FollowFriday On Twitter

Each Friday brings a fun "game" to Twitter called FollowFriday. With the number of Twitter newbies who follow me each week, inevitably at least a few people will ask me what the FollowFriday is all about.

The aim of FollowFriday is to share with the Twitter community which tweeps you enjoy following. Of course, it can help you find new people to follow too. One of the biggest benefits for those that participate is that they can pick up a good number of new followers.

When I was newer to Twitter myself, I used it primarily as a way to find interesting people. I find that most people recommended by others are conversational in nature. Now that I have a sizable follower base myself, I participate to help my followers out.

The game was started by @micah as a way to suggest just a person or two. Most of those who participate tend to recommend more than just one or two.

How does this work?

Hashtags are used on Twitter to enable others to search on specific topics. You simply add "#" before the word/term without a space.

#followfriday is specifically what should be used in tweets relating to FollowFriday.

Note: If you are using TweetDeck, one of the recent updates will automatically include hashtags used in a tweet if you hit reply on a tweet where a hashtag such as #followfriday is used. For web access and for other Twitter apps, you would need to enter it manually.

How to find others

There are 2 ways you can find others recommended with #followfriday:

1. In the Twitter search box type #followfriday - this will display all results across Twitter. You can also click on this link:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23followfriday

2. You can look at the tweets of those you already follow. I think this is a preferable route to go since you probably already have things in common with those you follow, so it's likelier that the recommendations will have at least something in common with you too.

How to recommend others

There are 2 common ways that Twitter users recommend others.

1. They will send a tweet recommending a single person. For example:

#followfriday @sharonhayes because she is really cool

Go ahead, copy and paste that into your tweet box ;)

2. They will send a tweet recommending a bunch of people at one time. For example:

#followfriday @sharonhayes @designmeme @andysowards @Minervity @styletime @iamkhayyam @unmarketing

Again, feel free to go ahead and copy & paste that into your tweet box ;)

Some tracking sites do count #ff and not just #followfriday but for the sake of helping others search on recommendations, it is a good idea to use the full #followfriday hashtag.

Notes: Try and remember to use the proper hashtag - #followfriday - since that will help with the search aspect. Also remember to put the @ in front of the person's user name. Finally, remember NOT to start the tweet with @username but instead with #followfriday since only that person + people following that person will see it - defeating the purpose of making a recommendation.

How to find out who has suggested you

Since FollowFriday recommendations are rarely done as @replies, it's a good idea to take a peek to see if anyone has suggested you. If you are using TweetDeck, they should show up in your @replies column. If you use Tweetie, you can go to your profile page and there is a link to search from there. If you are using the web, you can put @yourname in the search box.

Remember to be courteous

In my opinion, it's a matter of courtesy to say thank you to those who have recommended you. After all if they are taking the time to suggest you to their own followers, it should get at least a nod.

How you handle this is at your discretion. I used to DM (direct message) people. Then I would tweet a list of those who have suggested me and include the #followfriday hashtag. Something like this:

Thanks for the #followfriday @designmeme @andysowards @Minervity @styletime @iamkhayyam

Now with the volume of thanks I need to do I tweet songs to people who have recommended/retweeted me during the week.

Resources

There are some sites that have sprung up that look at #followfriday recommendations.

http://nearbytweets.com/search/followfriday - is a nice tool that will show you people suggested by others that are geographically near you.

http://www.topfollowfriday.com - provides daily ongoing counts for all users suggested by someone for the first time. It does not count duplicate, it does not count #followfriday lists that start with @user, it does not count tweets containing RT.

http://www.boxuk.com/followfriday/ - updated every 15 minutes on Friday. Counts duplicates from what I can see but does not include suggestions that contain RT (retweet).

http://www.tweeplerank.com/ - a ranking service that shows #followfriday #mrtweet recommends and #tweepletuesday. Like Topfollowfriday.com, it does not count recommendations including RT and if it starts with @username, it seems that the first person is not counted. Duplicates do not count.

http://www.followfridays.com - provides live #followfriday feed

Note: these sites only track where #followfriday tag is specifically included.

http://thetwittertagproject.com/followfriday.php - a site that allows you to autogenerate #followfriday recommendations based on those you have most recently communicated with. Note: I'd suggest you review the list before just tweeting it :)

Hope this helps you! Please feel to follow me too :)

P.S. The tweets provided above were for simply for the purpose of providing an example. :)

P.P.S. - I have made some changes myself to how I am handling FollowFriday. Please read about it here.

Twitter Gaming & How It's Costing Everyone

Warning: This is a bit of a rant.

I am getting sick and tired of the gaming for numbers I am seeing on Twitter. Before it was people that would follow as many as Twitter limits allow...

Twitter allows you to follow up to 2000 people. At that point, you can only follow 10% more than are following you.

... that was one thing. It didn't put a lot of "stress" on the system and wasn't a huge manipulation tactic.

The more recent trend is one that I personally find disturbing - and I'm not the only one. I'll explain what the trend is and then share why I think it is costing everyone.

Some people have figured out an "easy" way to game the system. Basically it is to bulk unfollow existing followers and then bulk follow new ones. Presumably the people doing this believe that a couple of things will happen: a. new people they follow will be "impressed" and a good percentage will follow back and b. that the people they unfollow won't notice they have been unfollowed.

Why is this a bad thing? Let me count the ways...

1. I have no idea how many people are doing this across Twitter. However, between myself and a few others I've communicated with who have noticed the same shenanigans, we've found at least 30 reasonably high profile people (high profile meaning a considerable follower base). But let's say that there are 500 people doing this and are unfollowing/refollowing in batch an average of 5,000 followers at a time. Yes, Twitter can handle a lot but how much of a drain is this putting on system resources? Keep in mind, it's not just the resources needed for the follows/unfollows but the follow emails that go out, people going to look at follower pages, and so on.

2. It's misleading to Twitter users. You look at one of these profiles and say to yourself - oh they follow back every one that follows them. For the most part, people engaging in this behavior try to keep the numbers balanced. There are also some that have been gaming Twitter who - after reaching a certain magical threshold number of followers - have made a big stink about how hard it was to keep up with all the people they were following so they were no longer going to follow everyone. The other aspect of this is that it gives false "social proof" of these Twitter users when looking at their follower count alone.

3. At least a few of these people are using their Twitter high follower counts to add credibility to whatever it is that they do. I don't know how you feel, but to me this is tantamount to faking testimonials.

4. Twitter is a fantastic networking tool and a great way to meet people you may not have otherwise. It's a superb way to stay in touch with others. But one thing that is crucial to Twitter's continued growth is the authenticity of it's users. Gaming the system in this way diminishes authenticity.

5. People are getting hurt by the unfollowing. I've had a few people tell me they were upset that so and so unfollowed them - especially since they had had communication etc. I've had it happen to me as well. It's hard not to take it personally in some cases.

6. Then let's not forget the time being wasted with this. Let's say the numbers above hold up. That would be 2,500,000 bulk follows a day. How long does it take to check out a new follower? 30 seconds? That works out to 20,833 hours a day being lost to gaming. Let's lowball the productivity of each person impacted to $20 per hour. Over $400,000 a day. Still think it's not an issue?

What isn't surprising to me is that these people have been smart enough to find out some way to game the system yet they don't realize that literally everything they do on Twitter is tracked somewhere or is trackable. You can get an instant snapshot through various sites like FriendorFollow.com to see who is gaming. You can backup someone's following/follower list and compare it on a day to day basis. There are sites like Twitterholic.com that show trends of how many followers/following any individual has had.

Here are some takeaways you can derive from this:

1. Don't hold much credence in a Twitter user's follower count. You may be shocked to learn who some of the people engaging in this behavior are.

2. Follower count really doesn't matter. Some of the sharpest people I know on Twitter have fewer than 1,000 followers.

3. If you are gaming the system now or are considering doing it & you are in business for the long haul, consider the potential damage to your reputation that can be done if/when you get called out on it. People are getting called out now. Your actions are being recorded. Is it really worth sacrificing your reputation in the long haul?

If I sound bitter in any way about this, I'm not and have no reason to be. I have close to 12,000 followers at the time of writing this. All but 30-40 were gained in just over 2 months time by using Twitter in an ethical and responsible manner. I tweet on a variety of subjects, I engage in conversations, I retweet, I try and help others when I see I can and I share worthwhile/ entertaining links I come across. I make an attempt to answer DM's. I have a very busy life yet I can handle this without resorting to tactics. I've made several dozen incredible contacts - both of a business and personal nature. The time I've spent on Twitter has been more than worthwhile when I consider just the new business I've gained. I know that I'm building a solid network with what I'm doing.

Follow me on Twitter

How To Boost Launch Sales During A Recession

If you do any marketing online, you'll probably know that product launches can be a fantastic way to drive immediate sales. In a nutshell a launch helps build momentum for the release (or sometimes re-release) of a product. Over the past few years product launches - especially in the Internet Marketing circle - have become more popular since the release of Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula. Even if you aren't in a position to leverage a network of joint venture partners and/or affiliates, treating a marketing campaign as a launch can have a much larger impact than focusing on a trickle of sales. I want to share with you one very simple technique you can make use of in your next launch which could potentially mean hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands in extra profits.

Before I share this technique, I want to provide you with some additional information so you can be of an appropriate mindset...

Here are just a few of the many reasons that product launches work as well as they do:

• It allows you to better engage a potential buyer and through the sequence of a series of marketing messages be able to chip away at their potential objections as lot as their interest remains.
• A strong human need is wanting to feel a part of something. Becoming the excitement associated with a launch day can help fulfill this desire. This is especially true when you have a solid name within a well defined market/niche.
• There is often scarcity associated with launches - i.e. there are only X number of the product available at this price. Perhaps you may be increasing the price. Maybe you might never offer the product again. The scarcity approach helps drive the urgency.

So let's say you've taken someone through the product launch cycle. You've chipped away at their objections. The price of your product is not an issue. You've done such a great job with marketing, they are completely sold even before your sales page goes up. But on launch day, one small thing stops them from buying. One little thing that even months ago may not have been an issue but with today's economic crisis it is. You miss out on not one sale but potentially 20% or more of what you did generate.

Even if you are one of those optimists that are harping that the economy isn't affecting you - you need to keep in mind that no matter what you are telling potential buyers during your pre-launch, no matter how sold they are, no matter how affordable your product is for them - they just may just not be able to pay today.

Credit card companies are restricting credit limits. With some companies increasing fees, many consumers are cutting back on the number of credit cards they have. Consumers with cash flow problems are turning to using their credit cards more and more for routine purchases. Many consumers are losing credit cards period and being forced to use debit cards in lieu of credit cards (meaning the money has to be in their bank account at the time of ordering).

All of these things add up to a situation where at least some portion of your potential buyers not being able today because of not having access to sufficient funds on a credit/debit card. If you are dealing with higher ticket items - which I'd consider to be $50+ in today's economy - it will likely be more of an issue for you.

Many Internet marketers have borrowed from traditional marketing the idea of offering split payments. For example, with a product costing $1797, they may offer the option of 4 payments of $497 spread 30 days apart. This strategy is especially useful during a recession, but it doesn't deal with the issue that the buyer still needs to pay $497 today. $497 which they may not have access to on a credit card on the day of launch.

There is a simple alternative: offer buyers the ability to submit their credit card information today but they will only be billed/have their product shipped/delivered in 2 weeks time.

From a technical side, if you have your own merchant account, you may want to say $1 will reserve their product. This will allow you ensure that the credit card information provided is valid. If you are using Paypal, you can create the product as a subscription item.

I have a client that has multiple sites in the same niches. (Opening "competitive" sites in the same niche is one of most effective ways of dominating a niche.) He will often launch second tier priced products in the same niche a few weeks apart. Same product with slightly different packaging and marketing geared to the differentiation of that site. He had a full schedule of second tier products to be launched in 2009 and was concerned with how the economy would affect sales. I had suggested he do a side by side comparison in one niche to see whether or not the deferred payment would make sense.

The last week of January he launched a $147 product to one subscriber base in a niche (Market A). He had slightly modified the product for positioning to a more upscale market at $197 to another subscriber base in the same niche (Market B). Traditionally this market was less price resistant. This was launched this past week. All those who received marketing messages for either campaign consisted of people who had either opted-in or made prior purchases from the respective sites.

With the exception of differences in marketing/positioning for Market A and Market B, all of the following held true:

• The pre-launch sequence was the same
• The sales page URL was the same
• The sales page content was the same

All that changed for either group was that the pricing component varied. A cookie was placed on the computer of a visitor upon their first visit. This ensured that the same visitor would see the same offer. Otherwise, two different pricing option sets were equally rotated amongst visitors:

1. Pay up front or 3 equal installments
2. Pay up front, 3 equal installments or reserve today for $1 with $147 charged in 14 days

Here were the results for Market A:

• $147 upfront, 3 payments of $57 or $1 now with $147 due in 14 days.
• 38,104 subscribers mailed
• 6,312 subscribers in pre-launch sequence
• Soft-sell message sent to only those subscribers NOT in pre-launch sequence day of launch - 34,692
• Total mailed on launch date: 41,004
• Unique visitors to sales page: 9,819
• 4901 viewed no deferred option - 192 orders @ $147 and 167 orders @ 3 payments
• 4911 viewed deferred option - 184 orders @ $147, 171 orders @ 3 payments and 162 orders @ deferred payment
• 3 deferred payment orders were declined upon processing

Total gross sales with no deferred option: $56,781

Total gross sales with deferred option: $89,830

* Obviously this doesn't take into account charge backs, returns, and potential rebill issues with those opting for the 3 payment option.

I have to admit, I was shocked when I saw the numbers myself. I had expected that it would boost overall sales by enough of a percentage to make it worthwhile. But I had also expected that some buyers that would have opted for the 3 payment option would have gone for the deferred option as well. That didn't happen. My client and I both thought this was an anomaly. Sometimes randomizing simply doesn't work. However, when the same thing was done with Market B - keep in mind here that it is targeting a group where buyers are known to be less sensitive to price than Market A was - the outcome was almost identical. (A slightly higher percentage of buyers in Market B opted for payment in full.) Since the launch for Market B was only done a matter of days ago, we won't know whether or not declined payments will be an issue.

My client is sold enough on this concept that for any tangible products he will be selling for the next several months using the launch method, he will be offering a deferred payment option without split testing it further.

Can this strategy work for you? First, something like this will only work when using a launch method or special promotional effort. There is really not much point in using it for ongoing market efforts. Second, I think this would work best when tangible products are involved. For ebooks, membership sites, e-training, etc, converting this method would amount to a free or $1 trial. Trial offers do work well, but my own experience has been that you get a lot of freebie seekers - i.e. people who will sign up with the intention of cancelling before they are billed - and people that will go through what they can and then cancel. This method works fine when content is "dripped" but if all information is provided upfront, you are likely to see overall revenue lowered.

Auto DM's Killed The Twitter Star - Or Did It?

In case you don't use Twitter or are newer to Twitter lingo, auto DM's refers to automatic Direct Messages. Direct messages are one-to-one communications between 2 Twitter users. You cannot send a Direct Message to another user unless they are following you. There are a few services that allow you to have direct messages sent to new followers automatically. Marketers think auto DM's are great but many Twitter users see this as the Twitter equivalent to spam. In fact, many spammers will create Twitter accounts for the express purpose of getting followbacks so that these auto DM's can be sent to users. Note: don't get any wild ideas about doing this - Twitter is pretty quick to close down such accounts.

If you are an active user on Twitter, you may have noticed that several Twitter users with decent size followings have bulk unfollowed just about everyone and are selectively refollowing people. Each one has given different reasons as to why they are doing it but many have attributed the glut of auto DM's as being at least part of the reason. I don't know what the numbers are across Twitter but I've seen myself that somewhere between 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 new Twitter followers use auto DM's. If these numbers hold true for most high profile Twitter users - basically that means getting 20 to 35 or so DM's for every 100 new followers. If you are getting 100's or 1000's of new followers a day this can add up.

The thing is - auto DM's really don't need to be an issue for anyone. A couple weeks ago, I was really getting fed up with them myself. I have enough trouble dealing with tens of thousands of emails per day, nevermind getting 2-300 auto DM's on some days. I did some homework, did 2 simple things and now my DM inbox is virtually free of auto DM's. Yours can be too.

Here's what I did:

1. Socialtoo allows you to automatically block any auto DM's being sent from their service. Just create an account and on your preferences page, you can choose to have auto DM's blocked. Bonus tip: I get really annoying with people who follow then will unfollow as soon as I've followed back. To save myself some grief, I use Socialtoo's autofollow feature, will filter new follow emails until I can manually check new followers and also use Socialtoo to block my account from automatically following those that will unfollow upon follow.


2. Tweetlater is another service that sends out auto DM's. If you follow this link it will give you simple instructions on how to stop auto DM's from being sent to your Twitter account.

I get anywhere from 100 to 600 new followers a day. I used to sometimes get up to a couple hundred auto DM's in a day. Now I get maybe 10-20 unpersonalized DM's a day from new followers. I don't know about you, but I think that is a rather significant difference.

One of the nice things about Twitter is that it is up to each of us as individuals to decide how we want to use it. This goes to what we tweet, how often we tweet and of course, our our decisions as to who we wish to follow back. Some of us choose to follow everyone back that follows us, some of us choose to follow more selectively, some will follow based on our own needs rather than who is/isn't following us. I personally have a hard time buying the reason that someone has chosen to unfollow everyone based on DM's alone. You can deal with auto DM's as I've suggested above. You can choose to ignore DM's entirely & provide people with other ways of contacting you.

I've made some fantastic business and personal contacts through Twitter that I may not have otherwise. For the most part, the best contacts have been kicked off with DM's rather than simply tweeting public exchanges. Some of the better business contacts have been with people that don't tweet themselves and who follow others very selectively. It's really difficult for us to know in advance the true value of any individual and how they may enrich our lives in some way or how we may enrich the lives of others.

Update on 03/01/09 - Socialtoo has now removed the auto DM functionality from it's service entirely. Unfortunately I've now started to see auto DM's come in from elsewhere. Spammers are quick to find new methods.

Will I Meet You In Vegas?

My apologies for a third post on PPC Classroom. If PPC/affiliate marketing is of no interest to you, then just scroll down - lots of other things below.

I signed up myself for PPC Classroom. I was really pleasantly surprised to see that you get immediate access online to the contents of the DVD plus a ton of bonuses and tools. Basically you can get started right away. The only cost for the program is the shipping & handling.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when you sign up, you will also get a free ticket to their Vegas event at the end of May. I love Vegas, so it's a good excuse to go there.

Let me know if you'll be attending!

Orders for PPC Classroom have been moving pretty swiftly. I'm not sure when they will be shutting it down so if you've been on the fence or want to know more, I suggest taking a serious look at it now.

P.S. We're experimenting on our side with different simple sites - one we just put online coincidentally is a Vegas Guide. No aff/CPA stuff there yet.

What is PPC Classroom about?

After my last blog post, I had a few people who had read it and pointed out I didn't explain what PPC Classroom was. One even asked what PPC meant. My bad. I should have explained more.

What PPC Is

If you go to Google, Yahoo, MSN or virtually every search engine, you will see ads returned when you perform a search. Advertisers create ads and place bids on various search terms at an individual search engine. The bids are what the advertiser is willing to pay per click. PPC = pay per click.

What Affiliate Marketing Is

Affiliate marketing is where a business rewards an individual or company for sending them traffic, leads or actual buying customers. These individuals and companies are called affiliates. The business providing the reward are called merchants. Affiliates get this result by sending visitors from their website, blog, newsletter etc to a merchant's website. Many affiliates also engage in arbitrage.

What Arbitrage Is

Arbitrage is when you find gaps in pricing and take advantage of it. It's basically buying at a low amount and selling at a higher amount.

What PPC Arbitrage Is

PPC arbitrage is when an individual or company looks for affiliate opportunities where greater commissions can be earned than the cost of utilizing PPC advertising.

What PPC Classroom Is

Now that we have the basics out of the way for those of you newer to affiliate marketing & PPC, I'll give a brief rundown on what PPC Classroom is.

PPC Classroom launches Tuesday, February 24 at noon Eastern US time. When you sign up, there is a small shipping & handling fee, otherwise it is free. You receive 3 things:

1. A DVD containing an interview that goes over the program & the full 9 module program. Topics covered include:

• How to pick a winning affiliate offer to promote
• How to conduct keyword research
• How to construct effective PPC campaigns
• How to monitor and optimize PPC campaigns

Once again, although the information is geared to those using affiliate programs, much of it can also be useful for any type of PPC advertising.

2. A set of landing page templates to use for your offers.

3. A free ticket to the PPC Classroom live event taking part in Las Vegas May 28th-30th.

There is a catch, albeit a tiny one: you will be enrolled in their monthly program which gives you access to a PPC mastermind, an advanced module each month, monthly webinar and some other things to help continue your learning. You can cancel at any time - even right after ordering the free program.

Hope this helps!

PPC Classroom

It seems that every time a new program is launched in the world of Internet marketing, I'll get a bevvy of emails from clients, associates and friends asking for my take on it. The latest questions surround the (re) launch of PPC Classroom.

Anik Singal and Amit Mehta are the guys behind it. I haven't had personal dealings with Amit, but I've known Anik from a distance and really believe he is not only a class act but have seen firsthand he is driven by the idea of helping others.

I know several people that signed up with PPC Classroom v.1. They, and their results, fall into various categories as can be expected. One of these people signed up because she was interested in learning more effective PPC strategies. She is not an affiliate marketer but has her own line of products and several sites. She also has an affiliate program of her own and wanted to be able to give better advice to her affiliates who use PPC for promotion. She has been very happy with the results and the knowledge she gained. I know a couple of people who promote CPA offers rather than traditional affiliate deals. Again, they were happy with the results. A couple of others I checked back with said they had no results but they hadn't actually either gone through the materials never mind followed the advice. Granted this is a rather small sampling but Anik & Amit have many, many people who have come forward with assorted testimonials of their success. I've yet to see or hear of anyone that actually followed the program who didn't see results. It's like anything else though, if you don't take action, you won't see results.

Anik & Amit have released 2 very interesting things - both of which are entirely free. The first is a report that gives the 5 fatal flaws most people make with PPC/affiliate marketing. If you do any kind of PPC advertising, I recommend reading it. Just one part of it - about how you select keywords - can have a huge impact on your results if you make this mind shift.

The other thing they have made available is a recording of a webinar they did. I did not personally attend/view it. However, my business partner did. He took notes and shared them with me. The webinar gives a really good overview of using PPC advertising in affiliate marketing. For many people, the webinar on its own may provide enough information to get started. One part of it deals with how to adjust your bids on ads - and that alone can be the difference between the success (or failure) with PPC advertising.

The basic part of the program will be made available for free. There will be an upsell to an going monthly membership program (that is reasonably priced as compared to similar programs). In my opinion, it's a no brainer. At least check out the 2 free things I mentioned above and then you can make your own decisions from there when PPC Classroom launches.

How I'm Staying Organized in 2009

I'm definitely not a Microsoft product fan but this year I've actually come to use and love one of their products - OneNote.

Basically OneNote works like a notebook. You can create Section, Section Groups, Pages and Subpages. You can add links, copy webpages, audio, video - basically whatever you want in there.

My computer desktop used to be a mess. I used to add shortcuts to webpages I wanted to go back to, would download files to the desktop, have folders for things I was working on there. Basically all the "stuff" I didn't want to forget about went on my desktop. Needless to say that over time it made it impossible to find what I needed (defeating the purpose of putting it there) and it also would slow down my computer.

At the start of 2009, I decided to start using OneNote instead of my desktop. I'm actually putting files in proper folders now and am no longer saving shortcuts. Everything is going in OneNote instead. I'm not only able to find things quickly, but I'm also saving time AND getting things done.

I'll share the way I am using it. Maybe it can give you some ideas:

* I created a new OneNote called Projects. This is my default one so that whenever I open up OneNote, it will open where ever I was last in Projects.

* I have a section called "To Do's". Within this section, I have a page called "Timed". This is where I put all upcoming appointments. I have a page called "Miscellaneous" where I just dump stuff in that I need to get done at some point and don't have a time/date for it yet. I then have a bunch of sub-pages - one for each day of the week. On these sub-pages, I create mini areas where I group everything I need to do by category. For example, I have one category for "Financial", another for "Domains" etc. This allows me to move a full category forward to another day or just individual tasks if need be. When I am waiting on something from someone else, I will highlight the item. I also drop links in for sites I want to go back and check into a relevant area.

* I have a section called "Staff". On the main page, I keep a summary status page so I know anything major going on with individual people. One look at that a day tends to be sufficient. I then have a page on each person where I keep a general log of communications. This is linked to from the summary page.

* I have Section Groups for Domains, B2B websites, Websites and Ideas. Within each Section Group, I have a section for each site/area. The main page for each site/area will give a snapshot look - often providing a timeline. On a weekly basis, I do a quick revision of each section and make sure the relevant tasks are linked to from my daily planners. Typically when I get one thing done from my daily planner, I'll then add the next item. But the weekly recap helps me make sure that things that get dumped in there for future reference don't get "lost". The Ideas section is a great way for me to organize ideas I have that aren't close to being actually worked on. I typically will dump in relevant research links, links on my computer to documents I've downloaded, contacts etc in the appropriate section.

Internally, we're still using Central Desktop accounts. I'll share more about how we are using this at another time. Although Central Desktop is a great tool & I wouldn't want to be without it for collaboration purposes, for the variety of things I need to get done/stay on top of, it was just taking too much time for it to be efficient.

Being Security Conscious Online Take 2

One of my previous posts about being security conscious focused primarily on passwords. After that post & sending my client newsletter out, I received a few interesting emails that raised another huge issue: the amount of personal information people are now sharing online.

Let me recount what happened with each of these people so you can understand some of the dangers. Names & specific details have been changed to protect privacy.

Marie provides a business to business service. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and travels a good deal. She is married with no children. Her husband traveled recently with her to a weekend conference in the South. They returned home on a Sunday night to find that their house had been broken into. She had both blogged and tweeted before leaving that her husband would be going with her. Perhaps it was a mere coincidence. But she feels certain now that she made a mistake advertising to the world that their home would be empty for 3 days.

John was in Vegas for a conference a couple of months ago. He's a snapshot crazy person. Takes pictures of everything and uploads them online. He had secured a suite with a cool room number at a hotel and took a picture of the door & room number which he then put online. John relayed online that he was going to a show. His hotel room was broken into - his laptop and other valuables were stolen.

Jamie is a single girl that blogs about her day to day life. She uses a pseudonym online. She had felt she was pretty safety conscious in terms of not revealing personal information. Her domain name was registered using privacy. She had mentioned several times in her blog posts that she lived alone and the city she lived in. One day she mentioned going to see a specific movie with friends at a repertoire theater. A movie that was only playing at one location at one time in her city. As she put her key in her door upon arriving home, a man jumped her and attacked her. He repeatedly referred to her by her pen name. He had apparently followed her home from the movie.

Facts:

Social Media usage is increasing
Many SM sites allow you to find users based on location or to search sites for references to areas/events/etc
The economy is in a pretty bad state as we all know and it's going to get worse before it gets better
Crime is on the rise


I'd suggest taking some time to review your own online habits & see what you can do to ensure your own security. If you see your friends, loved ones or associates revealing too much, let them know gently. (Perhaps refer them to this post.)

2009 Listcast.com Live

We just had a major update to our email marketing service http://www.Listcast.com go live. The service continues to be not only one of the most affordable services but also has one of the best deliverability rates in the industry. Our backend was a finalist again in the 2008 ClickZ.com annual roundup for Email Marketing.

Our parent company has been in the email marketing services industry since 1998. During this time, we've provided reliable service for over 10,000 lists. Our company was created by people with marketing and customer service backgrounds. Our focus is on providing clients with exceptional support. We pride ourselves on closing 99.9% of support tickets within 3 business hours and have staff coverage 24/7 - even on holidays.

You can sign-up for a free account to test drive the service. This is also ideal if you are just launching a new site where it might take you some time to put all of the pieces together. When you're ready to upgrade, just let us know. I'm sure you'll be tickled pink at how robust our system is for the low pricing.

We offer free webinars to new clients using the service. Just let our customer support department know you are interested in attending one, when good days/times are for you and we'll get you connected.

Being Security Conscious Online

I'm working on my next client newsletter and will be writing about security online. The newsletter isn't actually due out for another 2 weeks so I wanted to share some thoughts here beforehand.

There are a few common mistakes I see many people commonly when it comes to online security. All of these are things that have caused problems for friends, clients and associates.

1.Using the same password at one or more sites

Hacking and phishing scams are nothing new. The recent Twitter issues showed what can happen and how difficult it can be to contain them. If you use the same password across multiple sites and even one of those sites is compromised, you might find yourself in trouble.

Consider this: if someone knows what your email address is, your common password, what user name you may be using at other sites, what industry you work in, maybe even where you work... what else could they potentially get access to?

Solutions:

A. Ideal - create a totally randomized password for each site that you visit that consists of both letters and numbers, preferably with some upper and some lower case letters. Use an entirely different email address for each site that you need log-on credentials with. (If you have your own domain, this can be easily accomplished by using a catch-all POP account.)

B. Next best - use some kind of common format for password creation based on the site you are joining. This will save you from having to remember/record the details for each site. Use an email address specific for each site that you need log-on credentials with. For example, blogger@yourdomain.com.

C. Finally - if you don't want to deal with so many different passwords, at the very least make sure that any crucial passwords are different from others. For example, your email password, financial ones, etc.

2. Password reset information should be known only to you.

Many sites these days allow you to reset a password if you know a bit of information about the user. Sometimes it's as little as knowing your country and birthdate in order to reset a password. Before you join a new site, have a look at what the procedures are for resetting a password. Then make sure whatever information you provide them with is something you can remember but no one else can guess.

3. Be careful what information you reveal in public or even privately.

Several months back a young man I know learned the price of sharing too much. He had met this "incredible" woman through one of the social networking sites. They spent a few hours chatting on IM. She had asked him loads of questions - seemingly random and in an effort to get to know him. A few days later, he finds out that domains he owned had been transferred out, financial accounts compromised, etc. It turns out that by revealing just 3 pieces of information, he gave the person enough information to hack his accounts. Ouch. He could have prevented all of this trouble by using multiple passwords, using different user names at sites and by using security question answers HE could remember but that weren't accurate.

Microsoft Office On New PC's

Just a quick tip if a new computer is in your future: If you have Office (other than the Home & Student version), make sure to check your new computer for Office before you install it.

This is a mistake I've made twice in less than a year: I blindly installed Office Ultimate 2007 without removing the trial version of Office on the computer. Yes, you can activate Office using your activation key. However when you actually run Office, you'll see a message at the top "Non-Commercial Purposes." Not nice if you've shelled out close to a $1k for software to see.

If this happens to you, what you need to do is uninstall both the Office you installed along with the trial version. If you are unable to remove by using the "Add or Remove Programs" feature in your control panel, Microsoft has instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=928218 on how to uninstall the remnants. Once you've completed the removal, you can install Office from scratch.

Marketing Maneuvers to Make Your Business Soar In 2009

This post is an abbreviated version of a newsletter I recently sent to my clients. Whether or not you agree with everything I've written, I hope you can at least find one takeaway.

As we come to the end of another year, it's time to not only look back over the progress we've made in our businesses/job/life/health but also to look ahead, set new goals and refine our strategies for 2009. I'm going to share with you some ideas that can hopefully help you get to where you want to go a bit faster.

Mobile usage is continuing to grow and along with it mobile surfing. What does this mean for your business? That depends on who your audience is. But the adoption rate is accelerating at a rapid pace within North America across all age groups and income levels. Mobile considerations:

• Do you have an alternate version of your website(s) for mobile devices? If not, how does your existing site look? How much scrolling do people need to do?


• How do your emails look when viewed on a mobile device? If you are using HTML, consider dropping multi-column tables.


• Do you have videos on your website? Are you relying on videos to perform the entire selling job?


• How is your marketing/sales/ordering process being impacted?

Personal commentary: I recently got an iPod Touch and am having a blast with it. I was surprised to see that almost every sales site I've seen with only video could not run the video on the iPod Touch.

The Internet is Increasingly About Communication. Web 2.0 has given the individual a voice and with it power. Sure there is a lot of noise, but if you use social marketing in constructive ways that allow you/your business/your organization to engage in communication with your prospective/past/existing customers, you will stand out. It takes very little extra time/effort to do things right on this front. The same thing is true for literally every kind of online marketing you can do.

• Assuming you have some form of a social marketing strategy to begin with, take some time to really assess what you are doing. Are you using it in a way that is in line with the image you want to project? What are your competitors doing that seems like it would feel right from a consumer's standpoint? What are they doing wrong?


• If you send out emails to your customer/subscriber list, what are you really sending out? Are they simply marketing/sales pitches for your own products/services or for others? Or are you actually providing your recipients something of value at least some of the time? Many people say that email marketing is losing it's effectiveness. I suspect that most people that say this are doing 2 things wrong: 1. They are focusing on selling rather than marketing and 2. They see the recipients of their emails as subscribers and not readers.


• What return email address are you using on your mass mailings? There's been a growing movement towards "do not reply" addresses. Many people/companies say they can't handle the responses. At minimum use an autoresponder. The best case is to have someone actually deal with incoming emails and route them accordingly.

Many Tactics That Worked Well in 2008 Will Not in 2009. This past year, we've seen a lot of new marketing methods pop up that worked very well. But new methods can get stale rather quickly and you'll need to carefully consider what is most appropriate for your business model in 2009. Here are just a couple of example:

• Exit discounts became common place and worked but they are losing their effectiveness. I've had several clients that did conversion comparison with and without them in the past 2 months. Although order rate went up slightly with an exit discount, the overall profit actually went down. If you are backending a continuity program or something else, then getting more paid customers in the door may be worth the loss of upfront profit. I suspect part of the reason it seems to be resulting in diminishing profits is that more Internet buyers are used to seeing them so they'll test a site by leaving before they actually order. (None of the clients that did this comparison were in Internet Marketing .)


• Lengthy videos doing 100% of the selling will lose their effectiveness. Don't get me wrong - videos do have their place in the marketing & sales process and can truly boost conversion rates. But the novelty of long videos is starting to wear off for a lot of people. In one day last week, I received 22 different emails from marketers whose lists I subscribe to that simply pointed to a video sales page. If the average video was even 20 minutes long that would represent my full working day. What does the profile of your ideal prospect who will actually have the money to buy your product/service look like? Is it someone that has hours a day to watch videos?

Obviously I haven't covered everything here. I tried to focus on smaller things that I believe can have the most significant impact on ROI and shortest deployment time.

Use Paypal? Something You May Not Be Aware Of

I am continuously surprised by the number of people that don't see to know about a Paypal feature - Mass Pay. If you are already familiar with it, you can skip this post, but for the sake of those of you who may not be, I thought I'd share it.

Mass pay is a way to send payments to an individual or a group of individuals at one time. The funds must be available in your account in order for you to send money. The sender pays the fees which are capped at $1 in USD or $1.25 in CAD. There are no fees for the recipient.

Sending mass pay is pretty easy. For US sending accounts, you click the Mass Pay link at the bottom of each screen once you are logged into your account. You'll need to prepare a text, tab delimited file that contains the recipient's email address, the currency and the amount to be paid. Other field options are available. You then upload the file to Paypal.

For Canadian sending accounts, it is pretty much the same procedure except to get to the Mass Pay screen, you'll need to go to the merchant area.

As with normal payments, the recipient gets a notice that they have received funds.

I use Mass Pay for the majority of the payments I send via Paypal. It gives negotiating room when making purchases, paying contractors, etc since the recipient doesn't need to pay any fees. I also ask buyers/clients in many cases to send payment via Mass Pay when appropriate.

From what I understand, the risks are much lower with Mass Pay than with accepting other kinds of payment via Paypal. Unlike with cc funded payments, buyers cannot go back to their cc company where Paypal will typically reverse the charges immediately without even waiting for a response from the seller.

Hope this has saved someone reading this some money!

Surprising test results of email marketing campaign

I don't have a lot of time to get into details on this but I thought it was worth sharing. I've now been working in the email marketing space for over a decade. I continue to be surprised by new test variables that prove to have interesting results. Interesting in that it can be well worth the bit of time involved to test.

In the past month, I've worked with 2 clients who were doing limited launches. Both for products outside of the Internet Marketing circles and in niche areas. Both followed a string of successive emails building up to launch day. Both had a limited number of products available for sale. Price points were almost the same. No affiliates/jv partners used. These were launches done to in-house lists.

Client A followed the normal strategy to almost a T in that everyone received the same emails. At launch - 3 hours, 1/3 of the 28,000 list received one of the following emails:

A. <> opening in 3 hours
B. <> opening at 1 pm
C. <> opening at 1 pm Pacific

A minor difference to most people, but the results and how this translated to sales was significant. Who received which of these 3 emails was entirely randomized. The content of the emails as well as the email that went out at actual launch was exactly the same for everyone. The shocker here is that not only did version C recipients open more than A+B recipients combined, but over 75% of the orders in the first 30 minutes came from version C recipients. In the end, version C recipients ordered only slightly more units than versions A or B. However it did take almost 6 hours to sell out entirely.

Lessons learned: Specificity on the timing side is important if you are shooting for a fast sell-out. If you are promoting as a JV partner or as an affiliate, it could help you to get a bit more sales in.

Client B's launch was the following week and I asked if we could take this testing idea one step further. His database actually contained state/zip/country for more than half of subscribers. For the rest, IP addresses were saved. We broke his database down into 11 segments based on time zone and 1 for ones we were unable to determine. Starting the day before launch, we started to customize emails based on these segments. There was one email sent out the day before launch, one email sent out -3 hours, one email sent at launch and then a final one sent at sold out. Here's where things get really interesting: for all 11 time based segments, between 60 and 75% of orders came in during the first 30 minutes. If we consider the 12th group as a control group - something to compare results against - the overall conversion rate was about the same (it took 4 hours to sell out) however only 18% ordered in the first 30 minutes.

Lesson learned: specificity is even more important than I would have thought. Making it a no-brainer for people to know the time they need to be ready to order can help boost immediate sales.

A few caveats:

1. Because the numbers worked out this way in these tests does not mean that they would necessarily work the same way for you. This is why testing is important. (If you do run a test of this kind and would like to share your own results, I'd love to hear about it.)
2. For time-based launches, it's really important to use a vendor that can actually get your emails out on time. I'm continually baffled by the number of big time Internet Marketers who use third rate mailing systems where their emails go out HOURS after a launch has actually sold out and/or many of their emails end up filtered in spam folder because they are using the same content as other marketers. Reliable email marketing service. (Yes, it's my company.)
3. What about if you don't have data to do geo targetting? If you are using double opt-in, you likely have the IP information associated with a sign-up stored "somewhere". Although that is a laborious process to match back, you can go to Rentacoder or Odesk and get the work done for about $1-2 per 500 addresses.

WII Fit Challenge

A week ago, I got a WII in anticipation of the WII Fit. Fortunately without preordering from anywhere, I was able to get a WII Fit at my local Walmart. It was one of 2 they had left by around 8:30 am.

I want to tell you why I was so excited about it and why I'm posting about it here.

I work from home. I have a fully equipped home gym. Tons of exercise videos. Basically I could be in amazing shape just with what I have right here.

For more of my life than not, I've been on some kind of regular fitness program. The problem for me is that the majority of my day is pretty sedentary. Working out 30-60 minutes a day while sitting on my butt the rest of the day is not an answer. I find myself having too hard a recovery time. I find when I have to do things like travel, go to conferences, or just normal higher activity days, I'm not able to keep up as well as I'd like to. Giving up having a cleaning woman and doing more household chores hasn't helped. (It certainly hasn't helped my house since I have zero motivation when it comes to cleaning!)

I have a theory. No scientific foundation behind this. Just based on what I am seeing in my own life.

For the past couple of decades, fitness experts have all pretty much agreed that to optimize your metabolism you should be eating 5-6 meals a day and not going longer than 2-3 hours without eating. The idea behind this is that one of the best calorie burners is our metabolism. By continually stoking it, we keep the metabolism going. Of course, what you eat is important in the equation as well. In spite of the scientific evidence backing this, many nutritionists, doctors etc still say that you should eat 3 squares a day with 1 or 2 snacks. I know from personal experience that moving to 6 meals a day made me realize that the idea that we simply need a calorie deficit in order to lose weight is entirely wrong. I lost around 70 lbs in 8 months by following a few simple guidelines:

• Have 5-6 meals per day with the first meal being within 90 minutes of waking up;
• Each meal should be between 100 and 400 calories;
• Alternate how much I eat from one day to the next;
• Have one day every week or two where I go over the max calorie count for at least 2 or 3 meals;
• Drink lots of water;
• If I want something, have it - but either in moderation or save it for one of my higher calorie days;
• And try to limit the amount of processed food - especially starchy ones.

I've never had any difficulty with losing weight but keeping it off is proving to be another story. Even if I stayed with the above, eventually my body starts to adjust and the weight gradually creeps up.

I think that a missing part of the equation for me - and many others - is that our lives in general are way too sedentary. Scientific research has shown that we get a boost of calorie burning from physical activity during the hours after. Doesn't it make sense given what we know about the way our metabolisms function with frequent mini-meals that we could see the same boost in our metabolisms from having frequent mini-exercise sessions?

Having longer treadmill/other cardio and weight sessions is not the answer. Been there, done that. It just makes me resent exercise. Adding on extra sessions is not the answer. It's hard enough to find the time to exercise in the first place, nevermind doubling up sessions. Besides, I've already gone through the experience a few years back of setting an aggressive exercise goal (training for a marathon) and dealt with the ramifications of it - blowing a knee out from overtraining.

So this is why I was excited about the WII Fit. I don't expect it to REPLACE a regular exercise program, but to provide me with an easy way to fit in 5-10 minute exercise sessions every 2 hours or so during my work day. Most of us know that some kind of break during our workday is good. It helps keep us our mental motors running smoothly to get a change of pace. I enjoy games so for me, having game/exercise breaks sounds perfect.

I'm hoping that an added benefit will be a bit of reduction in my stress level too. I know that exercise in general helps settle me down and clears my mind. Hopefully during these mini breaks, it will help me deal with daily stresses a little better.

On my first day (Wednesday), I did only 15 minutes on it. I also spent about the same amount of time on Wii Sports on boxing/tennis and baseball. I find that my upper body strength has been declining as I've been getting older and those 3 sports focused on upper body in ways that my normal exercise routine doesn't. Today (Thursday), I did 21 minutes on WII Fit and another 20 minutes on Wii Sports. A little more than I intended to, but I was having fun. :)

My objective is to try and spend somewhere between 30-45 minutes 5-6 days a week between Wii Fit and Wii Sports.

CentralDesktop

I recently decided to investigate different project management/collaboration tools. The last time I did this was a couple of years ago and I was surprised how many different ones are available. After spending countless hours researching which would be the best one for what I needed, I ended up settling on CentralDesktop. Here's why:

• Having read the company's blog and forum, I know the people behind the company are passionate in what they do. That is a huge plus. Having read what I did I know that this is about more than just money but creating a really great product.
• CD differentiates between internal and external users. This is a plus because for many upcoming projects, we'll be bringing people in on a short-term basis and giving limited access to only a specific project they are involved with is crucial. Plus, internal staff can access more (read: confidential info pertaining to a project) than what external service providers can.
• There is version tracking for documents and you can do rollbacks. Although it's not something I am in need of at this minute, it is a feature that will be important as our team is developed.
• Their storage capacity and upgrading it is billed on a reasonable basis. I was amazed how many service providers in this area are charging huge fees for storage.
• You can have private or public workspaces.

CentralDesktop uses slightly different terminology than other services. For example, you set up workspaces rather than projects. Workspaces can include a variety of things such as blogs, discussion areas, documents, wikis and of course project tracking.

They allow for a 30 day free trial of a personal workspace - allowing up to 2 users and 2 workspaces. Their normal billing structure is very reasonable for what is included and the number of users. For example, we opted to start with their Company Plan 3 which costs $99 per month. It allows 25 internal users, 250 external users, 25 workspaces and 5 GB of storage space. Since they allow you to archive/delete old workspaces, this should carry us for quite a while. The average competitive service I looked at charged around $40/month per user - whether internal or external and had half the storage space. This seemed like a steal comparatively speaking.

On the offside, there is very little documentation right now. There is one long video and several short-ones that deal with specific tasks, but I noticed that several items have been changed since the videos were made. From reading the forum it seems that providing better documentation is something they are working on.

The lack of documentation hasn't been a huge problem for 3 reasons: The system is pretty easy to use. Their email support has been very fast. There is also an active and well-supported forum. Most of the questions I had I found the answers to by looking through the forum. It still would be nice if one of their higher level staff could actually sit down for a half a day and make some additional videos on applications of the different features. I'm sure this would increase their client retention rate because I know that most people wouldn't have a clue about what some of the features can be used for.

If/when I have some time I'll share some comments in the future on other tools I looked at.

My list of daily sites to visit has just gotten smaller...

As a 'net entrepreneur, one of the things I like to do is stay on top of new sites. Innovation is getting faster online - much faster. If you run a business, then it may not matter to you what new business models are emerging. You might just be interested in new competitors that pop up. If you are an entrepreneur, however, it's crucial for you to stay on top of trends. Unfortunately, as everything is accelerating, it's become much more difficult to do so. Sure you can find out what 'users' are evangelizing. Check out Alexa's top movers, Digg, De.licio.us, etc. But it's much more useful to be ahead of the ball by knowing about start-ups before they start to be adopted by the masses. A new site has popped up that can let you eyeball new trends... see what others have actually gotten to launch stage. KillerStartups.com

Another free typo tool

I probably go to Domaintools.com more often then I check my email - and that says a lot. They have a number of nifty features especially if you opt for a paid membership.

They now have a free domain typo tool available at their site. Since I do some proactive copyright/tm searches for clients, I'm always on the lookout for more ways to research. I ran a couple of recent searches I did for clients and found a few domains that I hadn't come across through other methods. (Of course, I wouldn't register tm/copyright domains for my own purposes!) It also has a few other capabilities that make it a cut above other typo tools.

Check it out yourself before they start to make it a paid service.

One of the problems with domain parking

Almost all parking programs work the same way: you change your name servers to that of the parking company and then add your domain to your account with that company.

I've been having a bit of a problem lately. When I register/purchase/win an auction for a new domain name, by default depending on the registrar, it will set the name servers to one of the parking services I deal with. This saves me having to manually go in to change the name servers. The problem is I don't always immediately add those domains to my parking account. I try to deal with parking bits just once a day. Seems like that is a more productive use of my time. Unfortunately, it seems that some unscrupulous people are tracking name server domain gains and adding gained domains to their accounts with the same parking companies. Essentially they are trying to steal the revenue from the domains. The normal procedure with the companies I deal with is that you need to submit a ticket to get ownership of the domain verified.

I've mentioned this to a few active domains who basically gave a virtual shrug of their shoulders as if to say there's nothing wrong with it.

Come on. These same people have to be doing it to more than just my domains. Aren't parking companies noticing this? Unless of course they are the ones responsible.

I have no problem with the parking company receiving any revenue generated because of my own delay in adding domains. But I do have a problem with people that are essentially stealing. I also have a problem with parking companies that sit back while people do this and put the onus on the legitimate owner. Meanwhile, while I wait a day or two or three for ownership to be verified, the thief continues to make money.

I'm not a Sedo fan by any means, but I do have to say at least this is one thing they have right: if the email address associated with a domain does not match the email address they have on file for you, they will verify ownership. Granted their reasoning is more likely tied into concerns about sales than about parking revenue... and this also poses problems for those of us that use multiple email addresses on our domain ownership records... but how much work would it be for parking companies to implement such a practice? Or at least to take action on people stealing the traffic/revenue of others.