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Worried about keeping your home address private when running your online business?
Get yourself a P.O. Box address.
Life will be much easier, and here’s why.
The government actually requires a valid physical postal address to appear on your emails.
If you don’t do that, you can actually be fined up to $11,000 per violation.
It’s a pretty serious law and it’s designed to stop all of the spam that goes through our emails on a daily basis.
Of course, we don’t want people showing up at our front door. That would be scary.
It turns out that you can use a Post Office box at the bottom of the email.
A Post Office box is relatively inexpensive.
In where we live, It’s around $100 a year.
If you are pretty sure that your business is going to continue to grow, you would definitely want to invest in a Post Office box.
Advantages
- It makes your business seem more legitimate
- It separates your business from your personal life.
- People are going to like that better when you have to mail things or they have to mail you things.
- It will be easier to collect emails (since your Autoresponder platform requires this)
- You don’t have to worry about any crazy people showing up at your doorstep.
So what are you waiting for? Get yourself a P.O. Box and get your online business to the next level!
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thank you for listening!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
SHANE: Let’s get straight to our question today. This is an awesome question from Luke Duban. His question is:
“When working with AWeber or MailChimp, or any other email collection program, what address do you use at the bottom of your emails to comply with spam regulations and still keep your home address private? I know you guys work at home and don’t want to broadcast your private address to your list for security reasons. What address do you use to get around this?”
That is a great question, Luke, and when we first started out, we had that question as well because it was a little scary when we signed up for AWeber because they wanted a physical address to put at the bottom of all our email addresses. Of course, we don’t want people showing up at our front door. That would be scary. Basically, we didn’t want to use our street address on our AWeber page.
The reason they make you do that is because there’s actually a law called, CAN-SPAM. I don’t know if that’s the official name for the law but that’s what it’s called. The government actually requires a valid physical postal address to appear on your emails. If you don’t do that, you can actually be fined up to $11,000 per violation. It’s a pretty serious law and it’s designed to stop all of the spam and things like that that are coming through on all of our emails on a daily basis.
There is a very specific reason for that especially if you live in the United States or if you do business and email people in the United States why you have to have that address at the bottom of your location. But, as Jocelyn is going to explain, you do not have to use your street address.
JOCELYN: When we first started, I did use my street address because we didn’t have any other option at that time. As my site got a little bit bigger, I started thinking, “This cannot work.” We looked into some different options of what we could do to not use our street address but to still comply with the rules.
It turns out that you can use a Post Office box at the bottom of the email. That is what we do. A Post Office box is relatively inexpensive. In this area, I think it is maybe around $100 a year. I’m not exactly sure of that figure. It’s fairly inexpensive and if you are pretty sure that your business is going to continue to grow, I would definitely invest in a Post Office box.
SHANE: It’s super low cost to go get a Post Office box and you get a lot of advantages from using a Post Office box as well. It makes your business seem more legitimate because you’re going out and you’re spending a little money to have your own mailing address. People are going to like that better when you have to mail things or they have to mail you things. Also, it separates your business from your personal life.
We always recommend doing that. You should have separate bank accounts for your business. I don’t care if you’re bringing in $5/month or $5,000/month. You need separate bank accounts. Even a PayPal account that is set up just for your business and your mailing needs to be separate as well just so you have that distinction between your personal life and your Post Office box.
We’re also really adamant that you don’t want anything to be a barrier between you and collecting emails. I made a huge mistake when I started out that I did not collect email addresses, and I had hundreds of people coming through my website and I had no clue how to track them. You really need to go out and get that Post Office box because you need to be collecting email addresses from the very beginning. Jocelyn actually did start collecting emails from the beginning and it really paid off for her.
JOCELYN: Yes, it has been great. I mean, just having all of those emails. I have around 9,000 emails and I’ve been doing this for about two years so I highly recommend it. Just go out and get a Post Office box. That way, you don’t have to worry about any crazy people showing up at your doorstep.
SHANE: That would be bad, yeah. When you do start collecting emails, we actually prefer AWeber. That’s the email collection service that we use. AWeber has been phenomenal for us. Their delivery rates are very high. Their emails do get to the Inbox of the person you’re trying to talk to and they have awesome customer support. We have had no problems with AWeber.
Once you get past this Post Office box problem, and when you first start out, you probably can just throw in your address to get started and then head down to your Post Office and get a Post Office box, All right?
Okay, that’s our question for today. We’ll be back with you again on our next episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Q&A Mini-Podcast Session. I think we need a smaller name for that, Jocelyn. I’m not sure what we’re going to call this in the future but we hope you liked that. If you want to ask us a question, make sure you tune in on Sundays at 8 PM Eastern Time over on the Flipped Lifestyle Facebook page and we will be taking your questions there. Until next time, we will catch you all on the flipside.
JOCELYN: Bye.
SHANE: Do you need step by step instruction? Do you need us to help you create your digital product and get your online business started? Well, you can do that. We actually now offer a course called the Flip Your Life e-course where we show you how to create your first digital product in 29 days or less.
All you have to do to get more information on this program is, go to www.flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife, and that’s all one word, and you can check out everything that we do in that course to help you get your digital product created for sale online even if you don’t have a website. That’s www.flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. You can check when our next session is starting at that link.
Brad @ RichmondSavers.com says
A PO Box is the way to go! I just got one a few weeks ago for $34 for a full year.
I stupidly had my home address on all my emails and as the list has grown a bit, I thought it time to get it off there.
Sharon Pivirotto says
Great website and thank you both for the valuable information.
I’m not sure if you were aware, but for those that would prefer to NOT list a P.O. Box as a business address, you can actually ask your post office if they offer “street addressing”. A simple Google search for street addressing PO Box will pull up the USPS information. Basically by completing a form at the post office, you can use the post office street address, followed by your PO Box number, e.g. Pivirotto Resource Group, 555 Thorn Street, #220, Pittsburgh, PA. (This is an example and not my actual address :-). This makes it look much more professional and appears more like an actual location rather than a PO Box (even though it is still just a PO Box). Just a piece of information I recently learned and thought I’d share.
Shane Sams says
Whoa, that is awesome. Had no clue you could do that. Thanks for sharing Sharon!
Gertrude says
Yeah Sharon, I had heard about that too. Very cool alternative to the P.O Box. I need to check that out at my local post office. Thanks Shane and Jocelyn for a great episode 😀
Amy says
I need some clarity on something please if anyone can help. I just started a blog recently, and since i need an address listed in my e-mails, can i get a P.O. box to put on my subscription e-mails only, and still use my home address as my regular mailing address? Or if i get a P.O. box does that mean all my normal mail will go to the P.O. box too? I only want the P.O. box to protect my privacy. I am not sending or selling anything to anyone over the mail and if/when i do send anything, it will only be a free e-book or some digital product. I have already had a stalker before, that was hell, and i’m not about to go down that road again. I have searched a lot for information on this, and this site is one of the few places i have found good information on this so far, so thank you. Oh and one more thing, if i am a blogger and not a registered “business” (not yet anyway) can i get a business p.o. box or can i ONLY be eligible for a business p.o. box if i have went through the legal process of making it a real business already? Again, all i really want is a way for people to be able to subscribe to my blog and have access to what i want to share with others, without me compromising my privacy. This issue has really been holding me up lately. Thank you for your time and any information you can offer! I appreciate it. 🙂
Jocelyn Sams says
Amy, You can get a PO box even as an individual. We didn’t have an official LLC when we opened ours. Your home mail will not go to the PO box unless you request to have it forwarded. Hope that helps!
Amy says
Thank you Jocelyn!!