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Eric Wolfram

Principal, Wolfram Digital
New York, NY, USA
Member Since: 09/15/2006
Status: Contributor
About Me:
Eric Wolfram is an SEO consultant, web consultant and entrepreneur. He is expert on everything Web and has started and run small businesses including a company that offers software solutions for property managers, a New York video production company, and an SEO business.

Industry: Information Services
Size of Business: 1 - 10 employees
Years in Business: 2-10 years

Affiliations:
none listed

Business Interests:
none listed

Total Guide Views

3 8 7
Overall Rating: N/A
Guides Written: 3
Comments Posted: 369
Comments Received: 0
Favorite Guides: 11

Guides I've Written

  1. Transferring a Domain Name


    Here are a few things your current registrant wishes you didn't know
    Guide Rating: 9.2 out of 10. Saved by 1 person.

  2. Domain Name WHOIS Search


    How to find out who owns an Internet domain name
    Guide Rating: 7.0 out of 10. Saved by 1 person.

  3. Google Apps


    Essential Office Applications from Google
    Guide Rating: 6.9 out of 10. Saved by 1 person.

My Comments

  • These guides that you're writing on work.com remind me of Link Spam. I don't know if you want to improve the guides with more content and links to other resources besides your web site, otherwise, it's pretty transparent what's going on.
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  • Get Free Publicity - 08/31/2009
    Nice guide. Do you have any links for publicity best practices or stunts, etc. A wise man once told me, if you have nothing, than you can use controversy to get publicity because you have nothing to lose. But if you have something going on, stay away from controversy.
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  • I love this guide for reminding us to think ahead. Halloween is the furthest thing from my mind...I still have sand in my ears from the beach. :-)
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  • Nice guide. There are so many scams associated with moving companies. Typical is the give an estimate and then, once the movers arrive, raise the cost based on weight or some other factor. There are all sorts of horror stories. How do you protect yourself from the common moving scams?
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  • When updating your site for geographic keyphrases, make sure you include, when appropreate, abreviations, counties, area codes and zip codes. People will sometimes search: hotel NY hotel NYC hotel New York City hotel Manhattan hotel 212 hotel 10023 etc, etc, etc... Cast a wide net.
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  • Ya right, I just spent about 20 minutes reading the Jim Caroll blog and I book marked it for later. It's true, every trend represents opportunities!
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  • I have two businesses -- one does video services and one is for marketing and SEO services. Sometimes it's awkward to bring up my other business to a client, because they expect me to be specializing in one thing. But as often as not, once they know about my other services, they become interested in having me help out in those ways too. So I agree, it's far easier to close a former client with a new service than it is to fine and close a brand new client.
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  • It is a fine line in using facebook to market to your friends. Facebook expressly forbids it: Facebook T&C forbids promoting yourself or your business professionally: "Per our Terms of Use, Facebook profiles must represent an individual. Users aren't permitted to maintain an account under the name of their organization, or use personal accounts to advertise or promote themselves professionally. If your profile was listed under a non-individual name, or was used primarily for professional promotion, this is probably why it was removed." That said, if you're letting your so called facebook friends know what you're up via your Facebook status, they can't help but associate you with your business and, hopefully, come to you out of their free will when they need your services.
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  • Wow -- this is a fantastic resource. The twitter scan makes so much sense. If you can find out that a customer had a bad experience, it's really a blessing and an opportunity to improve. I'm adding social media monitoring as a service to my clients. Great idea.
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  • Ample good links here -- thanks. It's good to have a place to go to figure out what else you can be doing regarding marketing. Doing something is almost always better than doing nothing.
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  • Great guide. I didn't like the salesforce.com interface for a small business because it was so full of features that I didn't need -- it seemed to be set up for a large opperation and it was confusing. The pricing was confusing too and it took many calls with their sales team before they'd even let me know how much it was going to cost...I ended up using FreeCRM and I'm happy with that.
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  • I really have to remember cafepress as a way to turn traffic into cash.
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  • My new favorite ASP is Free CMS. It's better than sales force. Also, if you use firefox's adbuster plug-in, you can get rid of the banner adverst.
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  • My new favorite ASP is Free CMS. It's better than sales force. Also, if you use firefox's adbuster plug-in, you can get rid of the banner adverst.
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  • Online Stores - 08/29/2009
    I'm starting to set up single product focused nitch micro-sites as opposed to big Amazon in a box. The work better. For instance, it's sometimes better to have an online store that sells JUST door knobs than one that sells all the things you'd find in a hardware store like door knobs, locks, doors, window shades, paint, etc. That's because people seach the internet for a single thing, and it's not like going to the hardware store where you might browse for other stuff. If you're looking for a door knob -- everything else is just clutter and subtrafuge.
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  • Landing Pages - 08/29/2009
    This is a good guide to the landing page -- the most forgot about part of a pay-per-click campaign. A landing page can make or break your chances.
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  • I've used a service called directory maximizer to help my clients get listed in many directories. There are so many directories these days, that it's hard to keep track.
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  • Loudspeakers - 07/31/2009
    The one thing I'll say about loudspeakers -- trust your ears. Really listen.There is so much marketing features involved with speakers and all sorts of price points that are arbitratry. There are cheap speakers that sound better than other cheap speakers, and there are expensive speakers that sound canned or like tin and others that sound full and rich. People sometimes get too into all the features and pricing and forget to listen.
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  • SLR Digital Cameras - 07/31/2009
    Here's a good page for comparing SLR cameras because it shows all the models on one page.
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  • Custom USB Drives - 07/31/2009
    These drives are getting so cheap. I bought a 16 gig for $20 at Amazon. I wanted to use it to transfer large video files, however, I discovered that they use a FAT file system which won't accept files over 2 gigs. I had to reformat the drive to accept larger files, and I had to download a driver for my mac to use the new file system.
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  • Also, a good printer is needed. Many of the inkjet printers follow the cheap razors, expensive blade model where the printers are under $100 and the ink is $40 (and you have to refill after about 150 pages printed.) I chose a lazor jet printer that only did black and white and I get over 700 pages per $30 of ink.
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  • freecrm.com is a great free CRM that is a hosted service to rival Salesforce.com
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  • Pop Up Blockers - 07/31/2009
    I've started using Adblock Plus plugin for Firefox and it's great -- it stops all adverts...not just the pop-ups. You subscribe to a list of blocked ads and they all disappear. If you ever find one that doesn't -- then just right click on it and add it to the list...and you can use a * to eliminate all adverts from the same ad server...
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  • I like how NPR has an interesting 404 file not found page. It basically says, "sorry, your page is not found, here are some other things that haven't been found..." and they have links to stories about Amelia Earhart, the watergate tapes, Jimmy Hoffa, etc.
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  • That's true Annetta. I had interview training from an HR professional who told me that the #1 reason people get hired -- sense of humor. So it's not even that people are consciously thinking "lets hire somebody who's friendly" it's even deeper than that. People want to hire people who are relaxed enough to see humor during an interview -- it makes them feel like they'll fit right in.
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  • I like being thanked as a customer even though I know it's a sales strategy. i went to have my car serviced at the dealer under warranty and was thinking that I won't take my car there for regular service because the prices are high. And one of the mechanics (not even the owner) said "thanks for your business" and I thought...nice try...but then my cold heart melted a bit and I thought...maybe I'll come back here...
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  • I started using freecrm.com for a contact database. Originally the adverts were distracting but then I used adblocker plugin for firefox and that took care of that problem. I learned about freecrm from the Business blog.
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  • I'm doing an adwords campaign for a client and the small business IT support key phrases are very competitive -- meaning, you can easily pay $5/$10/$20 and $25 per click for some of those geographically targeted b2b phrases like: New York IT support or Manhattan IT consultant.
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  • Thanks for the is guide. Too many computers are getting dumped into landfills.
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  • Donna, you should try the "Stop Autoplay" plugin for Firefox -- I use it to prevent video and sound from playing on web sites. It's not perfect because on some sites it might stop navigation from loading...but those sites are rather lame anyway for using flash or something to allow people to navigate their web site. I'm currently using version 0.7.6.
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  • The new Twitter Widget lets you put a stream of relevant twitters on your web site -- so your web site will have live content from twitter that relates to the subject matter or industry that you're in. It uses the hash mark feature of twitter, which means that if you're writing a twitter about gardening you can end the tweet with #gardening and then your tweet will be tagged.
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  • Fresh helpful content is very important with regards to search optimization. Wordpress has some good premium themes that are relatively inexpensive. I've used Revolution Magazine theme and WooThemes to create web sites with blogs.
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  • Twitter - 07/24/2009
    Twitter just added a widget that allows you to create a continuous real-time update box on a custom search topic. The way it looks can be custom edited and it can be placed on a Web page. So if your business is about Scuba Diving, you can have a live twitter feed on your site that relates to Scuba.
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  • Litigation Forms - 06/30/2009
    I tried to use findlaw to get a lawyer to help me settle an agreement that I have with a pharma company. The project was put on hold and then the company was bought by another company and my contacts at the original company were let go. The agreement is for about $40K and they've paid 1/2. I want to continue working on the project but my calls and emails are unanswered by the new company. The lawyers I spoke with on findlaw either couldn't afford to litigate such a small potential settlement or I couldn't afford the hourly rates that they were proposing. What does somebody do in my situation? Keep trying to find the expert who's willing to help or try to do it myself?
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  • I need somebody to help me litigate a contract. It's over the small claims amount but not large enough to attract a lawyer to help me out strictly on commission...sigh...I guess there are some things you can do yourself and other things you can't...
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  • A lot of these carbon off-sets are not really off setting anything. Is there a way that you can be sure that your off-sets are really helping?
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  • How are the new rules about funding CMEs effecting Pharma marketing? You can't give doctors promotional items with your brand or take them to lunch anymore. Is it difficult to reach them? I've started a new medical video production company and we're helping to webcast CMEs in New York. I'm wondering if we're allowed under the new regulations to seek Pharma sponsors for the web casts.
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  • Green Investing - 06/30/2009
    I also did a video for the Wall Street Green Trading Summit. Those folks are thinking about how Green is changing the economy...they're thinking about forests as an investment class and not as a bunch of trees...
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  • Green Buildings - 06/30/2009
    I recently did a video for Mancini Duffy where they talk about sustainablity in construction design. They have some pretty green projects.
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  • Thank you for this guide. I'm three reviews in to a ten review contract that I agreed to write about a reality TV show. It's brutal...for $100 I end up watching the 2 hour show, writing the review takes 4 hours, getting art for the article take another hour. I can make more money for that time doing other things. The only saving grace is that I enjoy the subject matter enough. But yes, next time somebody calls I'll be thinking...turn it down turn it down...otherwise I might go broke.
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  • I like this guide because it's really a logical step by step approach. Thanks
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  • What about ideas for the small software developers? Iphone applications that cost $1 can generate a lot of business these days.
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  • If you don't hire a cleaning crew than you or your staff are the cleaning crew. You just have to think of it as a fixed cost, like rent.
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  • Sometimes I guess it takes an investment in your business to make a return.
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  • Dental Laboratories - 06/30/2009
    There are these street level dentists popping up in NYC called vitaldent. They have pretty good service and you can just walk in and have your teeth cleaned.
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  • Nice guide. The the costs for creating a Kiosk has been dropping. You can get a touch monitor for $60 these days and then drive it with a low cost computer running free linux software. You can use a regular web browser to show the content, and the content can be developed as a regular web site -- just open the browser so that the only thing showing on the screen is what you want the user to see, ie, don't show the browser buttons or the OS buttons.
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  • A couple of strategies that I've learned from competition to motivate backlinks. Kids site that awarded other sites with a "kid friendly award", which those sites faithfully put in their footer as an endorsement. An ISP that gave out "powered by" badges and offered incentives to their clients to post them on their web sites, one of the clients who adopted the button was a PR 9 site for a popular opensource software.
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  • My slow seasons are Christmas and August. Unfortunately, things slowed down for Christmas and never really picked up this year. We have good cash reserves and have been able to maintain this year but we haven't been able to increase the reserves.
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  • I picked WebHitsConsulting.com for my web marketing firm because it is what it says it is. Now I'm getting traffic from google from people who are looking for web hits because I'm #1 for that phrase. So picking a good domain...try to pick what you are...I think the best name for a dog walker in New York is something like NYDogWalking.com
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  • You know, actually, it's probably a good idea to have more than one person twittering for your business so that you have fresh perspectives with a new take.
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  • I've advised my client Eharmony.com about their conversion area on their content site. The little widget that is on every page of their content area, which is a form where a user is invited to sign up for eharmony for free. Users are more likely to convert to customers if you ask them to...
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  • Web 2.0 - 05/31/2009
    Right Mark -- like other buzz words, web 2.0 is so overused that maybe it doesn't mean anything specific anymore. Good to see you on the Work.com comments.
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  • Shared Hosting - 05/31/2009
    I think for most small businesses, shared hosting is a no-brainer. Most web hosts provide such a large amount of resources for such a low cost and you only really need your own servers if you're a internet company or if you're using custom applications or huge databases on your web site. Indeed, a single shared web hosting account can provide enough resources for 25 or 50 typical small business web sites.
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  • Good info here. There is not much written about image optimization.
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  • This is very timely for me. I recently moved and I'm looking for new cards. I also want a new look. Somebody gave me a card that was handwritten -- Plug-Ugly Films -- and the look went with his whole web site and concept. Very distinctive.
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  • Thanks for the tips. People are looking for new ways to advertise these days. Even in small ways -- I posted some fliers at the 86th Street subway station to rent my apartment this month and it worked better than Craigslist.
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  • Judging from the amount of link spam in these comments, it is clear that there are plenty of so called SEO experts that are operating under the best practices from 2003. SEO isn't just about backlinks anymore -- search engines like Google are tracking user behavior these days and not just adding up backlinks. What to score higher in Google? -- make your site helpful.
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  • You also don't want to sell links on your site via services like text link ads because it's against Google's TOC.
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  • I recently added a form that offered "free consultation" to my video services web site and a "chat with us now" button -- both of these increase my interaction with visitors.
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  • It's difficult to put a value on web content. It think a lot of it is overvalued. If you have a national brand with some page rank to offer, you can enter into a mode where you pay little or nothing for content with strategic partnerships.
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  • Sedo is also a domain auction site that I recently discovered.
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  • Every time I buy something in an ebay auction I always get the uneasy feeling that I just bought something for more than anybody else was willing to pay...that doesn't sound like a good deal to me (unless you're the seller.)
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  • I think this guide has the most comments ever.
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  • Make sure you contact the registrar prior to changing the email address that you used to regsiter the domain. If you stop using that email address or don't have access to that email address, and then you want to make changes to the domain (sell it, transfer it) it can be difficult to prove that you're the person who registered the domain.
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  • My pet peeve is a web site where you go to the front page and it's so full of buzz words and benefits that you can't even figure out what the company actually does, as in: "We increase synergy and bottom line value by leveraging social networking paradigms with web 2.0 methodology. You'll double your conversions, increase revenue and maximize return on investment -- sign up here"
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  • work.com needs a guide on how to lay off an employee. I've got to do that right now to somebody who's been with us for 5 years. I came here looking for advice.
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  • Adwords is getting more complicated. They're adding features every month. Many phrases are also more competitive than ever before. This is becoming an area for a specialist and less of a "do it yourself" activity for most entrepreneurs, IMO. If you find it complicated to maintain a successful adwords campaign don't feel frustrated -- seek help.
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  • Thanks for the tips. I've been asked to produce an infomercial and this guide really helps me line my ducks up in a row. Thanks
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  • I just read the blog post on using interns for twittering.
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  • Pricing is such a complicated thing. Ideally, you want to be priced at the top end of what your target customer expects to pay...you don't want to leave things on the table. But different customers expect to pay different amounts for services. You can spend all week helping 20 customers who expect low costs or make just as much spending 3 days helping one customer who expects to pay more. Or you can sit there waiting for the phone to ring because you've priced too high for almost anybody. My favorites: Subscription pricing...weight watchers has 500,000 members each paying $10 a month? You do the math! Or best of all -- three tier pricing like Yankees tickets, you pay for the right to buy the season tickets, ie, own the seat, then you pay for the yearly subscription and then you pay for the actual tickets -- brilliant! I think you're right -- pricing really is both an art and a science.
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  • The competitive analysis is always the fattest part of my business plan. It was a hard lesson to learn...ie spending maybe a thousand hours starting a business that I shouldn't have started. I would have known that I shouldn't have started if I had spent more time looking at competition...not just looking at what they were, but also looking at what they were not. Good guide.
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  • Is there any data that shows if an autoresponder upon submission of a form actually improves the conversion rate? I've started using google gmail's new "canned response" feature with the filter feature to accomplish auto responding when I receive emails from various forms. I'm not convinced that it's helping.
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  • Gmail for Work - 03/31/2009
    I'm really liking all the new Gmail Lab features. I'm using the canned replies, especially incorporated with the filters, but also the todo list "tasks" and especially the "send and archive" button. I think the gmail client is getting better and better.
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  • Good point Soula. Some people think a CMS is something that gives a client just enough control to ruin their web site :-) On the other hand, many non-profits are big enough to have somebody on staff who is trained enough to handle the skills necessary to make basic changes. And that's why going with something like Wordpress has an advantage because it's easier to find somebody who is already trained to handle making those changes than if they adopted a CMS that doesn't have a large user base.
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  • More details would be great, of course, but to be fair...this is a pretty new feature in Google Adwords and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the nature of PPC is that it costs money to test variations of landing pages and the information people get from those tests will almost always be held close to the chest as confidential information that you don't want your competitors to know. For instance, if you find out that you get a better click through rate with the words "Click for your Free Report" on the button instead of "submit", then that information is only really a competitive advantage until your competitors start doing the same thing.
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  • Business Blogging - 02/28/2009
    I'm using google adwords tool called Search-Based Keyword Tool, which tells you the popularity of phrases related to your site or a word that you give it. You can export this as an excel file and write blog posts based on the relevant phrases that might convert to customers. If a business is going to have a blog, it may as well have blog posts that relate to what their customers are searching.
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  • I really wish that Google would add a simple CMS but it seems like they're happy with the strategic partnership with Salesforce.
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  • You know, I just read through this page again and it is worth it's weight in gold. Businesses all around should heed this advice. I've been implementing the advice in my businesses and for my clients and, time and again, each little detail pays off. Send PPC to a home page and you'll get 40-60% bounce rate and .1% conversions. Send them to a good landing page and the conversions will increase to 2-4% or even 10-15% is not unheard of.
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  • Thanks for this great guide. I had no idea that we could do remote check deposit. Often my checks sit in a pile until I get a chance to go to the bank. This is good news.
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  • I recently found one of these that was given to my by a client and had sat in a drawer for 2 years! I ended up using $45 out of the $50 and now I still haven't used the last $5. I can see why the companies like selling these, and why all business people should sell gift cards -- people lose them or forget to use them! If you sell $5000 of gift cards, I bet you will only ever be asked to provide $4500 in services. Maybe less.
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  • There is also a balance between focus and generalization that I see is hard to come to for some businesses. Some focus too much and the nitch is too small and others generalize too much and it becomes unclear what service they're providing. I knew a guy who made tons of money on making software for dentists. I see some stores trying to sell too many things but not enough of any one thing -- sort of a hardware, drugstore, candy, stationary and clothing store all in one -- and yet none of the complete line that you'd expect in any one of those stores...going there is like taking a chance that they'll have what you want.
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  • Email Providers - 01/31/2009
    These days, one of the best email providers -- since it comes with the excellent email client -- is Google. Check out Google Apps. I have a business running on the free version of apps, and the professional version included full 24 hours support for $25 per users.
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  • In 2004 I was researching this as a business -- providing a hosted application that would help schools or universities. I discovered that class scheduling software is a subset of Learning Management Systems or LMS. That link goes to part of my research into this industry.
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  • wow -- I always suspected that I was getting shafted while buying cables at places like Bestbuy. I could never hear the difference once I brought them home. I don't think it matters at all...
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  • Gmail's chat client has added a video conferencing feature which works pretty well. Incredible...welcome to the future.
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  • Memory Sticks - 01/31/2009
    It's incredible how inexpensive these drives are getting. I bought a 4 gig for $20. I can carry 4 movies on my 4 gig flash drive -- these are MP4 files that play on an ipod or on a computer. Once I used it to transport all the audio from a 3 day conference and I had plenty of room left over on the drive.
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  • Web Server Software - 01/31/2009
    Apache is certainly the best web server software. Strange that this guide doesn't mention that?
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  • How to write emails - 01/31/2009
    Ha ha Paul. Worse than leaving the subject black, IMO, is somebody who trys to type the entire email into the subject and leaves the body blank!! I had a client that did this and I had to drop her as a client. She would literally write only in the subject something like this: call my cell after your meeting because I'm going to the beach now and I won't be back to the office until noon That would be the subject and the body of the email was blank. Sheesh!
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  • Televisions - 01/31/2009
    Circuit City is now out of business. I like Best Buy. If you order your TV from Amazon.com, you can often avoid state taxes -- the down side would be if you had to return the TV!
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  • Web Servers - 01/31/2009
    I'm happy with oneandone.com for my shared hosted services. Their admin is a tad lame the way it pops new browsers with almost every click. However, I'm able to set up many domains with a single hosting account, a lot of them use mysql and I think I get something like 5 gigs of storage for $10 a month -- I think it's hard to beat that. On the dedicated server, I have had 3 of them at rackspace and I'm happy with their service, but Servepath.com is also a good provider for dedicated servers.
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  • List Servers - 01/31/2009
    ezmlm is a pretty good list manager opensource software for unix. The reason that it's good is that it makes it easy on the list administrator. Some mailing list software send all the bounced emails back to the admin -- uhg.
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  • FTP Software - 01/31/2009
    I use CuteFTP for the mac and I really like it. Also, if you're on a mac and you don't have a client, you can actually FTP right from the terminal using the unix commands for ftp
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  • Job Interviewing - 01/31/2009
    I heard that the number 1 reason people are selected from an interview -- sense of humor. They figure that they can train you for the job and almost everybody will need some training anyway. What they can't teach you is how to be a likable person. A sense of humor goes a long way to demonstrating that you'll fit in. But it's a fine line...you don't want to walk in there like a stand up comic and fart jokes, complete with sound effects, probably won't work either. But making the interviewer laugh, for the right reasons, can go a long way...thoughts?
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  • I've heard that press releases have been updated to be a media release, which would be an internet page with high resolution photos and video sound bites and other multimedia presentations to support the story in the press release. The whole idea is that it helps the editors who want to do a story related to the press release. I haven't seen many examples of these though.
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  • Good guide. I'm wondering what the best practice is for generating leads from an HTML email. Do you just try to get them to click to a web site or to a landing page specific to the HTML email offer. And once on the site, what should be on that page to generate the best conversions for a lead?
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  • Thanks for this guide. I'm using testimonials extensively in my marketing and they are powerful persuaders. Most of my clients are very happy to provide them upon request.
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  • Craigslist? Really? I don't think that would be a good place to find a SEM specialist at all because SEM is a highly specialized field and craigslist is a general job board.
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  • Thanks for the guide. But when you say spend an hour each day writing an article, that's already pushing it because developing content takes more time than that. And then submitting it to all those locations takes time too. But I see your point -- good advice -- I'm just saying it will probably take longer than 1 hour a day. Don't you think?
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  • This is so important to any business, even a one man business. I was hoping that Google apps would have included at least a minimal SFA tool, but they seem happy with the strategic partnership with SalesForce. There are not many options out there. Thanks for the guide.
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  • Log Analysis - 01/28/2009
    Of course, analog is the old favorite of mine.
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  • I recommend woothemes and revolution themes for the wordpress backend -- they have some business themes that work well.
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  • Pop Up Blockers - 01/28/2009
    Nice guide. The firefox pop-up blocker works great these days. I recommend the Stop Autoplay plugin for Firefox, which stops web sites and videos from autoplaying when you land on the site. I first started using it when our baby was born because surfing to a site could wake up the baby. It's not flawless because some web sites have functionality like interactive graphs or navigations in flash that rely on autoplaying. On the good side, it also stops some annoying banner adverts from animating :-)
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  • It's hard to put a value on something like a domain name. I just leased one of mine to a business for $1000 a year and they have the option to buy it for $10,000 at any time. Afternic is a domain auction site and it seems to me that they have tons of do it yourself domain appraisal advice in the support section of the site.
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  • We used Rackspace dedicated servers when they first came out in 2001 and I set up a client with three of them. The client is still using them even though they are not the cheapest solution around because it would cost them too much to pay somebody to move all our code to another company. Another good company for dedicated servers is Servepath from San Francisco. I helped them out once and got to see their data center.
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  • I've been using wordpress with various themes. This new york video production web site was built using the OverEasy theme from woothemes on top of wordpress. I totally recommend it.
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  • Technorati is a helpful for cutting through all the web content and finding blog posts about various subjects. I needed this the other day when doing diligence on a vacation resort. When you search google for the vacation site, all you get are vacation super sites, etc, where anybody can post reviews. After reading tons of good reviews and the occasional bad review, I started to loose trust in the good reviews because I figured somebody who worked at the resort could have been writing them, but I was trusting certain blogger because I could see more about them and they would be harder to fake. Google was very bad at allowing me to search blogs.
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  • Any thoughts on how Yahoo is changing. I noticed that they absorbed some of Overture's tools.
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  • Business Blogging - 01/28/2009
    I'm pretty sure that CNN Anderson Cooper's blog is using Wordpress. I think it's a fantastic application.
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  • Another two links about video blogging for business. Here is a web site that sells video blog themes for wordpress, which I've used and can recommend. And -- ahem -- shameless plug -- we just launched a video production services for business in New York, and we specifically help businesses to get professional looking video on their web sites.
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  • Thanks for this guide. I just contacted some existing clients and generated more business. Thanks.
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  • I use vPIP as a way of delivering video content within a web page.
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  • Google has at least 2 ways of filtering duplicate content from the search result pages. So if you're hoping to lease content so you can appear #1 in Google, be careful if you're licensing content that is also appearing elsewhere.
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  • Afternic is the most popular domain auction site, which shouldn't be overlooked when searching for a good domain. You can see the market value of domains by looking at their closed auctions. They also have information on the various ways to appraise a domain.
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  • I still say to cut the Gordian Knot of Google: Make your web page useful...it's as simple as that...make it have a purpose...make it helpful. When it's helpful, people will bookmark it and digg it and link to it...even if you don't title it correctly, THEY will title it correctly in the links -- Google will notice that they do this and how long the visit and if they return. Once Google notices...the page will rise in the search result pages for the relevant search queries...so focus on making your pages helpful...
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  • Sigh, Overture is no longer with us...great guide though. "building a web site that sells" -- the eternal challenge -- solve this problem and you're in business.
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  • Web Store Design - 11/30/2008
    I really wish there was more data available on which designs facilitate the sale the most...and which IA for an ecommerce system does that. But, of course, most or all stores are going to keep that information close to the chest (so that their competitors don't figure it out.) On the other hand, the biggest retailers online, you would hope, have done some testing on their own or are constantly testing. I would think that places like Amazon or Ebay have refined the customer flow. If you're designing a store on a lower budget, it might be a good idea to follow those examples.
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  • This is a fairly comprehensive guide on the various ways a business can use social media to establish authority on-line. Twitter is the newest...a mini-blogging application.
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  • If you have a bunch of internal documents that you want to search, google has a new mini-search appliance that can help with that.
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  • I like the topic of this guide. I wish there was more research, links and resources included here.
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  • Wow, interesting point...increase circulation by offering the PDF. My wife is an editor-in-chief of a magazine. I'll ask her for her thoughts on this.
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  • Automotive Mirrors - 11/30/2008
    I constantly see mirrors that were knocked off of parked cars in the side streets of New York where various vans and trucks double park causing other vans and trucks to squeeze by. Rarely will they stop to leave a note. I even met a guy who ended up buying an Accord instead of a Civic because the Accord's mirrors fold in while the Civic's don't -- smart man.
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  • Here are some resources for finding suppliers. Doba.com, inventorysource, and dropshipHQ -- any thoughts about these?
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  • Any suggestions on how to convince a supplier to drop ship for you. What's a good commission to expect for an order? I don't see how anything less than 20% of retail would be possible, considering the costs of marketing and sales...but I find the few suppliers are willing to ship at that sort of discount...any thoughts on this?
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  • Using Flyers - 10/31/2008
    We had some success targeting our customers by what type of vehicles they were likely to drive -- SUVs -- and then had the fliers distributed only those vehicles.
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  • Promotional Yo-Yos - 10/30/2008
    This promotional item is certainly not ideal for all businesses...but I'm sure it's the perfect thing for some businesses -- nice guide.
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  • I provide corporate video & editing services in New York and get called on to record events every week. One of the things that makes it difficult is when people don't understand what they want or the complexities of doing video well. I wouldn't recommend trying to train somebody from internal to provide the service. Put it this way, it's easy to train somebody what to do, but it's nearly impossible to train somebody on the 100,000 things NOT to do. That sort of knowledge only comes with years of experience and that's why I recommend hiring specialists for any sort of video production.
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  • What do you think about targeting specific publications on Adwords as opposed to targeting the Google Content Network in general?
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  • Google Adwords - 10/30/2008
    Google is now testing the landing pages and they give it a quality score. A bad quality score will mean that you have to pay more per click...a lot more. More and more I've been making landing pages that are highly relevant for my key phrases -- almost like SEO -- to keep the quality score as "good". I really wish Google would be more transparent about how they judge the quality of landing pages.
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  • Thanks for all the good links. So many SEM newsletters are just long-sales on the person's book or training...ie, every article ends with "and that's why you should buy my book on SEM for $39.95" Some of these links are the real info.
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  • What about the size of the advert? Somebody told me to look at the size of my competition and then make the same size ads.
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  • Charter Buses - 10/30/2008
    Bus drivers often will get his meal free when he or she stops at a restaurant.
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  • I've been using that trackball with the pad now for about 3 weeks and it's great. My hands are relaxed. I use it with finalcut and at first it felt weird but I got used to it rather quickly.
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  • This is an excellent guide, thanks for the information.
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  • One of the best things you can do for a presentation is to practice and be prepared. Practice out loud but also go over it in your mind 100 or even 1000 times -- whatever it takes -- until you can do it in your sleep. That way, when it's time to be "on" and everything is changing and the lights are on -- you can't be distracted by all that and will stay on your script with ease.
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  • Breast Pumps - 10/29/2008
    Nice guide on pumps. However, you buy a pump once. The real money is in the follow up sales in nursing bras, baby bags, bottles, pacifiers, diaper services, etc. Question: What's the difference between a mobile and a ceiling hung infant cognitive development device? Answer: About fifty bucks :-)
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  • OMG I LOVE this concept. I'm soooo tired of hearing people say what's wrong with the economy. It's really been driving me a bit crazy. I've been busy focusing on making my business more streamlined. In particular, I'm streamlining the marketing and sales. I making my services even more focused. Remember, Mr. Marriott started A&W Root Beer in the middle of the depression and he was sucessful...people can make money in any situation. Also, there are good things with a bad economy, in particular, it's a good time to find great staff that wouldn't be available in better times. Thank you work.com for helping to keep things positive...really!
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  • Also, I see many bloggers using blockquotes to populate their blogs with content -- which is sometimes bit shady. They write a quick paragraph about the content on some article out there, then they blockquote a "fair use" amount of the article, and then they end with some thought about the article. Best done, the blogger adds some value in overview or summarising the article and/or adding their opinion. Worst done, the blogger simply parrots what's in the article and blockquotes an unfair amount...it seams to me.
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  • I work at CNN in NYC and the control rooms and stages there are top of the line. But I also help an artist, Mark Kostabi, with a production of a game show called TitleThis. They have set up a complete stage and control room using prosumer level DV equipment. They have about 6 cameras on jibs or tripods all feeding into a room that has 8 monitors and a Panasonic switch. There is a sound mixer for the various mics and a Sony DSR-25 deck to record switched show feed. The really cool thing about it is that when Mark Kostabi is in Rome, he still does the game show by calling in and by using MSN messenger video feed...we send him the switched show and the audio from the room and he sends us the video and we record his voice on the phone. It's really amazing what you can pretty much emulate what CNN does by using essentially consumer gear...
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  • I believe in green kharma :-) But I also believe in business and green dollars. Each state offers different incentives for reducing carbon emissions. I'm watching.
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  • I like this Philippe Starck Wind Turbine. Who says that going green can't be uber-stylish?
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  • I took a 20K load from a family member once. The deal wasn't written out. It was based on trust and one conversation. I and paid 6%, which came out to $100 a month. One concern was that this would complicate their income statements with small pay offs, so the deal was that I'd only make big payments on the loan. I ended up paying interest for about a year or so and then made the entire $20K payment back at once. I'm glad that they got the interest instead of some credit card company. They were happy to get more then the pitiful amount they could get from a money market or bonds.
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  • Donna, I bought the same set up based on your recommendation. I think it might be good to alternate between a mouse and a track ball. I'll post back here later to let you know how it's going. I use FinalCut a lot and I don't have much room for the mouse so I think the trackball might help with that issue. Great guide, BTW.
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  • Wow -- I didn't know these pricing plans were available. As a business owner, I LOVE it when I can move a monthly service plan to a pay as you go sort of deal. I can see how these dial-up plans might be helpful to some people to get email when traveling. Do you really think that speed is still that helpful? Maybe I'm out of touch. It seems like the technology of last decade. My computers (macs) don't even come with a modem anymore. For my needs, I'd have to be wireless high speed. I'm interested to see those options. BTW, I think Starbucks has a wireless pay as you go solution (at least in NYC and SF)
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  • Although short copy is probably great for web pages, Susan has a good point too. Don't be heavy handed with the 250-400 word page rule. There are times when that guideline should certainly be broken. If the subject matter requires more copy, and if the subject matter is compelling enough for the user, it will be read regardless of the length. But Haley has a point too. I think many pages are saying in 1200 words what could be said in 400. Writers seem to feel the urge to needlessly puff up their prose. I think I'm guilty of that :-)
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  • Nice guide. I think wordpress is a no-brainer for NPOs. It is amazingly extendable for a blog software. Here is a web site designed with a wordpress backend and notice how it looks like a web site and not like a blog -- yet multi-users can have various access to edit or publish different areas of the web site. Plus, customers or visitors can comment, etc. The reason I advocate wordpress to my NPO clients is that there is a huge community of people who support this and there are even more people who are somewhat trained or familiar with using it.
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  • Wow Donna, thanks for posting that comment. After reading the guide, I felt that while handwriting analysis could be interesting, I bet it's not even close to being right all the time. Still, I'm going to have my handwriting looked at -- self knowledge being a good thing :-)
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  • Nice guide. The part where you say "Personality traits and characteristics are primary decision factors" rings very true. I'm always looking for a sense of humor. We can almost always train people to do the task at hand but we can't train them to see humor in the world. If they prospective employee laughs at my jokes, they get points. If they crack a good joke that makes me laugh then they're hired over the other qualified prospects that don't.
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  • Maybe it's easy for an employer to feel like "hey, I give them a pay check...isn't that thanks enough?" Well, maybe no it isn't! I really like how this guide recommends individual and personalized gifts -- done right, I think that would be a powerful signal that the manager/employer is thoughtful and cares. How motivating for the employee! Nice guide!
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  • Hi Jeanne, Strategic Management seems like something that a board of directors and a CEO would be discussing and implementing in a large corporation. How would you say, if at all, would it apply to a small business with, say, 5-10 staff members?
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  • Google Adwords has at least three ways to target locally. 1. You can set up local campaigns. 2. You can target local web sites and local publications through in the Google content network and 3. They now let you place adverts in the Google Maps via the Adwords interface.
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  • Nice guide. It's a good list of bookmarks for a iphone user.
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  • Bluetooth Headsets - 08/27/2008
    I know. It may seem unreasonable but I'm not using one of those head sets because of health concerns.
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  • Great guide. Time to upgrade my phone system! Thanks.
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  • I agree. I personally think that wordpress has become one of the best web site content management systems available today for free. Even though it's blog software, you can use themes to make it look like a more traditional web site. Here's a site that I created using wordpress and a revolution magazine theme
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  • The best way to write content that is perfect for a search engine is to write content that is helpful to a human.
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  • Some industries are so small that there are no custom CRMs, which CRMs are the most customizable?
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  • Firewire Switches - 07/31/2008
    So if I have 3 firewire hard drives hooked up in a serial chain because I only have one available firewire input into my imac, would it be better to use a switch?
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  • With the costs of hard drives going down down down...I wonder how practical these backup systems are. I guess they still make sense if you're dealing with a lot of new data every day...I mean hundreds of gigs a day. Consider that the 300 gig tape media costs $50 for each tape, or more, and that you can buy a 500 gig external hard drive for $100 or less...well...do the math and it's very close. And the hard drive is certainly going to be faster...thoughts?
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  • I love my tivo and I bought one of the first ones with a life time service contract -- so I paid no monthly fee since I got it in 1999, even though I've upgraded the hard drives. Although it cost $200 more at the time, it turns out to have been one of the best $200 I've ever spent! I realized that Tivo stopped offering that life-time plan (probably smart for them)...but are there any consumer DVRs that don't charge a monthly fee?
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  • ISP Directories - 07/31/2008
    This is a helpful guide because the ISP market place is still so fragmented and it's always one of the top phrases that people are searching on the web. If you already have a web host, it might be worth it to check out the new deals out there because you can get the best deals these days then ever before in the past. Even if you don't change hosts, maybe you can get a better deal from your current host if you're armed with information from these directories in this guide.
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  • I've been enjoying the video interface at CNN.com because, after you get a hang of it, you can que up the stories that you want to watch and then sit back and they play -- one after another.
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  • Hit Counters - 07/31/2008
    Google analytics is excellent. The numbers from these various hit counters might actually be different from each other because they each may have different ways of counting. Instead of focusing on the exact numbers, if you compare the trends, they should match. If not, something else could be going on.
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  • This is a good guide. Everybody is talking about Google, but Yahoo also has a decent percentage of the search traffic and they also, as you point out, have some unique tools and services.
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  • Microsoft Solomon - 07/30/2008
    Is this Microsoft's answer to Quickbooks? After reading this guide, I'm still not 100% sure what Solomon does.
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  • Offshore banking - 07/30/2008
    this is a very spammy guide, it seams to me.
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  • There is also a version contol software called bitkeeper.
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  • I tried that "free sample" link and got an ugly error upon submitting. UserID < 1 Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e14' [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Procedure 'sp_NewUser' expects parameter '@n11', which was not supplied. /subscription/magazine/freesample.asp, line 581
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  • A lot fo these franchises look like t hey're GreenWashing, ie, green posturing for marketing purposes instead of truly being concerned with being Green. Kind of like what Exxon does. I'm really interested in truly green franchises, like Yes Solar, which sell real green services instead of traditional franchises that say they're green because they use brown bags instead of plastic.
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  • Calendars: Daily - 07/30/2008
    Wow - that calendars that work link looks really helpful. They'll email you new calendars as time goes by. I'm using google aps calendar and that works for me because I'm almost always near a computer.
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  • Data Centers - 07/30/2008
    Data centers can be real hogs with electricity. Since the prices of power are only going up, what are some of the best tips to keeping the power consumption down in the data centers?
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  • Decorative Paints - 07/30/2008
    We painted our apartment and my sister-in-law helped select the colors. We picked a color called sand, which was a lot lighter then I though my wife wanted but once it was on the wall it appeared darker than the swatch -- ie, just right. What are the common mistakes made when choosing colors?
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  • I need a suit but I hate shopping. I think this is a good idea -- help guys get the right suits!
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  • I understand the point of this guide and I agree that these things will help you get a certain type of customer, however, isn't there something to be said for looking small? I have long term clients who like me because they found me...kind of like how you might like an out-of-the-way restaurant that you found. If I were pretending to be something I'm not, I wonder if they would still be my customer. Also, I have become customers of some businesses because of how unpretentious their lobby is -- I look and think "they don't spend a lot of money on marketing and impressive chairs and a fancy address...that's a good business that will be around a long time and one that can give me good prices because they're not spending money on those secondary luxuries."
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  • Google adwords now lets you bid to place commercials on cable and network TV. They even give you a 1800 number to help you track conversions and the effectiveness on media buys.
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  • I find that many of the answers in yahoo answers are wrong or haven't been fully answered yet.
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  • Hi Scott, I've tested that and found the same thing. If I add a line "starting at $495" to my adwords, in an attempt to qualify the lead, the CTR goes down but the % of conversions go up and, all in all, it's more effective for me.
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  • Inside Sales - 06/30/2008
    Good guide with the advice and fish metaphors. I found that these cold calling tips & scripts worked very well.
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  • Google Analytics - 06/30/2008
    Good guide to analytics.
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  • Some parts of SEO can be outsourced. However, a big part of SEO is key phrase analysis. If I were optimizing a web site for a Philippine audience, then I would trust a partner in the Philippines for this. However, if I were optimizing for America or an English speaking audience, then I'd want to make sure that my SEO partner had a fluent understanding of the language and the culture.
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  • Google Adsense now offers publishers the option to place pay per action adverts on their sites. I've been doing well with them. Now I'm noticing that they are automatically running the PPA adverts when they find a good fit.
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  • This is a helpful guide. I personally like it when google gives the snippet instead of the meta.
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  • BTW, I'm using Google adwords to bid on classified sized adverts for my clients. You can underbid the paper's published rates and they might still run the advert if they have the space.
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  • Certainly Adwords is getting more and more complicated -- with the quality rating we now have to optimize landing pages on the web. Then there is the possibility to target sites and demographics as opposed to targeting searches. Finally, we're able to target real fish-wrap news papers, radio stations and now TV even. There has never been a time when small businesses needed a qualified SEM professional more then today.
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  • My friend Janelle Brown is using facebook well to promote her book "All We Ever Wanted was Everything." I'm getting pinged about her NY book signing & she's posting all her reviews there...
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  • It's also good from an SEO perspective to update your website frequently. The more you update it, the more often Google will visit the site. The same could be said for users. :-)
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  • I'm using google apps as an ASP for my business. It replaces the Microsoft Office Suite and it's my email host at wolfram.org
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  • What about grid hosting. It's quite a buzz word these days in hosting. It started with MediaTemple. Then Amazon got into it. Now Servepath has Go Grid hosting plan. I guess that grid hosting is supposed to scale with traffic. Thoughts?
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  • Is there a way to get an RSS feed forwarded to your email? Or is there one that integrates with an email program? I just don't see these things catching on until it integrates with the pull client application everybody already uses -- email.
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  • I think that if you're going to monitor employee's surfing habits, you should let them know prior to doing so or else you'll risk demotivating them once they find out. I guess it's an ethical issue. Thoughts?
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  • Hi Jeff, I understand what you're saying, that the revenue of parking the domain might compensate for the cost of leasing the domain. And I certainly agree that it's easier to buy a domain than it is to develop it with helpful content. However, you say that there is "little time commitment" and are you sure you're taking into consideration all the time you're spending finding domains to buy. I don't know about you, but many people spend hours and hours looking for a single good domain because thousands of people have thought that they were going to get rich quick by sitting on domains, and consequently there is absolutely nothing available from the source. Secondly, are you taking into account the time it takes to attend the 3 conferences you recommend attending? ;-) Still, I see your point. But if you ask me, shooting to sell domains for 2K isn't a good business plan these days. Still, you can make a few bucks. But if you develop a web site, you could stand to make a few million bucks -- which I think is a better plan. Finally, I didn't see this link in your guide -- Afternic.com -- which I think would be a good resource for somebody dealing in domains. It's a domain auction site. I saw some 4 letter .com domains for sale for $60...pretty good if you don't mind domains with numbers in them :-)
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  • I'll second the Drupal recommendation although I wouldn't put it into the "affordable" box, necessarily.
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  • word-press comes with a bunch of templates. Although it's a blog software, the application has the concept of "pages" and I think some of the templates take advantage of that to make wordpress a pretty easy out-of-the-box web site solution.
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  • I think almost every business could benefit from a good CRM
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  • I have Time Capsule and it's not so great. It's slow. Our laptop doesn't always maintain connection during backups. It's slow. The automatic hourly backups interfere with work and you can't set a schedule..it's either every hour or "off". .oh, and did I mention that it was slow? .
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  • I can't deny that putting "free" in a PPC campaign actually increases the CTR. But I see your point, in B2B it doesn't matter as much as with consumers. In certain types of B2B sales, anything "free" or gimmicky is a big turn off. They typically want facts and bottom line. Thanks for pointing this out so well.
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  • Good guide. I'm trying to improve my PPC campaigns. How long should we test A/B ads. In print direct marketing, I remember that 5000 was a number...but in PPC, especially at the Keyword level, those number often take too long to get to. I'm afraid that I'm altering my copy before the tests have had enough time to run. Any thoughts?
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  • Also, I have to add -- wordpress.com -- the version that you install on your server (and not the hosted application) is solid -- it is not just a blog -- it has the concept of "pages" so the application can be used as "web site" and it has plenty of templates that can be used. It's what they're using here at blog.work.com -- so it MUST be good :-)
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  • You know, this is a very helpful guide. I've had problems with my clients when they are developing site searches for stores. Thanks for this excellent much needed specific perspective on the subject. I'm going to send some clients and some developers here...
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  • Here's' a cool twitter plug-in for firefox. http://mashable.com/2007/05/06/8-awesome-firefox-plugins-for-twitter/
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  • Hi Jeff, It's great that you can make $2000 selling a domain name that you bought for $12...no doubt. I wonder how many domains you bought that didn't earn any money -- how many do you still own? And it's true that developing content is a different skill than speculating on domain names. There are different risks too. And I believe that the pay-off for creating something helpful on a domain is long term -- both in cash and in karma. But if you can buy something for $12 and sell it for more -- more power to you.
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  • You know, Google Adwords is now judging the landing pages and giving them a quality score. A "poor" quality score will send your cost per click to $5 or $10 even for phrases that others are paying pennies for. Google is being typically not transparent about how to improve the landing pages and improve your quality score. So I'm interested in what, if anything, you have learned about how to improve a landing page for a Google adwords campaign.
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  • Somebody once told me: "Doing something is almost always better than doing nothing." I hate that advice because 1) it's true 2) It doesn't allow me to be lazy :-) I finally figured out that I'm actually happier when I'm doing something than when I've got nothing to do -- so now I'm more at peace with it...
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  • This all sounds very slick but I'm wondering what, if any, effects this would have on your credit rating to A) carry a balance for a long time B) Move it around on various credit cards.
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  • Salary Negotiation - 04/30/2008
    This is interesting. You don't want to leave anything on the table by low balling your salary expectations. Giving a range sounds good to me, as in, well I'm making 15-29K a month doing freelance and I kind of want to be in the same ball park if I took a full time position with you.
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  • Carry-On Luggage - 04/30/2008
    What a good guide. I see a lot of luggage that looks like it's carry-on size but it's not. How can you tell if a suitcase will actually fit?
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  • Also, WordPress and Typepad, although they are known as blog software, which are chronological logs, both systems also have the concept of Pages. Pages are static and stay there even as time goes by. Wordpress also has some good templates for blogs that use a lot of pages. These are good options.
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  • Great guide Justin. This is a fantastic check list resource. I'm bookmarking it now. I'm an SEO professional and my clients will benefit from this. Thanks.
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  • Nice guide. Never underestimate the benefits of user testing. Simply sit some of your target demographic in front of your web site and ask them to do tasks like 1) Find the phone number 2) Add and item to the cart and check out 3) Find the address 4) Contact the support -- then observe them. If they are having problems with these sorts of conversions, you can bet that your users are.
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  • Hi. Nice guide. So many people build web sites and have pages meant to hold content that doesn't get written. Making the place for content is way easier than writing it -- isn't it? :-) One thing I'll add: A page of text can be a turn off. I found that I get lower bounce rates on pages after I put an image with the written content. I'm using IStockPhoto -- a very reasonable and web friendly stock photo library to get visual content to go with the written stuff.
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  • IMO, usability is often the most important part of design. Sit some users in front of a web site and ask them to do some essential tasks. For instance, ask them to find the directions to the store, try to write feedback, how would you add something to the cart and then change the order, etc. Then observe them. Somebody who is familiar with the site, like your designer or you, might be shocked at how difficult some people will have doing these simple and essential tasks on your site. If so, fix the problem.
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  • Short Term Blogging - 03/13/2008
    Great guide. I never thought of a short term blog.
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  • This is a very good guide. I love it. Bloggers-block -- lol. I would also add, if you have a blog, one motivator to write could also be cash. Go check out reviewme.com and sign up to write some Advitorials content. You could end up helping all involved.
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  • I always thought the best domains are what they say they are. New-York-Dog-Walking.com is a GREAT domain, if you're a dog walking service, for instance. It will also do well in SEO. Also, don't forget to look for domains for sale at afternic.com -- that's a place where people auction off their domains.
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  • Google apps also has a basic web design tool that's intended for small businesses within their suite of applications. Check out: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/business/index.html
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  • From what I understand, Drupal has a steep learning curve. it's certainly not something that you can learn in a weekend. There was a Drupal conference in Boston a couple of weeks ago and when my friend returned, all he could talk about what how Drupal was the cat's pajamas. I'm thinking about loading it onto my server and checking it out.
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  • My favorite small business tweet is from Woot.com -- they have something on sale every day and they have it at a very low price until it sells out. I think this would be a good model for many types of small businesses as a way to encourage your customers to subscribe to your tweets. http://twitter.com/woot Eric
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  • My insurance agent always hands me a ton of this stuff. Calendars, address books, umbrellas, pens, magnets, bags and note pads. Although a lot of it got tossed, some of it made it into my house. Over the years, I've used those items to find his number when I had an insurance question. So I tend to think these things work. But I think this sort of schwag is on a different level then the yearly sort of gift basket thank you gifts. One of the best pieces I received was a USB flash drive with the company's logo on it -- very helpful and a high perceived value!
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  • There is also the type of "consultant" who is really an employee. That is, they must show up for work from 9 to 5 and are unable to determine their own hours, they sit at their desk and answer their phone and are unable to work from other locations, and they provide an ongoing service for years at a time. The employer calls them a "consultant" to avoid paying benefits or employment taxes and the worker does it because they like the higher gross income.
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  • How do you balance the need to be profitable with the desire to be green? I mean, the number 1 task of a business must be to stay in business. Sure, you can look for the win-win...telling your drivers to idle less saves some CO2 from the air and it also saves you $$ in gas money -- so great! But beyond the win win, how do you balance these social responsibilities with the responsibility to your bottom line? A bankrupt business isn't good for anybody. So even if you give back to society or go the extra mile to be green, staying in business must be your first task at hand. You have to find a balance. Sometimes this involves a little waste.
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  • Does this work the same way with Yahoo or MSN?
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  • How do you get your ads to appear next to a Google maps search?
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  • It also helps if you put the keywords as the name of the images. For instance, calling it white_shirt.jpg will increase the relevance and probability that this image will appear in a Google Image search then if was called 2038958.jpg.
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  • Flow in Web Design - 02/14/2008
    Interesting concept. Can you give some specific examples of web sites that have good flow and then explain why you think they have good flow?
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  • I'm glad you posted this guide. I'm so spoiled by Google that I get very frustrated when a site search doesn't work as expected...ie, lets me find information that I KNOW is on the site! Thanks.
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  • Website Promotion - 02/14/2008
    That's cool that you continued to improve this. I think you'll find that it helps more people.
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  • Isn't this is a guide to making post cards and not really a guide to direct marketing. Postcards are a subset of direct marketing.
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  • Excellent guide with ample tips and resources. Well done!
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  • Even so, I like this guide because it attempts to differentiate marketing and sales and I think too many new small businesses confuse the two, or focus too much on the marketing problem and not enough on the sales problem. They spend all their money on logos, advertisements, web sites and brochures before they solved the sales problem. If you're trying to sell something that can't be sold, all the marketing in the world won't help. On the other hand, If you have a great product that fills a need where droves of people will want to buy -- even the worst logo in the world won't stop all of them. Marketing is there to keep leads coming in for your sales team. Sales is the problem that isn't being solved by most small businesses who are suffering. Or put it this way, if you can solve the sales problem, at least you're in business. Marketing will help a lot after that...anything guide which helps people understand the difference between the two is a good guide...even if it's a guide that uses a labored relationship metaphor to do it :-)
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  • These are some helpful tips. Thanks.
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  • One way to judge how important a web site is: How many people can update it. That's why sites like ebay, wikipedia, and craigslist (not to mention work.com) are some of the most important web sites around -- anybody can contribute! Web portals give that sort of power to the web sites of small businesses. Even if you don't want everybody editing or contributing to your web site...even if all of your staff have that power that will increase the power of your web site. Good guide!
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  • How about some pointers to other web sites about email best practices?
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  • SEO KPIs - 01/18/2008
    I would like to know more information about these indicators and why they're important. Nice try.
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  • Thanks for the excellent guidelines for a home page. I would argue that it's not the most important page. Maybe it is, but for the sake of argument, I assert that the checkout funnel is more important. I would be interested in reading the same sort of advice from you about the checkout funnel...do's and don'ts. Good guide though!
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  • This is some good advice. #3 is particularly important if you're trying to keep the costs down.
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  • Devils advocate: Haven't these domain camping waters been completely fished out already? Plus, the whole concept of "type in traffic" is a declining industry because browsers alter the behavior. Originally, many of these domains would get free traffic as users typed in, for instance, "free socks" into the browser instead of going to a search engine and many dominant browsers would send that user to "freesocks.com". These days, however, more and more browsers will send that user to the browsers search engine and show them search results for free socks. Finally, you can't even get a .com domain these days for almost any series of words. I know many people who have spent lots of money registering domain names and they have created no value, cluttered the internet and created no revenue. Instead of hanging your hat on domain camping (ie, placing only adverts on many domains and relying on random type-in traffic), I still believe that publishing helpful content on one domain is a superior revenue generating strategy these days.
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  • I like help like this, breaking something down into a usable bit. Web design means different things to different people -- so ultimately, communication between designer and client is highly important. This guide is a good start.
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  • This guide would be more helpful if it were more specific. "Online Business" is a huge category to be covered in 1000 words.
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  • Website Promotion - 01/18/2008
    This is another guide with link spam...the whole guide exists so to provide links to 9searches.org -- probably for the sole intention of boosting the sites ranking in google.
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  • As an aside from an SEO professional: People misspell words when they search for things on Google. If you misspell the words in the same way on your web pages, your pages will appear high in the search result pages for those misspelled words. If you're selling potatoes, it might be helpful if some of your web pages were titled with potatos or poatatoes in the title...for instance.
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  • T1 - 12/28/2007
    My cable modem is great for downloading. However, in my business, I often have to upload huge multi-gig video files. I am considering a T1 for that.
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  • This is a really cool guide. Thanks. I'm going to add it to my favorites. I really like the free wi-fi directory.
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  • Wow -- lots of buzz words in this guide. So many, I'm not sure what it's about. This reminds me of the late 90's when there was a site called "balls.com". But when you went to the site, you couldn't figure out what they did. The text was all "Impact your customers with brand awareness by increasing synergy in win win on-line multi-media b-2-b marketing" You could read the whole front page and not know what they did. It turned out, they sold balls with your logo on them.
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  • Nice guide. One tip for creating a successful website is to use some paragraph tags to break up the text a bit. Throw in some bold tags for some headers and some links that point to resources and you've got yourself a nice looking guide.
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  • Multimedia Design - 12/28/2007
    I think it's true that more and more sites will have media elements to them. I also think it's important to wrap these elements in some sort of web page with meta data to go with the media elements.
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  • I have found that one of the hardest things about implementing a CMS is the change management to getting the staff to actually use it! I wonder if there is a guide to change management.
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  • Internet Software - 12/28/2007
    Great guide. One of my favorite internet software suite is google apps
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  • Thanks for the comment. Let us know your progress. BTW, I deleted all the link spam from all of your recent comments.
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  • Business DSL - 11/28/2007
    Sometimes it's difficult to get cable at a retail location and I had troubles setting up a friend on Madison Avenue street level store in NYC. I run cable modem from my home office on the upper east side, however, and it's far faster on the download speeds then DSL. Upload, however, is throttled and there is no way that I can open that up. With my old DSL company in SF, I could order faster upload speeds. This is important in my business because I sometimes want to upload huge DV video files to TV stations. One thing I will say for cable in NYC, it doesn't lose the connection...I uploaded a 3 gig file overnight and it worked.
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  • Online Stores - 11/28/2007
    Amenda, how SEO friendly a shopping cart is depends on the shopping cart. Things to avoid: Session IDs and Flash navigation. Things you want: The ability to edit the title tag and to see keywords in the URL (instead of id numbers or database non-words). You also want permanence in the URLs, ie, when you add new products, that all the other URLs don't change and when you delete a product, it's best when it disappears from the navigation of the site, however, it's still there if you try to go to it directly but you can't add it to the shopping cart and instead there are links to other similar products that are still in the inventory.
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  • Website Development - 11/28/2007
    My advice on web development for small business -- make your site helpful to your customers and don't just make it an a big sales job for your services. Make the site serve your customer (and staff) and it will serve you. Put your pricing up there, put your hours, list your inventory, put up helpful "how to" articles, link to helpful resources, make sure your phone number is on every page, be up-front and open about features and limitations, more information is better than less, put up pictures and contact information of your staff.
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  • Web Store Design - 11/28/2007
    Nice guide. I just did some consulting for a store that had a web page that didn't look like it was an on-line store. It had a very good looking design, it's just that the front page didn't say "store"...it looked more like a site for consulting service of some kind. So, my advice, it might seem like a no-brainer, but make sure you put some products on your front page so it looks like you're selling something! :-)
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  • I like blogs with photos. I think this subject lends itself well to nice visuals!
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  • okay...this is cool. I'm bookmarking this right now. Thanks!
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  • Here's a Sample Proposal that I made for some tech work in the past. This formate has worked for me, although I usually deliver it in a nicely formatted Word document, of course.
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  • I always make sure my proposals include, not just what I'm going to provide the client, but what the client will provide me. For instance, in the schedule section, a payment schedule and client deliverable schedule is included in addition to the work that I'm supposed to deliver. I also include a section called "assumptions" where I clarify things that may be obvious. Among these "assumptions" are things like "changing the scope of work could have timing and cost implications", etc.
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  • Psychology Jobs - 10/30/2007
    I hesitate to ask, but what would account for the growth in career opportunities in psychology?
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  • I heard that dark carpets make the space look smaller. What are some of the most common carpet design mistakes for small business? I imagine it's white carpets!
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  • IT Jobs - 10/30/2007
    I've been working as a freelance and making good money. Whenever I look at jobs, they seem to make less but they get benefits. How do I compare my independent freelance income with the income I would be making as an employee?
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  • Commercial Doors - 10/30/2007
    This is a really good guide because I'm sure doors are on the minds of every business owner, and yet...where would you start? This guide is a good place. Here in NYC, all businesses seem to have the metal roll up doors or a slide cage type barrier that are secured with these harden steel dead bolts. I imagine that's the safest?
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  • Firewall Hardware - 10/30/2007
    I have an apple extreme airport router. It says that it acts as a firewall. I'm wondering how safe this is. I'm assuming the firewall is not software...but maybe I'm wrong. Any idea?
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  • Rebuild your RAID - 10/30/2007
    Should you replace drives before they go bad, and if so, how often?
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  • This guide brings up a point that is very interesting to me (and it should be interesting to all business owners.) How to convert visitors into customers? I agree that Analytics is an excellent tool, especially if you use the Goals feature to track users into your sales funnel, to see where they're bouncing. I've done a lot of testing and it's strange how changes will increase or lower the bounce rates or conversion rates. I'm developing some "best practices" guidelines and maybe I'll share them here in the form of a guide once I come to more conclusions. However, this is very interesting to me. Great guide!
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  • Web Site Success - 10/23/2007
    Submitting your site to google is often unnecessary and it's not entirely sure that it even helps at all. My site scores #1 in google for many high volume and competitive keyphrases, and I've never submitted it to google. As I wrote in 2003 the best way to score well in google is to make your site useful to others, show it to them and get the word out. As people use your site, Google will track that behavior and index the pages.
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  • This is pure link spam. Don't hire the Agents of Value for SEO because all they'll do is spend time spamming the web with links. And this tactic, which may have worked in 2002, doesn't work in 2007. They're basically wasting their time.
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  • I love analytics and I use it all the time for my clients. I often need help and the analytics support will help if you're also an adwords customer. This is a good guide. One resource that I use frequently -- www.webmasterworld.com -- this contains a forum specifically for analytics and the users who write there are very skilled and informed.
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  • Maybe we need a guide on "writing copy for ebay" -- I really think it's key. When I buy something on craigslist or ebay, it often has good descriptive copy. Maybe i'm just a sucker :-)
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  • Nice guide if somebody is using HyperOffice. I'm a bit confused as to exactly what HyperOffice is. Is it a hosted application suite?
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  • Graphic Design - 10/23/2007
    More linkspam and linkspam in the comment. No value here either...
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  • E-Commerce - 10/23/2007
    This is more link spam. I recommend deleting this guide. It's not a guide.
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  • This guide is an advertisement for agents of value. It's link SPAM. There is no value here.
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  • sigh...this guide is not at all helpful and it's full of link spam. It's basically an advertisement.
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  • Great guide. In my experience, web projects frequently get out of hand -- off schedule and over budget -- when the process isn't followed. The process is similar to building a house. Architect, design, build. Often, business owners want to see the web site before they comment on it or request changes and they didn't even look a long time at the designs/spec that the web developer gave them. That's wrong. How expensive would it be to build a house if you didn't look at the designs or blue prints and waited until they built the house and then walked around and said, "no wait, move the garage over here and put another bathroom there"? It's the same with web sites. Have your designer show you a completed specification/blue print and make sure every detail is exactly as you want before they start building.
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  • After reading this guide a couple of times, I have a hard time understanding what EDI is, and who uses it, where it comes in handy, how it can help me and why it should matter to me as a small business person. I have more questions then answers...
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  • The best way to protect your name is to register the domain before the squatters get there.
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  • online games - 10/22/2007
    Some games could be good for business, like online poker on facebook.com or their "Scrabulous" application can go a long way into building rapport with clients and associates or potential clients and associates. It would be good to have a more complete guide to these sorts of ideas. Plus, some of the online games could be good for team building activities. I'd like a serious guide about that.
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  • Awwww, another guide full of link spam. Ya, don't invest in a web site, just let me throw up some links in hopes that I'll score better in google...sigh...that doesn't work anymore. People actually need to follow those links -- google is tracking behavior not JUST backlinks anymore...
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  • Don't overlook Google Apps for your company domain, web host, office applications and email host. Even the free versions work and you have to assume that Google is going to keep adding business applications to this suite...
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  • Setting procedures for small business is important if the owner ever wants to not do everything. Even simple text files like: How to Lock Up If You're the Last Person Leaving or Setting Up Your Email Account can save time and stress. Get in the habit of asking staff or consultants to leave you with such information -- even if it's just a few lines of text -- and keep those procedures in a single place. This goes double for learning the software. One of the things I've done is set up "test packages" which I can give to staff after they've learned a software, which are sort of real life scenarios that encompass most of the challenges the staffer might face -- this takes the pressure off and lets the staffer use the software in a sort of test run of a real situation. Anyway, great guide!
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  • Great Guide Felix. Nothing beats a free education!
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  • Google has added "presentation" to it's suite of office applications. It looks like it measures up to PowerPoint very well. The cool thing about this is that it will work well for conference calls, where anybody who's invited can view the presentation and a person can "take control" of the presentation and switch which slide everybody else is seeing -- even if those people are in different places!
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  • Where can I activate my old batteries? I have some old gear, lick a clam-shell portable DVD player that my son uses in the car. The charge seems to empty faster then when it was new. Suggestions?
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  • Second Life is a whole other world to advertise in...There is huge potential to brand this space.
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  • I've rated this guide "supremely useful". Don't underestimate what you can learn from looking at the competitors. I help clients in a variety of industries with on-line competitive analysis, and it never ceases to surprise me how various strategies have worked for different industries.
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  • I'm an early adopter of many of Google applications. They just released a presentation application (think PowerPoint) to their other office applications -- Documents (think Word) and Spreadsheet (think Excel).
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  • These days, I've been using Google Analytics to help my clients determine if and where their customers are jumping out of their sales funnels. I've discovered that simply moving a button and making it more noticeable has reduced the bounce rate and increased sales and ROI. If you have Adwords set up, you may as well also use Analytics to discover trends.
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  • This guide seems like link-spam
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  • This guide has very little editorial integrity. The author of this guide, Sue. S., seems to have some sort of affiliation with localweb.com because this author has created more then one guide, which exclusively point to localweb.com as if that company is the single solution to an entire industry.
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  • Email hosting - 08/07/2007
    This guide looks like an advertisement for Microsoft Exchange and, in particular, for one service provider. As a work.com expert in technology, I recommend also considering other email strategies, including Google Apps and standard opensource solutions like sendmail and qmail.
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  • Somebody offered me $4000 for a domain name that I owned but I didn't sell it. Still, it's difficult to place a value on a web site -- especially a domain name. Here is a forum about appraising domain names
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  • I use paypal.com merchant services to allow me to take credit cards payments via the phone and web. I don't need a merchant account to do this. They charge me $20 a month plus a percentage of each charge. It was pretty easy to set up and it only took a couple of days to get verified. What's the downside of using paypal to take visa?
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  • My first business was going to put me on easy street and, boy, was I disappointed. The point is, what I've learned since then, is the advice in #2 and #3 of this guide is NOT to be ignored. Invest plenty of time in those steps. This can save you ample time and money in the long run if you use those steps to determine if you should even start that business at all.
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  • Adding audio to websites can be very easy and you don't really need a 3rd party provider to accomplish it. For instance, you can convert audio to the quicktime format (.wav) and then upload that audio to your web server. From there, you can use a simple action reference tag (see an HTML tutorial) to point to the audio.
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  • Great guide Samuel. I have used istockphoto.com to buy low price ($1) stock photos for my web site. The good thing about this site -- easy to use and low prices for low resolution versions. Just to be clear, I think I had to set up an account for $10 and they gave me 10 credits. Low res photos were 1 credit.
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  • I always wonder how you can tell if it's a "she" or a "he" in second life. I guess it doesn't matter...I guess...
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  • OpenACS is an opensource (free) framework for web development that has an extensive internationalization feature. It comes with a ton of pre-built community applications, ie, forums, calendars, blogs, wiki, ecommerce, Content management, photo albems, etc -- and users can log-in and join groups, etc. Here is a site that is using openacs. The system allows for the user to switch the language of the applications, and if there isn't a translation yet, it makes it easy for somebody to translate.
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  • John, this is a good guide. I just read another guide about setting up a specific shopping cart called getting started with zen cart, which I think can help some of the people reading this guide.
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  • Great Guide Phil. This is very helpful to small business owners because you've listed every step somebody needs to go through to get the cart up. I'm wondering if you can point us to a couple of examples of sites with the zen cart up and running.
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  • Don't leave out Google Apps as a great suite of collaboration tools. Check out this work.com guide to google apps
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  • Promoting Websites - 04/25/2007
    This guide appears to be very self-serving. There is very little copy. All the resources are pointing back to one site. On wikipedia this is known as link spam.
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  • I setup up the paypal website standard and then upgraded to the virtual terminal so that I could accept credit card payments over the phone. This immediately helped my business as I could accept deposits in advance for services. I also avoided accounts payable efforts by getting payment in advance for services.
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  • Ya, trillian is great for keeping all the services together. Also, mac's ichat lets you do the same. I wonder if anybody is using IM successfully for customer support or sales?
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  • If gmail users mark your emails as SPAM, this can actually hurt your web site's chances in the Google search result pages. So I've adopted the practice of asking for a double opt in. This means once a user has signed up for "two free copies of my news letter", I send them the first two with a note at the top saying basically, "Hi John, please let me know if you want to continue seeing new issues of this news letter by clicking on this link or replying to this email". The list I end up with is smaller but they are enthusiastic readers.
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  • Spam Prevention - 03/22/2007
    Good guide Paul, I've heard of people who are using gmail to filter their spam. Gmail has an excellent spam filter based on user feedback. Now that google will let you host your email with your own domain at google apps, it seems like this is a good solution to the problem.
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  • If you want to lease a dedicated Microsoft Exchange server, try servepath.com for an excellent choice.
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  • This is a good basic guide on Adwords. Here is a tip I learned about creating dynamic headlines in Adwords so that they keywords that the user types in to Google appear in your advert. I also provide fixed priced Adwords management services for people who don't have time to deal with Adwords.
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  • Here are my notes on free web site content management systems, most of them are open source.
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  • I have noticed that plenty of sites rely on the browser to redirect domain.com to www.domain.com (or visa versa) and that one or the other actually don't resolve to the site (unless you're on certain web browsers.) However, I've done SEO for a long time and I haven't noticed the problem with www.domain.com and domain.com causing duplicate content issues or PR leak. Even if it did, I think this sort of thing is best handled in the DNS A records and not with mod_rewrite. If you have an A record to treat www as the main domain -- no problem -- and I think search engines like google handle it just fine. Besides, only apache server has mod_rewrite, not MS servers or AOLserver, etc. On the other hand, I have used mod_rewrite in SEO when a client is redesigning their entire site and I want to preserve deep backlinks with a permanent redirect.
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  • I've always thought that a good test to determine if a web site is usable (for everybody) is to see if you can navigate the site on a mobile phone. I designed my personal site with that in mind back in 2001 and it's finally paying off big. I won't need to redesign as more and more people start browsing with small screens.
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  • Google Apps - 03/21/2007
    I think this really puts extra pressure on Microsoft because, when the hosted applications paradigm for common office applications gets adopted, it will strike at the root of Microsoft's core business. Plus, Microsoft domination is under attack from many major fronts -- linux, apple, google, etc. I'm a big fan of these Google Apps and I use them in my Search Engine Consulting business and my New York Video Services business. I find them easy to learn and use and full of all the features you'd expect from things like a calendar, spreadsheet, email client, word processor and basic web content management. I'm a big fan. The videos are on that link, you just have to click on the images.
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  • How about lag time. The same reason there is an echo on cell phones. This could be a concern to online game players or video conferencing. I heard that they were sending up low altitude satellites to solve that problem. Has that happened yet?
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  • Don't forget blip.tv as a place to host videos. They allow you to place adverts before, during or after your video and they share the profit with you 50/50. For an example, check out this short video of my 2 year old riding a 2 wheeler -- one of those new Like a bike things for toddlers.
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  • I understand the frustration with webspam sites -- designed for search engines and search engines alone. However, I disagree that a web site needs graphics to be sucessful -- and I'll use craigslist.org as the ultimate example of that. I also want to agree with useit.com pointer. My test if a web site is sucessful: It works well on a cell phone.
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  • Nice humor in this guide. I agree, I agree, I agree.
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  • Here's my collection of SEO tools and sites. This includes links to keyphrase evaluation and other hosted applications that help with SEO.
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  • I provide blog ghost writing as part of my SEO Services.
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  • Google Reader - 03/01/2007
    It's strange, I've been putting RSS feeds on my sites for a long time but I haven't used a reader to read other sites yet. I'm going to Google right now and starting with the Work.com blog :-)
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  • This is a very good guide. As a freelance videographer in NYC, clients often ask me to make them 20 minute promotional videos -- which is too long in most cases. I've had clients return 6 months later asking me to cut it to 10 minutes -- which is still too long in most cases. You've got to say it in 4 to 5 minutes, especially if the delivery is on the web. There is a theory that: The smaller the screen size, the shorter the video should be. So that's why movies are 2 hours, TV shows are 30 or 60 minutes. Something that is 320x240 pixels should probably be 3 to 4 minutes. Also, don't forget about Blip.tv as an option for uploading web video for free.
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  • I've been using a framework for web applications called OpenACS, and it has a fully integrated "internationalization" feature. The applications (forums, ecommerce, blogs, wiki, etc) are already translated into many languages. This enables the user to select which language they speak and all the applications are translated to that language. Of course, for your own content, the company who uses this framework would have to provide their own translations, but look into openacs as a solution for companies that need a web site in many languages.
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  • Closing the deal is essential -- even online. Good guide.
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  • It may be syntax, but I've always had a problem with the term "community building". You can build things that enable or nurture the community, but the community itself -- the people -- can not be built. I know community nurturing will not be adopted over community building -- but add it to the long list of things that I feel are misnamed :-)
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  • I'm often selling things that cost a significant amount of money, ie, $500 to $60,000 -- usually software or high end marketing services. These are they types of purchases that are not impulse buys. Instead of trying to convince someone that they need my services, I ask them questions until they tell me that they need my services. It's a technique that I learned called SPIN selling and here's a basic review of the SPIN selling technique that I wrote. Basically, you ask implication questions, which help the lead verbalize the implications of their choices. Here's an example of how to come up with SPIN selling Implication questions. If you know of common situations in your industry, and common problems that your product solves, I recommend going that next step and coming up with questions that invite your prospective customers to verbalize the implications of those problems, instead of just trying to tell them that your product solves these problems that you're saying exist. It's better if they say they have a problem then if you tell them they have a problem.
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  • Here's a basic guide that I wrote about sales pipelines. So many small business owners that I meet, don't really understand the concept of the sales pipeline, and if they did, they'd definitely have more incentive to use their contact management software correctly. .
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  • Yes, put it this way, if you have customers, then you're in business. Almost every small business that is in trouble could be out of trouble if they just got some big customers. So face it, sometimes you just have to call someone and set up an appointment so you can show them what you have. Don't be afrade. Here is a book review of cold calling techniques that I use when I just have to smile and dial.
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  • Here's a review of a book on preparing for the first sales meeting which I often use to prepare for giving a presentation. It goes over some of the basics that are good to remember.
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  • This is a great guide. Having spent my adult life in San Francisco and New York City...I can't really comment on the challenges of staying connected in the rest of the country.
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  • I've used rackspace.com for many years as a leased server where I have root access. They're not the cheapest but they do have good support. Also, a new option appears to be on the rise, Grid Hosting which is where the hosting company distributes your web pages across a grid of many servers, which helps when there are spikes in traffic. Another note, every year the deals get better and better in terms of how much bandwidth, hard drives space, etc, that you can get from a web host. If you've reached your maximums, make sure you check around for the newer deals, which are bound to be far far better then what they were giving last year.
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  • Business Blogging - 01/01/2007
    I've used blogs as a part of small business sites simple to increase a web site's ranking in search engines like google. By publishing frequently and by linking out to relevant articles, search engines like Google (not to mention your customers) return more freqently.
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  • Anything that can get people to focus on their "about us" page is important -- that's why I love this guide. An about us page is a great place to humanize the corporation or company...it's not a company it's "us"! I think the about us page is a good place to tell the narrative or "story" of the company...and a good place to not take yourself too seriously. For instance, here's an example story that is meant to be funny and humanizing, which explains how we came up with the company name "John remembered that gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge. That sounded good but Gnosis.com was taken. So Eric suggested Gnosio, which got a good laugh. Later, Eric started babbling about a web site that claimed that Ghandi spoke of gnosis, not simply as knowledge, but as a 'sudden realization that changes ones current perspective into a perspective that is more truthful' Wow! By then we were hooked. Gnosio.com didn't seem so funny any more."
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  • Akwasi, ruby on rails still can still use apache and it can run on linux. Perl is a programing language. Ruby is a programming language. Unlike Perl, Ruby on Rails is more of a framework for web application development. My understanding of what this means is, in basic terms, it's like a predeveloped toolkit of common code that can be reused in typical web applications. Maybe someone can explain it better, for instance, many web applications contain forms (like this one I'm using to type this comment) and a framework for forms would be a single code in ruby that could be used in many applications, ie, a blog, a forum, a contact us form, a survey, or whereever on your web site that a form is needed to interact with your database.
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  • This isn't a guide to affiliate marketing!
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  • I agree that WebmasterWorld is the best resource for search engine related forums. There is so much information there.
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  • When was the term "world wide web" coined?
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  • This is a good guide. I'm wondering how a seller can protect themselves from Paypal's buyer protection plan. I've heard that paypal can sometimes take the buyer's side on things and is rather draconian with the sellers.
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  • This guide seams to be promoting one wholesaler. I'm wondering if you (or other interested people) could list some other sites that sell jewelry...
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  • One comment about user-friendly: It's not just about the site's navigation and architecture. Sometimes user-friendly is about the words and copy. I like sites that are clear about certain basic things: * what they actually do (ie, not just the benefits of what they do) * how much it costs * where they are located * how to get in touch with them It sounds simple, but there are countless examples of web sites that fail miserably at one or more of those points.
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  • Here is another list of Free Web Site Content Management Systems that, once set up, will help you maintain and contribute to your web site easily.
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  • It's the same as with hiring any staff or service. * view work they've created * check references
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  • During start-up, or if you have no web site at all, using one of these low cost templates might be the way to go. However, many of these templates that I see have problems that will ultimately present more problems then they save in terms of customization, cross browser compatibility and impression. By impression, you might be buying a style which, although it looks slick, metallic or modern, is actually dated, cheesy or worse. I guess my advice to someone who is looking at using a low cost template would be: Select 5 or 6 that you think would work and then ask plenty of creative or design oriented people for their opinions on which look would best represent your company.
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  • Upon rereading this guide, I have to say that the advice here is spot on target for making a site useful, and therefore popular in search engines. Small business owners would be wise to heed this advice, because it will pay off on-going in free leads that convert.
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  • Remember that the words "under construction" and "coming soon" also hurt the page in terms of how likely that page will be shown on a search engine result page, especially if those words represent a significant percentage of the content on that web page. In other words, search engines like Google penalize web sites that have pages or areas that are "under construction" or "coming soon".
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  • Web 2.0 - 11/19/2006
    It's good to keep up on the buzz words. I always thought Web 2.0 had something to do with Ajax. I guess I was wrong. It's a term to describe sites like Work.com, where users are empowered to contribute to the domain in new meaningful ways. Web 1.0 sites were maintained by a webmaster or a small development team. One way to judge how important a web site is is by counting how many people can contribute to it. Sites like ebay and craigslist are very important because millions of people contribute.
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  • Email Marketing 101 - 11/19/2006
    I recommend maintaining a double opt-in list. That is, users must opt-in to receiving email from you, and then at a future time, you ask them to opt-in to continuing to receive email from you. Some sites start spamming their "customers" without asking if that's okay with them. So just because you bought something from them, doesn't mean that you want to receive email from them forever (even if you forgot to uncheck the little box that invited them to send you email.) What these marketing people from these sorts of sites don't know: When gmail users (gmail is google's email application) start marking such email as spam, this may negatively affect the seach engine rankings of any URL within the emails. So these marketing people may be shooting themselves in the foot. They do increase second sales from customers at the expense of free search engine traffic in the future...
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  • I've used adwords to increase traffic to my sister's auctions with some sucess. It only works in some situations and you really have to watch your costs (obviously) to make sure that the effort is worth it. Does anyone else have stories of driving PPC traffic to ebay auctions?
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  • Isn't it better to let the employees know that you're going to start monitoring their internet usage? I think it's important for moral reasons and the employees' dignity. I don't mind if I'm being spied on if I know it's occuring. A worst case would be a boss who suddenly springs it on everyone "hey, for the past 3 weeks I've been watching which web sites you've been surfing and you three are fired and the rest of you -- you better watch out!"
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  • There used to be a time when the costs of starting an on-line store might have exceeded the benefits. Those days are gone. Thanks to services like yahoo, there is almost no excuse NOT to have an online store. Good guide!
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  • Good guide. I find that Pay per click from search engines works for most businesses, but it doesn't always work as well for every product. For instance, it's hard to compete with a random unique luxury gift product, because "gift" is very competitive and unless the searcher is looking for exactly what you have (and how would they know) then the click through and conversion rates aren't always high enough to justify the costs of the adverts. Examples of where it will work are typically things that people go to search engines specifically to look for, ie, computer parts, travel, mortgages, insurance, hotels, books, baby gear, furniture, etc.
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  • A search engine friendly web site is a user friendly web site -- organized, labeled, categorized, helpful or useful. Thanks for the guide!
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  • Nice collection of cafe-links!
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  • This guide doesn't help me use clickbank at all. After reading the guide, I don't even understand what clickbank is.
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  • There is no doubt that, from a direct marketing point of view, you want to test landing pages. When the pages are part of the web site, they must link home. Every page is your home page :-) I agree as a general rule that frequent call to actions as well as less navigation or links from the page tend to increase its conversion rates. Therefore, a store should have the contact information on every page -- not just a link to "contact us"! Nice guide!
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  • In the long run, I don't think "link spam" is going to be a major problem (although it can be a tad annoying these days). People who go around spamming wikipedia with external links, commenting on blogs or creating content in forums, etc, might fool some search engines for a couple of months/years. Google has already moved beyond that as they track actual user behavior now, and not just the number and quality of backlinks. As a long term goal, I don't think this sort of link development activity as having much value in by itself, unless the pointers are associated with helpful content.
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  • Guanxi is an interesting concept. I wonder if there are signs that a Westerner can easily see which indicate that enough Guanxi has been achieved to move forward in the business relationship. What are some of the signs? How can a Westerner indicate that they believe enough guanxi has been established to do business, without appearing pushy or foolish?
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  • I really like this guide and Scott's comment about the 10 most practical blogs. I'm marking this as a "favorite" so I'll come back later and search these resources. Thanks!
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  • The main benefit that I enjoy with hosted applications is that I can access the data or application from any office.
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  • With free hosting you have to watch out that it's worth more then what you're paying for -- nothing. I'm cautious using free services like myspace or blogger to host content essential to my business. I'm afraid they might go out of business or start charging. That said, it probably doesn't hurt to have a myspace page for your business, in addition to businesses web site.
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  • Squidoo - 10/04/2006
    A centralized repository of information is the value of the network but it's also part of the problem. There is so much information that we can't see. Using different filters or aggregations of links or searches are ways to extract and amplify the value of the web. There is no question that a collection of links is content, however, when the links contain even the smallest bits of meta data -- a snippet of text describing what you'll find at those links -- personalization -- that's where a page truly succeeds. Therefore, the Squidoo page will only boost your Google rankings when you've started to make it a useful or helpful destination for the user.
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  • One good way to learn about HTML is to view the source of web pages that you're visiting. You can do this on almost all web browsers. On Firefox browser you go to the View menu and then select "page source". Start by looking at simple web pages like this one or this one
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  • I'm a big fan of hosted applications and I keep almost all my business data online (behind password protection, of course). This way, I can get at it from any web browser (or web enabled cell phone). I remember the first time I didn't need to take my palm or laptop on a business trip -- I had it all available from my phone! Still, Google has some good hosted applications, for instance, Google Spreadsheet to replace excel and Google Calendar and Google Sketchup, a 3d drawing program. (not to mention gmail). Anyway, there are many advantages to having data and applications hosted as opposed to installed on your system.
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  • I stay away from bringing emerging technology in my business (although I do tend to buy new gadgets for myself, I admit.) First of all, if my old printer works, I'm not going to upgrade -- why introduce the possibility of introducing gear that isn't as reliable as my old printer. Secondly, I feel that plenty of products are over hyped and over designed -- too many features that I don't need. Finally, I like to buy at the bottom of the price curve, so if Apple has 3 versions of the imac -- fast, faster and fastest -- I'll probably buy the fast one and not pay twice as much for the relatively small incremental step to the fastest.
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  • I use an opensource toolbox called OpenACS which has all these community resources -- forums, blogs, photo albums, surveys, content management, wiki -- under one single login. I use it on these two sites, MyTLC and FMAllen - luxury African safari. If you want help having openacs as the framework for your site, you can post in the openacs forum and I'm sure people will help.
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  • the lock it technically a "service" but yes I think it's sneaky too because they don't always ask if you want the lock -- it's an opt out feature! So if they succeed in delaying a transfer until the domain is about to expire, the domain owner has no choice but to renew. Although some registrars credit new customers with time remaining on the domain, most don't. Therefore, domain owners tend to wait until the end of their time before trying to transfer. This is why these delay techniques work so well.
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  • I've found that whenever I have a site that allows users to leave feedback, I have to watch out for Link Spam.
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  • The number one way hackers get unauthorized access to systems: They guess the passwords! There are a whole bunch of social engineering (basically lying to gain confidential information) tricks used to that end. Everything from sending phishing messages to just calling up and pretending to be someone else. People look for scraps of paper around the computers of users to find passwords. Basically, the user is the weak link in computer security and hackers have many tools to exploit this weakness.
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  • On my google adwords campaigns I'm always testing two adverts against each other. Sometimes, a single word or a comma, even, will make a significant difference in click through rate. Since google rewards adverts with higher click through rates, I save real dollars by continuing to refine my campaigns
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  • When I'm taking pictures of small products, I set up a little studio. I put it on a table with either a black or white table cloth and back drop. Of course, it's in a well lit room and I add even more lights. That way, the camera doesn't need flash and the fstop doesn't have to be all the way open.
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  • I've had sucess using SPIN Selling techniques. The meat of this techniqe focuses on "Implication Questions", which are questions about the consequences or effects of a customer's problems. The goal of using these questions is to persuade the customer to EXPLICITLY state a need that you can solve. Like Socrates's, you ask many of these questions to help somebody realize that they have a problem that you can solve. Here's a SPIN Selling book summary.
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My Favorite Guides

  1. Small Business Blogs - 09/15/2006


    Find out what other businesses are doing with this powerful tool
    Shara Karasic, Work.com Community Manager

  2. Landing Page Optimization - 03/25/2008


    Increase your conversion rate with just a few simple steps on your landing page design
    Eve Lopez

  3. Producing a Promotional Video - 01/25/2007


    The right video can give a big boost to your small business
    Elaine Grant

  4. Learning Search Engine Optimization - 10/09/2006


    Learn how to rank in Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and other major search engines.
    aaron wall

  5. Litigation Forms - 04/13/2008


    Navigating the field of litigation forms can help you help yourself in court
    Wesley Ratko

  6. Social Media Monitoring - 09/11/2008


    Social Media Monitoring: A Lesson From United Airlines
    Marianne Hynd

  7. Free Internet Access - 10/15/2007


    Click your way to savings with free Internet service providers
    Gwen Helene Kleist

  8. Pharmaceutical Sales and Marketing Consulting - 06/04/2008


    Motivation, research and solutions are required for pharmaceutical sales and marketing consulting
    Geraldine McGowan

  9. Optimize your Website for Local Search - 03/05/2008


    Who uses the Yellow Pages anymore?
    Justin Palmer

  10. Building Sales with Email Autoresponders - 09/15/2006


    Stay in constant contact with your prospects
    Linda Formichelli

  11. Address Search - 09/15/2006


    A little effort on address search can beat fraud and wasted mailing.
    Dave Chartock
Work.com