Be Extrordinary ~ Sendside Packages

Sendside Packages solve some very difficult problems for organizations large and small. This short video demonstrates how Sendside Packages let you seperate your business from competitors and compete in ways that they can't match.

View a Package about how Sendside speeds Sales

View a Package about Sendside powers Marketing

What's Sendside good for? Hell, you're supposed to be creative...

Selling: Hey! You can now communicate complicated or important messages thorough one simple communication. As you see through the tabs above I've sent an overview, relevant facts, a magazine and even an application. Any organization that needs to communicate now has unlimited capabilities to do so and tell a complex story easily and simply. You'll be providing your clients custom 1 to 1 communication and interaction that they've never seen before.

Customer Communications: Sendside's clear communication capabilities provide the ability to 'send' information instead of asking others to come and get it. Instead of a static email, Sendside offers the capability to send high-touch, highly-interactive communications and use your existing content.

eCommerce multiplied: With Sendside you can tie in to your existing infrastructure, or not. But Sendside can still solve the headaches, costs, and inefficiencies around multiple sites with a comprehensive solution that's easy on your end users.

No IT Integration or Downloads Needed: Since Sendside is delivered as a service, there's no need to force downloads or installs on your team or IT pros. Just login and go.

Uber-Security & Compliance: Sendside's legendary security is trusted by banks, hedge funds and boards of directors for their most confidential info. Sendside's security is 'baked in' and always on, allowing every user to have complete trust in every communication and conform to any compliance need. Did I mention there's no spam, fraud, or phishing??? Tres cool.

Safety: Sendside gives everyone piece of mind with jaw-dropping capabilities like Reach, Prevention, and Recall that allow you to see every person who has access to your message, prevent forwarding, printing or downloading, and even recall a message at any time, even after it's been read. This type of control gets you some mongo bang-for-the-buck since you can switch inventory or the entire communication in-stream.

So there it is. Of course there's much more... Interactive, video, messaging, real-time reporting and analytics... Jump the curve to Sendside.

Technorati Tag Authority

There’s a fresh new opportunity from Technorat to create both powerful one-way links to your site and build your own reputation as the expert in your market.

Technorati has introduced new “tag pages” system, the main page:

There are two approaches to keep in mind when utilizing the new Technorati tag pages.

Firstly, you want your own blog posts to appear in the more popular tag pages (of course, they need to be on relevant tag pages as well - don’t pick irrelevant tags). There’s a comparison engine that can help you determine the most popular tags. For example, here’s “Internet marketing” compared with “seo.”

As you can see, SEO trends higher than interenet marketing. So, if you had a blog post relevant to both categories and were trying to decide which one to tag it with, SEO would be a great choice as it’s a more popular tag. You should use between 5-10 tags on your blog posts, so there’s plenty of room for several tags but, again, it’s important they’re relevant.

Secondly, and this is the fun announcement from Technorait - each tag page has a sort of “sponsor” who writes an introduction to the topic. In return, Technorati links to the authors blog! Take a peek at what this looks like:

These pages are, of course, new right now and there are TONS of them available for you on which to add your own description and link! Because you’ll only get links from and write descriptions for tag pages that are within your niche, these links from Technorati will be HIGHLY relevant as well - and we know Google loves that!

Technorati describes the opprotunity:

This is a unique opportunity for authors, brands, agencies, experts and content sites with some significant benefits. Your tag article will appear on Technorati.com with a writer credit. You will be seen as the definitive expert on a tag subject – by millions of readers. Your article can include links to useful references and sites, including your own, if relevant, as well as your own byline link. It’s also really easy to contribute: tag articles are only 2-3 paragraphs, between 100 and 200 words, and can live for years as evergreen content.

Aside from the Google love link you’ll receive, having a prominent space on your niche’s main Technorati tag pages will bring your own site and name brand recognition. Having written the tag article, you’re now the expert in the niche.

How to become a tag page author? You’ll need to join Blog Critics, and they do a manual review of your content. If you’re publishing MFA (made-for-Adsense) or other non-unique content, you’ll likely not be approved. This is the opportunity to showcase your best work. Once you’re a Blog Critics member, you’ll be able to author Technorati tag pages.

Move forward with this opportunity as quickly as possible, as the “keyword goldrush” is occuring right now - grab the best keywords for your niche before they’re all snapped up!

Via Crowd Mountain

Internet sales slowing since I've started going to the gym.

Via the Times: Online Sales Loose Steam as Buyers Grow Web-Weary.

 
Since the inception of the Web, online commerce has enjoyed hypergrowth, with annual sales increasing more than 25 percent over all, and far more rapidly in many categories. But in the last year, growth has slowed sharply in major sectors like books, tickets and office supplies.

Growth in online sales has also dropped dramatically in diverse categories like health and beauty products, computer peripherals and pet supplies. Analysts say it is a turning point and growth will continue to slow through the decade.

The reaction to the trend is apparent at Dell, which many had regarded as having mastered the science of selling computers online, but is now putting its PCs in Wal-Mart stores. Expedia has almost tripled the number of travel ticketing kiosks it puts in hotel lobbies and other places that attract tourists.

The slowdown is the result of several forces. Sales on the Internet are expected to reach $116 billion this year, or 5 percent of all retail sales, making it harder to maintain the same high growth rates. At the same time, consumers seem to be experiencing Internet fatigue and are changing their buying habits.

Monitizing Traffic: Making money from your blog.

I have more than a few blogs.

 
Posting to them seems to be somewhat cyclical. For a while I was posting almost daily to this site and neglecting others. The roles have switched lately and I've been posting to my medical blog.

Here's my current list of blogs that I write or have created:

• Medical Spa MD: Information for physicians in cosmetic medicine.
  
• Nimble Theory: This here blog.
  
• Pony Tail Club: A fourteen year old & her horse.
  
• Kid Agent: Inside the life of a Hollywood child agent.
  
• Wild Blue Creative Partners: Advertising & Marketing
• Surface Medical Spas: My medical business site.
• Fight Club
  
• A few others.

Medical Spa MD has the most traffic, 18000 unique visitors, most of which are physicians. (This blog has about 7k unique monthly visitors.)

So, the rub. How to monetize your traffic without seeming crass and turning off your readers.

I use Yahoo PPC and my Medical Spa blog earns between $100 and $250 a month pretty consistently. I lean towards creating something more since it's a hell of a lot of work to grow a blog.

So, I'm using my blog to generate revenue indirectly rather than try to make money from PPC. I've a strong feeling that it's a better method for my market and could generate much more revenue than the ubiquitous PPC.

• I've created a classified section to allow physicians to buy and sell their used lasers, IPLs and medical equipment. With 18k readers this should generate some traffic and value... especially since it's free.
• I offer a needed piece of equipment, a spectrophotometer, at a significant discount. (I take a percentage.)
• I've organized much of the information I've generated and plan to offer it as a book, guide, or structure for starting and running a medical spa or cosmetic practice.
• I've built a portal to address every cosmetic medical practices main concern and need, driving new patient traffic. This new site will be a vertical marketing portal where a physician can build, customize, and send direct mail at a 30-40% discount from the current deep discount printers. (This is a big play in the market and I'll link as soon as the site goes live.)
• I've created a medspa membership list to garner info about my visitors.
  

Will it work? How well? We'll see.

What's wrong with Yahoo context ads?

I'm  am running Yahoo Publisher Network for my text ads on my blogs and not Google's adsense.

My brother-in-law was in town for Christmas and he and I argued over which ad system was better. My arguement was that Yahoo paid more than Google. He felt that Google had a higher click through rate because Google's relevancy engine is based on click throughs as well as cost. (Supposedly Yahoos new Panama engine does the same thing.)

But my blog at Medical Spa MD is a real hit and miss. When Yahoo is working well it places ads with great relevancy. But around 20% of the time the text links are some form of generic financing ads. Since I've not run adsense on that blog it makes me wonder if Google wouldn't do better for me?

One thing is for sure, with Yahoo getting their ass handed to them by Google, they can't really afford to loose the clients they already have.

Capitalist Pig isn't happy either.

The excitement was short lived as within three days, the yahoo editorial staff had removed 231 of the keywords.  That’s over 75% of the keywords that I’m currently running with google that have high CTR, and great conversions.  So now, if I want to get back in, I have to spend more time resubmitting the keywords that were declined.  The question is, what would be a better use of my time?  Trying to get all my ads back into yahoo so I’m in front of the roughly 25% of users that use Yahoo or increasing my exposure in Google?  It’s definitely more efficient for me to spend more time with Google since I’m sure my ads and keywords are going to show there.

...More than one advertiser has come public with their experiences with click fraud on Yahoo’s network.  One of the bigger claims was from Pepperjam which had a client that ran through $10k worth of clicks in one day with Yahoo.  I first read about the story when reading Shoemoney’s blog, who has a strong relationship with Pepperjam.  Yahoo responded with a $10k “goodwill” credit to the advertiser without admitting that there was fraud.

The Art of the Sign Up Page

Tim Bednar over at Turtle Interactive has written a great post on “The Art of the Sign Up Page“ where he discusses his insights and decisions. 

I selected these sites because I thought they were well done and were subscription based, productivity applications. Other applications I reviewed included: 30boxes, Blogger, del.icio.us, Flock, Give Meaning, Kiko, My Pick List, Titlez, CRM from Zoho, Zopa, Second Site, LinkedIn, Box.net, Vyew, and Cork'd.

What elements make up a sign up page?

The best place to start is to list all of the elements that compose a sign up page:

• Logo
• Elevator pitch
• Description copy
• List of key features
• List of key benefits
• Call to action
• Testimonials
• Tours
• Examples of who is using the application
• Screen shots
• Life-style images
• Link to more information (price, login, about, blog, terms, privacy)

Clickriver: Amazon lauches verticle PPC program.

Amazon's own own PPC program, Clickriver.

Clickriver Ads is an advertising program (currently in beta) that allows businesses to place sponsored links on Amazon.com, next to search results and on product detail pages.

It's a closed beta at the moment. I've applied and if they let me in I'll post a review after I tinker with it.

This little widget is driving mucho traffic.

My blog is worth $40,887.98.
How much is your blog worth?

I stumbled across this little Technorati API application that gives you a value for your blog or site based on the number of inbound links priced according to the numbers on the AOL-Weblogs deal. (He figures out that at $25 million valuation, each inbound site (as per Technorati) is worth $564.54.)

It's a little blog-vanity.

Here's the code if you want to add it to your site:

Click to read more ...

Viral marketing done right: The Mormon Al Qaeda

Viral video marketing performed to perfection. While this was for a comedy show, watch this YouTube video and you'll find a great marketing tool that could work inside a local market.

VIPBlogger.com's largest buyer is incredibly good looking.

Since my RSS feeds were full of VIPBloggers posts yesterday I trotted on over to see what all the fuss was about. It seems that Justin Bergener (another of those short haired Junto boys) thought that the million dollar homepage idea was just the ticket to pry a few dollars out of the blogger crowd and buy himself more hair gel. Justin's no dummy. You're only in for a 6 month run.

This little 9 box square is mine and links to a number of blogs I run or businesses I own including:  Fight Club, MedicalSpasOnline.com, Surface Medical Spas, Nimbleit.com, and this blog. I didn't want to have 5 little boxes so I made one icon and split it up 9 ways. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It made me the largest buyer to date but did little to affect my looks as far as I can tell.

I would expect to see a number of these sites pop up much like the 'I'll tatoo your logo on my forehead' auctions on Ebay. Still, I hope it works. Justin wants the money.

Woot and the power of limited inventory.

Limited supply + large demand = motivation.

For anyone who doesn't know woot.com, now's your chance. Woot is an online business that takes a single product of limited inventory, discounts it heavily, and releases it every day at midnight.  If the products good it sells out pdq so you have to be quick to the button. Steep & Cheap is backcountry.com's like-concept but offers outdoor stuff.

I found out about Woot from Alan Young when he was working with the University Venture Fund. Allan told me that Woot was changing it's users sleeping patterns since they'd stay up 'till midnight to see what the next Woot was.

Of course it's the limited supply. Limited supply + large demand = motivation.

The problem many businesses have is that they don't really have limited supply, they have lots of supply. It's this factor of being able to offer unlimited supply that exerts a downward pressure on perceived value for internet companies. How much will people pay for email? Nada.

What can a business do to decrease the perceived supply of its offering? Depends. If you're direct competitors also have unlimited supply you're in trouble because your customers will switch. It's only if you're offering is unique enough that the opportunity cost is now perceived by the buyer to be lower with your offering.

It's the perceived value and opportunity cost that buyers use to make purchasing decisions. That's it. It would be really simple if all consumers used the same criteria to judge but they don't. There's slop in the decision making process since every individual use their own criteria. But that's also where the opportunity lies for any business.

Women purchasing shoes are using a very different standard of value and opportunity cost than men. (Way different in my wife's case.)

Woot proves the point. Changing the habits of customers is not easy, but if the perceived value of the offing is there it happens without a second thought. 

Seth Purple Cow's Google

Seth Godin talking about Purple Cows at Google. If you like Seth, this is the stuff. Here's the link.