Biz Tips Blog: Internet Marketing Tips

Packaging Your Product with a Digital "Cover"

Seems like I keep coming back to product packaging.  Yesterday Patsi and I were in a consult with a client about the next steps on marketing his white paper on how to retain employees. He's written a terrific paper and now needs to get the word out.

Among the many tactics we discussed was the need for a digital cover. You need an image to attract attention and for readers to "visually" get that this is a legitimate document, even though it's delivered as a pdf file.

When we published our white paper on The Great Internet Marketing Challenge, it did OK as far as a lead generator.  However, when we finally created a "cover" for the paper, registrations for the paper really took off.

The cover for our white paper was designed by Killer Covers. They've been around for a long time and a lot of people selling on the Internet use their services.  They are quick and responsive and willing to make tweaks until you're happy.

Earlier this week I learned about another designer who has a lot of raving fans. eCoverFrog (I have no idea about the biz name!) is doing some good work. Since I haven't personally done work with them, I cannot comment, but I did poke around the site and liked the graphics I saw.

For either service you'll invest between $99 to $117 which is a real bargain to get a great graphic image for your product.

Related Post:
Instant Website Content from Your Book Cover

Lijit Helps Your Readers Search Your Online Universe

At the BlogWorld Expo, I had a chance to spend some time talking with Tara Anderson of Lijit. Today, I finally had a chance to explore their product and add it to all my blogs.

Lijit is a personal search engine for all your online sites and profiles. You create the search engine by adding URLs for every site you want to include such as: your blog(s), MySpace, del.icio.us account, Digg account, Flickr, LinkedIn profile, YouTube, Twitter and many more social networking sites.

I was able to create a search engine that includes The Blog Squad's online universe of websites, blogs and other social networking sites. You can also include sites in your network of contacts, if you want.  In our case, we want to keep people in our universe so I would not add any outside sites.  Although, you could probably enter affiliate URLS -- I'll have to test that.

I've installed the HTML code on our blogs (in a TypeList), so when you are looking for content The Blog Squad has created, all the sites and blogs we have will be included in the search and the relevant links will be in the results. You can include web pages in addition to blog posts.

You can use the default search widget or customize it to match your own site.

I love Lijit and it's FREE!

Product Development Day

How much time do you devote to creating products for your business? Early on in our partnership, Patsi and I decided we had better block off time every week to focus on product development or it would never get done.

Every Friday we have "sacred time for product development" blocked off on our business calendar. We do not schedule anything else during this block so we can have those 3 hours, at the very least, devoted to building our business.

I confess, it doesn't happen every week. Stuff comes up, an urgent project may take precedence, but we keep it on the calendar as an ongoing reminder to keep on producing.

Today, I was wrapping up the tasks for creating a product for the teleseminar we did a couple of weeks ago on Protecting Your Intellectual Property Rights.

Flip Video is a Hit at BlogWorld Expo

Last week at BlogWorld Expo Patsi and I did video interviews with some of the bloggers we met.

I use a Flip Video camera and I have to say, it was a hit with everyone we talked to. Everyone wanted to know how it worked and how much it cost. The original one (at left) that I own is $119 at Amazon.com and the new Flip Ultra is $149 and comes in a variety of colors: black, white, pink and orange.

Technical Details

• Simple to use, pocket-sized camcorder with one-touch recording and digital zoom
• Holds 60 minutes of full VGA-quality video on 2GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required
• Convenient USB arm plugs directly into your computer for easy viewing and sharing
• Built-in software lets you easily e-mail videos, upload to YouTube and AOL, and capture still photos from video
• Watch videos instantly on TV with included cable

This is a VERY SIMPLE camera to use: turn it on, press the red record button to start, press the red button again to stop and you've got a video.

Plug the camera into your computer with the USB arm, the software which resides in the camera automatically starts. You can do simple edits and easily save the video to your computer, upload it to your YouTube account or email to friends.

For a small investment every blogger can become a video blogger. At this point I would recommend getting the Flip Ultra because the new version has a tripod mount so you don't have to hold it out in front of you if you're filming yourself. For $14.99, definitely get the tripod. I may have to upgrade my Flip just so I can have this valuable feature.

Now there really is no excuse not to add video to your websites and blogs. It's just so easy and it give your readers/visitors/prospects another format in which they can get your message.

Extreme energy makeover: Home technology edition

This isn't about leveraging the Internet; it's about leveraging your money as a home office user. It's a fascinating article about how to reduce the energy you use in your home office. I was already able to make some tweaks to my equipment after reading the article.  And what small business person doesn't want to save money? Here's the brief synopsis:

Step by step, tech writer Rob Mitchell shows how he measured energy use of all his home office equipment, and then targeted the energy pigs for replacement. With better equipment choices, he'd save $90/year. You can apply his techniques in your own computer room. Includes formulas, a spreadsheet and, of course, a gadget.

read more | digg story

One Laptop per Child - Give one, Get One

This is one of the coolest offers I've seen in a long time: One Laptop per Child - Give One, Get One:

For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).

This appeals to all my philanthropic beliefs.  First, I believe in empowering people to get an education so they can achieve what they want in life. Second, this is an amazing tool that will not only help one child, but can potentially help many because when one child becomes technically literate, they will probably share their skills with others. Third, this offer, for a limited time (until November 26) allows you to get one of these cool laptops and give it to someone of your own choosing. 

Most of the kids I know don't need a laptop -- their parents can afford to buy one for them or they already have one, but what about an organization in your own community that helps underprivileged kids, or a school in a low income neighborhood?  This  is a great way to make a contribution to your own community as well.

Thanks to the TerraPass blog for bringing this program to my attention. As they say, this is a great experiment in social entrepreneurship.

1ShoppingCart...KickStartCart...MarketersChoice

If you read this blog, you know we recommend KickStartCart as one of the best online marketing and ecommerce systems available. I've been using it for about 6 years and am continually impressed with the features and frequent upgrades to the service.

A couple of days ago I got an email notifying me that the fees for KSC are going up on December 1. I believe this is the first fee increase in about 3 years.  At $99 per month for the professional level version, it's still a darn good deal.

But, I'm a small business owner and I like saving money. So, if you use KickStartCart or another private label brand of 1Shoppingcart, this is what I suggest you do, if you can.

If you pay by the month (we do for cash flow purposes), then I suggest you upgrade to the annual payment plan before December 1.  For the professional version, this will save you nearly $400 over the next year and push back the move to the higher fee until next December.

I don't know about you, but if I can save almost $400, I will.

Related Post:
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Open Source Software is Worth Checking Out

Following on my post yesterday about how important I believe it is to be able to create your own web pages, today's post is about how to get free or low cost software to create your web pages.

A few weeks ago on Blogging and Beyond, we interviewed James Gaskin about open source software. He shared info about a site called theopencd.org that distributes free software that can replace the expensive software you're probably familiar with. Me being me, an active experimenter, I immediately went to the site and purchased a cd with 33 software programs on it. The cost was $10.

NOTE: theopencd.org is no longer a functioning site. The OpenCD is available here instead.

There's a lot on this disc that I will never use, however, a couple of things caught my eye:

HTML: Why You Need to Learn

One of the most important skills I've learned in the past 10 years of doing business online is how to create simple web pages and edit HTML code. I don't mean complex stuff, but enough to be able to make quick changes on a web page, set up a sales page without having to wait eons for a web designer and then pay big bucks, and how to tweak copy in my blog.

Generally I use simple "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) tools like FrontPage to create my web pages, but sometimes you need to go a little further and "hand code" something.

It came up again recently when I was making some minor edits to complete a registration page for our upcoming teleseminar on how to protect your intellectual property rights.

Jay Hollander, our guest, uses a service mark in the title of his blog: ExpertPreneurLaw^SM Blog. The service mark is the superscript SM after "law."

Shoeboxed.com is a cool organization tool!

This isn't really related to Internet marketing, but I just learned about a really cool site that can help you be more organized. And better organization can help free up valuable time for marketing your business.

In the new Springwise newsletter, I read about Shoeboxed.com, a site where you can send all your online receipts and they'll be organized for you in one secure online account. Can you imagine how much easier it will be when tax time comes around? Instead of printing out your receipts or losing them in the mass of emails you get, they will be neatly organized in one location.

You get a personal email address that you use instead of your regular email every time you purchase something online. Your email receipt is then sent to your Shoeboxed account.

Here's the info from Shoeboxed.com's FAQ:

Shoeboxed.com is an internet startup company that is reinventing the online shopping experience. Shoeboxed.com has created a centralized website for the storage, organization, and management of personal and business receipts. It will also keep spam from reaching your personal e-mail inbox and will help protect you from online identity theft. This service is free to everyone and will help to eliminate the hassle and inconvenience of receipts. With each user's purchase history continuously updating and centrally stored, shoeboxed.com will help to simplify your life and give you more control over your personal online shopping data.

I'm pretty organized (though if you were to see my work space you wouldn't think so) and this type of service totally appeals to me. Since I have a business partner, Patsi Krakoff, and we live in different cities, we both make purchases. If we both use an account, then it will be simple for our accountant to get the necessary info when she does our books.

Check it out and let me know what you think.