Just in case you don't know, Bob Parsons, is the founder and CEO of GoDaddy.com, proud Ex-Marine, self-made multi-millionaire and responsible for building and growing his small domain business startup into a world leading registrar. Bob wrote on BobParsons.com (his personal Blog, which was actually much more personal in the early days) that it was not easy, and he blew away a fortune, before GoDaddy became profitable.

Anyway, why am I writing about GoDaddy today?

It just happened that I signed into my GoDaddy account to make some changes, and … It's just amazing how well they have integrated up-sell functions in every part of their user interface. There is almost nothing you can do at GoDaddy without being exposed to some sort of product up-sell and cross-sell.

I don't want to go into the detail of that. Many of you will know it anyway, and I want to keep this post short and get to the point quickly. You'll find all sorts of stories about GoDaddy on the Internet that cover the full range of human emotions from pure hate to wild admiration. There are a lot of them, because … Well, GoDaddy is big.

Personally, I can say that they never let me down. I purchased my first domain in 2002 with them and did not have any issue that was any bigger than minor. However, I recommend that you evaluate potential areas of risk with any company you are doing business with — not just GoDaddy — and work on reducing, spreading your overall business risks. Especially, once the cash starts to flow in. Don't let excessive risk analysis prevent you from doing business in first place. Now, to cut the story short…

9 things to learn from GoDaddy

1. Make the first purchase easy.
2. Pro-actively up-sell and cross-sell your customers.
3. Roll out new products on a frequent basis.
4. Improve existing products on a persistent basis.
5. Advertising on various channels and do it in a controversial fashion.
6. Measure the results of all your activities on a daily basis and react accordingly.
7. Try hard to keep growing and improving! Don't get satisfied with the status-quo.
8. Automate Your Business As Much As Possible.
9. Don't forget the fun part for your customers and employees.

Before you leave a comment like, “I hate those up-sell pages on my way to the checkout button”, think, again. I am talking about how you could improve your business! Obviously it works for other businesses, it brings in additional cash.

Would you mind having more cash in your pockets? If not, you don't have to figure out ways how to increase the value of your customers.

Note at the end: I have chosen the title for the purpose of getting more attention. Let's see how it works. But it's really about following proven path and ways to increase your business. I'd love your comments on that. Pure hate comments on the other hand will not be tolerated.

I leave comments not moderated — as usually here on this Blog. Don't disappoint me.

Yours
John W. Furst

Having the Blogrush widget displayed on your blog can mean two things:

1. You are getting thousands of additional visitors a week.
2. You are loosing visitors, because they find the headlines as advertised on Blogrush more compelling than yours.

Looks like nothing to gain, you get more visitors, but you also might loose visitors. Well, that's not exactly what happens. You could be afraid of loosing visitors with any form of monetization. Be it AdSense (that I just wrote about in the last post), banner ads, affiliate links and banners, …, etc.

“Keep your headlines ‘hot’ and your content valuable!”

That's the best and only medicine that should be prescribed to keep and extend your readership.

Every once in a while I click on a title (in the Blogrush widget) myself that seems to be kind of interesting, but most often I get disappointed.

“A title alone is not enough of an indicator to signal, if a post or a blog is worthwhile visiting. In the majority of cases it is not.”

The review based listings of Digg, Stumble, Propeller, and Co. are much more useful.

That's why I don't blame my readers for not clicking themselves away from my Blog via Blogrush.

To answer the above question: Blogrush does not lead my readers away. So it does not hurt me, as well as I don't really benefit from it. I actually should start looking for a better use of that screen real-estate.

Some major A-Blogs still show Blogrush, probably because they got a huge referral network that works better for them.

It was a hype, it's days are counted and if you look at John Reese's Blog. Not much going on there. Didn't he promise a promotion network for “hot topics”? I think he did.

The classic theorem of physics seems to withstand the test of time in the Internet Age, too.

“No output, without any input!”

Displaying someone's widget — the Blogrush widget — doesn't solve your traffic problems. There must be more action going on.

Yours
John W. Furst

How many times have you watched an Internet marketing video online that promised “great, special info”, but did not deliver? That's really a big turn off.

“A bad video steals you up to 20 times more time than a bad PDF document”

Unfortunately you cannot always tell in advance, if a video will deliver on its promises or not.

• I have seen poorly produced, short and long videos that contained more than expected and
  
  
• I have seen studio production quality kind of videos that didn't tell you anything, except that it must have been expensive to produce.

Too many videos just waste so much time with introductions and typical “Let me tell you my / his / her / their story …” phrases. Too many videos show just faces or other static information. Could be an MP3 audio, and just a piece of written text instead.

I am absolutely tired of this and simply prefer written material, since I can quickly scan through it. Most people also can read faster than those video guys and gals do speak. It's just a waste of time and not to forget a waste of bandwidth.

Of course, there is room for video. The visual aspects can add tremendous value, but not everything needs to be in video. Shooting a video from lame content does not make the content better, it just gets thrown into a different package.

Some folks claim that it takes less time to make a great video than it takes to provide good quality written material. Well, that's true. But only for the producers, who actually have the ability to write good quality content at first place.

All others are just showing their stupid faces into the camera and that is definitely not worthwhile watching. And furthermore they are showing that it is not even worth their own time to create quality content for others. “To hell with them.”

Now, let's talk about some absolutely positive aspects of online videos.

Good reasons for use of video

• Showing onscreen actions that would be hard to describe otherwise. Videos are great for tutorials, but should be accompanied with a written add-on, like a cheat sheet.
  
  
• Showing animated graphics that tell more than words. I have shown an excellent piece of descriptive statistics here on this Blog.
  
  Another excellent example are the recent StomperNet Going Natural 2.0 Videos (↑) about SEO, conversion, … facts that help you increase your sales. For my personal taste the intros are too long. However the content is very valuable.
  
  
• Adding artistic, humorous, graphic, … value
  
  
• or just adding a moving pictures to otherwise great content

Since not everybody is following quality gidelines, how can you protect yourself from wasting time with bad, empty, or hype only videos?

Tips for saving your time

• Watch only videos that have been referred to you by a trusted person.
• Build a list of trusted, good quality sources.
• Watch a video only one time and take notes (if it is worthwhile).
• If the video doesn't capture your full attention during the first 30 seconds. Click away.
• Prefer material that will give you transcripts of the video content as well. Especially, if you have to pay for a course or something similar.
• …

What additional tips do you have to share?
Leave a comment, let me know.

Yours
John W. Furst

Welcome to the December 11, 2007 edition #30 of the Carnival Of Small Business Issues.

My name is John and I am your host for this “Canarian Edition”. As this Carnival grows it is getting harder to select articles from the growing number of submissions.

Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Instead of limiting the number of promoted articles to some arbitrary number, like 20, I have decided to give you more, and introduced a new category “Online Marketing Special” just for this edition.

Question of the day: How Would You Promote Innovation? If you are a member of a management team or a business owner, how would you answer this question? Charan “CA” Atreya, the organizer of this Carnival, runs an open answer survey on his blog. If you have something to say, please, do so on his Blog.

If you are interested in hosting this Carnival or submitting a blog post, you'll find more information at the bottom of the page.

Today we have the following categories: Marketing, Online Marketing Special, Human Resource, Operations, Personal Development, Finance, Business Tips

I just came back from a long weekend and found this tip on Steven's Blog at AffiliateMarketingDiary.com (↑).

Yes, you can get Camtasia Version 3 for free from Techsmith. Optionally you can upgrade this to the latest Version 5 for just $149, which is a rebate of $150.

Check out the details and put some screen casts online.

• Camtasia Version 3 For Free (↑)

Yours
John

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P.S.: What is Camtasia Studio About?