E-Biz Booster Blog

Email Marketing Tips - My New Blog Carnival

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:05:00 -0700

Email marketing is more important than ever. It's a very cost effective means to stay connected with your customers and prospects. And you do not only want to stay connected, you want to build a relationship with your members.

While social media platforms like twitter and facebook allow you to be present as a business, as a marketer, they very often change the rules, … You don't want to be at their mercy. Build your email list. Start now and continue to grow it.

Email Marketing Tips - Blog Carnival

→ Submit your email marketing related blog post to the next edition on Feb. 7, 2012.

The Archive

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 28, Jan 31, 2011
Upcoming
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 27, Oct 27, 2010
Includes: (*) Behavioural Targeting, (*) Sharing via Email vs. Social Media, (*) Tips to Improve Your ROI, and more …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 26, Oct 14, 2010
Includes: (*) False idols: 4 beliefs that can hurt your email marketing, (*) Keyword Research for Email Marketing, (*) 12 Email Marketing Tips For Small Business, (*) 7 Books About Email Marketing, and more …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 25, Sep 30, 2010
Includes: (*) Email Deliverability; (*) Email Marketing Jargon Explained; (*) Top 3 Sales Copy Mistakes; (*) 8-step E-mail marketing refresher, and more …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 24, Jul 24, 2010
Includes: (*) Getting to Know E-Mail Recipients; (*) Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide; (*) Aweber Tutorial; and more …

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 23, Jun 5, 2010
Includes: (*) The Right Way To Buy A List; (*) Sharing Your Newsletter on Social Media; (*) 8 Eail Marketing Tips; and more …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 22, May 19, 2010. Hosted at Internet Marketing With Pat Doyle
Includes: (*) Affiliate marketing: $103,789.85 revenue in 2009; (*) Email is not dead; (*) Funny side of customer service;
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 21, canceled
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 20, Apr 7, 2010
Includes: (*) Email marketing on autopilot; (*) How often should send your emails? (*) Increase the open rate; (*) Get a higher ROI; (*) The one missing thing; and more …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 19, Mar 23, 2010
Includes: (*) Copywriting tips from David Deutsch and Sonia Simone; (*) Email Template Design Tips; (*) “Single or Double Opt-in?” and more, …
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 18, Jun 19, 2009
Includes: (*) Why you should build YOUR email list; (*) How to improve your writing; (*) Better scheduling for your autoresponder follow-up messages, and more …
Email Marketing Tips - 17 (History), Feb 19, 2009
Includes: “Do you have an opt-in form?”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 16, Jan 20, 2009
Includes: Tips and case-studies on email subject lines, how to send video emails (can you?), much more,… and last issue of Chris Garrett's series about email marketing for bloggers. A real power edition, great start in 2009.
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 15, Dec 12, 2008
Includes: Tips for authors & freelancers, affiliate marketing strategies, email marketing tips for bloggers from expert Chris Garrett, and much more. This is the last carnival edition of 2008.
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 14, Nov 26, 2008
Includes: Email marketing tips for bloggers from expert Chris Garrett, tips on how to prepare for Christmas and clues about copywriting,…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 13, Nov 10, 2008
Includes: Tips from Yaro Starak about targeting, auto-responder tips from John W. Furst, copywriting email tips for bloggers, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 12, Oct 29, 2008
Short Edition, because blogcarnival.com is down, again. Includes: Chris Garrett's killer post about how to increase the return of investment (ROI) of your Email campaigns…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 11, Oct 17, 2008
Includes: A video tip from Ed Rivis about tracking life time value. Chris Garrett writes about plugging holes in your campaign, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 10, Oct 1, 2008
Includes: Tips about video emails, email etiquette, social networking, and email marketing tips for bloggers by Chris Garrett, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 9, Sep 15, 2008
Includes: Tips for a more catchy subject line, explains testing, continues with the 2nd article about list building for bloggers from Chris Garrett, and more…
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 8, Sep 03, 2008
Hosted at Internet Marketing Chaos - Internet Business Without Hype
Includes: Tips about list building, choosing subject line, and timing of your campaigns
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 7, Aug 26, 2008
Includes: Tips from Ryan Deiss about increasing the opt-in rate and an email marketing course for bloggers written by Chris Garrett
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 6, Aug 6, 2008
Includes: John Carlton, “Who Gets Read” (about copywriting)
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 5, Jul 23, 2008
Includes: Ed Rivis, “1,035 email subscribers in 35 days”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 4, Jul 9, 2008
Includes: Marcus Hochstadt, “Freebie Seekers” (about strategy)
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 3, Jun 25, 2008
Includes: Fred Black, “Behind Bars: Could the New FTC CAN-SPAM Rules Land You In JAIL?”, and Ed Rivis, “How to increase sales by 300%”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 2, Jun 11, 2008
Includes: Manuel Viloria, “Is Listbuilding Just A Dream?”
Email Marketing Tips - Edition 1, May 28, 2008
Includes: Brian Terry, “Become a Listbuilding Genius!”

The facts are as follows:

Description: The tag line says it all! I.e. Tested tips and tricks, copy writing for email campaigns, comparison of providers, scheduling, how to ..., software reviews, web site integration, how to collect email addresses at a fair, legal issues, ..., etc.
Keywords: autoresponder,email,marketing,business,newsletter,list building
Filed under: business
Submission deadline: every second monday at 11pm Pacific time as in Los Angeles, CA, USA
Submission categories: copywriting, tools and services, legal, strategy, general tips
Maintained by: John W. Furst

→ Submit your email marketing related blog post to the next upcoming edition.

I will refine the submission guidelines as I move forward with this. And I definitely don't come up with stupid rules, like “1 submission per author, per blog, per edition, but only when the sun shines on the other side of the country you are living in”. It's cumbersome for authors to keep track.

What kind of content seems appropriate?

Again, the tag line, “How to successfully use email autoresponders and follow-up newsletters in your business”, says it all.

Subjects like:

Tested tips and tricks
copy writing for email campaigns
comparison of providers
scheduling
how to …
software reviews
web site integration
squeeze pages know how
how to collect email addresses at a fair
legal issues
the more recent the better
specific advice better than general blabla
…, etc.

I'd like to see a lot of original, recent articles from real people on real Blogs with about info and a real email address.

First edition will be hosted here on this E-Biz Booster Blog on Wednesday, May 28^th, 2008.

Yours
John W. Furst

Sign-up for my newsletter at http://blog.fcon21.biz and receive ‘Become More Productive - Get Email Under Control, and more …’ To claim your free gift go there now and sign up”.
Copyright ©2012 by John W. Furst. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0.

SOPA Is Off The Table For Now

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 02:55:00 -0700

“SOPA is on hold”

When I heard the news that SOPA in its current form has been put on ice, I was relieved. I had outlined the reasons why I am opposing SOPA (↑) a couple of days ago on this blog.

Another battle in this ongoing war has been won, but the war is not over yet. Will there ever be an end to the debate?

Like look at this article in the Forbes magazine about what happened 30 years before SOPA, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) feared the VCR (↑) (video cassette recorder).

The new target is the Internet

There will always be a struggle between those who wish to defend the status quo and those who embrace change.

Don’t be afraid of “the New,” embrace it and look for opportunities.

As a side note: I was positively surprised that Neelie Kroes (↑), Vice President of the European Commission, responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe, criticized SOPA very publicly.

Neelie Kroes tweets about SOPA and defends a free Internet.

To sum it up, here is a rundown of some articles I found useful.

+Pete Cashmore (↑) of Mashable posted a couple of links about the demise of SOPA. It’s a battle won but the war might go on.

SOPA Is Dead: Smith Pulls Bill (↑)
RIP SOPA: The Internet Kills Its Attackers (↑)
Facebook ‘Relieved’ That SOPA Is Dead (↑)
Could SOPA Rise From the Dead? (↑)

Stay tuned as the protectionist will fire back as soon as they have caught their breath.

To Your Success

Yours
John W. Furst

SOPA And Protect IP: Free Internet At Risk

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:11:52 -0700

Welcome in 2012!

My first post this year will be a short one but nevertheless a very important one.

The Free Internet in the USA is at risk!

It is challenged by two proposed laws which basically will allow or even require censorship.

While the intent of the legislation is noble, “Stop online piracy and copyright theft!” The means the law provides will do more harm than good. And not only in the USA. There will be some global collateral effects as well.

At least this is my personal take.

Some say, “This will break the Internet as we know it!”

Here is what I wrote in a private forum earlier today.

Interesting sometime “hot” discussion here.

My take:

Successful pirates move faster than any law enforcement. They always have been and always will. That’s their business model.
They need to be stopped where they are.
No US law will stop them.
This law might stop some amateurs with a negligible volume, but not the big boys (and girls.)
… and this law will cause more collateral damage than the society will benefit from it.

More Links:

End Piracy, Not Liberty (↑) on Google.
In Face Of Protests, Congressmen Begin To Abandon SOPA Ship (↑) on TechCrunch.
When the world changes... (↑) by Seth Godin.
Why We’ve Censored Wired.com (↑) by Evan Hansen on Wired, saying, “SOPA and PIPA represent a legal strategy that focuses the attention of business leaders on stopping losses rather than promoting innovation and building new products. It obfuscates the fact that piracy is, in the long run, an unavoidable cost of doing business, one that should be bearable provided the fundamentals of the business (say, customer satisfaction) are sound.”
A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP (↑) by Jason Harvey on Reddit.

And did you notice that Wikipedia (↑) is blacked out as a protest. Here is more info on that (↑).

People discussion, protesting, debating, …, putting pressure on those who have been elected into office (most likely based on a set of totally different issues—don’t forget that!)

That’s democracy alive!
Let’s hope it wins.

Bravo!

Now, do yourself a favour. Get the information, make up your mind, and take action if you choose to.

To Your Success

Yours
John W. Furst

Need Results? Are You Disciplined More Than Others?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:10:50 -0600

Have you ever been frustrated, because business is not moving forward? You are giving it all, but success seems to be far away. Many business people know this kind of situation. Whether as part of a big team that they are managing or as solo entrepreneurs, who run on their own.

In my experience it is even harder for the lonely rider to cope with “lack of success”, because there is no social support by colleagues, no other department, nor the “stupid boss” that you could blame for lack of results. (There’s no big budget to cover up inefficiencies as easily as well.)

From the many different types of businesses an Information Product Business seems to provide many benefits, like

low startup cost,
high margins,
and you don’t really need an office

You and me know that thousands of people try to get their Internet based business off the ground, but most of them give up too early.

Why is that?

They are overwhelmed by the amount of information and advice that’s available (either for free or for sale), they get it all, but what’s missing is the big plan that ties it all together.

The biggest challenge might be how to manage yourself. Once you got yourself under control doing business becomes many times easier. I’d love to give you good advice on how to run your businesses, especially if it is an Internet based business, but I rather refer you to someone, who has a greater track record and who is devoted to teach this stuff.

Talking about managing yourself and your business, you might want to check out the following video.

→ Becoming A Productive Modern Guru (link expired)
by Eben Pagan (~37minutes)

Eben gives you a lesson on how he uses time in his 20 million $ a year info product business. It contains a strong personal as well business message. A business owner or manager is a strong leveraging point of the business. The smother you run, the smother the business brings in the proceeds you are looking for.

Just to give you an idea, what Eben is talking about

Time allocation:

40% traffic generation
20% conversion
10% content and product creation
30% management (time + people + business)

That’s one key element of his business success.

Does this get you interested?

You may like or not like Eben’s style, but I am sure you can improve your performance, when you act on some of Eben’s tips.

Warning: This is not a magic bullet that will make you rich over night. No! Success requires discipline, determination, and work. Watching the video’s or even going to the video blog will waste your time, unless you act on some of the info you get there for free. I guess that’s fair enough.

To make it worthwhile you should tune out any possible interruptions, take notes, and even more importantly, put some of the stuff on your to do list.

But it doesn’t have to stop with time management. You virtually find the blueprint for your successful info product business on this videoblog.

→ Blueprint for a Successful Information Business… (link expired)

7 Steps to financial freedom with your own info, advice product business.
(~2 hours)

One of the key points in his video:

“Find out first what people are going to buy from you, then perfect your business around it. Not the other way around.”

Enjoy.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Even though Eben sells his high end coaching program right now, there are no strings attached on his blog.

Masscontrol and Co - Massive Launches Compared!

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:34:00 -0700

Alexa Reach

If you are following “the” Internet Marketing Masterminds you certainly have been overwhelmed by the large amount of free quality information that was given away prior to following product launches lately.

I am talking about the following launches:

SMARTS (link expired) from StomperNet
Pulled off the market for strategic reasons soon after the launch (the story is quite long, I don't really want to blog about it.)
Internet Marketing Explained (link expired!) from Armand Morin
Homestudy course, still available; it's not limited in quantities sold as far as I know.
Masscontrol (link expired) from Frank Kern
30 day class, limited to about 500 people,
sold out in less than an hour at a ticket price of about 2,000 $

Now, look at the Alexa graphs (screenshot on 2008 Feb 03)

Alexa Reach

Alexa Rank

You might remember John Reese's BlogRush Launch in mid September, and Rich Schefren's product launch (strategicprofits.com) in December last year. I added them to the Alexa Graph for comparison.

Frank Kern nailed the bullseye with his MASSCONTROL Launch.

Well, done and congratulation!
Or what else would you say?

Now, if you still want to learn Internet marketing from one of the best marketers.

Check out Armand's offer in detail (link expired)

Currently (as of today) there are still some of the great bonuses available. Like a live seminar in March, extra videos, … Just go to his sales letter, if you are serious. I believe the bonuses expire or change at midnight. So you want to check this out now (link expired).

Bottom Line

If you want to build a new business or improve an existing one, you need to invest in education for yourself and your staff.
If you invest wisely, you will achieve a good return on investment.
If you only want to play business and see how it goes, of course, than you don't need to do anything.

What I personally learned in life with any discipline is:

“Learn from the best!
It's not inexpensive, but it's worth it.”

Yours
John W. Furst

Update: Quote from Yaro Starak of entrepreneurs-journey.com

Mass Control - Email Marketing Tips From Frank Kern Courtesy Of The Biggest Launch In History (link expired).

If buying programs like Mass Control are out of your league, start working towards the day when you can afford to buy these products because you make good money online. Study the free content Frank puts out. Learn from the content itself and also how it fits into Frank’s overall strategy and launch style. It’s compelling stuff if you are into Internet marketing, no matter what niche you operate in.

Yaro Starak
Mass Controlled

Discover Headline Testing Secrets!

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:22:12 -0700

Eric Graham - The Conversion Doctor

Here is a valuable tip from me. Check this out!

The Conversion Doctor Eric Graham reveals results from his headline testings that he has performed during the last 12 month. You know, that increasing the conversion ratio of your web site is a key strategy to outperform you competitors and to increase your sales volume.

Eric Graham is a leading authority in this field. Top copywriters like Michael Fortin are saying about Eric,

“I not only listen, when Eric speaks, I also take notes!”

Headline Testing Secrets Revealed!
“Fanatical Tester Pulls Back The Curtain and Exposes The Real World Results of His Most Profitable Headline Tests… ”
( … The boost you'll get from just one of these tweaks will make this webinar the most profitable 60 minutes you've ever spent!)

FREE, LIVE “Webinar”Monday, February 4th, 2008
8:00 - 9:00 P.M. Eastern

In this power packed 60 minute LIVE Webinar I'll share my latest and most surprising headline testing results.
Simply apply these tested and proven findings to YOUR headlines and convert a much higher percentage of your visitors into buyers, almost overnight!
Just a few of the valuable, profit producing nuggets of wisdom you'll see and hear on this breakthrough LIVE, Webinar event are…
The single biggest headline writing mistake I see 90% of all websites making. (And it's even being made by those who should know better!)
Why to test, how to test and what to test in your headlines to maximize your sales and minimize your marketing costs.
The actual, real world results of many of my most profitable headline tests. (And I've conducted over 6,000 of them…)
How to test up to 24 headlines (and combinations) at the same time. (WITHOUT having to run the test forever just to see the results!)
And much, much more…

There are ~~500~~ 201 spots available as I write this.

The Webinar is FREE, you only pay your long distance charges. I am calling in from Europe, because I was on Eric's Webinars before, and I know it's worth it.

Here is the direct link.

Update as of Jan. 23, 2010: I became aware of various rumors concerning business practices of Mr. Graham's company. Especially that he doesn't always deliver 100% of the services purchased and did not grant refunds in several incidents. Please, check out Ryan Healy's blog “Internet Marketing on Life Support (↑)” for more information. Eric Graham replied in one comment to parts of the accusations. Personally I am neither a customer nor affiliate of Eric just think his information is valuable. It's a pitty. Please, make up your own mind. Thanks.

Reserve Your Spot: FREE Webinar: Headline Testing (expired)

You also might want to check out Eric's recent post, too.

Glyphius After 181 Test Rounds - How Does It Really Stack Up? (not found)

Yours
John W. Furst

Your Best Idea Might Be ... (One of Many Things)

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:21:56 -0700

Brand Catalyst and Verbal Designer Bernadette Jiwa is a Linchpin as Seth Godin has redefined the word almost two years ago.

Here is her piece of Art

The Idea Manifesto

Find out more at http://thestoryoftelling.com/idea-manifesto/

A compelling piece of Art that is supposed to spread.
(And it can be spread rather easily.)

Let’s pick it up and share it.

That is what I am doing right now.

Pick up your free copy and help spread the word.

Yours
John W. Furst

10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs To Grow Continuously

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:00:15 -0700

While waking up this morning I suddenly found myself having a pen in my hand and scribbling 2 ideas for a new blog post on a piece of paper. Here is the first one.

Probably you can help me out and post as a comment, who had said the following originally.

“If your business doesn't grow it dies.”,

It is certainly true.

As the population grows, as markets grow, someone else will takeover your niche soon. If not, you are in the wrong market and hopefully close to retirement with enough retirement funds saved.

What are the drivers:

Number of sales
Average sales price

So why would you like the product of those variables to grow continuously, strictly monotonically?

This is not supposed to be a scientific article. No. I only want to get you engaged thinking about those issues in your own business. So I really only give you a short list and not much more.

Let's start out with a solo entrepreneur, because it's real easy to start thinking from this point on and the rest applies for big corporations as well.

Here is my Top-10 list, why your business needs to grow:

1. Limited personal capacity: You simply cannot work more than 24/7, which is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 366 days (Yes, 2008 is a leap year. You probably noticed on Friday.) Believe me, you cannot do even that. I would know.

The heaviest working week I ever had was, I believe 1987 or 1988, when I put in some 105 hours! I was assistant manager to a very successful restaurant and discotheque owner at this time. We opened up 2 new bars in that week. I remember that figure that well, because I had to fight for getting compensated fairly for this heavy duty overtime.

Back to the point: Once you start outsourcing, you increase your cost that has to be compensated for. Right? Means you need to grow.
2. Inflation: Ever wondered why you cannot buy bread for 5 cents anymore?
3. Investments: By it's very nature investments help you to increase profits, but there are 2 types of investments. You can decrease costs or you can increase revenue. Ideally you should do both types. Then your business will grow.
4. Markets Grow As Economies Grow (normally): If a market grows and you stand still, you are actually shrinking.
5. Competition: If you stand still, you cannot gain or defend leadership in your market. There is a huge competitive advantage for market or industry leaders. Don't miss that.
6. Increasing Financial Needs: Isn't it natural that anybody wants to earn more over time and actually deserves it (if the work attitude is right). You as an owner, your employees, your contractors, and the Tax-man. How to do it? Grow.
7. Enjoying Your Seeds: The more freedom you want to have from your business, the more it has to perform without you. How? Grow
8. Stability: A bigger, stronger business is more likely to fight any economic, environmental (or even political) threats successfully. How to get there? Grow.
9. Compelling Offers: The more you can rely on the overall fact that your business is growing, the more compelling offers you can make your prospects and clients.
10. Using Full Potential: If your business is not growing you simply don't utilize its full potential. It means that you don't leverage its own momentum. If you are using all your business assets the right way, it's natural that your business will grow continuously.

Well, as I said this is not a scientific essay, just a couple of thought. Tell me what you think. Leave a comment below.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I won't forget the 2^nd blog post idea that I mentioned. Don't worry, I wrote it down as I said.

What Size UPS Do I Need For My Computer?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:14:52 -0700

Scroll to the tutorial video.

It's dark all of a sudden. Did this ever happen to you?

Screen Dark, Data Lost?
Not For Me – Thanks to UPS

Did it ever happen to you? You are working on a complicated spreadsheet on your computer and all of a sudden… power is out. The screen gets dark, silence follows, and you might hear your neighbor through the wall shout out loud, “Oh, shit!”

I got used to those power outages lasting from 30 seconds to 1 hour. Like during the recent heavy rainfalls in early December. In 95% of all cases power comes back in less than 5 minutes.

Other people suffer data loss.
Some people even had their hard drives crash or other hardware damaged (Ouch!)

I am not one of them.

After moving to the Canaries I quickly realized that electric power is not as stable as in the big cities where I lived earlier.

Therefore, I got myself a UPS (uninterrupted power supply), a kind of a battery that keeps supplying your PC and monitor with juice even when power fails. Usually you can run up to 15 minutes on battery power with your normal PC or Mac setup.

The reason for writing this article is I want to share with you what I have learned about UPS during the last three years. I just replaced my UPS with a new one because the battery died.

Update: Just added a “How To Video” going through the process.

It's inside the blog post.

You should have one for each PC unless it is a battery powered notebook.
Only connect your computer equipment (PC, external drives, etc., LCD monitor, modem, …, printer if it is not a laser printer (those can draw way too much current.)
A more expensive UPS can signal your computer to shut down when the outage exceeds, for example 5 minutes.
A good UPS protects also against voltage spikes and surges, stabilizes the voltage and filters the current.
The batteries of a UPS are old fashioned—like car batteries—and should not be handled like modern rechargeable batteries for cell phones or notebooks. They wear out far more quickly.
Tip: Don't test excessively and too frequently how long your equipment stays on!

When you test do not just unplug the UPS from the socket, because you disconnect it from the ground that way which can be dangerous! Use the test button on the ground fault interrupter of your main circuit instead.
I made it a habit to start saving all open documents and shut down the computer if the power outage has reached 7 minutes. Just to be on the safe side. Consider the power situation in your location when making your plan. I know here, if it is not back within 5 minutes it will take much longer (happens a couple of times a year.)

Now, I hear you asking,

“What ‘size’ UPS should I get?”

Here is my rule of thumb:

(1) I list the power input ratings of all equipment I want to protect.

I do this separately for either Watts or Volt Ampere. Volt Ampere rating preferred if available.

If Volts and Ampere are stated individually, multiply them.

If the input voltage is variable use the smaller number. (low voltage means high current; high voltage means low current; the maximum current is stated, use the low voltage for your calculations.)

Always look at the input ratings of the equipment.

My “How To Video”: How To figure out the right rating for a UPS power supply?

click here to watch it(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

John W. Furst for E-biz Booster Blog

The example from the video:

Computer:	700 VA
Monitor:	100-240 Volt, 0.5 A gives 100 x 0.5 = 50 VA
Modem:		25 W
Ink Jet Printer:	Power supply 100-240 V, 1500 mA (1000 mA = 1 A) gives 100 x 1.5 = 150 VA

Subtotal:	900 VA	25 W 25 W ~= 25/0.6 VA
Total:	900 + 42 = 942 VA

The subtotals are 900 VA plus 25 W.

(2) Divide subtotal for Watts by 0.6 and add it to the subtotal of the Volt Ampere.

Total is 900 VA + 25/0.6 VA = 942 VA

Hurray, let's go shopping for a 1,000 VA
(or above) rated UPS

Why not go to Amazon for a first overview?
There are some great product reviews from customers.

UPS Uninterrupted Power Supplies | Electronic (Amazon) (↑)

I deliberately did not repeat the more technical descriptions you find on sites like Wikipedia. You are smart enough to look it up there yourself. Some links below.

For geeks: The best approach is to measure the real and apparent power of all equipment involved. I used to do that originally but just realized that my power-meter is dead now, after not having been used for a couple of years. I know from experience that my rule of thumb puts me on the safe side.

The difference between VA and W ratings comes from capacitors, inductors, and rectifiers in electric circuits like power supplies. In layman terms: The average PC is hungry for extra current, therefore, the factor 0.6.

Power ratings on equipment are usually stated a maximum level. The actual consumption is usually less.

This approach should give you a protection of 15 minutes in the average scenario. You can dive into more technical documentation or simply read some of the customer product reviews on Amazon (link above.)

Further readings:

Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) FAQ (↑)
Wikipedia: Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) (↑)
Wikipedia: Power Factor (↑)

I bought my UPS in a local computer store last week by the way. And I already needed it once. That means it already paid off for me.

Do you have a UPS already?

If not, start shopping around!

While I did not really plan for it in 2009, I have increased data security in my business significantly last year.

Not only that I am handling my entire email storage at Gmail in the cloud for a couple of month now.

I finally keep records and procedures for handling of my various online accounts up-to-date.

Happy 2010.
Be safe and prosper.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: No, I am not an electrical engineer. My father is. Myself? I was quite good in physics. However, no guarantees here.

Performance Boost Under Pressure

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:43:33 -0700

Face Yourself!

It seems that people respect their boss and they do whatever they demand — more or less — in exchange for their salary. That's how this boss-employee relationship works. What can you learn from this for your own business?

Even if you have changed the sides in the meantime and become your own boss, either as owner of your company or manager of a department, you will remember the days, when you worked late or on weekends to meet the deadlines given to you by your superiors. All of a sudden everything became less important: your plans for Friday night, the date with your new acquaintance, the movie premier, etc.

You absolutely needed to finish your assignment, because your boss would not accept any excuse and even could fire you. Even, if your assignment appears to be ridiculous to you.
Your boss is your boss.

I will cut a long story short (… and save your time).

Many tips on personal-development and self-improvement Blogs tell you how to avoid distractions of all kinds to focus on your tasks and goals. Eliminating distractions is an important goal for any aspiring Internet marketer or home business owners in general. Your Internet business in in danger, if you do not learn to control your environment effectively. I gave you some tips in my series of posts about getting more done.

However, this is only one part of the equation. Even without any distractions it is possible that you don't get anything (important) done.

The cure for this is actually quite easy, even though it sounds a bit strange.

“Simply be your own boss, if you are your own boss.”

Do you respect yourself or do you accept each and every excuse for not hitting the target?
Your daily task(s) should produce measurable results each and every day.
Your day is not over unless the target is hit.
Be mean to yourself and don't accept any excuses from yourself.
Imagine you are watched (by a third party boss) and pretend that he or she will check your results at the end of the day.
If there is a fault in your procedures, you should revise those as your boss (in the world of employment) should recognize such a situation and give his employees better tools.
You will see that your habits will change within a short period of time (less than a month) and that you do not need to be schizoid for the rest of your life. It just helps to shorten the process from being used to receive order to being responsible and accountable.

Does this sound too drastically?
What do you think?
Leave your comments and let us know.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Thanks to The Next 45 Years for featuring this post in the Personal Development Carnival - Issue 28.

Hit The Bulls-Eye With Your Sales Message Every Time

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:47:45 -0600

Top level copywriters preach for ages how this can be done, but it seems that

(1) Most marketing and advertising professionals are consistently ignoring that knowledge of “How To Make The Sale” and

(2) There's a steadily stream of a new generation of professionals whom this know how should be brought to attention too.

Now Christophe Morin and Patrick Renvoise have not only conserved this wisdom in their latest book Neuromarketing, but also have put it in new light.

Put the book in your amazon cart right now!

While you are waiting for your book to be delivered you can read on and answer yourself the following questions:

Did you ever wonder why there are certain mega markets like health, fitness, make money, relationship?
Did you ever wonder why some products sell like crazy although you say, “I never would buy that sort of …” It's not — actually it's never — about YOU.

Once you watched the video below you might not wonder anymore why certain marketing strategies and tactics that you may observe work. Smart marketers are using that secrets big time. For decades. They are making big money while you say, “I don't like that kind of marketing … ”

Well, one more time: “It's not about YOU. ”

As long as you market to people made of flesh and blood you need to do it that way.

Technology is changing
Trends are changing
Styles are changing
PEOPLE are not changing! Not in your lifetime.

Now watch this video about the absolute marketing power

Sorry, the video got deleted.

Also don't miss Steve's interview with author Christophe Morin about Neuromarketing.
(broken link removed)

And you probably don't want to miss the answer to the one million dollar question in the interview.

Thanks to Steve Cunningham from PolarUnlimited.com and his site Read It For Me (↑) for his excellent, read, multimedia business book summaries.

I suggest you head over there — after ordering the book — and sign up for his Business Book Summaries RSS blog feed (↑) right away. And check out the other books he already has summarized for you.

And do not forget to order the book Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer's Brain.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Any comments?
And subscribe to my email newsletter in the upper, right corner of the screen.

Marketing Remarkable Products - The Internet Changed A Lot Says Seth Godin

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:31:35 -0600

I am not sure, if I promised that I will continue to write about Seth Godin, but I do it anyway. Yesterday I have revealed a podcast about Seth's latest book Tribes. Today I will feature a TED talk related to his book “Purple Cow”.

The talk is about 18 minutes long and quite entertaining as well as educating. Check it out.

Seth Godin speaking at TED in February 2003.
A timeless treasure.

Are you ready?

No wonder that Seth Godin became a well sought after speaker. He manages to say a lot with a few words and hits the target in the center.

Average products for average people doesn't work anymore.
The TV industrial complex is broken.
Safe is risky.
Your products need to be remarkable. I.e. Worth having a remark made about them.

I did not count how many books Seth already has written, but it's a lot. Some you might already have heard of. some you maybe have read. I noticed with me and with other folks that once you have read one books of Seth you want to read more of them.

Yours
John W. Furst

Podcast About Tribes And Speech About Purple Cows (Revisited)

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:56:00 -0600

This is a post I had written much earlier on a static web-page. Now I am importing it into the blog. It’s not such a bad idea to revisit Seth Godin’s work from time to time anyway. Enjoy.

Seth Godin - A Podcast and a video from a TED talk

Shortly after I turned on the computer this morning, I decided that I will continue to write about Seth Godin and provide you with two great resources about smart marketing.

The Podcast for Tribes

I just finished reading the book and published my honest review on my blog.
Tribes - A Review by John W. Furst
John, 2008-10-25

On September 12th, 2008 Seth Godin had recorded an exclusive interview style podcast done by and for his community Triiibes.com.

(I don’t hot link there, because it is a private community — and will remain to be private — and all you would see is a login screen.)

In this roughly 47 minutes Seth talks about

His notion of Tribes
The Book: Tribes - We Need You To Lead Us
Triiibes.com

Listen to the Podcast now

Podcast with Seth Godin (audio only, 47 min.)

Are you finally inspired to buy the book?

You should be. This book is about

marketing and leadership,
about leadership and marketing,
about tribes.

The book is already an Amazon bestseller, the book is short and small and simple. It argues, as clearly as Seth is capable, that leadership is the best marketing tactic to any organization — a company, a school, a church, a job seeker.

Our role today is to find, connect and lead tribes in order to make change happen.

We see Tribes behind every successful brand, organization, politician, non profit and cause. And yet it seems almost impossible to attract a tribe. In this book, Seth tries to explain that the challenge is leadership, not marketing or hype.

Check it out now.

top↑

The TED talk

This remarkable talk at a TED conference in February 2003 is of timeless value. It’s related to the content of Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow”.

The talk is about 18 minutes long and quite entertaining as well as educating. Check it out.

Please, enable Javascript in your browser to view this video and reload the page.

Some RSS feed readers like Google Reader block Javascript. Open the post directly in your Web browser to view the video.

Seth Godin speaking at TED in February 2003.
A timeless treasure.

Are you ready?

No wonder that Seth Godin became a well sought after speaker. He manages to say a lot with a few words and hits the target in the center.

Average products for average people doesn’t work anymore.
The TV industrial complex is broken.
Safe is risky.
Your products need to be remarkable. I.e. Worth having a remark made about them.

I did not count how many books Seth already has written, but it’s a lot. Some you might already have heard of. some you maybe have read. I noticed with me and with other folks that once you have read one books of Seth you want to read more of them.

Seth Godin is Famous For More Books

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Before I forget.

Click here to watch the video(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

Tribute Video by John W. Furst for E-biz Booster Blog and Triiibes.com

[MUST SEE] this is the best pitch I've ever seen!

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:36:47 -0600

Is this the best Pitch Ever?

No matter if you have attended the webinar I recommended, you MUST SEE this sales video. (And you want to take notes.)

Most likely I was not the only one who has sent you emails about Perry Belcher's course. You likely will ask yourself...

IS IT ANY GOOD?

In all honesty I have not seen the course myself, but …

I have seen Perry's presentation at Frank Kern's Masscontrol 2.0 Workshop in San Diego in April 2009. He got standing ovations. (From me too!)

But not only that, … Perry also gave killer answers in the Q&A section of the workshop. This guy has what it takes to pull this program through. Absolutely, yes.
Look at this product launch itself … a MASTERPIECE. And I am seeing it from both sides. Another “GO Perry” from me.
The webinar yesterday, delivered! Don't rely on my world. Social Media is filled with positive feedback.
Not to forget, Ryan Deiss is involved, too, and his products deliver! Big time.
want you to check it out for yourself.

However, here is something I CAN tell you

I was on the webinar yesterday. That rocked. I just saw the sales video!
It is a masterpiece, I really want you to see this.

→ The Best Sales Video Ever?

… and I am not the only marketer who shares this opinion.

I teach you the fine art of selling here (from time to time), right?

Well, then this video will be the absolute best “low tech” down and dirty sales video you have ever seen in your life.

It's so good that I almost want to order FIVE copies of the course.

Seriously, you want to see an absolute masterful pitch - you want to watch this right now:

→ The Best Sales Video Ever?

Drop everything right now. The course is selling fast. And once it is sold out the video will be gone forever. Watch the video and you will see why.

→ The Best Sales Video Ever?

Do I recommend this product?

Absolutely, yes!

Should you get it?

If it is as good as Ryan's and Perry's other products, then it will definitely exceed your expectations.

Sitting here on the Canary Islands I did not have a chance to review the course for you. But the whole campaign speaks for itself. Social media is transparent and Perry is as authentic as a marketer can be. That's my impression. If I had any doubt about Ryan's or Perry's integrity I wouldn't recommend this course. Wouldn't do it.

All I know is that I implemented a couple of changes on some of my niche websites — just from the free information — and it worked. Actually better than I have expected.

Yours
John W. Furst

Busy, Busy, Busy, Bankrupt - Dead

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:46:14 -0600

Get Rich Schefren's new report “The Entrepreneurial Emergency - Uncertainty Syndrome”.

This eye opening report reveals the easiest and most important way to give our business the extra, quickest, most potent boost possible.

Are you working more and more for less? Are you scarifying your personal life for your business?

What is holding your back?

misperception about marketing mistakes
flying blind
linear thinking
inefficient work style
no network
outdated marketing or
buyer bottlenecks

Get Rich Schefren's new report “The Entrepreneurial Emergency -- Uncertainty Syndrome”.

The live broadcast is over, but you still can get the report. At least now.
Rich is still live on his 24+ hour Ustream.tv broadcast at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rich-schefren-live. Started 2008 Aug 18 12 noon Easter time as in New York (might be over when you are reading this)

Get the report first!

“The Entrepreneurial Emergency -- Uncertainty Syndrome”
or at Rich Schefren's Blog

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: What did you get out of this report?

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 7

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:48:38 -0600

Welcome to the seventh edition of email marketing tips on August 26, 2008.

This is certainly a very different edition of the Email Marketing Tips Blog Carnival. Different for 3 reasons:

It is late. Very late indeed. I apologize for this, but it started out with the blogcarnival.com site being down for at least 48 hours. I don't know when they have gone onlione again, but I simply did not have room in my schedule to deal with this earlier. Forgive me.
Finally I created a brief intro video for the carnival. I take you out on the highway and briefly introduce the content in this carnival edition. No more, no less.

©2008 by John W. Furst for E-biz Booster Blog
I never got so many off-topic submissions like this time.
- Mostly in the personal development category.
- I also got an interesting submission about how great multi-level-marketing really is, and how easy you can get started. I was stunned.
  
  I decided not to feature that post for two simple reasons. This was certainly not a post about an email marketing tip, and secondly MLM is an ineffective, stupid kind of business model. It is off-topic for this carnival and I should ignore it.
  
  However, I know you are receiving many MLM related offers right now, because of this recession talk. There are so many great products waiting for you. All you need to do is sell them — to your family and friends,… — and become richer than you ever have thought were possible. Well, your friends don't have money? Doesn't matter, you can show them how to become rich with MLM, too.
  
  Off-topic, right! Don't go that route! Let me protect you. The great Gary Halbert wrote many rants about MLM. I like one in particular. You should read his letter “Why Multi-Level Marketing Sucks!” before considering any MLM related offer. Please, promise it to me.
To fill up the void I searched the net for email marketing related stuff by myself and I found some really great articles.

Let's begin. In fact I received only one submission that I want to use here. I dumped the rest. People, if it's not about email marketing, not even somewhat related, I don't use it. As stated many time, if you are not sure if it fits, submit it anyway. I won't be mad, as long as you are not getting mad. Period.

Contact me to host an edition of this carnival on your Internet marketing related Blog.

Get your Blog more exposure!
It's easier than you might think.

Also submit your articles to this carnival.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.

We have the following categories today.

Tools And Services
General Tips
Strategy
Code Of Practice

tools and services

Paula Brett presents Could You Save Some Money on Your Aweber Subscription? posted at Paula-Brett.com

John's comment: I personally believe trying harder to make money is better than trying to save 10 or 20 US dollars a month. However, you might want to checkout Paula's detailed post. I also left a comment on her post and she follow up.

general tips

Ryan Deiss presents Increase opt-ins by ditching the name field posted at Driving Traffic.

John's comment: Ryan Deiss is a successful marketer, who is way to busy to submit to blog carnivals. That's one of the posts I have found for you. You don't want to miss it.

strategy

Chris Garrett presents Email Marketing Tips: What is Email Marketing? posted at Chris Garrett on New Media

John's comment: Another successful man. I am reading Chris's Blog on a regular basis and noticed, he started am excellent series about email marketing on his Blog. Here is the first post. (You can go to following issues directly on his blog.) I consider the series a must read. Go ahead.

I will feature each post of his series in the Carnival. Chris doesn't submit to blog carnivals, but we excahnged emails and he is perfectly cool with having me pick his articles for you. Thanks Chris.

John W. Furst presents Bad Future For Email? posted at E-Biz Booster Blog, saying, “Does your Grandma use Email? Do your teenage kids or nephews use email the same ways as you do? I think those are very interesting questions for a marketer, aren't they.”

John's comment: My humble post of this week's edition.

Code Of Practice

AWeber's Hot Email Marketing Tips!

Do you love AWeber, too?

2008-08-22 List-Unsubscribe Header Makes Unsubscribing Easier and More Trustworthy

2008-08-19 Team-Building Day: Wednesday, 8/20/2008

2008-08-18 Double Your Blog Newsletter Readers: Expand Beyond Your Blog

2008-08-12 Free HTML Email Template: Malibu

2008-08-11 Double Your Blog Newsletter Readers: Encourage Sharing!

2008-08-07 Email Web Analytics: 2 New Segmenting and Targeting Options

That concludes this edition. Submit your Blog article to the next edition of email marketing tips using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our Blog carnival home page.

Contact me, if you want to host an edition on your Internet marketing related Blog.

Now, it's time to send the carnival on a journey. Therefore, the next edition will be hosted on the Internet Marketing Chaos Blog.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 6, too.

Technorati tags: email marketing tips, blog carnival

Tribes - A leadership book written by Seth Godin

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:37:07 -0600

Seth Godin got into the habit of doing something special with every book launch. His latest book Tribes is accompanied by a private social network Seth had created in August. Currently Triiibes.com has 3662 members.

The inside of the book cover of Tribes shows the avatars of some members of this network. You will remember that I wrote, “I got an invitation from Seth to join his network”. Yes, I am in. However, I did not make it on the cover… To bad. Not really. I just created a video showing all 3,662 members in 2 minutes and 2 seconds.

Watch this.

Are you inspired?

You should be. This book is about marketing and leadership, about leadership and marketing, about tribes.

Check it out now.

Yours
John W. Furst

New Legal Hurdles For Email And One Big Change

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 01:50:00 -0600

Pick One - Spam or not Spam

I came across two interesting articles on internet Retailer (↑) in my email inbox today . I thought I’ll share them with you. Let’s start with the not so good news.

New Email Laws in Canada in 2012

Canadian law makers create FISA -- Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act -- which will be in effect in 2012.

As long as you want to reach Canadian consumers or by Email you will need to adhere to this new law.

The law will apply if:

You want to reach Canadian consumers
You are using equipment (e.g. servers) inside Canadian borders.

It doesn’t matter where you are located or where you are sending your commercial emails from.

Most important implication: Opt-in first is a strict requirement!

You’ll need the permission from consumers before you may send commercial email to them. The usual opt-out method which many US-based businesses use today will be prohibited.

Read the full article: A new hurdle for e-mail (↑).

As usual the law will affect regular businesses only. Spammers don’t care.

The One Big Chance: The inbox Goes Mobile

It is a trend that people are connected to the Net and to their email inbox more often and on multiple places. You don’t need to wait till it’s raining and people stay at home at their desktop computer. They take their email everywhere, anytime.

That’s an opportunity, isn’t it.

But you need to be prepared for it. Do your commercial emails display nicely on those mobile devices with the tiny screens? If not, change that.

Thanks to the fact that most if not all social media and networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and G+ as the latest star, connect to your email inbox to some extent. I.e. even the young generation knows what email is. It does not main that they like to consume email but email has one big advantage over the walls on Facebook or the Twitter and Google Plus streams.

It’s an archive, one can sort and use filters. It’s much easier to find a specific message in email than on social media

Read the full article: With consumers communicating on the move, e-mail must go mobile, … (↑)

Hope you like the tips. Let me know.

Yours
John W. Furst

Bye-Bye Chris Brogan And Company - Feature Request For Google+

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:52:00 -0600

Chris Brogan on Google+

Before we get started I want to put the title of this post into the proper perspective, right away.

No, I don’t have anything to hold against Chris Brogan (↑), not at all. He is a fine person! Otherwise I would not follow him on Twitter, in Google Reader, now in Google+, and probably elsewhere.

Unfortunately for him -- I hope his ego can cope with that -- he becomes my poster child for something he is not even responsible for himself. (Life can be tough, isn’t it.)

Chris posts a lot on Google+ (at least now) and his followers are eager to comment and share. The result is that he (as well as other heavy posters like Robert Scoble (↑), Trey Ratcliff (↑), … show up first almost every time when I look at my stream.

Don’t get me wrong, I follow them, because they usually have blurbs of value to share. Anything from entertaining to educating …

It’s just that I don’t want them right in my face all the time whenever I look at my stream.

When taking this screenshot above it just happened that Chris Brogan was up there twice in a row. It was not planned. Seriously. It could as well have been someone else. Sorry, Chris.

Robert Scoble has addressed the problem and has described how you can organize your circles to take your stream back into your possession. You can read Scoble's tips for newer users of Google+ (↑) (a post on Google+, I believe you can read it even without being signed up for G+). Note his point 2.b.

But wait a second! Your stream should not be hijacked in first place.

Isn’t that something the user interface is supposed to protect you from? That question might be a bit philosophical and we don’t need to address it here but why should you be foreced to arrange your circles in a certain way so that your stream remains usable?

Nevertheless, I found a cure (theoretically.) You can see it in the screenshot.

The solution is rather simple:

The user should be able to toggle each circles to be included or excluded in the stream.

Turn circles in the main stream on and off

Currently you can only select one circle at a time. I think it shouldn’t be that way.

Of course you could switch from circle to circle but probably all you need is to exclude one or two from your streamin order to do just fine.

That’s what I propose here.

Tell me what you think? Could this solve this initial G+ hick up?
Since many people are writing about that issue it might be worthwhile tackling it. I have scribbled other, smaller ideas somewhere on my notepad but who cares about those.

From that list:

On the +1 tab of the personal profile I’d like to see a share and comment link next to the items I have previously 1+’ed.
I’d like to be able to hangout with audio / texting capabilities only (skype like). .Don’t require me to hookup a webcam and show my face.
I don’t have a remedy for this one: Maybe it is only me, but sometimes I feel insecure when selecting members. “Is this really the person I mean?” I am so used to see unique identifiers like an email address or an ID#. Now, it’s only a name and a photo. I guess I have to get used to it.

That's it for the start.

It seems that Google is really actively listining to the tons of feedback they get from users. And Google is implementing some popular and important user requests fast (↑).

Update

While I suggest what Google could do to improve the user experience with G+, my friend Dr. Mani shared his personal tricks and shows how he organizes his circles.

He has some pretty smart ways of doing this.

Read his blog post here:

Circles = Sharing : How I’m Using Google+ Circles (↑)
Google+ In Ten Minutes a Day (↑)

__________

Now, what do you think?

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Besides that I am having a very positive Google+ experience. Thanks to the team of Google+.

P.P.S.: Don't of think that I am focusing on what might not be working that well so far. I must confess my Google+ experience is really much better than when I got started with Twitter, Facebook or Google Wave (remember that one?)

Sneaky Email Marketing Tips - 7 Universal Laws for the Email PS That Gets Prospects to Click (Now)

nospam@example.com (Jeff Herring) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 11:14:58 -0600

Image Credit

Email marketing is supposedly dead. I love it when I hear people say this, because it usually comes from one of the people that pound their list everyday with a the “latest greatest offer” for that day.

Email marketing should be dead for those folks because it gets old really quick. Think about it, if this is the latest greatest offer, does that mean that yesterday’s offer now stinks. And what about tomorrow’s offer? Etc. etc.

But, if you are taking really good care of your list community your emails will be welcomed. Here are a few ways to increase the open rate of your emails with strategic use of the PS.

Many people will scan down to the PS in an email, just like they do in a sales letter. So why not make yours powerful for pulling in prospects and profits.

For each tip, be sure to include in the PS the link you want your reader to click. (I know that sounds so obvious, but you should see what I see sometimes…

7 Universal Laws for the Email PS

The Law of the Recap - Since many people scan to the PS of an email for the bottom line, this is a good place to review what you have said in your email. Here’s a template: This is what I have for you, this is what it will do for you, this is what I want you to do next…

The Law of Scarcity - Remind your reader that their is a limit to what is offered in the email. For example: only 200 lines available for the call, just 17 slots left, only selling 20 more packages, etc.

The Law of Urgency - Best used when you want someone to act quickly. For example: Offer ends at midnight tonight, last chance to register, register before all the lines fill up, etc.

The Law of Colombo - Some of you will remember the great character Lieutenant Columbo, the detective in the rumpled overcoat, played by Peter Falk. He had a way of waiting until someone thought the conversation was over before driving home a point with “Just one more thing…” So an example for our purposes would be: “And, of by the way…”

The Law of Humor - You are allowed to have fun with this, ya know? Sometimes just to do something different, and spread a little good will, I’ll stick a short clean joke. Just Google “short clean jokes” to find ones you can use.

The Law of Oops - Related to the Law of Columbo, this is when you start your PS off with “Oh, I almost forgot…” and then add in something that will get them to click on the link you want.

The Law of Blank - This is a bit silly, but it’s fun and spreads goodwill. Since folks will almost always look at the PS, every now and then I’ll type in after the PS - “This PS left intentionally blank.” It’s funny because now it is no longer blank. I got this idea from the phone company that used to print that on a previously blank sheet of paper in the bill. I am not making this up.

And so now here’s a way to get many more great tips and tools on a regular basis, on my blog at http://JeffHerring.com

You’ll find leading edge tips and tools for Article Marketing, Content Creation, Traffic Generation, List Building, Online Visibility, Info Product Creation and so much more…

From Jeff Herring - The Article Marketing Guy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Herring

Google Adwords Guide 2011 Released by Perry Marshall

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:04:31 -0600

Perry Marshall
Google AdWords Expert

HOT NEWS: As you can probably tell from the advertising that I have on my site and blog you see that I am a big fan of Internet Marketing Expert Perry Marshall.

Perry's Adwords course has saved me from “Adwords bankruptcy” a couple of years ago. Now, I just saw that Perry has released his new edition 2011.

Definitive Guide To Google Adwords 2011

50% of the book rewritten.
The gap between Adwords winners and losers never has been that huge.
6 brand new modules!
From affiliate marketing, PPC marketing in the U.K. and Canada, … to the content network.
Choose one or get two or even all modules at a discount price.
A must have for everybody working with Adwords.

3 Unstoppable Forces Will Either Propel You to Victory or Bury You on Page 2-3-4 of Google's Search Results.

You Either Win or Lose.
(Perry Marshall)

Check it out now!

All backed up with Perry's crazy guarantee. Watch the video as he explains everything you must know.

You also could sign up for Perry's 5 Day Google Adwords Course by Email.

Yours
John W Furst

P.S.: Perry writes much better copy than I do, therefore, I save you from having to bear with me and urge you to go over to his site and read what he has to say about Google Adwords in 2009/2010 and why you need to get his book.

Actually you don't even need to read everything.

Play his video, listen, and then get your copy of his book for as little as $49.

Upgrade Your Marketing - Rick Butts Is The Real Deal

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:03:51 -0600

Update, April 2011: StardustFactor is no longer available.

I still hear the applause echoing on the Web after Rick Butt's first StardustFactor Workshop.

That's what I have to say about Rick Butts:

I was on the on the call myself and I can tell you, it's great, solid information, and … as always with Rick, it has been fun, too.

I am already doing a couple of things Rick taught me in that one call. To be honest … it's too early to report back dramatic results, but he got me going and that's the big road block for most people. Right?

Rick gives you a big kick in … and gets you moving.

Anyway: The replay of this first call is already available and on-line.

In case you haven't heard about the StardustFactor before:

Rick Butts teaches his own walk so to speak.

It's about becoming the GoTo-Guy or GoTo-Gal in your market in a short time. That's what Rick did, and that's what he shows you to do as well in this course.
If you want to increase your visibility and authority in your market, your niche, on-line or off-line than you need to have the *StardustFactor*.
And it works for any business as I said. Rick gave an example of how a regular tire store managed to take out the competition in its town by just making people talk about this store. It's easy if you know how.
You are literally sitting on a hidden “gold mine” that you are not using for your marketing right now.

So if you want qualified prospects chasing you with their wallet already open then

Download Rick’s StardustFactor Workshop Recordings right now.

Do it.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I did not have a clue that Rick will like my Youtube video about the *StardustFactor* that much. He was nuts enough to put it on his blog.

→ Rick’s Blog post featuring John

P.P.S.: Yes, Rick is fun, areal person, probably a bit ‘nuts’, but that's okay. You can learn a lot from him. At least follow him on Twitter @RickButts

P.P.P.S.: But you really should get Stardust to work for your business.

Important Update Regarding Google Adwords by Perry Marshall

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:19:18 -0600

Perry Marshall
Google AdWords Expert

Definitive Guide To Google Adwords 2010

Update April 2011: Definitive Guide To Google Adwords 2011

50% of the book rewritten.
The gap between Adwords winners and losers never has been that huge.
6 brand new modules!
From affiliate marketing, PPC marketing in the U.K. and Canada, … to the content network.
Choose one or get two or even all modules at a discount price.
A must have for everybody working with Adwords.

3 Unstoppable Forces Will Either Propel You to Victory or Bury You on Page 2-3-4 of Google's Search Results.

You Either Win or Lose.
(Perry Marshall)

Check it out now!

All backed up with Perry's crazy guarantee. Watch the video as he explains everything you must know.

You also could sign up for Perry's 5 Day Google Adwords Course by Email.

Yours
John W Furst

P.S.: Perry writes much better copy than I do, therefore, I save you from having to bear with me and urge you to go over to his site and read what he has to say about Google Adwords in 2009/2010 and why you need to get his book.

Actually you don't even need to read everything.

P.P.S.: Update April 19, 2011: I just discovered that Perry has updated his Definitive Guide To Google Adwords and calls it - Edition 2011.

Play his video, listen, and then get your copy of his book for as little as $49.

Use Safe Identifiers In Your Web Templates

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:15:00 -0600

Stop guessing about, what would be a valid name for a new CSS class, a JavaScript variable, a PERL function or any other identifier!

Use the common shared set of rules of languages. It cannot be any easier. Print out that page and you have a valid reference for the most important languages on the Web.

Web masters, Web designers, and programmers do not have an easy job, when it comes to update templates, files, and programs for a Web site. In most cases they will have to build on "code" that has been written by somebody else. Furthermore there are many different languages that have rules of their own.

HTML, XHTML, XML
CSS
JavaScript, DOM
PHP, PERL
…

Sometimes the differences are minor, but the interpreter, browser, or validation tool might complain, if the syntax or content is not correct 100%.

1. Characters you can use safely

Use only the following ASCII characters for your identifiers, variables, and functions names.

[ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ] -> [A-Z]

[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz] -> [a-z]

[0123456789] -> [0-9]

The beauty about the old-fashioned ASCII character set is:

It is available on any computer platform in any country in any language setup.

Even though current standards allow to use a wider set of characters in many cases restricting this to the subset above avoids problems with older or badly configured operating systems, servers and browser or different regional/language setups.

2. Case-Sensitivity

Most identifiers are case-sensitive according to the language specification. That means “Web-site” is different from “web-site”. Some identifiers are not case-sensitive.

For example: Element names are case-insensitive in HTML, but case-sensitive in XML.

To avoid potential problems and ambiguity type the identifiers always in exact case, but treat them as they were case-insensitive. I.e. don't use “Manual” and “manual” as separate identifiers. You might mix them up way too easily and “buggy” software might mix them up either.

3. HTML, XHTML ID and NAME Tokens

E.g.:

<div id="Main_Content-1">

No spaces
Must begin with a letter [A-Za-z]
And may be followed by any number of letters [A-Za-z] , digits [0-9], hyphens "-", underscores "_", colons ":", and periods ".".

4. CSS Class Names

HTML:

<p class="MainContentFooter">

CSS:

.MainContentFooter {

    background-color: white; …

}

No spaces
First Character must be a letter [A-Za-z]
Allowed are Letters, Numbers, Underscores, and hyphen [A-Za-Z0-9] + [_] + [-]
Case-sensitive in XML, "WebSite" is not "website"
Case-insensitive in HTML, however type exact case, but treat it as it were case-insensitive
Multiple class names are delimited by a whitespace [ ] character.
Descriptive, but keep it short (even though there is no upper limit for length defined)

5. Variable and Function Names

in PERL, PHP, JavaScript

no spaces
[A-Za-z0-9] + [_], no "-", ".", ":"
Case-sensitive
Must begin with [A-Za-z] or [_], no digits up-front
Must not be a reserved word of the language
Descriptive, but short
You must not use any reserved word

Reserved words for JavaScript:

abstract, boolean, break, byte, case, catch, char, class, const, continue, default, delete, do, double, else, export, extends, false, final, finally, float, for, function, goto, if, implements, in, instanceof, int, long, native, new, null, package, private, protected, public, return, short, static, super, switch, synchronized, this, throw, throws, transient, true, try, typeof, undefined, var, void, while, with

Lookup the reserved words for PERL (↑) and PHP (↑) in the corresponding documentation.

Other References: W3C (↑) – The World Wide Web Consortium

Happy coding.
John W. Furst

Catching Up ...

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:03:36 -0700

I will be catching up with a couple of editions of my

Email Marketing Tips Blogcarnival

at once shortly.

Apologizing for the delays.

I even kept your submissions for the issues which have already been deleted from BlogCarnival.com

Stay Tuned!

Yours
John W. Furst

101 Reasons for Personal Change (More or Less)

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:00:00 -0700

Old Linchpin on a Shore

Once again Seth Godin has bet the farm and seems to have won, already. (Probably not the farm, but you get the point, don’t you.)

He decided to bypass the traditional act of sending out dozens of review copies of his latest book to journalists of main stream media. The book title — you might have heard about it already — is

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Instead he sent preview copies to people who care, members of his tribe.

As a result the Internet is already flooded — in a good way — with blog posts, tweets, videos, … all sorts of real world testimonials about how much they love the book.

Is there anything else that could help sell the book better?

I do not think so.

Are You Indispensable?

What type of people are indispensable in those difficult times, in which we are very close to the edge economically and environmentally.

I have assembled variations of short excerpts and thoughts from many conversations between Seth Godin and his readers who have received a preview hard-copy of Linchpin: Are You indispensable?.

101 Reasons For Personal Change

Now I have promised to give you 101 reason why you should change. Well, what about this,

“Imagine you could be one of the persons described here. Wouldn’t that be enough reason to change?

Here is the secret, You can!”

People who bring art to work, people who reach out, make a connection, cause change to happen.

People who refuse to become an interchangeable part, someone who merely follows the manual.

People who love their job.

People who can spread ideas, build a tribe. … if you can get your ideas to spread, you get to build what you want.

People who are brave enough to do marketing.

People who make decisions.

People who are motivated.

People who can steer, innovate, provoke, lead, connect and make things happen.

People who will do art, will be brave and are willing to fail (often).

People who solve a new problem in a new way. And all of us have done that at least once in our life. Even if it goes back to our kindergarten experience.

People are not the standard resume they give you. Standard resumes are out.

People who have projects, not resumes.

People who are the great engineers of our time, programmers, materials specialists, inventors.

Everyone is leadership material! The only question is whether they’ve practiced or not.

People who lead. Leading gives one charisma, not the other way around.

People who choose to do the work necessary to become indispensable at something. They will succeed.

People who start with making the choice.

People who create what matters.

Answer by Seth Godin: I think that industries that are based on commodities and on repeated life or death deliverables are probably not the best places for artists, for people making change or doing new work.

I’d stay away from Exxon or a pacemaker factory.

John: Can you imagine a story that if you hear it you would say about, “If only that had happened because of my book, it would have been enough reason to do all this work and write this book.” What would that story be?

Seth Godin: I’ve already discovered everything I was hoping for… people are telling me that the book has given them the last push they needed to do something important, something worthy of their effort. That’s the whole point!

Thanks, Seth.

Now check out the many interviews and reviews about Linchpin (↑) which have inspired me to this post.

Really, go and check it out.

I hope you are getting something out of this blog post. In case your mind just has gotten hungry for more… Here is my review of Linchpin.

I only have received Seth’s preview summary so far. That’s one disadvantage of living on an island in the Atlantic.

Now tell me how you want to change respectively what or who you would love to change.
Leave a comment below.
And share the post, please.

Thanks and
have a nice day.

Yours
John W. Furst.

__________
Additional Image Credits: mumchancegaloot on Flickr.com (↑)
Some rights reserved — CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

Two Power Tips For Better Marketing In 2010

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:35:10 -0700

“Happy 2010”

I have recorded a short video with two tips for improving your marketing in 2010.

Update: This will work in 2011, and 2012, …

Actually I have already recorded it on December 28, but so far only had uploaded it to a private membership. But why not share it with everybody?

Here it is.

click here to watch it(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

John W. Furst for E-Biz Booster Blog
Music: “a tu lado” (↑) by slumberlords (CC BY 3.0)

This year I will focus on improving how I use words and further build relationships.

Download the full transcript

Two Tips For Marketing In 2010 (↑)
[PDF file, 130 kibytes]

Words (like in copywriting)

Think about it.
I am an Internet marketer, “What makes my stuff sell?”

Words on a sales page
Words spoken in a video
words in a podcast
words, …

No matter what it is, it's words that make people buy my services or the services that I recommend.

Relationships

The right relationships will get you further in life. Relationships enable you to leverage your skills and abilities.

You have to nurture, build relationships to the right people to be happy and to be successful to be more successful.

Going alone only brings you to a certain point. If you want to go beyond that point you need other people to help you. … you need relationships.

Long lasting relationships are built, are based on mutual benefit. So words and relationships that are the two most important things I will focus on next year.

I hope you do the same.

No matter what position you are in in, it could be a relationship that brings you to the next, better job. It could be a relationship that brings you in touch with a business partner whom you ever wanted to do business with.

And it could be the words in your cover letter that get you the next job No matter who you are, what you are doing I think words and relationships are the two most important things.

How To Win Friends And Influence People

Dale Carnegie (↑) wrote a classic book about connecting with people. You might have heard about it.

I have read this book ages ago. It was one of the first ones in the “self help” corner which I have read, now I will read it again.

I highly recommend it.

In case How To Win Friends and Influence People is missing on your bookshelf I suggest you get it.

Get the hardcover edition from Amazon.com

This grandfather of all people-skills books was first published in 1937. It was an overnight hit, eventually selling 15 million copies. How to Win Friends and Influence People is just as useful today as it was when it was first published, because Dale Carnegie had an understanding of human nature that will never be outdated.

Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to “the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people.” He teaches these skills through underlying principles of dealing with people so that they feel important and appreciated. He also emphasizes fundamental techniques for handling people without making them feel manipulated.

Carnegie says you can make someone want to do what you want them to by seeing the situation from the other person's point of view and “arousing in the other person an eager want.” You learn how to make people like you, win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment. For instance, “let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers,” and “talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.” Carnegie illustrates his points with anecdotes of historical figures, leaders of the business world, and everyday folks.
--Joan Price

Either way, one more time:
Happy New Year 2010

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: What are your tips for this year.

Support of Web Standards - 4th Blue Beanie Day

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:44:03 -0700

John on the Fourth Annual International Blue Beanie Day

Today, on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010, the Fourth Annual International Blue Beanie Day ought to remind the Internet community to stick to Web standards.

It will make on-line life so much simpler then.

Imagine how much easier development could be if you could trust your code to work on all major platforms.

It's a call — an outcry — to the big guys like Google and Facebook to make sure their APIs, widgets, and plugins are within the standard and pass validation.
It's also an outcry to the standards committees to adopt innovative ideas and integrate them into the standards more rapidly.
Two examples:
- The relatively new social plugins from Facebook, e.g. LIKE button, comments, …, does not validate to the (X)HTML(5) standards.
- Same is true for the embedded YouTube Player.
And I could go on, and on, and on …
You might say it doesn't matter if a website doesn't validate 100%. However, one could detect true and serious issues with the code with less hassle in the absence of all those defacto standard violations.

Please, participate by doing the following:

1. Take a self-portrait wearing a blue beanie (toque, tuque, cap) and upload it to the Blue Beanie Day 2010 (↑) pool on Flickr.

2. Add a blue beanie to your social network avatar on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc.

3. Write a web standards haiku and post it on Twitter with the hashtag #bbd4 for your chance to win web design books from Peachpit and A Book Apart in the Blue Beanie Day Haiku Contest.

4. No blue beanie? No time for Photoshop? Try face-sticker.quodis.com (↑) to the rescue!

Have a nice “standard” day.

Yours
John W. Furst

Webmaster Articles Carnival - December 03 2007

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:56:32 -0700

Welcome to the December 3, 2007 edition of Webmaster Articles Blog Carnival!

My name is John and I am your host. This edition is packed with a great variety of articles. You'll meet “old friends”, as well as new fellows in the carnival scene. I am hosting this carnival for the first time, and I was pretty much impressed by the high quality of the submitted posts and Blogs. No problem with Spam Blogs (Splogs) at all. Might be the technology part of this carnival that doesn't attract so many spammers as compared to the business related carnivals.

Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Each of the 41 articles below is handpicked. I suggest that you do not only look at the articles, look at those Blogs, too. I have found a lot of great recent posts on those Blogs, too. Check it out. Maybe this carnival should be run at least every month. My comments are open, so just say what you think.

Question of the day: Who will be the next host for this carnival?

Write a note to the organizer (↑).
Get more exposure for your Blog
Volunteers preferred.

You also can submit your article to the next edition already. More info at the bottom of this post.

We have the following categories today: Design, Monetization, Traffic-Building, and General

Design
Monetization
Traffic-Building
General

The links to the posts and Blogs will open in a new browser window. By the way: The posts are ordered somewhat arbitrarily and don't reflect my preferences. Leave a comment here about what you liked most.

Design

Anthony Williams presents Reduce Bandwidth Usage by Supporting If-Modified-Since in PHP posted at Just Software Solutions Blog, saying, “Supporting If-Modified-Since and Last-Modified HTTP headers can reduce your bandwidth requirement for repeat visitors.”

Paul presents CleverWorkarounds » SharePoint Branding - How CSS works with master pages - Part 1 posted at CleverWorkarounds.

Maria Fernandez presents How to view PDFs with forms on a Mac posted at Learn a foreign language - Blog, saying, “How to view PDFs with forms on a Mac.”

Zac Garrett presents Wordpress Sucks, Use Serendipity Instead posted at Zac Garrett :: Technology Geek, saying, “Reasons to use Serendipity instead of Wordpress”

Kate Blogs presents My Top 11 Tools posted at kate blogs about writing & web design, saying, “A quick round-up of my ‘must have’ blogging and design tools - what are yours?”

Artdian presents Tips on how to Speed Up Your Photoshop - episode 1 posted at Skool of Arts.

Monertize YourBlog presents How To Enable Expandable Post Summaries On Your Blogger Blog posted at Monetize Your Blog, saying, “Pros and Cons of Expandable Post Summaries and how to implement them on Blogger.”

Samir Bharadwaj presents The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships posted at SamirBharadwaj.com, saying, “Is your website layout or blog template remarkable, and why it should be.”

Yuri presents Use Words on Your Site Correctly: The Complete Guide posted at Improve the Web, saying, “People should use words correctly on their websites for other people to read them well and do what they want on the website.”

Sutocu presents 7 Steps to Profitable Website Planning posted at Your Website Profit.

Vandelay Website Design presents 40 Resources for WordPress Theme Designers posted at Vandelay Website Design, saying, “A collection of resources for WordPress designers.”

Jones Hansen presents Free smooth Vector graphic collection posted at 0tutor.com tutorials blog.

R. Pettinger presents Guide to Moving Wordpress Blog to New Host posted at Net Writing, saying, “Some tips on moving blogs.”

top ↑

Monetization

Terry Dean presents 18 Possibilities to Build Your Unique Selling Position posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.

Christine presents Me, My Kid and Life: The Single Mom and The Cost of Starting an Online Business posted at Me, My Kid and Life: An American Single Mom Living in France, saying, “Making the money you need to live the life you want! This article is specifically geared toward single moms and stay at home moms who want to start an online business without needing start-up capital. It's written by a single mom who has made 100% of her income online for the past several years and who is raising her daughter in France supported by her online income. If I can do it, anyone can do it!”

Sarba Raj Bartaula presents Make Money Online posted at Sarba Raj dot com - Tips for Webmasters and Online Money Makers!.

Robinson Go presents 8 Killer Ways to Skyrocket Your AdSense Revenue posted at Advice, saying, “Effective. Innovative. Killer.”

Aahz presents Get Paid For Your Non-Sponsored Blog Posts Too! : Philaahzophy posted at Philaahzophy.

James Alenteal presents How about THIS response booster: 26.7% Conversion Rate! posted at James Alenteal's Conversion Rate Clinic. It's a short post, but nevertheless it shows two different conversion boosters used by Terry Dean and Ryan Healy

top ↑

Traffic-Building

Rodney Burge - Marketing Strategies presents How Important are Blogs to the Media? posted at Lori Prokop - Keyboard Culture, saying, “Free publicity is a great way to get your message out to the world, attract new customers and make money online. To get free publicity for your blog, products or services, you need to get the media’s attention. In this blog post by Keyboard Culture Expert Lori Prokop at http://www.keyboard-culture.com it’s amazing to see how much the media is depending on blogs.”

Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury presents Search Engine Optimization Tips to Build Traffic posted at SEO Consultant India - SEO Kolkata, saying, “Tips on how to get search engine spiders to crawl you blog and index the site completely. Also tip son how to improve rankings through organic SEO.”

Raj presents

posted at MT Herald Dot Com. Check out his other Blog posts, too. Like his recent post “Importance of Backing Up Blog Regularly.”

Steven Lohrenz presents Giving Is the Beginning of Receiving posted at Steven Lohrenz, saying, “The best way to build a community is by giving away little things to your readers. Here's a list of ideas for giving to build your community.”

Sagar presents The Digg Toolbox: 70+ Digg-related Scripts, Tools, and Tutorials posted at Virtual Hosting.

Carl Galloway presents 4 Must Use SEO Pointers for Bloggers posted at Carl talks blogging and making money online, saying, “Use these solid techniques to increase your search engine rankings and boost traffic to your blog.”

Robinson Go presents How to Rank #1 in Google through On Page Optimization posted at Advice, saying, “Rank #1 in Google now and get loads of traffic! This is a recommended resource for your readers.”

Amy S Quinn presents 17 Specialty Search Engines Every Web Developer Should Bookmark posted at Virtual Hosting.

Derick Thomas presents Lesson - Patience for Webmasters posted at derick.in, saying, “This article deals with the patience needed for Webmasters. This is from my personal experience when I launched this blogged and waiting this blog to be indexed by search engines.”

Chris Crompton presents The Link Not Taken? posted at Chris Crompton, saying, “Getting more traffic to your site. Why not use my script that finds Wordpress blogs with comments enabled and a ‘NO NOFOLLOW’ policy.”

Jim presents 15 Minute Link Exchange Strategy posted at The Kaizen Business. Users of the Relusi Link Directory Software should read this.

Karl Sultana presents High pagerank one way links for you! posted at OutRankSmart Blog.

top ↑

General

Cassanova presents Graphic solutions for web developers. posted at SEO is always welcome !. Check out the cool Traffic Plugin in the sidebar of this blog. It shows the location of visitors as they show up on the Blog.

Danogo presents

The Ultimate Band Guide to Building a Myspace Music Community, saying, “Teaches site owners how to make money online by selling songs and music on myspace.” and
How to Make Real Life Money in the Second Life Virtual World, saying, “People are making millions of real dollars in the virtual real estate business. Are you missing out on the next Web gold rush?”

posted at Danogo.com - Discover. Inspiring . Media

Desinet1 presents Get a Free Backlink from This Blog posted at Web Tools and Tips, saying, “I am starting my own way to build some crucial backlinks, which should appear to be natural and organic to Google. They will be helping both your blog, as well as mine. Just, send me the URL(s) to which you want a backlink, alongwith the keyword(s) of your choice for every URL. I will accommodate it within my next few posts.”

Jones Hansen presents How-to-promote-through-videos posted at seo Online marketing blog. Don't waste your time! Submit your promotional videos only to popular, high traffic sites. There are a ton of them.

Jones Hansen presents

posted at 0tutor.com tutorials blog.

Niharika presents The Mobile Productivity Toolbox: 100 Resources to Keep You Productive When on the Move posted at TruckingAccident.org Articles.

Pushpa Sathish presents WebDev Rage Hall of Fame: 10 Hilarious (and Familiar Sounding) Rants posted at Virtual Hosting.

Terry Dean presents Secret Ingredient in Your Business posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.

Wakish presents Upload your own image on the Internet, can you? posted at Wakish Wonderz.

top ↑

That concludes this edition.

Please, help us and eachother to spread the word and take some time to give feedback via comments, trackbacks, and use the social bookmark tools to further promote articles that you have liked. Thank you.

Also, special thanks to the Carnival organizer Matt Harzewski. He has also hosted the previous edition of October 01, 2007 (↑). And thanks again to Mary S. (fcon21.biz), who had created the logo and did the ‘dirty’ work of typing.

Yours
John W. Furst
Creative Director - fcon21

Carnival of Webmaster Articles

Submit Your Article Today (↑)

Carnival Archive (↑)

Technorati tags: webmaster articles, blog carnival, internet business, monetizing, usability, blogging, web design, monetization, web development.

Viral Marketing Gone Wrong?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:16:00 -0700

Viral Marketing Success
Graphic by Paul Durban, Information Product Design at Blazonfire.com (↑)

Without a doubt it seems that “Viral Marketing,” is a powerful buzzword. Just tap into an existing social network and have your marketing message spread — essentially — for free.

Sounds like a big money saver that can slash your advertising costs dramatically while increasing response. Your message is not yelled at a cold prospect but instead delivered by a friend.

And it spreads, … if it is done right.

Usually big corporations are prone to not doing it right.
Corporate managers are listening to their agencies …
Agencies are doing it wrong because they still believe you can buy attention and sales for big money. Their share in this kind of deal is not insignificant.

Viral Campaign For Turning TV license dodgers Into Paying Subscribers

The idea is fun and spreads but I don't see much potential for making people pay a mandatory fee which they refuse to pay up to this point. Especially because the idea seems to spread more outside the intended target audience.

Have a look. I made a viral video for myself.

Internet Marketing Superstar John W. Furst

Note: Unfortunately the application has severe browser compatibility issues. If you cannot access it try the lower quality YouTube version (↑) I have made from it.

My wife and and my sister in law have been stunned when I surprised them. Unfortunately for the Swedish broadcasting corporation they won't pay any fees in the near future.

Two days ago I counted about 13 tweets within one hour about that viral movie tool. Just right now there were 21 tweets in the last hour. But only 1 person living in Sweden, all other 20 tweeples couldn't care less about Swedish TV license fees.

But let's leave geographic targeting issues aside. Since I am outside of Sweden, don't speak Swedish and admittedly did not check other sources and media in Sweden, I could miss an important part of the campaign altogether. My view here is certainly skewed as I am an outsider. Still, there is a lesson to be learned.

The missing part in this campaign: A Strong Offer.

Sure the videos spread somewhat but they do not answer the important question:

“Why should someone who breaks the law by not paying the fee at first place all of a sudden start paying?”

It reminds me on the infamous campaign by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service, USA) a couple of years ago. Psychologist and author Robert B. Cialdini talked about that case study in an interview about his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (↑).

They basically sent a letter to tax payers saying,

“So many citizens are not honest with the taxes at least you shouldn't be the one who lies in the tax return.”

The result was quite the opposite the IRS had intended. Even more people evaded some of their taxes because they felt:

“When everybody is doing it it must be okay and I would be stupid not doing it.”

Are you going to make your viral hero movie (↑)?

How To Make A Better Viral Campaign?

A viral campaign doesn't need the Web, but the Web can make it really big rather inexpensively.

Just keep in mind:

Know your ultimate target audience and their “hot buttons”. Make them an offer respectively give them something they really appreciate.
Make sure your campaign reaches and spreads in your target audience.
Keep it simple. Don't require the latest browser and high speed Internet access. The time of your audience is precious.
Keep it safe! Many viral tools have serious privacy issues and security loopholes. (See what Case Stevens wrote.)

The Swedish Hero Campaign doesn't score for any of those issues at all. No good reason for signing up right now; ~95% of users outside the target group (*); even experienced Internet users let me know that they gave up trying to load the movie.

(*) An estimate from a snapshot at Twitter; not representative at all.

Certainly a nice try, a funny one, … I am just glad that I was not the one who has to pay for it.

What's your take?

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I'd love to see the real figures what it had cost to produce and how much registrations it produces.

Aweber – A Marketing Lesson And Smart Pricing

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:09:14 -0600

Email Marketing Tips

AWeber.com (AWeber Communications, Inc.) is one of the most recommended service providers for email marketing.

For three reasons:

They are devoted to maintain one of the highest email deliverability rates of more than 99% in the industry. That makes sure your messages have the best chance to pass spam filters and block lists on their way to your subscribers inbox.
Essential email marketing features are included without hidden fees.

E.g. Newsletter broadcasting, signup forms, autoresponders, sign up per email, HTML templates, 24/7 easy to use admin interface, unsubscribe and bounce management, various reports, and …
Very competitive and affordable rates.

19.95 $ a month for unlimited email campaigns
with up to 10,000 subscribers.

Well, that one has become history.

Now, AWeber confronts potential buyers with 69.00 $ a month for the same service (unlimited email campaigns for up to 10,000 subscribers).

At first glance that looks like a price increase of a whopping +246 %.

But let me step back for a second and look at this in detail.
(Conclusion: AWeber is still a bargain!)

There is not much rumor on the net about this, because AWeber managed to introduce that price increase rather silently.

Existing customers may remain in the old price plan at their will. AWeber focused on communicating the introduction of two new features and how cool they are.
1. New super fancy tracking and analytics tools and
2. an overall Web site redesign.
Customers will have the choice between upgrading their accounts to include the new features at the new price or sticking with their old plan.

The existence of that choice might be responsible for the silence on the net.
New prospects might not know about the old prices and therefore don't have a reason to complain.

By the way: Even after the price increase AWeber's rates remain competitive. Especially, when you take the quality of service into consideration.

New customers can start with the 500 subscriber plan at 19.00 $ a month. It already comes with all features and no hidden cost. And new customers get a 30 day risk free trial, which means they'll get their money back, if they are not satisfied.

Even a closer look at pricing

A bad taste of this new tiered pricing might come from the fact that 500 seem kind of low, and that 501 subscribers cost as much as 2,500 subscribers. But that's a general feature of that kind of price plan.

AWeber Pricing: Old versus new

A simple example might put your mind at ease. Assume you have a targeted list of 2,501 subscribers that incur a cost of 49.00 $.

What could you do to make some profits?

Would you do anything differently only because your cost has risen to 49.00 $ a month? If you are freaking out now, chances are good that you didn't do anything profitable with your email subscribers anyway. How much revenue are you planning to generate? What is your dream number?

30.00 $ or 40.00 $ a month?

If you see the Internet as a business opportunity and tool, you will have those “dream numbers” in the thousands anyway. So what ?

There are many different flavors of email promotions. It depends on your positioning and your relationship to your email subscribers and your market how you will be able to monetize your list. I give you some examples with the 2,501 subscriber base from above.

2,501 subscribers; 29.00 $ product; 57 buy; 1,653.00 $ revenue

2,501 subscribers; 7.00 $ product; 125 buy;
875.00 $ revenue

2,501 subscribers; 47.00 $ product; 46 buy;
2,162.00 $ revenue

2,501 subscribers; 97.00 $ product; 33 buy;
3,201.00 $ revenue

2,501 subscribers; 497.00 $ product; 11 buy;
5,467.00 $ revenue

2,501 subscribers; 997.00 $ product; 3 buy;
2,991.00 $ revenue

2,501 subscribers; 4,997.00 $ product; 1 buys;
4,997.00 $ revenue

Those examples are picked arbitrarily. What matters is

the quality and responsiveness of the list subscribers
the relationship you have with them
the appealing and value of your offer

If you are great in those aspects, your conversion rates will be much higher than in those examples above.

You can send those subscribers email, after email for no additional cost at Aweber. And Aweber give the tracking capabilities that help you to better manage your campaigns. Sounds like a no brainer. The new tracking features include:

Click Tracking With Your Domain (no aweber.com links in your email again)
New Reports: Track Campaign Activity Over Time, and
Track and Target Subscribers Based On Activity

I hope you are inspired.

Follow proven email marketing strategies. People fail and complain, because they are not following those proven strategies in detail.

Target a market that is proven to be responsive and a market that buys. Check: Are there many advertisers and products for that market?
Turn your Web visitors into email subscribers or you will pay pay-per-click forever.

This is an investment. You need to put in time or money to get people to your Web site at first place. Then, you'll need to give them something of value. … and you need to keep them happy over time.
Sell them your own (preferably) products or services or affiliate products.

Yes, it's true. Money is made by selling something. Many people seem to have trouble understanding this principle.

The marketing lesson learned is: Value first.

AWeber Communications has built its reputation as professional email marketing service provider, and now they moving by introducing the next level of email tracking features.

They are also moving on by finally charging an amount that is a bit closer to what their service is actually worth, and they started to better define their customers. Obviously Aweber wants to deal with business minded customers, who appreciate the value they are providing (Something every business should do, define and select your customers, don't try to appeal to everyone).

You can check out all the features and new prices directly at AWeber Email Marketing Tools (affiliate link)

AWeber remains the service of my choice, and I feel perfectly okay with promoting it that way.

You can start out with professional email marketing tools for just 19.00 $ a month, take full advantage of cutting edge email tracking technology, enjoy the outstanding deliverability of AWeber, and still have a 30 day money back guarantee. They call it “risk free trial”

Check out the new features and pricing AWeber Email Marketing Tools (affiliate link).

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: As I am organizing the Carnival of Email Marketing Tips, you certainly can expect more related blog posts from me.

Seth Godin - A Podcast About Tribes (47 Minutes)

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:23:16 -0600

Seth Godin

Shortly after I turned on the computer this morning, I decided that I will continue to write about Seth Godin. He was so kind to leave a comment on my lates blog post, “Tribes - A leadership book written by Seth Godin”

On September 12th, 2008 Seth Godin had recorded an exclusive interview style podcast done by and for his community Triiibes.com.

(I don't hot link there, because it is a private community — and will remain to be private — and all you would see is a login screen.)

In this roughly 47 minutes Seth talks about

His notion of Tribes
The Book: Tribes - We Need You To Lead Us
Triiibes.com

Podcast with Seth Godin (audio only, 47 min.)

Are you finally inspired to buy the book?

You should be. This book is about

marketing and leadership,
about leadership and marketing,
about tribes.

Key Success Factor: Listen To Your Customers

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:33:51 -0700

Ask Your Customers

Two days ago I wrote about the Key Success Factor Number 1: Speed Of Implementation. Today I give you another “Gold Nugget”. Here it is:

“Listen to your individual customers and even to prospects”

Many business owners fail to do so properly. This could be one of your competitive advantages.

Do you believe to know what your customers and prospects want?
Few admit that they don't know. But if you believe to know, you simply don't know.
Do you know, who your customers are?

This article has been featured on
“More Than We Know (↑)”
in the Carnival Of Small Business Issues.

This morning I talked to Michael, who runs an online shop as part of his business, and he told me,

“I was totally surprised when I got the results of my recent customer survey. We thought our buyers are much younger then they actually are. And many of them are buying our product for a different reason than we made it for …”

Only three weeks ago Michael had emailed a customer survey to his about 6000 subscribers and got 550 completely filled out forms back. That's quite a lot. Michael achieved this good return rate by combining the survey with a random draw for a US$ 700 prize, some additional smaller prizes, and due to the fact that his email subscriber list is quite targeted.

Since than Michael could increase his sales by 15% just by using this kind of information. What did he do? Not much just the following.

Modified the copywriting of two of his sales pages and created new experiments in Google's Web Site Optimizer to integrated it smoothly.
Added a few new pages to the info section of his Web site
Created additional AdWords Ads for his campaigns and split tested them.
Sent an "answer" newsletter to his customers.

The total input of labor for the survey, the analysis, and the implementation of the recommendations of the results was 4 person-work-days, altogether. Next time Michael will conduct a customer survey, it won't be even as much work anymore.

A customer survey via email is one choice to get more customer feedback. What are you planning to do or what have you done already?

Email Survey?
Feedback Form on your Web site?
Question Time on your Blog
Squeeze Page with attached questionnaire
Exit Question
Entry Question
Give-Away upon questionnaire
…

Are you listening carefully to your customers? As explained above, listening might not be enough, when you ask them, your listening will be more worthwhile. Otherwise you might not hear much of a feedback.

Yours
John

P.S.: Watch out for my next blog post, because I want to listen to you.

Setup Tweetmeme Button On a Wordpress Blog

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:04:00 -0700

Recently I have described how I fixed a wrong setup of the tweetmeme button on my blog. I manually modified the blog template and I only mentioned briefly there is a Wordpress plugin for Tweetmeme.

Acknowledging Wordpress as the most popular blogging platform I need to follow up with a more detailed description of the Tweetmeme WP Plugin.

The installation and configuration is straightforward and shouldn't be a problem for anyone who has installed Wordpress on her hosting account successfully.

I provide some screenshots for your orientation.

Update Dec. 21, 2009: I made a screencam video of the procedure as well.

How To Setup A Tweetmeme Button On A Wordpress [HQ video] (↑)

Installation of the Wordpress Tweetmeme Plugin

You can download the plugin from Tweetmeme (↑) or directly install it with the Wordpress Admin Interface.

Add Plugin, Search for “tweetmeme”

Select the plugin from the list.

Review the description and install it.

After installing you need to activate and configure the plugin.

Activate the plugin

A new item — “Tweetememe” — appears in the left navigation bar at the bottom. Now it's time to configure it. (It's very easy.)

Settings for Tweetmeme

I used the default setting and only changed those below:

Source: johnfurst
URL shortener: bit.ly

Using almost all default settings

Tweetmeme Button Successfully Installed

How long did this take?
4 minutes or less?
We are almost done.

Let's move the button to the left side…

I just want the button move the botton from the other side. All I need to do is to modify the Style.

Style for right side (default): float: right; margin:left: 10px;
Style for left side: float: left; margin-right: 10px;

The result looks fine.

Voilà, my twitter user and a shorter text. Perfect.

The plugin uses — behind the scenes — the HTML meta element and inserts a “tweetmeme-title” into the head section of the page with the title of the post. It drops the title of the blog to keep the retweet text string short.

There are additionally configuration options. Just play with them a little.

Yours
John W. Furst

Google's PageRank and Alexa Rank: Useful or Not?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:31:40 -0600

Much has been written about another Google Slap in the last couple of days.

Google Slapping Entire Internet Marketing Industry (↑)
by Courtney Tuttle
Digg Favorites Slapped By Google (↑)
by Andy Beard

Goggle has reduced the PageRank of major, quality blogs by 2. You find the whole list in those posts that I have linked above. Enough comments and articles about this already.

By bringing in the Alexa Rank and compare it with Google PageRank I want to show, what this is all about.

At first, it is just an arbitrary number chosen by some company (Google, Amazon). Whenever those companies decide to change, how they calculate these numbers, it proves again, that they are just arbitrary numbers.

Why are so many people talking about those numbers then?

Those numbers are not random numbers, they have a more or less strong correlation to some real world facts as evaluated by Google and Amazon.

The goal is to make it easier for Web masters, site owners, and advertisers to compare sites and draw their conclusion about how those other sites are performing in real world figures (traffic, monetization, …)

PageRank (PR):

The range: no PR - PR 0 - PR 1 - … PR 10 (11 numbers plus “no rank”)

PageRank Explained by Google: “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’ Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance. …”

In a few simple words: The higher the better, higher PageRank usually means, more links, more visitors, more authority of the page. Yes, PageRank is assigned to each individual page. It is not one number for the whole site.

Alexa Rank:

The range: no rank - 10,000,000 - 1,000,000 - 100,000 - 1,000 - 10 - #1

Alexa's definition: “A listing of all sites on the Web, sorted by traffic...

Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, we get the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service. The process is relatively complex, but if you have a need to know, please read on.”

More About the Alexa Traffic Rankings (↑)

Once you have managed to get listed under the top 100,000 sites of the world, Alexa gives you even more statistics.

Both measures have some shortcomings like PageRank being heavily dependent on Google's moods and Alexa is giving you a picture based on Toolbar Users only. They are far from portraying some sort of truth. What is truth anyway?

As your site is evaluated by others based on those numbers to some extent, you should at least know what those are for your sites and how you are doing compared to your competitors.

The easiest way to get those numbers is by installing Toolbars in your Web browser:

Download the Alexa Toolbar (↑)
Download the Google Toolbar (↑)

If you are concerned about security and data privacy read the legalese for those toolbars, but most importantly, start out with using a fast, secure browser like Firefox. ~~Get it now and Google's Toolbar will be already installed.~~ Update on 2008-08-01: This option doesn't seem to be available anymore (at least for Linux) But no problem, just install Firefox first and install the toolbars afterwards..

Get the Firefox Browser (↑)

Any other reason, why you should have those toolbars?

Well, … Google Toolbar shows the PageRank of a site that your are browsing. But what's also cool is it integrates access to almost every Google Tool into your browser, which saves you some clicks.

Alexa shows you the traffic history of a site and lets you recognize trends easily. For this feature its much more useful than the static PageRank figure from Google. That alone is the best reason to have it installed. Also don't forget, when visiting your own site with the Alexa toolbar installed, you help its ranking a little bit (at least as long as you are in the millions or not even ranked at all. Do you want to impress those advertisers or not?

Conclusion:

The most important figure about your Web business was, is , and will be your bottom line. Always! Your profits, that you can keep at the end of the month. Right? You'll observe some correlation between those numbers and your Web generated income, but that correlation will be more or less strongly dependent on many factors. A Google slap like this one just throws off that type of correlation altogether.

Keep an eye on those (PR, Alexa) numbers for your site and the site of your competitors, but continue to work for money and these numbers will follow in the right direction naturally.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Thanks to Journal Blogger (↑) for including this article in the outstanding Edition of The Carnival of Small Business Issues of Nov 13^th, 2007 (↑).

Regulations Advertisers in USA and EU Should Know About – FTC and European Commission

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:07:45 -0600

Due to the latest announcement of changes in regulations for advertisers in the USA, a lot of people talk, write, and speculate about that subject.

Situation In The USA

I published my opinion about an hour ago as a separate note:

Time To Double Check Your Advertising? - FTC Changes Guidelines Effective Dec 1, 2009

The core elements can be summarized as follow:

Disclose the use of affiliate links on your sites and in your social media profiles.
Disclose any form of relationship when writing about commercial products and services. Even if you only got a free sample worth $0.99
Monitor your affiliates and publishers for compliance with the new regulations.
Always tell the truth.
Think twice before showing specific results in testimonials.
Last but not least don't use fake blogs with made up reviews and those kind of things.

You may want to read my entire note.

Update
October 10, 2009

The most important pages to read in the FTC PDF document are pages: 55-81.
FTC: Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising
[377 KiBytes, 81 pages, PDF document]

Advertisements are evaluated from the perspective of a typical consumer.
Three important questions.

(a) Whose opinion is displayed? (average consumer, the advertiser, an expert in that field, ...)
(b) Are there reasons this opinion could have been influenced by the advertiser?
(c) What are the results a typical, average customer can expect?

(Very soon anything without a disclaimer will look suspicious. )

Situation In The European Union

Let's not forget, the Internet is more or less a medium without national borders.

I mean to say, it is likely that any website targeted to US consumers will effect some of the 500 million consumers in the European union as well.

Maybe a good idea to recall the fact that the European Union cracked down on unfair business practices two years ago.

Press release: Consumers - New EU rules crackdown on misleading advertising and aggressive sales practices (Dec. 2007)
The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive
[PDF Document, 32 pages, 708 KiBytes]

At the core of the EU regulation efforts are 4 key elements for eliminating unfair business practices.

A far reaching general clause defining practices which are unfair and therefore prohibited.
Misleading Practices (Actions and Omissions) and Aggressive Practices.
Safeguards for vulnerable consumers.
An extensive black list of practices which are banned in all circumstances.

A Short Teaser - The "Dirty Dozen Black List"

Bait advertising
Fake "Free" offers
Direct exhortations to children to buy advertised products
False claims about curative capacity
Advertorials
Pyramid schemes
Prize Winning
Misleading impression of consumers’ rights
Limited offers (!)
Language of after-sales service
Inertia Selling
Europe-wide guarantees

And of course "Free" should mean free.

I kept this introduction very short on purpose to motivate you look up the detailed documents published by the European Commission. (links above)

The Bottom Line

Always tell the truth.
Don't hide anything about your relationship with the seller/advertiser.
Be upfront with your motives
Keep in mind you are writing for a typical consumer. Their expectations are the measure for all things.
Monitor your agents/affiliates and make sure they comply with all regulations.
No false pressure.
Some extra rules for special interest groups like children, low income consumers, and a lot of extra regulations for some markets like health, fitness, financial, real estate, etc. …

Most people in business will be up-to-date with most regulations. Major shift right now is concerning product endorsements and the use of testimonials.

That's it.

No reason to freak out.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Frank Kern's post about those matters is very educational and entertaining to some extent as well. Go check it out.

“FTC Declares Shenanigans On All Kinds Of Stuff!”

My comment on Frank's blog: “Absolutely d’accord. Makes sense. I mean, when it starts to rain, what do you do? You take an umbrella, still go out and keep your smile on your face, don’t you. Like in the great movie ‘Singing In The Rain’ … ”

(This entire blog post reflects my personal opinion and is certainly not any form of legal advice.)

Templates and Themes For Serendipity - S9y

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:10:43 -0600

The number of freely available templates or themes is a critical ingredient for the success of any Blog software.

I have advertised Serendipity Blog software (s9y) and Garvin Hicking’s new book on Serendipity in my previous post. Today, when I answered a comment on my Blog, I actually got into thinking about the importance of templates, and decided to write this post about themes and templates.

S9y offers a great deal of flexibility and customization without the need to tweak the template code directly. The configuration and Plugin management via the Admin interface is straight forward and very flexible.
The use of the Smarty Templating Engine separates design and application code.

However, one main advantage of Wordpress... over s9y is the huge base of cool looking themes for almost any purpose. Most or at least many of them are readily available for free. A new blogger just picks any of the themes and is done! There are SEO optimized themes, AdSense optimized themes, etc.

I mean look at the following search terms. I added up the number of search results on the big three (Google, Yahoo, live).

free wordpress themes 34,700,000
free serendipity themes 2,470,000

We know, the bigger a community the faster it grows. Wordpress is ahead of s9y in terms of popularity more than just a short head. Anyway, I am a s9y fan and I'll tell you how to deal about s9y templates (it's not as scary as you might think of).

Let’s talk s9y themes straight

All official templates are available at the official Serendipity Web site. I have counted about 103 official templates or so.

You can either

reconfigure those,
modify them with Plugins,
edit the template files (PHP skills not required),
or start from scratch and design your very own template.

A good starting point are the “bulletproof” templates, which were created as template framework for designers. Start with your unique template from here:

S9y-Bulletproof.com

The Bulletproof developers' primary design goal was to create a template which can be base of any of the “classic” Blog layouts, in any popular browser, on any popular platform, without falling apart. Bulletproof makes great use of s9y's “theme options”, so users can now configure almost any desirable option using just the administration panel. There is almost no need to edit any of the template's core files for the most desirable features.

I hope that helps
Yours
John W. Furst

Discover A Free Mind Mapping Online Tool

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:19:58 -0600

MindMeister.com

A friend told me about an online mind mapping tool that helped him to organize the 1,000 ideas in his head. So let me pass on this little productivity tip to you.

Without further ado, here is the tool he recommended to me.

MindMeister.com (↑)

Mind mapping allows you to lay out your ideas and thoughts kind of visually. Related items are close together. Therefore, you don't need much space and keep the overview easily. I am not going into the details of mind mapping (sorry), but some advantages of using an online tool like the one my friend recommends.

Advantages

It's easy to rearrange items. You don't run out of space, like you would probably on a sheet of paper.
Major advantage: You can share your maps with a team easily.
Your data is accessible from anywhere.
(Check terms of service, etc. and make your own decision about the risks of outsourcing your sensitive data that way.)
MindMeister.com (↑) offers a free basic version, besides that the rates are very reasonable.

I have signed up for a free account today. I just started to check it out myself. I am not affiliated with MindMeister.

Have a nice weekend.

Yours
John W. Furst

Update: Vic Gee left a comment pointing to his extensive, great resource about various mind mapping tools. You definitely should check it out.

Thanks Vic

Improve Your Tweetmeme Setup For Better Results

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:57:00 -0700

A couple of days ago I have removed my do-it-yourself Tweet-it button and put the button from Tweetmeme (↑) on this blog.

Dreaming of 44 retweets.

It's more encouraging for website visitors to retweet a story that already has been retweeted a lot. People follow the crowd.

Besides that the button looks pretty, too.

Update Dec. 12, 2009: I have added a blog post about the Tweetmeme Wordpress Plugin.

However, as simple as it is to put a button on a blog or website I still got it wrong.

Browsing the Web I can see that I am not alone.

Therefor I decided to write a short article about how to get Tweetmeme up right.

The problem on my site was as follows:

Blog visitor clicks the tweetmeme button
A new window opens
(If they have not done this previously, they need to authorize tweetmeme for their twitter account. Eventually they also need to login to Twitter.)
The following text is suggested for being retweeted:

Tweetmeme, with the wrong setup

Do you spot what's wrong?

At first, it should be my twitter username that's retweeted, shouldn't it be.

Secondly, the text is not really informative or encouraging a retweet, isn't it.

Thanks to Andy Beard (↑) for shooting a quick email to me and pointing this out. Andy is someone whose suggestions got picked up by the tweetmeme developer team (↑) after his blog post in May, 2009. Now Andy uses Tweetmeme on his blog.

Setting Up The Tweetmeme Button Correctly

Obviously I have screwed up this rather simple task. Shame on me.

As I really want to keep this post short I stick with the exact implementation on my blog. There are more than one ways of implementing the Tweetmeme functionality on a website. You can figure out the rest by consulting the Tweetmeme Help pages on their website.

I am using the Retweet Button (↑) based on JavaScript.

It only requires a simple cut and paste of code into your website template or static (X)HTML file (and obviously some thought.)

Users of Wordpress blog software have the convenience of managing this with a Wordpress plugin instead.

Here is the HTML code needed for Tweetmeme

I am using 3 JavaScript variables to configure Tweetmeme (and another trick which I will mention further down the line.)

tweetmeme_url = 'http://yoururl.com/your-page.html';

The button grabs the URL of the page. That means if you have more than one button on a single page—like on a blog index page—you need to specify the URL of the post. That's what this variable is here for.

The URL must not be a redirected URL, like from tinyurl.com but a regular webaddress returning a 200 OK HTTP status response code.

tweetmeme_source = 'yourtwitteruser';

The default user—and many webmasters leave it that way—is 'tweetmeme'. Change it to your user.

tweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly';

This is a list of the URL Shorteners that we are currently supporting:
bit.ly, awe.sm, cli.gs, digg.com, is.gd, TinyURL.com, tr.im, su.pr, ow.ly, twurl.nl

My choice is “bit.ly”.

There is an additional variable for a compact button, but I never have noticed anyone using it.

Now the button is configured correctly and suggests the following text for the retweet.

Tweetmeme, correct setup.

Done, almost.

Tweetmeme Title - Two More Issues

After fixing the configuration I noticed that the "headline" in the retweet-it-window did not change. I still got the title of my blog suggested rather than the title of my blog post.

That's because the "wrong title" was already indexed at Tweetmeme. An entry for this index is created at the first time a new URL shows up. Either on Twitter or vie a Tweetmeme button.

A quick test confirmed that theory, and later I found the corresponding section in the FAQ and the remedy of the problem.

Fix Broken Titles In The Tweetmeme Index

Other users have had that same problem before as I could see at the Tweetmeme Button FAQ (↑).

Why is TweetMeme not picking up the correct page title?

TweetMeme caches page information (including the title) to reduce load on the site that is using the button. If you have updated your page titles, you can force TweetMeme to update by using our ping service (↑).

This worked like a charm and I had updated the wrong post titles in the index within a couple of minutes.

Now that issue is fixed.

Tweetmeme Ping Service

I got the wrong post title in the tweetmeme index from my blog post drafts. My blog returns a “soft” error page on posts that are not published yet. The title of those is “E-Biz Booster Blog”. Now I have disabled the display of the tweetmeme button on drafts. That's what tweetmeme picks up.

Tip: Check the tweetmeme text after publishing a new page. If necessary, correct it, and do a ping.

Check your workflow. The button only should be displayed on finally published pages.

After changing the title of a page you need to ping tweetmeme.

But I am still not entirely satisfied.

The Retweets Could Be Simply Too Long

Tweetmeme will use all 140 characters Twitter allows if necessary.

Tweetmeme and long post titles

Personally I try to keep all my tweets at 120 characters maximum length. This makes it easier for my followers on Twitter to retweet it.

While a person can click through to the site and use the Tweetmeme (or any other) retweet button there, some prefer to acknowledge twitter users in the retweet chain—especially if some authority twitter user is involved. E.g.,

RT @big_shot_authority RT @unknown_dude: “Great Story Of A Nobody!” http://bit.ly/…

I don't think too much about it. I simply leave some extra space.

Changing The Headline For Tweetmeme

To avoid abuse tweetmeme is restrictive in what you can do. You can cut down your title. Nothing else. You cannot even exchange a single character or change the order of words.

You can use an HTML meta element to specify an alternative title. What I currently do is to drop the blog title.

For example:

Google Wave - Forget Plain Text Emails | E-Biz Booster Blog

becomes

Google Wave - Forget Plain Text Emails

You achieve this by adding a XHTML meta element into the head section of your website page.

<meta name="tweetmeme-title" content="Google Wave - Forget Plain Text Emails" />


<meta name="tweetmeme-title" content="<?php wp_title(''); ?>" />


<meta name="tweetmeme-title" content="{$head_title}" />

Details are described in Customising Button Title (↑).

Don't forget the new title must be an exact subset of the title in the HTML title element of the webpage.

An Even More Retweet Friendly Tweetmeme Tweak

Later today I will add a function in my blog template which cuts the that guarantees that truncates the title so that the entire tweet string won't exceed the 120 character limit I care about.

It's a bit unlikely that I will ever hit that limit, but who knows. Let's figure out how long the blog title can be.

“RT @johnfurst ”
(14 characters, including trailing space)

“ http://bit.ly/5L9KKX ”
(22 characters with the spaces)

120 - 14 - 22 = 84

I need to truncate the page title down to 84 characters. Here is what I do in Serendipity. Wordpress users are most likely using the plugin. No need to give them code.

<meta name="tweetmeme-title" content="{$head_title|truncate:84:""}" />

A tip for Serendipity users: The Smarty truncate function puts '...' (three periods) at the end of the truncated string (included in it's specified length). This would violate Tweetmeme's restrictions of not modifying the string. The second parameter "" (empty string) overwrites that behavior and leaves the string unmodified. The function cuts off at a word boundary.

Voilà, that's it.

Tweetmeme also offers a premium analytics package for Twitter (↑) but I do not currently intend to use it.

Yours
John W. Furst

Change Everything and Take Off - Looking at Linchpin by Seth Godin

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:00:00 -0700

Enjoying Seth’s “Linchpin” summary.

Seth Godin does not exactly have the reputation of writing How To books for dummies. And his latest book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (↑) — to be released on January 26, 2010 (audio book on February, 9) will not be an exception.

Let me talk a little bit about this amazing book. I also had the honor that Seth answered me a couple of questions about the book. All here in this blog post. Stay tuned.

Update January 12, 2010:
Review of the whole book by Becky Blanton
…and even more reviews by my friends from <Triiibes.com>.

Godin continues his successful tradition of being a reporter on one hand, visionary and agent of change on the other hand. While Seth’s previous bestselling book Tribes was a book about leadership, this one is about personal change. The author writes,

“Linchpin is the book for the individual, it’s a very personal book […] It’s about a choice and it’s about your life. This choice doesn’t require you to quit your job, though it challenges you to rethink how you do your job.”

I agree.

Seth is the master of pointing his finger at broken systems. In Linchpin he finally pleas to you to step out of this broken box. Actually he goes so far to suggest that’s almost a survival strategy to do so.

“ It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. […] The population has been seduced, scammed and brainwashed. […]”

Why do you need to read this book?

You are probably guessing how the economy will perform this year, how secure your job really is, or if your potential customers will have any money left to pay for your services, aren’t you.

The rug is pulled away under your feet, it’s time to take matters and responsibility back in your hands.

Seth Godin motivates you to become a linchpin in your organization..

In the old days a linchpin was essential to fasten and secure a wheel to the axle. In our days and age you only will be indispensable, if you have become a linchpin.

Doing your job—even if you do a great job—isn’t good enough anymore. Forget job security or the concept of a loyal customer.

The Concept of Emotional Labor

One key concept for becoming a linchpin is creating exceptional, outstanding value for your boss, share holders, customers, whoever, … by exerting emotional labor. (↑) This creative process and its output will become your differentiator.

This is the most difficult part. That’s where the value is, the source which will make you indispensable.

As the sociologist Arlie Hochschild has described forty years ago, emotional labor is done with your feelings, not with your body. It’s the part which cannot be substituted with the output of machines or cheap labor from the other side of the planet.

As I understand the author creativity and human interactions are the main ingredients for value creation. This makes it almost a form of Art. While the author speaks to our inner artist, he points out Art is not limited to visual Art, performing Art or music.

Why should creating a new business model or an efficient algorithm for software not be considered an art form?

Imagine …

Now imagine you make that decision to change everything and start living your life on your terms, how would that feel? It’s risky—a bit—but the rewards will be worth it.

You will never forget that moment when you got going your way. Seth Godin writes,

“You are a genius and we need your contribution.”

About Seth Godin

Seth Godin, is the author of Tribes, Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, and many other international bestsellers that have changed the way business people think and act. He’s the most influential business blogger (↑) in the world, and consistently one of the twenty-five most widely read bloggers in any category. He’s also the founder and CEO of Squidoo (a successful internet company) and a very popular lecturer.

Conclusion

So far I only have read a 62 page summary written by Seth Godin, sent to me by Seth Godin early this week.

His writing style is very enjoyable and resembles the beauty of elegant mathematical equations: You don’t get tired of playing with them and, yet, always find new applications and solutions.

I am certainly very curious about the rest of the book.

Seth does not want to write books for everyone—and he admits it—but once he has the reader on his hook … Game over. You’re a fan.

Maybe some notes of warning!

Don’t expect it to be easy to change. It’s not.
It might help to give copies of the book to your spouse, friends, your boss so that they better understand what you are trying to become and understand it’s also for their benefit. I learned this from Alex Mandossian. He always suggests to get at least 3 copies of any book he recommends.
Let’s do it.
Buy three and give away two (↑).

Being generous is another important trait of linchpins.

Speaking of generosity, Seth was so nice to answer two questions about the book. So we shot some emails on a trans-atlantic mission. Here we go.

Question by John Furst: While you assert the genius is in everyone, … Are there professions, industries that are especially rewarding for linchpins and others one should probably consider exiting. Or in other words, jobs in which that genius has no other potential than being wasted.

Answer by Seth Godin: I think that industries that are based on commodities and on repeated life or death deliverables are probably not the best places for artists, for people making change or doing new work.

I’d stay away from Exxon or a pacemaker factory.

Q: Can you imagine a story that if you hear it you would say about, “If only that had happened because of my book, it would have been enough reason to do all this work and write this book.” What would that story be?

A: I’ve already discovered everything I was hoping for… people are telling me that the book has given them the last push they needed to do something important, something worthy of their effort. That’s the whole point!

Thanks, Seth.

Update January 12, 2010: Review of the whole book

Becky Blanton,
A writer and photographer with passion.

One disadvantage of living on a remote island: shipping. I still only have the PDF summary, but my friend Becky Blanton (↑) wrote a really good review of the entire book. Go, check it out:

Linchpin – embrace the lizard brain (↑)

Even more reviews on my Squidoo lens. (↑)

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I know the book will not be released before the 26th. Why not pre-order it from Amazon (↑) and also subscribe to Seth Godin's blog (↑).

P.P.S.: Always have fun.

Key Success Factor Number One: Speed Of Implementation

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:33:02 -0700

Ready - Fire - Aim

I warn you at the beginning. This will be a short article. Why? Because everybody of us has work to do. No matter in what position you are. So I will quickly give one of my popular “generic - this helps everyone in every situation” rules. It's not limited to business. All you need is the drive for “getting results”.

Here's the tip:

“Implement your ideas as quickly as you can!”

Are you

A business owner (home based, small or large, …)
A manager (first level, middle or top management)
A freelancer
Or simply an employee

Even if you are a student or if you are unemployed, you should get out something from this lesson.

Ask yourself, how many times in your life you had a “great idea” or a “great opportunity”, but you didn't really follow through. Instead you switched yourself into “research mode”. Or in “waiting mode” and never switched to “taking action”. Later you simply dropped the idea. Another, “what would have been, if this had worked …” story is born. Think a little:

What is research, reading, waiting, … worth?

It's worth exactly 0.00 in any currency.
Unless you put it to work.

The sooner you act, the sooner you put your idea into action, the sooner you'll get results. Positive and sometimes negative ones. The important part is you get solid results that help you stir your business ship into the right direction.

“Thinking about it”, “doing research”, “reading”, “waiting” will not give you the answers you need to boost your business with success stories.

Albert Einstein (↑) came up with ground breaking theories about the physical structure of time and space from “pure thinking”, but that's physics and math. The law of physics don't change and Einstein was a believer that everything can be calculated, if the input variables are known well enough. Bad for Einstein, but quantum physics proved him wrong. The “future” is not predetermined due to Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (↑).

Doing marketing and business is for sure more unpredictable than physics. Stop thinking whether something will work or not. You have to do the “experiment”. You have to take a shot. That's the only way to find out.

You can further improve your chances for success, when you mimic and learn from people or businesses, that are already where you want to go. No reason to re-invent the wheel of marketing and business.

Follow success proven path!

But still, you have to act! Do it now, don't wait. Get into the habit of acting and implement your ideas fast. A recent university study in the US has revealed again:

The number 1 key factor of successful business people is:

“Speed of Implementation”

Especially on the Internet, since it has become so cheap to test different ideas.
Get real world feedback. Get it fast, do it now!

Before you say, there is something missing:

You don't have the skills to implement it?
Find someone who has.
You don't have the money?
Well, you are already running a business, aren't you? You already have some basis to work on. I found that many quick ideas are actually about improving something that you are already doing. Little improvements will add up to some respectable results.
You don't have the time?
Start reading my Touch It - Get It Done series of articles about effective time management.

No more excuses, please. Do yourself a favor.

Let me conclude with a personal story from the Corporate World at a time, when I was Product Marketing Manager for a leading Mobile Telephone Operator. One of our staff had an idea for a subscription based MMS — Multi Media Messaging Service (↑), e.g. those little pictures or videos you can send and receive with GMS cellphones (↑). This technology was brand new and only a few early adopters had the latest handsets. We knew it will be difficult to get a “little, cute product” like this approved quickly.

The review and approval process for new products was geared towards voice products which impact millions of customers and move tens of millions of dollars with small changes.

What did we do? We outsourced the development and operations, including payment processing and got started within a week. Viral marketing did the rest. In the next marketing meeting our department showed results:

We didn't have an approved product, but we had paying customers.
Do you think the product was rejected? It was not, even the CEO subscribed to the service later.

Results are selling themselves. Get results, quickly.

Your
John W. Furst

P.S.: Some will ask about details of this study. Sorry, I saw it in a video today, but didn't keep the reference. I rather jumped to have this post written. Break your bad habits and start now. Is it really important, who conducted this study?

You could waste your time and search for it on the Internet or
You could apply this simple rule and find out that it works. What bad could happen? Even if you have the idea to jump out of the window, it will work, you 'll have jumped out of the window by now.

FireFox Toolbars - Best Of Selection

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:48:38 -0700

It seems that I am in the mood of discovering more and more browser toolbars this month. Just recently I have recommended 3 browser toolbars, which are available for Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE).

Google Toolbar and Alexa Sparky to check your rankings and the
Stuble Upon Toolbar for discovering new Web sites and being part of the Stumble community of 3 million people Web enthusiasts.

Andy Beard says Google Toolbar Is Not Family Safe (↑) and removed it. Well, that might be true, simply don't let your Kids on your computer. There are many more areas of danger.

Today I have another 2 toolbars that I want to tell you about. Since I am using Firefox, I did not even check, if those or similar ones are available for IE.

Stop, complaining and finally get a decent browser:

Download the ultimate Web software now (if you haven't already)

Here we go:

Cooliris Preview
by The Cooliris

Cooliris Previews gives you the power to browse and share Web links and rich media faster. Just mouse over any link, and the Cooliris preview window immediately appears to show you the content. To email it, just click.

Preview web links, images, and videos without even clicking.
“Stack” previewed items into temporary bookmarks to quickly preview later.
Instantly send links to friends and family with just a click.
Automatically subsearch Google, Wikipedia, and many others by right-clicking on any phrase.
Customize preferences to control preview window activation, time delay, size & position, etc.

Get it now:

Cooliris Preview (↑)

Web Developer
by Chris Pederick

This very powerful toolbar is the right tool for Web developers, Web designers, and Web masters.

You can alter CSS inline and style sheet parameters and see immediately how ot affects the page you are viewing.

Also very useful are the information functions that will show you details on the design of the page: draw boxes for otherwise invisible <div></div> containers or tables, and much, much more. Go and check it out.

Web Developer Firefox Add-on (↑)

My favorite plugins:

Happy browsing
John W. Furst

P.S.: Always be careful when downloading and installing third party software or extensions on your computer. Make sure they are from a trusted source, are free of Adware, Spyware, and viruses.

Are They Burning Their Email Lists?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:23:43 -0600

Don’t Burn Your Email List!
(image credit)

Something must be up in the air this spring.

Too much is too much.
Really.

Last week I advised you to write more often to your email list members. This week it seems like I say exactly the opposite.

Many friends and colleagues are complaining that they are getting too many sales pitches in their email inbox. They are fed up and told me they have unsubscribed massively from the email lists of company A, marketer B, blogger C, and so forth.

Too Many Affiliate Promotions

The main culprit seems to be those affiliate promotions,

“He’s my friend, a great guy, his product rocks! This helped me so much when I was in the same situation like you are in right now. Really, it’s a steal, you are crazy if you don’t buy this now before it’s sold out. Buy it now, don’t wait!”

It continues the next day:

“I cannot believe that you are still sitting on the fence. You cannot let that go. It’s a once in a life time opportunity. And it’s so affordable. Imagine how you will feel when you finally get the results you and your family deserve.”

Seen in weight loss, make money, find the better job, learn X,Y,Z, …, you name it. C’mon.

And so on.

And once you start not opening and reading their emails, they figure that out and send you the same email again with a different subject line. And again, …

Companies and marketers are loosing customers that way all the time.

For example, a friend told me,

“He and … try to sell me something every day. It’s almost like they are whoring themselves out. If they concentrated on their own products and customer service - which is awful by the way - I think I would be more interested in them.”

I clicked Remove Me From List. Done.

Emotional Bank Account

As a marketing professional you have to understand this. You have an emotional bank account with your email list members and whenever you promote something to them, it will cost you points. You must ensure that your subscribers keep getting way more value from you over time than what you withdraw with every promotion you do. This balance should remain high and ideally continue to grow.

For example:

When Maria just has opted-in to your email newsletter or bought something from you. Think about:

Does she really need this product right now.
Can she take advantage of it?
Does she need it?

It doesn’t make sense to promote an advance course to someone who just has bought your beginner product and normally wouldn’t even have finished to consume your program at this point.

… Webinars and Tele-Classes

Really? Webinars or tele-classes with special, free information are part of so many promotions today.

Honestly, how many time can one listen to the same “old story” over and over again. The content wears out quickly over time and what’s left is a 40, 60, 90 minute sales pitch,

That hurts a lot.

Costs many of those points in the emotional bank account you have with your email subscribers.

And even if your subscribers don’t watch the video, webinar or read the promotions, once the balance in that bank account is low, they start thinking that you want to steal their time and money. There goes your credibility as trusted adviser and friend.

This is not good.

Think about it.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: There is a fine balance between sending too few and too many emails and it all has to do with the type of content you send along the way. I shall write more about this in the future.

A Lazy Man's Domain Name Tip

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0600

Are you searching for ‘a car’ or ‘many cars’?
Which domain name would you type first? (image credit)

A couple of month ago I have written about the basics on how to choose a domain name. Today let me add one important point.

A friend of mine runs a successful business and just has launched a new website with some great tips for lead generation. I wanted to read one of his articles again and typed-in his URL. Instead of his homepage I saw:

Error: Server not found

This was quite a surprise. He has one of those domains where you have a hard time to remember whether to add the “s” for plural or not. Like in

car.com or
cars.com

The weird mess up on his part is that he even has a very beautiful logo with …labs, but his domain name is …lab.com.

I don’t think I am the only one making this mistake, but I am one of the few who actually try the other version as well. The average web surfer might just give up right away.

Of course I wrote to him immediately and shouted,

“… get the plural version of your domain as long as you can.

You can buy it from me for $2,397.00 if you decide on the spot while we are talking. Otherwise I throw it on the market for at least $4,997.00 tomorrow. Your choice …”

Well, the last part is made up, I did not try to rip him off. Fortunately his missed domain is still available. That’s the secret reason why I don’t spell out his domain name here.

I am sure he understood the hint and will buy it.

Type-in traffic can be more valuable than you think

Ask yourself, “Who types in your domain directly into the browser?”

Likely someone who already has heard about you and wants to know more. For example she has remembered your company name, brand name, product name from an ad you ran in a magazine, from a radio or late night TV ad, or in best case from someone who mentioned your products and services in a very favorable tone — basically referred her in your direction.

Sounds like a not so cold prospect.

That type-in user whom you have lost just 3 minutes ago, and another one 10 hours and 27 minutes ago might have signed up to your newsletter or bought something right away. You’ll never know.

Tip: When you think about registering a certain domain name consider right away whether it makes sense to register both singular and plural versions of it.

Is there already a competitor using one version or the other?

Maybe you should get a totally different name then to avoid trademark related issues in the future.
How many searches are on the major search engines for each — the singular and the plural version of the keyword — respectively domain name.

A quick quiz

What do you think is the more popular site?

car.com or
cars.com

(display the answer)

The Answer

According to Alexa cars.com is more popular than car.com, it gets about 25 times more visitors.

Did you guess right?

5 million searches a month in the USA for cars and 1 million searches for car on Google. That’s at least what the Google keyword tool tells me.

car.com was registered in 1994; cars.com in 1998. Obviously those marketing savvy guys who grabbed cars.com had figured out at this time that a lot of people are searching for “cars”.

[close answer]

This treatment is a bit incomplete but don’t waste your time to find the holes in my argument. Take action instead.

Rather check if you have domains that are effected, shell out a few bucks and register the plural and singular versions of your important domains.
Then redirect your traffic with a 301 Permanently Moved HTTP status response code to your main domain. Your web hosting provider has documentation on how to do this or even can do it for you.

Now get to work.

By the way did you notice that in general most of the folks who make a good living on the Internet have a lot of domains. (Just a hint more.)

Yours
John W. Furst

5 Tips on How to Increase the Open Rate of Your Email Newsletter

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:37:00 -0600

Ingredients for Email Marketing Success (image credit)

A business owner who publishes a monthly email newsletter asked me for advice. The business in question is a European based specialist for color trends and consults with designers in the fashion and home design industries. In this particular case, Carol, wanted to know how to increase the open rate for her newsletter editions. Her company publishes the newsletter once a month.

I think my response might be transferable to your business or website as well. That is why I thought I should share it with a wider audience.

The content and design of the newsletter I was giving the advice on is rather intriguing. However, it is a constant challenge to keep readers engaged and interested over a longer period of time. I gave Carol the following tips to think about.

5 Tips on how to engage your readers and increase your open rate

(1) Make it more personal!

Have an editor, a spokesperson write the newsletter in a colloquial tone. Introduce that character as a person with a back-story, and also address the reader on the personal level. An email is communication from one person to another. A newsletter should not be an exception.

I came up with the following suggestions for Carol’s situation in our initial consultation. Let the reader follow the editor, James for example, on his personal journey through the universe of color and time. This allows for some great metaphors and brings the otherwise dry text to life. Instead of writing in the third person like in academic papers bring in personal points of view and emotions by writing in the first person to tell a story.

Look at how I have started this article. I am telling you the reason why I am writing this article. It works pretty good, doesn’t it.

(2) Increase the frequency of your newsletter

Once a month is too infrequent to maintain and strengthen the relationship with your readers.

You don’t want to be perceived as the 57th agency which sends yet another trend report. You want to be perceived as “friend,” who helps the reader through the jungle, who offers effective solutions for whatever the biggest problem in your industry is. Go beyond of just being a reporter.

(3) Vary the type of emails

When I said, “Write more often,” I did not mean to just multiply your efforts. You still send your “full blown” monthly report to your readers, but you contact them with different kind of useful information in-between.

While you keep sending your beautifully designed report with lots of pictures in PDF format once a month, you introduce a shorter type of message that highlights important information for your readers. For example:

How to tips
Interesting links
Hot or controversial news in your market
Videos on the web
Offer timely sensitive info
Case studies from your readers
Survey your readers and report results back

Provide them with content they can and want to talk about. Then, they might talk about your email newsletter and your company as well. It is about keeping the conversation going. Don’t be afraid to link to other than your own websites.

You will be positively surprised that your readers will write back and thank you for this kind of content even when you don’t ask them to do so. I know that from my own experience.

(4) Measure the feedback

Keep an eye for your email marketing metrics: open rate, click through rate, replies, number of new subscribers and members who just unsubscribed. This data helps you to find a style that works best with your reader base.

Are you sure that one newsletter serves both groups? In my example, designers in the fashion industry and designers in home decor? While your monthly report might be of identical value to them, it could be that they require to be treated quite differently. Maybe you will find cues that you should segment your email list into two groups.

(5) Incorporate Social Media

Refer to your newsletter in social media and vice versa. Allow people to share your content with their colleagues and friends easily.

Rounding it up

These tips are just a couple of things to start with. It means more work, but it will be worth the effort and will increase your footprint in your market.

In case your goal includes selling more of your services with the help of the newsletter, you have to make it a topic, too. Meaning, you talk about your offers from time to time and ask for the sale! Or even better, come up with “newsletter subscriber only deals.”

Last but not least, it has been said already that headlines are very important. But in the long run your members will continue to open the newsletter issue not because of the headline, but because they hardly can wait for the next one. They want to hear from that person - the personal voice of your brand. If not, you have lost them somewhere on the road so to speak.

One of the biggest mistakes in business to business marketing (B2B) is to assume “businesses are different” and you have to be super serious. Same is true in the academic world by the way, but that’s a different tribe.

There is not such a thing as a BUSINESS…
It’s always a PERSON, who is reading your ezine.

In Carol’s particular case, I bet designers will really appreciate and value a real (not fake), personal touch in your communication.

Successful email marketing is about building relationships through value!

One last note about losing subscribes. Without a doubt some people will unsubscribe when you introduce changes, but others will become more engaged with you, which is your goal here. You are writing for those who are listening and giving you constructive feedback. You should not write in order to keep people from leaving your email list. That’s a game you cannot win.

Now I hope that you put these ideas to practice right away.

Sign up to my newsletter in the top, right corner of this page. I’ll rush my free report “Become More Productive to You” that helps you to eliminate the time-wasteful side of email altogether.

Yours
John W. Furst
E-Biz Booster Blog

B2B Marketing Fundamentals Don't Change

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:09:43 -0600

(image credit)

I just have found this video, which demonstrates …

Well, just watch it. It's only 2 minutes or even shorter. (I didn't look at the timer.)

And then, please, leave a comment and let us know what you think.

That's what the description at YouTube reveals,

«While technology, communications channels and media usage habits change over time, the fundamentals of profitable business-to-business marketing, including the importance of building awareness, credibility and relationships, do not. In this excerpted video from a live staging of McGraw-Hill’s classic “Man in the Chair” ad at the Business Marketing Association’s 2009 national conference, BMA drives home the fundamental similarity between how buyers and sellers built business relationships 50 years ago and how they continue to do so today, albeit with many new and revolutionary tools and techniques at their disposal. For more information on BMA’s “UNlearn” conference, go to www.marketing.org/conference»

The Man In The Chair Ad — Then and Now

Click here to watch the video(You might need to enable Javascript in your browser.)

BMAintheUSA on YouTube

BMAintheUSA is based in Chicago. The Business Marketing Association is a leading marketing organization serving the professional development and networking needs and interests of some 2,500 senior business-to-business marketing professionals and 21 chapter organizations throughout the U.S.A.

So, what do you think?

Leave a comment, now.

Yours
John W. Furst

Procrastination is a Marketers Worst Enemy [Video]

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:48:39 -0700

I thought you will like this little video. Before I have looked into that I wanted to write a post about email marketing instead, but I procrastinated.

Did it every happen to you? I am sure it did. If you are not quite convinced yet, watch the video, and I promise you will recognize certain patterns in your behavior as well.

The video explains in an entertaining way what procrastination is.

Procrastination (↑) from Johnny Kelly (↑) on Vimeo (↑).

If you think about it, watching this video might be procrastination.

What do you think?

Leave a comment and let me know.

Enjoy

Yours
John W. Furst

Email Marketing or Social Media in 2010?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:18:54 -0700

Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian (↑),
Heart surgeon and social entrepreneur

I joined the discussion on Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian’s blog quite late, but since I gave it some thought, I decided to share my response with you.

In mid November last year Dr. Mani published a list with his predictions about what will be IN and what will be OUT in 2010 (↑).

The first item on his list

1.) Email Is OUT, Social Media Is IN

I am buying the second part of his statement immediately, but “Email OUT”?

I had to think about it a couple of seconds longer than usual, ’cause a couple of respectable experts like Chris Brogan (↑), Warren Whitlock (↑), and Willie Crawford (↑) already had left comments on Dr. Mani’s blog post.

Here is the re-print of my reply:

I don’t think email is OUT in 2010.

I rather would say, we have to use and nurture email marketing differently than in the past.

A strong email list is still an asset, like your website. I hope you have purchased your own domain.

Who owns—and most importantly who has jurisdiction so to speak over—your social media profile?

The inherent benefit of email is it’s independence from any given email marketing service provider on the sender side. Maybe the Google Wave protocol will push email type communication into this century and at a same time allow a merger with social media. I am looking forward to it. Maybe in 2011, 2012.

What’s the deal with email marketing in 2010?

You would be crazy to stop building an email list. But on the same token you would be insane not building your social media presence.

In case you are sitting on the fence and don’t know whether you should put the subject email marketing into the IN or the OUT bucket. Think about why businesses are complaining. You hear two main reasons:

Low open and response rates resulting in less sales.
Deliverability problems.

Now ask yourself or your team a couple of questions and revisit the response rate issue. For sure you will find a couple of areas where you can improve.

Is my aging email list outgrowing my content, my offers?
Do my offers mature in-sync with my subscribers?
Am I (trying to) milk my members or am I graduating them?
Does my offer evolve over time and stay fresh and state-of-the-art that it appeals to new subscribers as well.
And now probably the most important question: Am I sending brochures, pitches, or am I building a relationship with that person who reads my email message. (Hint: Even outside of internet marketing consumers already can smell automated follow-up messages.)

One kind of email marketing campaigns did especially well in 2009. It’s called customer reactivation. But that is just one tactic that worked.

Maybe your email marketing activities need that sort of a botox treatment. (LoL)

Lots to think about.

Don’t dump your e-mail opt-in box, yet.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: [Admittedly I have procrastinated (check out the edutaining video) with this blog post for some time.]

What Drives Us? Bob Poole Asked Daniel Pink

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:37:59 -0700

Bob Poole (↑) lives his life following a path with heart. He writes about Sales, Marketing, Creativity and Leadership.

I just noticed my blogging colleague Bob Poole put the audio recording (mp3) of his interview with best-selling author Daniel Pink online.

“Interview With Dan Pink (↑).”

Bob has a sales background and, therefore, they also touch on the subject of motivating sales people quite a bit.

Check it out. The interview is about 16 minutes long. A transcript (↑) is already available on Bob's blog.

Enjoy.

By the way: I already put Dan's book on my Amazon wishlist.

“Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (↑).”

Learning about human psychology and applying this knowledge has been always helpful in sales and marketing. Remember the old saying?

“People buy what they WANT not what they NEED.”

Yours
John W. Furst

One More Reason Your Prospects Don't Buy

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:05:00 -0700

Derek Sivers (↑) is best known as the founder of CD Baby (↑).

Do you remember the reasons why people do not buy from you?

Here are the main three reasons:

• They don’t want what you sell.
• They don’t have the money.
• They don’t trust you.

Let’s focus on the first reason for a minute or two.

They don’t want what you sell.

In many instances this can easily be translated into “They don’t understand what you sell.”

Direct response copywriters and advertising experts taught us the importance of “getting into the head of our customer”.

A piece of marketing which generates a lot of response is not a monologue, it’s a dialog between the copywriter and the reader—the prospect. A writer needs to join that conversation in the head of the reader. Therefore, the writer needs to understand the market and the prospects she is writing for very well.

Derek Sivers gave a short 6 minute talk at a
TED (↑) conference in India, in November last year. He reminds us of the many reasons why the person listening or reading might not understand what you are trying to communicate. His multicultural example makes it quite clear.

Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?

Derek Sivers at TED Different Perspectives? (Pop Out)

That’s just the icing on the cake. Culture is not the only potential barrier that interferes with the meaning of your message and its perception.

“Despite the Internet being a global medium, your audience usually wears a very local head.”
~ John W. Furst

Enjoy the video and start becoming more aware of dangerous pitfalls in your communication and marketing.

Yours
John W. Furst

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