Software Trends Growing

Yesterday I got side-tracked.

For some time I've been thinking and researching a software idea.

Obviously, my thoughts have gone out to the Universe, and in the last couple of days I've become increasingly aware of applications and services that perform one or more chunks of the grand plan that's in my head.

So yesterday I went digging a little deeper. Could they be used instead of me having to create what I want from scratch?

More checking needed.

But one thing that did become apparent was the proliferation of software services, as opposed to software you can buy once and use 'forever'.

Perhaps it's the early signals of the trends Mike Mograbe spoke about in his 378 Predictions book last year.

Either way, there appears to be a definite push to save you the upfront financial pain of buying quality software, and spreading the pain - or the pleasure! - over the years you will use it.

What the Heck is Trackback?

That 'trackback' entry below has some folk puzzled.

"I've heard of it, but - in plain English - what is it?" seems to be the common response.

I'm no expert, but this note answers the questions I had extreme difficulty finding answers to among all the technobabble percolating around the Net.

See if it helps you.

Trackbacks seem to be a way of linking relevant blog content around the web. In doing so, they provide links between the sites involved (ie one of the keys we marketers are looking for).

To use it, you need a trackback service. Some blogging software/services include it as standard. If you're using Blogger (or about 20 other free blogging services) you'll have to join a separate trackback service. One free one is http://www.HaloScan.com (It's dead simple - they even automate it for Blogger.)

Once your blog is trackback enabled, you've got the "Hey, link to me!" sign flashing.

Now, say you write something on your blog. I come across it, find it relevant to my site, so write a post about it on my blog - including a direct link to your blog so my readers can find it.

I then go to HaloScan and insert the heading and a few lines of my blog post. I then get the trackback link off your blog and add it to this HaloScan entry.

I click a button, and it links the two blogs by adding my heading and summary to your blog.

Result: we both have fresh content, and we both have incoming links.

Some services have all this built in, so this is a tedious way of doing it. But it seems to work. Beats the heck out of 'traditional' link exchanging.

One warning though - in seeking relevant blogs to test this with, I came across one that had been spammed. The site was about dogs, but there were hundreds of trackback entries about viagra, college and the usual suspects.

So check your blogging service settings to see whether there is a way of requiring posters to register, or to notify you when someone does trackback - that way you can periodically check for spam and relevance.

You might also enjoy 3 videos Thomas Pierce/Jim Edwards have here.

Enjoy!

Emerging New Home Business?

Nothing is still for more than a moment on this thing we call the Internet.

And now comes word of a new home business opportunity ... "bloggeropoly".

Hard on the heels of discussion of ghostwriting blogs and whether journalists are capable of writing blogs ...

Paul Chaney floats his ideas here.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Clone This Home Business Success

Five years ago, Jon Benson was sick, fat and slowly dying.

Today he's so fit and healthy it's almost sickening - for others.

And he's turned the turnaround into a home business.

Why not? When you've got the proof - the before and after photos are here - you've got two things going for you.

One is untold energy.

The other is a passion to help others tap into the same source.

And it's the same source that can help you achieve whatever you like in your home business.

The secret? Role modeling.

It's the core of NLP and ancient self improvement techniques that have proven themselves over and over again.

But what Jon did was rather neat.

"Why not compile an entire book full of role models and let them write about their own transformations - in their own words -
to serve as examples, to educate and to motivate other people?" he thought.

It's an established marketing principle, but is rarely applied to such a field.

And to top it off, he's leveraged a number of other marketing 'systems' to 'make sure the benefits of this life-transforming system reach everyone it could help'.

Worth watching.

(Incidentally, he's offering a $1200 bonus of e-books, audio MP3’s, e-courses and special reports if you 'test drive' his course between Wednesday, February 23rd and Friday, February 25th).

A Secret Money Generator?

There's no doubt that software can streamline work and make possible tasks that only a short time ago were beyond the practical reach of we mere home workers.

And don't you get sick of the drivel the 'corporate types' go on about - "just delegate it" seems to be their one-size-fits-all solution to everything.

Anyway, that's why I like software. It's my chance to 'delegate'. Although sometimes that means I still have to do the work - the program just makes sure I do it properly.

There's a host of site building software on the market these days, most of it fatally flawed.

Hosting companies allow you to use their templates and (sometimes) page production software to produce sites which look pretty. Unfortunately, as you've no doubt discovered, there's a bit more to it than that.

At the other end of the extreme are the programs that produce clone pages by the million that spam the search engines and do nobody any good.

Somewhere in between are a few options that create effective, useful, profitable web sites.

I've been toying with some of them, so over the next few days I'll outline some of the better ones.

The first has the unfortunate title of Secret Money Generator. Luckily, it's an excellent product. Read on...

NPOD Your Way Out of the Maze

Oh, the deep end is where the sharks swim!

This whole blogging forest is full of trees, I'm finding, with a strange dialect, rules they make up as they go along, and jargon fit to confuse the already confused.

All I set out to do was to make life easier for myself and better for you! Looks like my grand plans might just have to incubate a little longer than anticipated.

In the meantime, wrap your noodles around this juicy bit of info ...

A full review of the Net Profits on Demand NPOD home business building system.

Think you'll be glad you did!

My Place

Hi

Good to be here. But I have that feeling that I need to make this my place. Know what I mean?

Laurie's put up a lot of good info, and I'll try to continue that (better not say 'improve' it, had I? Or should I!)

Anyway, a bit of housekeeping first. A few changes to make, and then I'll get into some postings.

See you soon.

Action Counts

I've been thinking a lot about what my friend said yesterday. And decided to do something about it.

After all, you can have all the knowledge in the world (well, imagine!) but unless you take action, it's really not worth a heck of a lot, is it?

So this will probably be my last blog entry. I'll hand over the reins to Lyn Devon. It's not a big task, but it is something that remains on my mind most of each day.

You will be in good hands, I assure you.

Thank you for the support you've provided since we started.

And allow me to wish you everything you deserve in your Internet home work income business. Au revoir.

Coding Challenges

Talking to a friend yesterday, who had this to say:

"I'm no programmer, and a self-taught HTMLer, Photoshopper and all the rest of the tools we use to get web sites online. Which is another way of saying my skills are a bit rough.

"But there is so much to master there is simply not enough time to become expert in everything.

"The answer, of course, is probably to contract out most of the tasks requiring special skills and become expert at the key ones - the marketing.

"I know that. Doing it is something else. How long would it take to explain to someone exactly what I want, and how I want it done? Particularly when I often don't know ahead of time - just when it 'looks right'.

"But after this week, I'm going to have to look a bit deeper into that whole outsourcing scene.

"I did a 50-page site from scratch, with most of the content complete in the first couple of days. Yet mastering the technical absurdities took another four days.

"That's crazy. The time has come!"

Ring any bells?

Laughter Opens New Dimensions

Most home business enthusiasts have come across the Norman Cousens story of how he laughed himself back from terminal illness.

Well now, it seems, the 'laughter gland' has even more power than just saving lives!

How about opening parallel dimensions?

University of Queensland (Australia) researcher Professor Jack Pettigrew has described just that in the current issue of the journal Clinical and Experimental Optometry.

You know those optical illusions - the Necker cube, the young woman/old woman etc?

Well apparently what happens normally is that the brain sends alternate messages from each eye, very rapidly - a process known as binocular rivalry. So people just don't see the two versions of the illusions at the same time.

They have to focus, first on one, then on the other.

But when you laugh, the images blend together and the illusion is lost, leaving just a flat 2D image.

"If you can see both images together, you can be pretty sure you're seeing from both hemispheres at the same time," Professor Pettigrew said.

"It's a surprisingly large affect from such a banal phenomenon."

Just think about that for a moment.

Laughter can transform brain function.

If you really need proof, just think about the last time you had an uproarious laughing exchange, and how the ideas spontaneously popped into your head and out of your mouth.

And now imagine the possibilities of harnessing that 'banal phenomenon' to jet-propel your online home business income ...

Is that exciting, or what?

Viral & Buzz Marketing

MarketingSherpa is working on a special (free) report in partnership with the Viral & Buzz Marketing Association and they're calling for quick input at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=11516859463

You'll find a quick one-page questionnaire to let them know what you think about viral ads.

Plus, if you've conducted a viral campaign, you can also submit it to be included in their upcoming Viral Ad Showcase. That way their 173,000 weekly readers can see the glory of your strategy and creative!

Everyone involved has been promised both the results data and access to the Viral Ad Showcase in a couple of weeks, as soon as it's published.

Although there does not seem to be a link to leave your email address! Probably best to do that at their home page first. They have a number of free publications that are very worthwhile.

Email and RSS Collide

Email is still working ... but I am starting to wonder for just how long.

I don't see it 'dying' - well, not for a very long time, anyway. They still make horseshoes, don't they?

But my experience mirrors that of research reports which show declining delivery rates. And anything not delivered will not be read - or acted upon. Which, of course, is the name of the game.

Recently, though, I've noticed an even stranger phenomenon.

I have accounts at several free email services. Their quality varies significantly, but two in particular have been highly satisfactory - myway and ifrance.

They easily bypass the 'no hotmail' programming that is also increasing on commercial sites, and the spam count has been negligible.

But now one of them has begun displaying random emails from my inbox whenever I click to read something. It was fun for a while - like those 'click the monkey' banner ads of a few years ago. Click, and wonder which one will open!

Yes, it did get annoying, even quicker this time!

It led me to recall that last year Mark Hendricks and Nick Temple released something they called the ByPass Publishing System.

Don't ask me how it works, but you download a tiny application that you can add URLs to. Whenever there's a new message from any of those you added, it pops a little alert down near the system tray. (Those who enjoyed the amazing free downloads from the 12 Days of Christmas promotion got to experience it first hand.)

At the time it was touted as 'the email replacement', then along came the RSS bandwagon, and I sort of lumped them in together. Natty, but not essential.

But now I've been thinking it's not such a bad idea after all.

As a consumer, it gives some control, both over what you subscribe to and what you unsubscribe from.

As a publisher, you get to bypass the email minefield, without having to create your own toolbar - and let's face it, who wants another single-purpose toolbar!

A new version of the ByPass Publishing System is due this week, and apparently it's faster and easier than the one I'm using - and that's pretty good.

But what caught my notice is that this new version publishes PERSONALIZED auto-responder and broadcast messages to:

* traditional email
* RSS Readers (a terrific new development), and
* Private Mail Reader

Plus it will publish content directly to webpages.

They're holding three free teleseminars to explain the whole thing, so if you're at all fed up with email, or wanting to crack the RSS puzzle, it's probably worth a visit.

Until then, I'll go back to 'shooting monkeys' in my inbox!

Podcasting Growth Exponential

Feedburner has just released figures on the growth of 'podcasting' - the practice of making downloadable broadcasts for the iPod (or other mp3 players).

The growth this month alone is eye-catching. At the end of 2004 FeedBurner managed 750 podcasts via SmartCast. Today the figure is 1,750.

Some of those podcasts have over 3,000 subscribers/listeners. At the beginning of February FeedBurner-managed podcasts had about 24,000 listeners.

Is this a home-based business opportunity for you?

Podcasting pioneer Adam Curry says podcasting's most distinctive quality lies in the capacity to time-shift the consumption of digital content.

"Users can grab and tote their favorite shows, then listen while commuting, exercising or doing chores. It's the Internet penetrating into the rest of your life, when you're not connected," he says.

It's a niche few have yet even contemplated exploiting. Is it yours?

Valentines Day Special

Phew! Those people at SiteSell just keep giving!

There must have been a dozen significant new features delivered this year already, with many more on the way. At no added price.

And now Ken has just announced an "I LOVE SBI! Special $100 Valentine Gift".

If you don't know what this is all about and your Internet home work income business is not producing the goods, you owe it to yourself to check the links in this post.

This really is a no-hype producer, with more hard data proof available online than I've seen anywhere.

In fact, in a recent international challenge, no-one came forward to claim the $1000 prize Ken offered for anyone who could show such proof elsewhere.

SBI is a business building system. It not only provides the blueprint, but all the tools you need to make it a cashcow.

Does it work? SBIers do so well that over 40% own more than one. I've got two online and a third in the works.

What's NOT To Love?

With these kinds of UNmatched "Top 1%" results....

And the updated Alexa study...

And this kind of UNparalleled proof of success...

And with a constant flow of new launches at no added price, this is the easiest decision, IF you've been thinking of starting a
second site. If not, keep "tortoising straight ahead"...

... until you, too, get the Special Prize...

If this is for you, hurry!

This ends when Valentine's Day ends...

At the stroke of midnight, February 14, 2004.

Details here.

Webinars v Teleconferences for Home Business

I'd be interested in some feedback on this. Got your typing fingers on?

Home business marketers of all shades seem to run teleconferences; an occasional one runs webinars. An even rarer bird posts recordings of the event for download or streaming afterwards.

How do these activities compare in relation to profit generation? And, for that matter, is that their primary purpose? Or are we entering the big business 'branding' fuzzy zone when we speak of such 'customer relations'?

Being in a time zone that doesn't line up too well with when most of the teleconferences air, I'm a great fan of the downloadable recordings.

I'm also not too keen on paying international phone rates for unknown quality in teleconferences. Too often they develop into idle chitchat or pitch fests that I'd rather not be paying for and not wasting time on.

And yet, I enjoy attending good ones.

They provide interaction with other Internet home based business people that is simply not available any other way.

So long may they live!

But which format do you prefer? Why? And how do you benefit? Be real interested to know.

Beware this "eBay" Scam

Last week I submitted an article to a content distribution site, using a unique email address.

Today I received an email at that address headed:
WARNING: CONFIRM YOUR eBay RECORDS

It included, among other things, these lines:
'We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your eBay account, and multiple password failures were present before the logons. We now need you to re-confirm your account information to us. If this is not completed by Feb 11, 2005, we will be forced to suspend your account indefinitely, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes ...
Click here to verify your account.'

The email was clean, professional, used the eBay logo, copyright, address etc - for all the world it looked 'official' and genuine.

And I do have an eBay account.

Thankfully, the alarm bells went off immediately and I fired off a complaint to the content distribution site - who at least have an email address listed for 'abuse'. Too early to tell of any response.

But then I thought I'd check up what eBay have to say about such matters.

Sure enough, they have an entire tutorial on 'spoof' (fake) emails. It starts out:

'Spoof emails can be a major problem for unsuspecting Internet users. Claiming to be sent by well-known companies, these emails ask consumers to reply with personal information, such as their credit card number, social security number or account password.

'These deceptive emails are called "Spoof Emails" because they fake the appearance of a popular Web site or company in an attempt to commit identity theft. Also known as "hoax" or "phisher"emails, this practice is occurring more and more frequently throughout the online world.'

You can access the tutorial at


Obviously, gone are the days when you could easily pick such an email because of how crudely it was done - layout, spelling, grammar etc.

Just makes it that much more important to always access any account from a known-reliable source - such as your own bookmarks or by direct typing.

The incident also confirmed the value of using unique email addresses. That way I was easily able to identify the site responsible for adding me to a spammer's list.

Some free email accounts will allow you to add unique identifiers (although the one I used created its own spam by sending me everything directed to every email account it held that started with the same letter as mine!)

If you have your own domain, you can usually set up the email to accept (or block!) any username - e.g. mary@yourdomain.com or thatsite@yourdomain.com.

That way,at least, you know where the shots are coming from!

Internet Inspirations

Listening to a conversation between an Italian and a Slovenian today about RSS - 'just one of the communication channels opening up to marketers' - I was struck by just how global this industry is.

We get so used to American accents online that it's easy to fall into the notion that that's the whole scene .. albeit with the odd UK or Australian accent here and there, and increasingly, an Asian one or two.

And the lingua franca that allows it - the English language.

So many of us living in isolation speak only English, and often mutter about the marketing and technical difficulties of trading online.

But I really take my hat off to those who master not only those hurdles, but do it in another language.

And then turn around and offer written and audio visual products in that foreign language.

Inspiring stuff!

Lessons From The Trenches

I was very pushed for time when I uploaded the videos, then the Net began to run so slowly I couldn't properly check the displays.

Unfortunately, there was a problem. Well, two, actually.

Camstudio objects to you running two versions of it together. Recording a completely separate topic worked fine, but when I tried to record Camstudio itself, several functions misbehaved. Notably the Stop and Pause shortcuts failed to work, and display became quite jumpy compared with how it performed on other topics. So you can stop the second video below after it starts converting to swf - it wouldn't stop recording!

The other discovery was that the Blogger software over-rides HTML settings. It reduced the display of the videos so that they were almost unviewable. For that reason, I transferred them to this flash video page, where at least I can control their size.

They do appear to display much jumpier than they do running on my own computer, so I may need to play around a little more with the Replay Rate - these are set very low at 10. I'm sure with some playing around, the on-web displays can be significantly improved.

Make Your Own Streaming Video - Free

All right! I relented. Here it is - I did make another video - on how to make a video. Or more accurately, how you can cut the learning curve and do it yourself - for free.

There's a lot of huff and puff about 'streaming video' at the moment, and there's no doubt it makes learning software and some marketing messages much easier.

The recommended tool seems to be Camtasia - cost about $300. But there is at least one free alternative. CamStudio.

Use it, and you can create all the streaming flash videos you want - for free.

In a sec, I'll show you how. Just be warned, this is my first public effort!

Now, there is one catch. The download link on the CamStudio site redirects to Macromedia. There you will be greeted with this message:

'Macromedia Captivate, the latest version of RoboDemo'.

And Captivate appears to be CamStudio stripped of some key functions. It's 'the latest', so I downloaded it and wasted a lot of time trying to convert to Flash before I realized you need to buy the upgrade to be able to finish the job.

So, for a limited time, you can download the original CamStudio (complete, and free) below. It's a bit over 1MB. (If it doesn't download, I may have had to withdraw the offer because of bandwidth considerations.)

To watch the video below you'll need the Shockwave/Flash browser plugin. Most computers have it installed as standard, so when you click the 'Play' button, the video should start playing - although, depending on your Internet connection, it may be a bit slow.

If it doesn't play, you can download the player free of charge from here:

http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

So, turn on your speakers, and prepare to be amazed! You, too, could soon be making your own videos - and products.

The first one is recording your video - it's just under 5 minutes - and the second (2 minutes) is converting it to streaming flash.

Apparently the program objects to you running two versions of it together, so a few functions misbehave towards the end.

Once the flash is done. your browser will pop open. View source and copy and paste the code into your web page. Easy as that!

Just remember to upload the flash files (takes forever) and ensure the code includes the correct link to it.

Now available here. See note in 6 Feb post.

You can download Camstudio here.

Home Based Business Treasures

This morning I started out doing something for someone else. There was basically nothing in it for me, but some of my knowledge could save a friend quite a deal of time.

So I thought I'd put together one of these new-fangled desktop videos to walk him through the process.

I've never made one, nor even seen how they're done, so that was quite a learning curve.

Until I discovered there are two versions of the software I was trying to use. One is easy, and the other is missing some key processes since a major software manufacturer bought and 'upgraded' it.

Anyway, with the technicals under sufficient control to produce something, I set out to demonstrate how to to use a variety of tools that I do know something about.

Off the top of my head I picked a topic I know nothing about - just to 'prove anyone can do this'.

And ended up finding an entire new (to me) niche with quite amazing potential.

Dilemma! Do I give him the video, or use the contents myself?

Drat. Give it to him. I don't have time to do another video - I'll be too busy building sites to capitalise on the discovery!

Silver linings turn up in the strangest places!

Customers Have Expectations!

Hard on the heels of yesterday's comment about trust, came this note from Verisign.

They say market research shows that you can increase your web site sales and/or customer usage simply by showing your customers you take their security seriously.

Gregg Rowley, Managing Director of VeriSign Australia, says:

• 64% of online shoppers have failed to complete an online purchase because they didn't get a sense of security and trust when it came time to provide payment information (Source: TNS study, July 2004).


• 85% of users are concerned about being a victim of identity theft (Source: InsightExpress, June 2004).


• 80% of online shoppers expect to see a trust mark displayed on a Web site's home page. (Source: TNS study, July 2004).

The company has a research summary available: Consumer Awareness and Concerns.

It's designed to explain consumer concerns regarding online security and spending, and how third-party trust marks - such as theirs - increase the likelihood consumers will buy.

How Quickly Can Prices Rise?

One of the tactics Internet home work income business folk notice fairly early is the 'Buy now before the price goes up' prompt.

Unfortunately, many of these calls are governed by a script that automatically increments the date to a day or two ahead of whenever you access that page.

Come back a week later and the same breathless urgency is evident - except the cut-off date is still a day or two away.

Understandably, many of us discount such deceptive practices and make a mental note to mistrust that marketer in future.

Recently, though, I've noticed a new twist appearing - and so far, the examples I've seen have been genuine.

It works by advertising a schedule. The price today is X; it will rise to 2X, then 3X ... etc. The latest example is Mark Hendricks' Internet Success System.

Like Ken Evoy, whose original Penny Stocks Mining site used this technique, Mark has built a reputation for honesty and doing what he says he will do. So I've no doubt that delaying will mean buyers will pay more.

A few other recent ones have been even more specific. They've published a table with dates and prices.

I didn't follow any of them, so I'm not sure if they stuck to the schedules. But assuming they did, I suspect this method is quite powerful.

It eliminates the need to price test ahead of time, imparts a sense of urgency, and basically gives the buyer the opportunity to set their own price.

(Setting their own price, by the way, rarely works - it confuses most people so much they never decide, which means you lose the sale. This way that impasse never occurs.)

The big unknown, though, is trust. For this to work to its capacity, marketers will need to expertly establish trust and credibility. And I don't mean by sticking up a host of 'rent an endorsement' testimonials.

That will be the linchpin.