Making money off of your website is not an easy task, but it can be done. The easiest and fastest way to start making money is to sign-up with an advertising network. One type of ad network is pay per click (PPC), such as Google AdSense. Other networks are pay per impression (CPM) like Burst Media or Tribal Fusion. The problem with the later is you need a substantial amount of traffic to make any money. Sometimes you will need a lot of traffic just to sign up with them.
So what can you do if you are like the rest of us but don’t have a whole lot of traffic?
1) Pick your niche
Sometimes websites are so focused that getting a single click from a Google advertisement can make you $10. The problem is that these opportunities are few and far between. Keywords that have to do with legal issues such as Mesothelioma (asbestos disease) can pay up to $25 a click. Other business products such as newsletter software, small business CRM, and even brand names can net you a lot of cash.
2) Build your site properly
If you focus on building your website properly, provide good content and generally follow good practices you may find your website having a nice Google page ranking. If you have a page ranking of 4 or higher, you can probably sell ads on your site that are focused on SEO.
For example. LogicBright, small business contact manager, wants to appear higher on Google's search results. So they purchase a advertisement, in the form of a text link, that contains their keywords. LogicBright will not get any traffic from your small website, but the SEO benefit is there and they may be willing to pay $25 a month or more for higher page ranks.
3) Offer paid reviews
If your website is a blog or a website that can fit reviews, you may be able to make money by posting paid reviews on your website. Some companies such as PayPerPost will allow you to join their network to find these opportunities. You are usually provided with all the product information you will need and in many cases it won’t take long at all to make some money. The biggest requirement these sites have is that your page ranking is decent and you make regular updates.
So you see, you don’t need to rely on high-traffic anymore to monetize a website. The best part about it, is all of these things can help you build your traffic as a result of promoting your website in certain channels.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Driving Traffic To Your Website Using Twitter
Recently, I conducted an experiment by using twitter heavily to drive people to my website. When I say heavily, I mean really heavily. I got over 900 followers in 5 days and posted over 170 posts, many of contained links to fun content on my website.
To do this, I simply searched for random people and b2b companies that focus on contact management for small businesses, and added them to the people I was following. In turn, about 50% of them followed me back. It was pretty easy, but very time consuming.
What I found was people were eager to follow tweats and become my friend, even sending private messages to chat, but when push came to shove it didn’t drive many people to the website. Furthermore, the traffic it did create wasn’t good traffic. It drove a small amount of people to the site that viewed the page I posted to them and no other pages.
The problem with Twitter when it comes to driving traffic is you cannot easily target people who would be interested in your website. By not having a way to target people based on interests it is simply not worth the time to use Twitter as a traffic driver. In fact, like every online trend that has SEO implications, I was flooded by messages of marketing people trying to do the same thing as me. This obviously dilutes the market place.
My suggestion is to wait for the next Twitter to come along and be one of the first people involved. The traditional ways of driving traffic to your website; word of mouth, forums, advertising, blogs and SEO give you more bang for your time.
To do this, I simply searched for random people and b2b companies that focus on contact management for small businesses, and added them to the people I was following. In turn, about 50% of them followed me back. It was pretty easy, but very time consuming.
What I found was people were eager to follow tweats and become my friend, even sending private messages to chat, but when push came to shove it didn’t drive many people to the website. Furthermore, the traffic it did create wasn’t good traffic. It drove a small amount of people to the site that viewed the page I posted to them and no other pages.
The problem with Twitter when it comes to driving traffic is you cannot easily target people who would be interested in your website. By not having a way to target people based on interests it is simply not worth the time to use Twitter as a traffic driver. In fact, like every online trend that has SEO implications, I was flooded by messages of marketing people trying to do the same thing as me. This obviously dilutes the market place.
My suggestion is to wait for the next Twitter to come along and be one of the first people involved. The traditional ways of driving traffic to your website; word of mouth, forums, advertising, blogs and SEO give you more bang for your time.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Going green, and saving green, with Managed Print Services
It is no secret that one of the easiest ways to save your business money is to run more efficiently. This applies to all aspects of your business, but the printer and copier fleet is commonly overlooked. Many companies simply track the cost of toner, and that can yield a large amount of savings on its own. But the savings can go much beyond toner alone. Managed Print Services (MPS) paired with eco-friendly; super efficient printers, can save money on paper, energy, toner, reduced downtime, increased productivity and more.
MPS, like the name implies; basically means you rely on a specialized IT company to help plan, implement and service your printer fleet. The advantage of having your printing network planned and managed by one vendor is that it saves a substantial amount of time fixing IT problems, ordering toner and implementing new document management systems. Imagine never having to order toner and the time saved by only having one invoice to deal with every month; now this is being efficient.
Another way of being more efficient is choosing an eco-friendly printer fleet. Eco-friendly printers, such as Kyocera, can save up to 40% on energy costs when compared to other market leaders. They can also save you money on consumables. Using less toner and drum units reduces money and waste while helping the environment. The reduced waste is one reason Kyocera won the prestigious, MicroScope Award for Channel Excellence (ACE) as Environmental Company of the Year in 2008.
It isn’t only about reduced waste; it is also about reduced downtime. Nothing costs a company more money than downtime. When it comes to reliability, not all brands are created equal. For instance, the Kyocera KM-8030 printed 2 million pages with no unscheduled service required. In fact, it only got a paper jam once every 166 thousand pages. Brands like Kyocera are more reliable and have reduced cost per prints which is why H&R Block has 10’s of thousands of them nationwide.
Finally, if you really want to increase your savings and decrease your impact on the environment, implement a document management system. Even the simplest document management systems will reduce paper and toner consumption and increase productivity. Document management will reduce the time spent on filing and retrieving documents and make documents more accessible – no matter where you and your employees are.
The opportunity to save money and help the environment is obtainable. Even if your business’ printers are new and you believe you have an efficient printer fleet having an outside MPS vendor may help you see the base of the iceberg more clearly. Many times a MPS provider will analyze your network and printer fleet for free resulting in little to no risk of saving your business money.
MPS, like the name implies; basically means you rely on a specialized IT company to help plan, implement and service your printer fleet. The advantage of having your printing network planned and managed by one vendor is that it saves a substantial amount of time fixing IT problems, ordering toner and implementing new document management systems. Imagine never having to order toner and the time saved by only having one invoice to deal with every month; now this is being efficient.
Another way of being more efficient is choosing an eco-friendly printer fleet. Eco-friendly printers, such as Kyocera, can save up to 40% on energy costs when compared to other market leaders. They can also save you money on consumables. Using less toner and drum units reduces money and waste while helping the environment. The reduced waste is one reason Kyocera won the prestigious, MicroScope Award for Channel Excellence (ACE) as Environmental Company of the Year in 2008.
It isn’t only about reduced waste; it is also about reduced downtime. Nothing costs a company more money than downtime. When it comes to reliability, not all brands are created equal. For instance, the Kyocera KM-8030 printed 2 million pages with no unscheduled service required. In fact, it only got a paper jam once every 166 thousand pages. Brands like Kyocera are more reliable and have reduced cost per prints which is why H&R Block has 10’s of thousands of them nationwide.
Finally, if you really want to increase your savings and decrease your impact on the environment, implement a document management system. Even the simplest document management systems will reduce paper and toner consumption and increase productivity. Document management will reduce the time spent on filing and retrieving documents and make documents more accessible – no matter where you and your employees are.
The opportunity to save money and help the environment is obtainable. Even if your business’ printers are new and you believe you have an efficient printer fleet having an outside MPS vendor may help you see the base of the iceberg more clearly. Many times a MPS provider will analyze your network and printer fleet for free resulting in little to no risk of saving your business money.
A Step-by-step Guide to Online Marketing
As companies seek to find more effective, and less expensive, marketing methods, online marketing stands to see the biggest increase. Businesses already spend more on online marketing than they do on Radio and is set to surpass magazines by 2010 (ZenithOptmedia, 2007). However, you can do many things to make sure your website is not lost in the clutter. Below are the top actions your business can take to increase your website exposure and increase your ROI.
1) Maintain and improve your website
Unless your business has an endless marketing budget then you need to rely on your website’s quality to drive traffic to your site. This is the basic of search engine optimization (SEO). A high-quality website doesn’t just mean something that looks pretty. It means that you have text that engages the reader, contains your keywords, and can be found by Google and other search engines. Simply put, your website needs to be designed to current industry standards with special attention to the basics like page titles, meta descriptions, accessibility, and navigation.
2) Build web presence
Once your website has the basics down you can concentrate on promoting it. Depending on your product you may want to utilize viral media sources like YouTube, MySpace or Twitter. These can be great for B2C type product lines if used in conjunction with directory placements, online press releases, online trade publications, forums and article submissions. The key is to get as many quality links to your website as possible; this will increase your search rankings. The higher your rankings are, the more traffic you will get.
3) PPC advertising
There are several PayPerClick options to choose from. The largest network consists of Google AdWords. You may have noticed these ads when you search for a product on Google and there are “sponsored links.” Adverisers pay to see their advertisement there when you search for certain keywords. This can be a very effective method to drive traffic to your website.
Note: PPC advertising is getting more expensive because of the dramatic increase in competition over the years. This could also reduce the effectiveness of your campaign if it is not monitored closely.
4) eNewsletters
Sending out eNewsletters can be a very effective way of staying in front of leads and existing clients. There are a couple of basic guidelines when sending an eNewsletter.
5) Campaign evaluation
One of the most important part of making an online marketing campaign is measuring its results. Keeping track of keyword rankings, incoming leads, new website traffic, and sales are among the most important indicators to a successful campaign. Since online media is usually fast moving and contains many traceable activities you should be able to track the success of your campaign with much greater detail than any other media.
Please visit Tekniq Data for quality website design in the Kansas City Metro.
1) Maintain and improve your website
Unless your business has an endless marketing budget then you need to rely on your website’s quality to drive traffic to your site. This is the basic of search engine optimization (SEO). A high-quality website doesn’t just mean something that looks pretty. It means that you have text that engages the reader, contains your keywords, and can be found by Google and other search engines. Simply put, your website needs to be designed to current industry standards with special attention to the basics like page titles, meta descriptions, accessibility, and navigation.
2) Build web presence
Once your website has the basics down you can concentrate on promoting it. Depending on your product you may want to utilize viral media sources like YouTube, MySpace or Twitter. These can be great for B2C type product lines if used in conjunction with directory placements, online press releases, online trade publications, forums and article submissions. The key is to get as many quality links to your website as possible; this will increase your search rankings. The higher your rankings are, the more traffic you will get.
3) PPC advertising
There are several PayPerClick options to choose from. The largest network consists of Google AdWords. You may have noticed these ads when you search for a product on Google and there are “sponsored links.” Adverisers pay to see their advertisement there when you search for certain keywords. This can be a very effective method to drive traffic to your website.
Note: PPC advertising is getting more expensive because of the dramatic increase in competition over the years. This could also reduce the effectiveness of your campaign if it is not monitored closely.
4) eNewsletters
Sending out eNewsletters can be a very effective way of staying in front of leads and existing clients. There are a couple of basic guidelines when sending an eNewsletter.
- a) Frequency – Choose a frequency that makes sense. If you email them too much it will reduce the effectiveness of all the newsletters
- b) Content – Don’t send a newsletter for the sake of doing it. Provide your mailing list with something of interest and they will thank you for it.
- c) Unsubscribe – Make sure your newsletter has an Unsubscribe option. It will help you maintain an email list that is of the highest quality and reduce bad feedback.
- d) Compatibility—There are countless email programs. You need to make sure that your eNewsletter looks acceptable in the major ones like Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo.
5) Campaign evaluation
One of the most important part of making an online marketing campaign is measuring its results. Keeping track of keyword rankings, incoming leads, new website traffic, and sales are among the most important indicators to a successful campaign. Since online media is usually fast moving and contains many traceable activities you should be able to track the success of your campaign with much greater detail than any other media.
Please visit Tekniq Data for quality website design in the Kansas City Metro.
Monday, December 15, 2008
How Managed Print Services Reduces Costs
It is no secret that one of the easiest ways to save your business money is to run more efficiently. That is why so many businesses have begun tracking the cost of toner. Reducing your toner costs can yield a large amount of savings, but the savings are limited because of the inefficiencies that are involved when a company manages their own printer fleet.
This is why many money-conscious businesses are turning to Managed Print Services (MPS). Like the name implies MPS basically means you rely on a specialized IT company to help plan, implement and service your printer fleet.
They have the expertise to incorporate new printers into the network with the expectation of increasing productivity and efficiency while reducing costs. By having your printing network planned and managed by one vendor your business saves a substantial amount of time fixing IT problems, ordering toner and implementing new document management systems.
• Save up to 30% of your print costs
• Reduce the number of printers
• Service, implementation and supplies from one vendor
• Document Management properly configured
• Reduce energy consumption and waste
Printer and toner costs are the final part of the equation for MPS. There is more to printer and toner costs than the pure price alone. Don’t force a square peg into a round hole. Finding the right printer for the job can save thousands. The primary consideration for a printer should be reliability. Nothing costs a company more money than downtime. The second thing to look for is the cost of the consumables; this includes the toner and drums. Many companies such as HP and Lexmark have inexpensive toners but they do not yield nearly as much as their competitors resulting in much higher costs. Companies like Kyocera can help reduce toner costs and have one of the lowest TCO (total cost of ownerships).
Even if your business’ printers are new and you believe you have an efficient printer fleet having an outside MPS vendor may help you see the base of the iceberg more clearly.
If you are based in the Kansas or Missouri area one vendor that provides Kyocera products and manaaged print service is called Tekniq Data Corp. Copy machine and printers
This is why many money-conscious businesses are turning to Managed Print Services (MPS). Like the name implies MPS basically means you rely on a specialized IT company to help plan, implement and service your printer fleet.
They have the expertise to incorporate new printers into the network with the expectation of increasing productivity and efficiency while reducing costs. By having your printing network planned and managed by one vendor your business saves a substantial amount of time fixing IT problems, ordering toner and implementing new document management systems.
• Save up to 30% of your print costs
• Reduce the number of printers
• Service, implementation and supplies from one vendor
• Document Management properly configured
• Reduce energy consumption and waste
Printer and toner costs are the final part of the equation for MPS. There is more to printer and toner costs than the pure price alone. Don’t force a square peg into a round hole. Finding the right printer for the job can save thousands. The primary consideration for a printer should be reliability. Nothing costs a company more money than downtime. The second thing to look for is the cost of the consumables; this includes the toner and drums. Many companies such as HP and Lexmark have inexpensive toners but they do not yield nearly as much as their competitors resulting in much higher costs. Companies like Kyocera can help reduce toner costs and have one of the lowest TCO (total cost of ownerships).
Even if your business’ printers are new and you believe you have an efficient printer fleet having an outside MPS vendor may help you see the base of the iceberg more clearly.
If you are based in the Kansas or Missouri area one vendor that provides Kyocera products and manaaged print service is called Tekniq Data Corp. Copy machine and printers
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Website Design - Target your Market
These days there are lots of different website designs you can choose. The most important thing to keep in mind is what is appropriate for the market you are advertising to. For instance, a website like College Humor may be able to get by with lots of video, file sizes that are enormous and flash that may slow down the navigation of the website. It is simply because the people viewing the site are not nessisarily trying to get to information. They are trying to be entertained and enetertainment comes in all forms.
However, for a small business this could be a bad thing. People want to find information about your company and find it fast. They may not be willing to wait for a flash animation to load and don't want to dig for the information they want.
Take Roy E. Daly Management Corp, they are a real estate company that has apartments and townhomes in California. Their customers want to find floorplans, contact information, apartment ammenities and photos of the properties. It is clean and streightforward which is what it should be.
So when choosing a website design, ask yourself what your customers would like to see first.
However, for a small business this could be a bad thing. People want to find information about your company and find it fast. They may not be willing to wait for a flash animation to load and don't want to dig for the information they want.
Take Roy E. Daly Management Corp, they are a real estate company that has apartments and townhomes in California. Their customers want to find floorplans, contact information, apartment ammenities and photos of the properties. It is clean and streightforward which is what it should be.
So when choosing a website design, ask yourself what your customers would like to see first.
Monday, August 18, 2008
How to choose the right website design company
Choosing the right designer for your small business can be hard if you do not know what you should look for. Here is a simple guide that you can use to make sure you ask the right questions and make an educated decision every time.
Website Design
Any company can say they have great designs but we believe a company’s portfolio should speak for itself. To adequately judge a website you must look at:
- Quality of Design
- Ease of Use
- Initial Impressions
- How sites compare to others in the same industry
- Consistent look throughout each the entire website
- Navigation is located at the top or left side of the website
Technical Expertise
This aspect is much harder to judge unless you are familiar with web technologies. However, this can be just as important as a good design. A few things to look for and ask when looking for a web design company are:
- Do their sites load quickly?
- Does the company put an emphasis on Search Engine Optimization?
- Does the company use templates?
- Does the company test on Mac and PC?
- Does the company have a testing environment and backups?
- Does the company host their own sites or use an outside company?
Attention to Details
Sometimes the smallest things can make the difference. Look for:- Page titles – each page should be unique and descriptive
- Terms of Use page – make sure it is present
- Copyright statement on every page
- Use of contact forms rather than published email addresses
This article was written and provided by Josh Collins, a multimedia designer in the Kansas City area. He has designed user interfaces and websites ranging from small business sites to large social network websites. His recent work includes:
Logicbright.com an easy to use web based contact manager
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Improving Search Engine Ranking
Recently I did some research on to what makes each search engine tick. What I found was of course that they are very similar as to what they look for in a website, but one of the biggest things I found out was the site’s age plays a giant role in your search rankings.
This is true for Google especially, it is almost impossible to get a decent ranking by Google if your website is fairly new (under 18 months). Yahoo and MSN seem to put a bit different emphasis on this and in as little as 6 months you can get a good ranking with them if you build your website correctly.
The basic things I recommend to get your search ranking up are below (and in order from the most important).
1. Don’t use navigation that is Javascript based, crawlers may not be able to see all the pages in your website
2. Use your keywords in your title tags of your website
3. Use your keywords on the text of your website frequently and put them in the appropriate paragraph and heading tags.
4. Get links from other websites that have high PR rankings. Just a link isn’t great, but a link that contains your keywords. (for example if your website is example.com that sells widgets, try to get a link that goes to example.com when they click on the word “widget”)
5. Use meta tags and descriptions. They say they aren’t that used anymore, but I think it could be the difference between a good rating and a great rating. Try to be as detailed as possible to each page and not use the same description on every page.
6. Use title/Alt tags on images and link on your own website.
That about covers it, there is not amazing technology that you need to know – but people frequently don’t do the basics so if you do it will be noticed.
This is true for Google especially, it is almost impossible to get a decent ranking by Google if your website is fairly new (under 18 months). Yahoo and MSN seem to put a bit different emphasis on this and in as little as 6 months you can get a good ranking with them if you build your website correctly.
The basic things I recommend to get your search ranking up are below (and in order from the most important).
1. Don’t use navigation that is Javascript based, crawlers may not be able to see all the pages in your website
2. Use your keywords in your title tags of your website
3. Use your keywords on the text of your website frequently and put them in the appropriate paragraph and heading tags.
4. Get links from other websites that have high PR rankings. Just a link isn’t great, but a link that contains your keywords. (for example if your website is example.com that sells widgets, try to get a link that goes to example.com when they click on the word “widget”)
5. Use meta tags and descriptions. They say they aren’t that used anymore, but I think it could be the difference between a good rating and a great rating. Try to be as detailed as possible to each page and not use the same description on every page.
6. Use title/Alt tags on images and link on your own website.
That about covers it, there is not amazing technology that you need to know – but people frequently don’t do the basics so if you do it will be noticed.
LongJump CRM Reviewed
LongJump is one of the newest web based CRM’s on the market today, unfortunately all the hype may not be worth much.
I reciently signed up for the 30 day trial to see what all this “custom application” and “relational database” stuff that they advertise is about. It is definintely not geared to inspire small businesses to use a CRM package. It is just much too difficult and involves too much understanding of the underpinnings to do even basic tasks.
First impressions:
The appearance of LongJump is actually pretty nice. It has a green a blue windows XP color theme going on that works quite well. The overall layout is really nothing new with the tabs across the top and some actions on the left. What was interesting and hard to get used to was to add a record of anytime you needed to click on the tab you wanted and then click “add record” from the left side of the screen. A bit odd but nothing to major.
Another thing that I noticed was the drop down menu at the very top of the page. This allows you to go between your “contact manager” and your “sales force automation” along with over 12 other modules that you can choose or ones that you have created yourself. This was somewhat neat but the more I got into it the harder it was for me to use because of this.
The homepage consisted of widgets that are “drag and droppable” which was nice, though the drag and drop was choppy on FireFox. They allow you to show a lot of content on each page but this requires a minimum screen resolution of 1280x1024 to use their product. If you have this, no worries.
Under the hood:
My biggest pet peeve when working with LongJump was that you have tabs from each area that are the same but not connected to the other areas. Ie. In the Sales Force Automation tab I have accounts and contacts but if I go to the “campaign manager” tab and try to set up a mailing list it seems that I have to import new contacts instead of being able to say “use these contacts that I have already entered. There may be a way to do this, but it sure isn’t intuitive.
The lack of intuitive actions was the bottom line to why I cannot recommend this product. Even something as simple as uploading your logo isn’t as easy as it should be. You have to click on “upload logo” then you go to a screen where you need to enter all your company information, go to another screen to upload the photo and then select that upload from the prior screen. It doesn’t even resize it to make it look decent.
Final Thoughts:
What LongJump has done is create an application that can create other applications. In theory this is fantasic, but in reality all it did was create a hard to use product that isn’t “great” at anything. If you use only the basic contact manager and ignore the other parts it may work for your company, but once you start messing around with the rest you will find it just isn’t designed as nice as it could be.
For the same price you can get an easier to use small business crm software.
Friday, March 21, 2008
The verdict is in on LogicBright’s new version
After several responses about the new version of LogicBright CRM, the consensis is that it was a great move for the product. Everyone thought the interface changes were good and made it easier to get around. A couple were really impressed with the “dragging and dropping” of custom fields. Most of the other features went over really well including the “assign to teams.” However, they felt that feature was really needed prior to this launch, but is glad it is part of the product now.
Though I only talked to a few small businesses regarding the changes, it seems that LogicBright CRM is really paying attention to what their clients want in a small business CRM solution.
Though I only talked to a few small businesses regarding the changes, it seems that LogicBright CRM is really paying attention to what their clients want in a small business CRM solution.
Friday, March 7, 2008
LogicBright CRM Launches New Version: Is it good?
On 3/2/08, LogicBright CRM released news of version 1.5. The new version boasts "30% lighter and has innovative new features that will help users be more productive and efficient while maintaining its ease of use." For those of you unfamiliar with LogicBright CRM, they are a small business CRM application.
But what does this all mean to you? Is it better? Faster? Do the new features complicate things?
Well I tried it out and here is what I found.
As to the "30% lighter, faster" claim. I didn't really notice the speed difference on every page, I am using a 8mb cable line so it is doubtful that their old interface was large enough to impact me. But I would assume that on a slower connection, maybe one that a mobile sales person would use, it could impact them.
There were many new features listed on their LogicBright CRM 1.5 tour page. So I will go down the list and discuss a few of them.
Start-up wizard - When new users login, they get a 5 step wizard that walks them through a few basic tasks. This is really innovative and original. I think new users will really appreciate this feature and will help them understand what CRM is capable of in an easy way.
The Interface - This was noticeable from the first login. The data is shown in a clear more refined way. I found it easier to scan for the information I was looking for.
Drag and Drop - This was probably the best feature addition I could have seen. One of their weak points in the past was their inability to put custom data fields any where you wanted. But now you can easily drag them to the spot you want them. It was one of the easiest "setups" I have seen for a CRM product.
Assign to Teams - Long overdue, but done well. When you type in an employees name it allows you to choose numerous employees or choose a team that they are on. Like usual, they use their innovative instant search that searches for your users as you type.
New Widgets - I noticed the addition of a photo widget, where you can put a couple photos to have a mini slide show on the homepage. Neat, but not overly useful. I also noticed a few options for existing widgets which allowed me to read a bit about the article before clicking on the news link. Pretty useful.
Overall, most of the changes are really good. There are a few "niceties" that aren't overly useful but add to the refinement of the product. I think LogicBright CRM has sealed the "Easy use CRM" part of the market.
But what does this all mean to you? Is it better? Faster? Do the new features complicate things?
Well I tried it out and here is what I found.
As to the "30% lighter, faster" claim. I didn't really notice the speed difference on every page, I am using a 8mb cable line so it is doubtful that their old interface was large enough to impact me. But I would assume that on a slower connection, maybe one that a mobile sales person would use, it could impact them.
There were many new features listed on their LogicBright CRM 1.5 tour page. So I will go down the list and discuss a few of them.
Start-up wizard - When new users login, they get a 5 step wizard that walks them through a few basic tasks. This is really innovative and original. I think new users will really appreciate this feature and will help them understand what CRM is capable of in an easy way.
The Interface - This was noticeable from the first login. The data is shown in a clear more refined way. I found it easier to scan for the information I was looking for.
Drag and Drop - This was probably the best feature addition I could have seen. One of their weak points in the past was their inability to put custom data fields any where you wanted. But now you can easily drag them to the spot you want them. It was one of the easiest "setups" I have seen for a CRM product.
Assign to Teams - Long overdue, but done well. When you type in an employees name it allows you to choose numerous employees or choose a team that they are on. Like usual, they use their innovative instant search that searches for your users as you type.
New Widgets - I noticed the addition of a photo widget, where you can put a couple photos to have a mini slide show on the homepage. Neat, but not overly useful. I also noticed a few options for existing widgets which allowed me to read a bit about the article before clicking on the news link. Pretty useful.
Overall, most of the changes are really good. There are a few "niceties" that aren't overly useful but add to the refinement of the product. I think LogicBright CRM has sealed the "Easy use CRM" part of the market.
Monday, January 21, 2008
How Google, MSN and Yahoo Differ on Search Engine Marketing
So you are interested in advertising on Google, MSN and/or Yahoo but don't know if there are any real differences. Take it from me, there are very big differences and being aware of them can save you a lot of money.
Back-story
Recently, I was charged with the task of promoting a new piece of software that is geared towards the small business market. I felt this was a good opportunity to run a test to see which search engine is most effective to advertise on. What I found was some startling differences between Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter and how effective each one was at promoting my product.
Test Setup
Over two months run the same advertisements with the same keywords on Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter to see how each of them performs. Though the daily budgets were the same, the cost per click had to vary in order to keep consistent with other bids for each search engine. The goal was to bid just enough to appear in an average search position of 2-3.
Test in progress
While the test was taking place I noticed that Google had by far the most impressions to offer and had very little trouble filling my entire budget each day. Yahoo, though they said they didn't have many impressions to offer for those keywords also maxed out my budget each day, sometimes even exceeding my daily maximum. MSN on the other hand never came close to filling my budget; sometimes it only drove a handful of people to the site over a week's time.
Another thing I noticed is that the cost per click varied slightly for the same position in their results. Google was the most expensive at just over $3 dollars per click, Yahoo was $2.67 and MSN was $2.39. I realize that the costs are a bit arbitrary without the keywords but this article is for comparison's sake and not specifics.
The Conclusion
In the end the only thing that really matters is how many clicks were converted. For those of you new to the term "conversion": A conversion is any signup, purchase or traceable action that you wish a user to perform. For us, a conversion meant a sign up.
After two months we had 60% of our signups from Google, 50% from MSN and a dismal 10% from Yahoo. The biggest surprise is that Google cost 50% of our total money spent, Yahoo cost 35% and MSN cost only 15% of our total budget. In the end MSN ended up being much cheaper per conversion and even though they didn't send a ton of traffic to our site it seemed that they were well qualified people that they were sending.
Yahoo was the biggest disappointment, costing over 3x's per conversion than Google and over 6x's more than MSN. There can be a host of reasons this is so, one of the possibilities is that Yahoo's users are not interested in the type of software we were promoting. Another possibility is that Yahoo's ads get clicked on by their users at a much higher rate which also causes the quality of the leads to be lower.
In the end, running campaigns on the major three search engines can be a great help, but monitoring them can save you a lot of money in the long run. What works on one search engine many not work on another, and keeping an eye on it will help you determine this. Don't be afraid to pull the plug if one is not working, sometimes you just need to go with what works and not force something that isn't showing you results.
Back-story
Recently, I was charged with the task of promoting a new piece of software that is geared towards the small business market. I felt this was a good opportunity to run a test to see which search engine is most effective to advertise on. What I found was some startling differences between Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter and how effective each one was at promoting my product.
Test Setup
Over two months run the same advertisements with the same keywords on Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter to see how each of them performs. Though the daily budgets were the same, the cost per click had to vary in order to keep consistent with other bids for each search engine. The goal was to bid just enough to appear in an average search position of 2-3.
Test in progress
While the test was taking place I noticed that Google had by far the most impressions to offer and had very little trouble filling my entire budget each day. Yahoo, though they said they didn't have many impressions to offer for those keywords also maxed out my budget each day, sometimes even exceeding my daily maximum. MSN on the other hand never came close to filling my budget; sometimes it only drove a handful of people to the site over a week's time.
Another thing I noticed is that the cost per click varied slightly for the same position in their results. Google was the most expensive at just over $3 dollars per click, Yahoo was $2.67 and MSN was $2.39. I realize that the costs are a bit arbitrary without the keywords but this article is for comparison's sake and not specifics.
The Conclusion
In the end the only thing that really matters is how many clicks were converted. For those of you new to the term "conversion": A conversion is any signup, purchase or traceable action that you wish a user to perform. For us, a conversion meant a sign up.
After two months we had 60% of our signups from Google, 50% from MSN and a dismal 10% from Yahoo. The biggest surprise is that Google cost 50% of our total money spent, Yahoo cost 35% and MSN cost only 15% of our total budget. In the end MSN ended up being much cheaper per conversion and even though they didn't send a ton of traffic to our site it seemed that they were well qualified people that they were sending.
Yahoo was the biggest disappointment, costing over 3x's per conversion than Google and over 6x's more than MSN. There can be a host of reasons this is so, one of the possibilities is that Yahoo's users are not interested in the type of software we were promoting. Another possibility is that Yahoo's ads get clicked on by their users at a much higher rate which also causes the quality of the leads to be lower.
In the end, running campaigns on the major three search engines can be a great help, but monitoring them can save you a lot of money in the long run. What works on one search engine many not work on another, and keeping an eye on it will help you determine this. Don't be afraid to pull the plug if one is not working, sometimes you just need to go with what works and not force something that isn't showing you results.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Keeping Press Releases Interesting
Most press releases are boring and don't appeal to the general public and many don't even appeal to the editors they are written for. The key to writing a good press release is to make it interesting from the start. A bad title or first paragraph can destroy a great press release. Here is the first paragraph and title of one that is different.
LogicBright CRM writes:
LogicBright CRM writes:
As you can see, this release takes a different approach to their announcement. They could have just said, "We have this new small business crm software" but instead they made it interesting and creative.LogicBright CRM Fights the Software Obesity War
The obesity epidemic rages on and costs billions of dollars annually; one company is trying to put a stop to the obesity – in software at least. LogicBright CRM is fighting the software obesity war (SOW) by providing small businesses with a faster, lighter contact and lead management system that will save them money.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Choosing an Ad Network for your website
With so many ad networks how does one choose the right one? With companies like Doubleclick, Gorilla Nation, Burst Media, Blue Lithium, 24x7 real media, adBrite, Tribal Fusion and even Google, there are so many to choose from.
The biggest thing to look for is their requirements. Nothing says “shady” like an adnetwork that will allow anyone to be part of it. These ad networks will commonly show the annoying and flashy smiley faced ads that we all love so much. They also pay out very low CPM’s because of this. Sometimes you may only make 5 cents per thousand impressions. No wonder the sites that use this are usually loaded with ads and crappy looking because of it.
Most of the reputable ones have traffic requirements and even privacy statement requirements that are reviewed by an actual person. This is usually a good sign, anytime I have signed up for a service and been automatically enrolled and ready to place my ads I have been disappointed. However, I have signed up for a couple that were almost painful to become a partner on and they have been the best ones.
One thing to find out before signing up is what the ad network gives you control over. Do they have an area where you can update your information, set up your default campaigns and reject ad’s that don’t fit your site? Most of them I have found do all of this but I have run into a couple that required me to go through my ad rep to make any changes and this is a hassle.
Below is a summary of some of the better networks I have come across.
Burst Media – good control over your ads and campaigns. Decent CPM’s but lower inventory fulfillment. (you may only have 15% of your ads filled by them)
Tribal Fusion – Great interface for the partner area, offers good control of your information and helps you put your site in front of potential ad buyers. Decent CPM rates.
Doubleclick and Gorilla Nation – Higher impression requirements limit smaller sites, but good selection of types of ads.
Google – Adsense is a great 3rd tier backup for other ad networks. I wouldn’t recommend putting them as your primary ad network but they do have decent payouts and a good interface to control your ads.
The best thing you can do is experiment. Try them out for a couple of weeks and if they don’t work out discontinue them. Most of them do not bind you to a contract that wouldn’t allow you to do this.
The biggest thing to look for is their requirements. Nothing says “shady” like an adnetwork that will allow anyone to be part of it. These ad networks will commonly show the annoying and flashy smiley faced ads that we all love so much. They also pay out very low CPM’s because of this. Sometimes you may only make 5 cents per thousand impressions. No wonder the sites that use this are usually loaded with ads and crappy looking because of it.
Most of the reputable ones have traffic requirements and even privacy statement requirements that are reviewed by an actual person. This is usually a good sign, anytime I have signed up for a service and been automatically enrolled and ready to place my ads I have been disappointed. However, I have signed up for a couple that were almost painful to become a partner on and they have been the best ones.
One thing to find out before signing up is what the ad network gives you control over. Do they have an area where you can update your information, set up your default campaigns and reject ad’s that don’t fit your site? Most of them I have found do all of this but I have run into a couple that required me to go through my ad rep to make any changes and this is a hassle.
Below is a summary of some of the better networks I have come across.
Burst Media – good control over your ads and campaigns. Decent CPM’s but lower inventory fulfillment. (you may only have 15% of your ads filled by them)
Tribal Fusion – Great interface for the partner area, offers good control of your information and helps you put your site in front of potential ad buyers. Decent CPM rates.
Doubleclick and Gorilla Nation – Higher impression requirements limit smaller sites, but good selection of types of ads.
Google – Adsense is a great 3rd tier backup for other ad networks. I wouldn’t recommend putting them as your primary ad network but they do have decent payouts and a good interface to control your ads.
The best thing you can do is experiment. Try them out for a couple of weeks and if they don’t work out discontinue them. Most of them do not bind you to a contract that wouldn’t allow you to do this.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Making money from your website’s traffic
So you have a website and you want to make money off your traffic? Anyone who has tried this realizes this is easier said than done. It is not because it is inherently hard to make money from ad revenues; it is that some ad networks make it harder than it needs to be. Here is an overview of each way you can display ads on your site.
Generally there are 3 types of advertisements you can serve up on your website. Cost Per Thousand (CPM) impressions, Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Action (CPA). Depending on your site and content you will have to experiment to find out what is best for you. But generally a mix is usually the best.
CPM rates vary by every ad network and website. Some ad networks will pay as little as .10 cents per thousand impressions and others as high as $30.00. In my experience anything in the $1 – 2 dollar range is good for an ad network. If you sell your own ads directly you may get between $5 - $30. I have seen rates higher but don’t know if they are successful in selling all their available ad space.
CPC rates are all over the board and generally is determined by the industry and competition of that ad. Take Google Adwords as an example. They do most of their ad serving as CPC. Some keywords like “Sound Effects” have little competition and demand so you may only get 10 cents a click if your website has that advertisement appearing on your site. However if you have a keyword like "Contact Manager" the market is saturated and you could make $5 dollars on one click.
CPA is the least common method of ad serving. This requires that not only a user clicks on the advertisement but also takes some required action on the website. For instance, Fire Fox offers a CPA program so that if a person clicks on the Fire Fox advertisement and downloads the browser the website makes $1.00. Other common CPA ads revolve around the user taking surveys or signing up to a website.
You can make substantial amounts of money off of your website traffic but in order to do so you must choose your ad network(s) wisely and even have numerous ad networks to capitalize on all your traffic.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Improving Google Adwords Keyword Quality Index
Whether you realize it or not, the amount you are paying per click with your Google Adwords campaign is not what everyone else is paying. The higher your Keyword Quality Index (KQI) score the less you have to pay for your keywords and the higher your position will be.
Your KQI is a somewhat direct correlation to how relevant that keyword is to your site, and more importantly, the page that your ads take the user to. So this brings up the top ways to increase your score.
1)Create landing pages for your advertisements. Don’t send every user to the same page. Send them to a variety of pages that have to do with those particular keywords. The more relevant the landing page is to your keyword the better your KQI score will be.
2)Create ad groups in order to separate your keywords. Don’t group all your keywords together if they are targeting different things.
For instance, one of my clients Logicbright CRM has two markets. One is CRM for small business and one is large corporations. The keywords that are important to each group happen to be different which means the ads that each market should see would be different. So in this case you would want to make two ad groups and have one ad group go to one landing page and the other one to a different landing page.
3)Use your keywords on your landing page and make sure they appear in the meta descriptions of those pages.
Don’t get too discouraged. It may take a while for things to happen the way you want, if you remove the keywords and start over it may take even longer since Google remembers your activity for old keywords and campaigns. So be patient, if you do it right results will come.
Your KQI is a somewhat direct correlation to how relevant that keyword is to your site, and more importantly, the page that your ads take the user to. So this brings up the top ways to increase your score.
1)Create landing pages for your advertisements. Don’t send every user to the same page. Send them to a variety of pages that have to do with those particular keywords. The more relevant the landing page is to your keyword the better your KQI score will be.
2)Create ad groups in order to separate your keywords. Don’t group all your keywords together if they are targeting different things.
For instance, one of my clients Logicbright CRM has two markets. One is CRM for small business and one is large corporations. The keywords that are important to each group happen to be different which means the ads that each market should see would be different. So in this case you would want to make two ad groups and have one ad group go to one landing page and the other one to a different landing page.
3)Use your keywords on your landing page and make sure they appear in the meta descriptions of those pages.
Don’t get too discouraged. It may take a while for things to happen the way you want, if you remove the keywords and start over it may take even longer since Google remembers your activity for old keywords and campaigns. So be patient, if you do it right results will come.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Using the sales cycle in your CRM to maximize efficiency
Most CRM software can be categorized in two groups. One lets the user operate the CRM software the way they want to without much guidance, and the other makes the user fit their way of doing things.
Both ways have a distinct advantage. The one that forces the user to do things a certain way typically keeps unorganized companies in check. But this is also not very flexible and doesn’t fit many types of organizations. Examples of this style can be found at netsuite.com and entellium.com.
The other way relies on each organization to train their employees on the “best” way of using the CRM product. This is not a bad thing and it typically allows a company to dictate exactly how they want to run their business. This is also allows for companies of all types to use the same CRM package. Generally this is the type of CRM most companies will choose. Think about it, does a computer company operate the same was as a charity or a bank? No, Then why would you choose a CRM that forces them to all do the same thing? Some examples of this type of CRM is salesforce.com, logicbright.com and sugarcrm.com.
One specific area of using CRM that many companies struggle with is the Sales Cycle. It can be difficult for business, especially small businesses, to use their CRM effectively throughout the sales cycle. The best way to solve this problem is to make sure that all your employees understand how leads, contacts and opportunities get moved through your CRM. Developing a “Best Practices” technique for your company is key.
Logcibright CRM has an illustrated flowchart of how Leads are found, converted to contacts and opportunities are created. Check out their CRM Sales Cycle.
Both ways have a distinct advantage. The one that forces the user to do things a certain way typically keeps unorganized companies in check. But this is also not very flexible and doesn’t fit many types of organizations. Examples of this style can be found at netsuite.com and entellium.com.
The other way relies on each organization to train their employees on the “best” way of using the CRM product. This is not a bad thing and it typically allows a company to dictate exactly how they want to run their business. This is also allows for companies of all types to use the same CRM package. Generally this is the type of CRM most companies will choose. Think about it, does a computer company operate the same was as a charity or a bank? No, Then why would you choose a CRM that forces them to all do the same thing? Some examples of this type of CRM is salesforce.com, logicbright.com and sugarcrm.com.
One specific area of using CRM that many companies struggle with is the Sales Cycle. It can be difficult for business, especially small businesses, to use their CRM effectively throughout the sales cycle. The best way to solve this problem is to make sure that all your employees understand how leads, contacts and opportunities get moved through your CRM. Developing a “Best Practices” technique for your company is key.
Logcibright CRM has an illustrated flowchart of how Leads are found, converted to contacts and opportunities are created. Check out their CRM Sales Cycle.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The Top 3 On-Demand CRM packages
Most growing companies find themselves in need of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software at some point. Choosing the right one can be tricky and there are more things than just cost to consider.
Here are three hot CRM companies and how they fair against one another.
Sales Force – This is the front-runner for On-Demand (website based) CRM. They cater mostly towards large corporations but recently added a small business version.
Pros: They are one of the most robust CRM packages out there and have good tech support. They offer good mobile support for Blackberry and Palm OS.
Cons: Although they cost around $15/per user per month for the first year, after the first year their cost triples! Their software is so robust that for most small businesses it is confusing and may require extensive training to utilize properly.
LogicBright CRM – This is the new kid on the block. They show a lot of potential for the SMB market since they are only catering to this market.
Pros: Logicbright.com is by far the easiest and least expensive CRM’s out there. Their cost is $20/user per month and extra disk space can be purchased if you wish to use the CRM more as file-sharing software. Since it is easy to use there is little training required.
Cons: LogicBright.com is a new product and hasn’t proven itself yet.
Sugar CRM - After coming out a couple of years ago, they have launched an impressive amount of add-ons and changes.
Pros: Lots of customization if you have on staff programmers, everything is open-source. They also have on-site options if you wish to house your own servers. Great for medium to large sized companies.
Cons: Focused too much on larger companies with their pricing ($50/user per month) and their features.
There are plenty of other CRM options on the market. Most are either designed for very small businesses such as ACT! or for large corporations such as Siebal. If you are a business in the 5-10 user range I would recommend trying out logicbright.com.
Friday, August 24, 2007
How to write successful website copy
Writing for the web is a difficult task for most people, especially those who are used to writing for print. The basic difference is a viewer’s attention span. In a magazine or a newsletter you have more of your viewer’s attention. They will thumb through and read whole articles because they have to decide to read it or throw it out. They are also typically left with no other immediate alternative for that same information.
With most websites, people have the attention span of a goldfish (7 seconds). If they cannot find what they want in 7 seconds they will just go and find another site. So how do you keep your viewer’s attention?
Summarize your text: Keep your text shorter. You may want to go in-depth on a subject, but use a blog, whitepaper or a downloadable pdf if you want to go deep into a subject.
Bullets and paragraph headings: Bullet points and headings of paragraphs are very important if you are listing topics out for your audience. They can quickly scan for what they are looking for and ignore what they don’t like.
Graphics: Use graphics and colors to draw the viewer’s attention to parts of the screen. This is the same strategy magazine use; it is the same for the web.
Keywords: This is the hardest part for some. To write text properly for the web you must use your keywords over and over throughout the website. This is mostly for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but also because your audience is not going to read it in any particular order. For example: If you owned LogicBright CRM, you would want to make sure your url (logicbright.com) appeared all over the website. Also use your keywords: CRM, Customer Relationship Management, small business software and online CRM software; throughout the site. Don’t forget to mention your competitors -- you may be able to get some traffic from them as well.
Length: If you think it is too long, it probably is. Even this article would be lengthy on a website that isn’t news or information oriented.
Keep it simple, and follow those suggestions outlined above and your website will be optimized for the web audience.
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