”. When the time comes to move on to a different company you may find your domain is being held hostage.

Recently a company contacted me to build a new website for them. They had originally used a cheap web design company and quickly found that customer service was nonexistent. The website had multiple grammatical errors, wrong information, the wrong logo was even used. After calling and emailing for months the customer got little to no response and nothing on the site was ever fixed.

Finally in frustration the customer decided they had to move on to another company to get the website they wanted but soon found out it wasn’t going to be so easy to get their domain name.

This is the email we received when we requested a domain transfer:

"Dear All,

We provided him domain free of cost. The value of the domain in today's date is $285. We are going to sell the domain for no less than $300 ass the traffic to the domain and value of it is pretty good. . Please let us know if you interested.

call on the number below.

regards,
Jack
Tel No : 1703-349-7835
Email id : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

So this is how companies like North American Web LLC do business. Offer inferior products, poor customer service, then rape the customer when they want their domain name. Note how no last names are used and they only have gmail addresses.

These people where almost impossible to get a hold of – and finally after the customer paid the extortion money they agreed to transfer the domain. It took them over a month to release the domain name – and even then they switched it to the wrong GoDaddy account so we had to wait another 2 weeks to even get access to the domain so we could change DNS.

The moral of the story is that it pays to do a little research and make sure you hire a company you can trust, never just go with the cheapest option. It doesn’t matter if it’s a web designer, a plumber, or a carpet cleaner. Hiring the right compnay will save you money and headaches down the road.

Life would be so much better if we didn’t wake up every morning to a mailbox full of spam.

Usually when I get unsolicited emails from companies that do not include an opt-out I will reply to the email and ask them nicely to remove me from their list. I normally give them a link to the FTC site and try to educate them about the CAN-SPAM Act. 9 times out of 10 they are grateful because some people still do not understand that there are rules to sending emails.

Occasionally I get someone who will just not listen. For example – over the last 6 months I’ve received emails from a person named Adam J McLean who has what he refers to as a referral website called the Jofi Dream Team (JDT) and he keeps asking me to join for $50 a month. 3 different times I’ve politely told him I am not interested and asked him to remove me from his list. The last time I gave him a link to the FTC website and suggested he read about the CAN-SPAM Act, and this was his reply:

“You are ridiculous. How tough is it to delete an email? It took you more time to send me an email. I get a million emails. Click and delete. That easy!

Have a great week!

Adam”

It won’t be me, but someone one of these days will get tired of his unsolicited emails and will report him to the FTC.

So what is the CAN-SPAM Act?

Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) is a law that establishes the rules for commercial email and commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have a business stop emailing them, and outlines the penalties incurred for those who violate the law.

CAN-SPAM doesn't just apply to bulk email. "It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as 'any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,' including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email." It does, however, exempt transactional and relationship messages.

Penalties for non-compliance are very steep. For every single email that violates the CAN-SPAM Act, the FTC will fine you up to $16,000. If you are caught being non-compliant and sending hundreds of emails your fines could be in the millions of dollars.

The CAN-SPAM Act applies to any person or business entity that initiates or sends a commercial e-mail message to a business or individual consumer (regardless of whether the message is unsolicited). Commercial e-mail messages must generally comply with the following requirements:

1. Inclusion of a valid physical postal address in every email you send out.
2. Providing a clear and obvious way to opt out of future emails.
3. Clear "From," "To," and "Reply to" language that accurately reflects who you are. This applies to the person or business sending the message, as well as the domain name and email address.
4. Not selling or transferring any email addresses to another list.
5. Not making it hard to unsubscribe from emails.
6. Not using deceptive subject lines that misrepresent the contents of the message.

For more information please visit this link.

A few weeks ago I received a disturbing screen shot from an upset client.

A client was notified by one of their customers that while searching the internet to find the business’s phone number the customer saw an ad that had my clients name but did not go to their website.

Upon investigation we discovered the website was hvac.zone and they were running PPC ads using the business name of my client. The PPC ad directs people to a website and asks them to enter information to receive a free HVAC quote.

Turns out hvac.zone is run by Local Clarity Internet Marketing out of Irbid Jordan. So I went to the website and entered my information to see what would happen.

I received calls from Sears and one other local AC company which is a competitor of my client. When I explained to them what I did to initiate this contact and why, they both informed me that they received my information as a lead through Home Advisor.

About 15 minutes later Home Advisor called me to make sure I found an AC company and I explained the whole situation to a pleasant lady who acted like she was very apologetic, claimed she was unaware of this practice, and promised she would pass the information along to a supervisor. I asked her to forward my email address so I could send a screen shot of the ad. I never heard back from anyone at Home Advisor.

Concept Digital Media works with a lot of trade companies including HVAC, Plumbing, Roofing, Carpet Cleaning, etc.  I find it to be a huge problem if Home Advisor is misleading the public by using the names of reputable local companies to send leads to other businesses that may or may not share the same values and work ethic.

I wonder how many other honest hardworking business owners are having their business name used to steal leads by Home Advisor in this way? Even if Home Advisor is unaware of this and just outsourcing work overseas – they ultimately should be held accountable for this.

Many companies use tactics like this, and unfortunately unless you are Coke or Verizon it’s very hard to stop competitors from using your name to mislead internet visitors.

I’ve advised my clients to terminate their contracts with Home Advisor and all of them said they never received quality leads anyway. As for Home Advisor, hopefully their own deceitful tactics ultimately will hurt them more than the local businesses they try to steal from.

Over the years clients have asked about this letter, and just this last year I probably got 25 of these letters myself.

If you receive a letter from iDNS – throw it in the trash.

You do not have to send them a cent, you do not have to transfer your domain name to them, and there is no risk of losing your domain. This is a scam to trick you into transferring your domain to a different company that will most likely take you to the cleaners.

According to the letter: “ You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to Internet Domain Name Services. Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the Web.”

I imagine that since so many of these letters are obviously mailed out that there are a lot of people who get confused and fall for this trick. Thankfully none of my clients has done that so I’m not sure what exactly happens if you were to switch your name to iDNS.

But you would be at least paying twice as much to register your domain name, and I also assume that if you wanted to transfer away from iDNS it would be almost impossible to do so or at the very least there would be some very high transfer fees.

If you get a letter from a company you have never heard from you should read it very carefully – especially if it has anything to do with your business or domain name.

I always suggest that businesses have their domain name under their control. You can register your domain at any number of reputable registrars including GoDaddy, Network Solutions, 1&1, etc. But never with a company that sends you a letter in the mail out of the blue.

These letters from iDNS usually appear to be mailed from an address with a Suite # in New Jersey, and the enclosed envelopes have a New Jersey address. I did a Google search for the address 924 Bergen Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306 – and I found that it was a UPS store P.O. box.

And if you look at the listed web address for iDNS you will see that it’s different in every letter. Sometimes it’s www.idns.ag, sometimes it’s www.idns.at, and usually it’s www.idns.as.

According to GoDaddy “ The .ag country-code is an extension that represents Antigua and Barbuda.” the .at extension represents Austria, and the .ae extension is for the for the United Arab Emirates. All versions of domain names resolve to idns.to – which is Tonga – a Polynesian kingdom of South Pacific islands.

So whoever is ending these letters out probably has a very nice home on the beach in the South Pacific because too many people did not read the letter carefully.

We can fairly quickly promote your website to the top of search rankings with no long term contracts!

How many times have you seen this email? We all get them, and I get a ton of them.

For example:

Hello,

My name is jenny Smith and I am a Digital Marketing Specialists for a Creative Agency.

I was doing some industry benchmarking for a client of mine when I came across your website.

I noticed a few technical errors which correspond with a drop of website traffic over the last 6-8 months which I thought I would bring to your attention.

After closer inspection it appears your site is lacking in 4 key criteria.

1- Website Speed
2- Link Diversity
3- Domain Authority
4- Competition Comparison

I can send you over the report which shows all of the above and so much more which will help you at least improve your site, its rankings and traffic.

I would love the chance to help as well however; this report will at least give you a gauge on the quality of what I do. If you are interested then please share your requirement and contact details.

Is this the best email to send it to?

Sincerely,
Jenny Smith
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.