Category Archives: Internet

Like an eSilverBullet to the Heart of Online Affiliate CRM

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Anyone who has done affiliate marketing can agree that keeping track of online publishers, affiliate networks, and numerous advertisers–across multiple platforms can be a nightmare. Although it’s not especially common to hear online affiliates talk about how they keep track of the different customers and clients that they interface with in their daily crusades throughout cyber-space, one can only ask why we haven’t heard about it sooner?

I recently came across eSilverBullet, which I think has a great solution for online affiliate crm. You can track prospective advertisers and prospective publishers… It’s packed with different online affiliate crm features. The list below breaks down their different packages, although as you can see, it is extremely packed with features, each of which has more information about it on their website.
• Import/Export Simplicity: Quickly import contact information.
• Live Contact Data: Let your contacts update their information for you.
• Task Master: Let’s you stay focused on your to-do list.
• Powerful Prospecting: provides professional grade prospecting tools.
• Sales Management: Provides integrated tools to map the sales process and close the deal.
• Account Differentiation: Manage publishers, advertisers and networks as separate customer types.
• Fast Searches: allows you find what you’re looking for in seconds.
• Communication Logs: Keep a record of calls, meetings, emails, notes and tasks in one location.
• Network Affiliations: Know who is running on what networks.
• Market Verticals: Segregate your advertisers or publishers by market.
• Mobile Access: Access contact information on your phone.
Standard Package Includes:
• Institutional Knowledge Retention: Prevents your customer list and conversation history from walking away.
• Intra-office Coordination: Allows you to divide tasks among coworkers.
• Program Management: Keep a record of your advertiser’s campaigns.
• Digital Filing: Attach agreements, insertion orders, W-9s, etc. to contacts.
• Easy Email: Enjoy one-click emailing at the contact level
• Email Templates: Stop wasting time rewriting email messages.
Premium Package Includes:
• Email Blasts: Send effective email campaigns to multiple recipients.
• Effortless Follow-ups: Automate follow-up communications with your contacts and prospects.
• Custom Configuration: Create your own data fields and tabs.

Of course eSilverBullet is coming out with another great tool for online affiliate marketers: Tracking Statistics Aggregation. This tool will allow customers to pull tracking data from multiple networks and tracking systems into a single report… Cool cool.

They’ve got a free download on their website http://esilverbullet.com for a trial package. It takes less than a minute to get in and start test-driving things and see what you think.

Their may be no panacea to affiliate marketing… but is there a silver-bullet?

Do Follow Links from Kellerblog

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Over the past week I’ve spent a lot of time looking for good blogs that have search engine friendly comments enabled…

I’m proud to say that Kellerblog is a very search engine friendly blog. Complete with disabled no follow tags and an open invitation to comment on anything that you can add value to.

Enjoy!

Online Dating Rapid Penetration Dilluting the Market

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For a long time online dating has been one of the fastest growing segments on the internet. The relationship of Large Online Dating Companies and profitability has taken a sharp turn. Although market adoption has still been growing at substantial leaps, the number of new companies entering the market has grown at a much faster rate, absorbing most of the growth for themselves. Here’s an article that tells more about it.

The concept makes me smile when I think about the little online dating company that my friend has recently purchased and is working to build it up. The website is LDS Friends… Which as you might imagine specifically targets the LDS Dating niche. It includes a craigs listing type sales page. as well as a number of other member services that lds match seekers could enjoy.

Niche dating websites are popping up all over the web. Although large corporations are trimming their fat, eventually the market will stabilize and new companies will work to the top. While now is not the best time to enter the market, it seems like a great time to be a player while things remain so mobile.

To help start your website… Get G.I.M.P.

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Either for fun, or if starting a website for your own home-based business, here’s a few helpful tips to start your own business website and hopefully avoid some problems.

When a person first wants to start their own website. There are few costs they need to take into consideration, (these are not all in the order they might appear in your individual quest).

Domain Registration
Hosting

Graphic’s Editor

Page Editor (unless you program from code, which can get a little long after a while)

Pictures (Unless you plan on taking all of your own)

Merchant Account

Today I just want to briefly mention Graphics editor. I once purchased a full photoshop suite from an O.E.M. reseller. About 8 months later, my hard-drive crashed and I when I contacted them to get another key to unlock the software, they were no where to be found. I came to find out later that the company I purchased from got caught in a big scam and is now editing his graphics in prison.

Honestly, if you have the money and want to invest it in some good software, I would suggest you get Photoshop (at least) the other programs that come in the suite are nice as well.

If you have don’t have the money or otherwise don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on software you may not use, I would suggest you get The GIMP. This program takes a little bit to download and install but is really a helpful little tool.

It’s a little less than super-user-friendly, but i’d imagine that you could install it less than 15 minutes… Visit Gimp.org and check it out… For people who have windows and want to skip right to installing it… Here’s the quick links.

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html once you get here, Install the appropriate add on, (I prefer to run XP but select the add on appropriate for you), then download and install the “GIMP FOR WINDOWS” button.

Install it, then enjoy! You’re that much closer to making the website of your dreams!

iPhone Gets Hacked… Businesses and Individuals Need to Protect Themselves

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The iPhone may seem like an immortal device, (check out this YouTube iphone spoof) but even it has its weaknesses. The New York Times has just released an article that states the iPhone has a security hole that allows remote control or hazing/fisching with fake websites. We knew it was bound to happen. It kinda reminds me of the line in Jurassic Park where Malcolm, (played by Sam Neill) says, “Nature will find a way”. But really when it comes to hacking, “People will find a way.”

The iPhone is the perfect item to hack as well. Limited supplies and relatively high-costs, (for a smartphone) mark its users as targets: Not only as die-hard Mac fans (for Steve Jobs’ next big product), but also as people with money who do a number of transactions over the internet. Intercepting or placing spyware could be very valuable to information theives. In addition to getting credit card information or typing histories, think of how great it would be to also pick up names, numbers, pictures, email addresses and more–all conveniently stored in the same location.

Identity theft has a long history. (Check out this wikipedia article.) The increased danger of hacked identity is more than a Hollywood storyline, (although The Net was a fun movie and one of Sandra Bullock’s better performances). The truth is that the advent of new technology is raising risks not only in the depths of thefts, but also in the breadth and number of people who can be affected.

For now, Apple has released information on a plug-in that can help patch the problem. Check out exploitingiphone.com for more information. But really, big brothers, (like the NSA) or little brothers (like local scam artists) can be tough to shake.

Here’s a website that offers great information on how to protect yourself from scams and hacking. Anyone who does business or shares information should be familiar with information theft and its prevention. Check out the ID Theft Center website and the FTC Identity Theft website for more information.

Really though, we can’t live our lives in fear. The main thing is: be careful what unsecured wi-fi networks you join. And if we’re going to do business and live anyhow, why not do it with an iPhone?

i is for (l)Itigation.

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The world sighs as Apple shows a significant increase in stock value with the release of their new iphone. Interestingly enough, Cisco has side swiped them with a litigation for trademark infingement.

Here’s an article that tells more about the whole iphone debate…

It’s a toughy because there are a number of other people who have been operating with the same product name. Who really gets it? If only there were a biblical solution to find the true mother of the iphone baby…

Alas only time will tell. In the mean time however, it is certainly great publicity for any and all iphones out there.

Starting Your Small Business

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I hear a lot of the statement, “John, I have this great idea…” The simple truth is there are billions of great ideas out there, but the person that makes it happen is truly unique.

Listed below is a basic frame-work I developed to teach an introductory class to help people without prior business experience understand more about about their small business idea and how to make it a reality. (There are a myriad of resources available for people who wish to learn more… More will be forth coming)

Starting Your Small Business

What is your Business? Identify just what it is that your business accomplishes. For example, if Juanita sells beef tacos, she can look at her business and say, “I sell beef tacos.” Or, she can look at her business and say, “I sell quality food services”. The first statement is somewhat restrictive where the second allows the flexibility for Jane to adapt and make the most money from her venture.

Getting a mission statement. What is the ultimate goal of your business? This mission statement helps everyone involved gain a better understanding of just what it is you wanted to accomplish. It is important that the mission statement provides focus and flexibility. Jennifer should not limit her mission statement to, “Jennifer’s Taco shop wants to sell a lot of tacos”. Rather it should be more specific it outlining her ultimate goal as succinctly as possible. “Jennifer’s Taco shop works to ensure that everyone one in Chicago enjoys Jennifer’s quality beef tacos and unbeatable customer service”.

Basic marketing elements. There are four very important elements to marketing your business, and a few questions to evaluate them.

• Product– What is my product? How is my product different from what other people can offer? What can I do to make my product better? What can I do to make my product more cost efficient?

• Promotion– How do my customers here about my product? What is the most effective way for people to hear about my product and services? What can I do to integrate that into the promotion of my product?

• Price– What is my cost of goods? What is the cost of operation? How much do I charge my customer? What are they willing to pay? What incentives do I offer to buy more product?

• Distribution– How do people get my product? Does the location of the sales of my goods meet with the demand?

Organization:
• Financial: maintain books that show the cash flow in your business. The more detailed you keep the records, the more information you will have to develop your business in the future.

• Tasks: Outline the responsibilities of your business in as much detail as possible. This is important to not only help you be organized, but to also provide the structure by which you can expand or lighten your work load in the future.

• Inventory: Make sure that you keep running count of your inventory. If the amount in your inventory doesn’t match the amount it shows you have in the books, for more or for less, do what you can to figure out what happened.

Remember what you’re doing and why you’re doing it! Your business provides incredible opportunity to learn and grow! Work to have your business work with education and family development, to provide even greater opportunity and freedom in the future.

Save as much money as you can and avoid spending money on things that do not provide benefit for the business or family. (ie. Tobacco, alcohol, entertainment magazines etc.)

Time is money. Do not waste time. Look for opportunities to further your education. Read books, watch videos and listen to audio cds that teach good business principles. Avoid watching television or movies that do not promote family unity, education or good financial practices, (this includes novellas).

Techy past times…

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So we had a little fun with a inter-company competition of ping pong yesterday. A few of the guys from our little Books Collection and Redistribution company, (Worldwide Book Drive), met up with the guys and Sewelldirect.com and and suffered a clear defeat. It was a great break away from the daily grind and fun for everybody. I remember a long time ago that Preston Wily, Sewelldirect President and COO, suggested starting up a local company competition circuit. But it never quite got off the ground. Feel free to check out its roots anyways at bizpong.com

I think it would be a great idea to get a sort of interbusinessmurals going… There’s a good name for a website (kinda long, but could become a new term :)

301 Redirect Lessons

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I’ve recently been trying to learn about 301 Redirects to improve traffic and search engine ranking. Unfortunately I’m no programmer and it has taken off my stats and the ability to view my template on some browsers. I’ve still got a lot to learn about this redirect business, so I’ll get back to you when I do :)

SEO TOOLS

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With all of the recent excitement of the SEO conference in Vegas, I decided it might be a good opportunity to garnish the subject with my contributions.

I get asked questions about search engine optimization (seo) all of the time. While I certainly am not the expert on the subject, (I’m privelaged to know a few who are). I have found the information on these sites not only to be helpful because of their optimization for search engines, but also for marketing and increasing click through rate (ctr) with your customers.

There are a lot of sites out there, but I would say the two I use the most are certainly

Jakob Nielsen’s website

SEOmoz.

They don’t have all of the answers, but the articles, links and tools between these two websites certainly handle the bulk of even most advanced webmasters.

Enjoy!