It's Summertime!!
A happy Solstice to all my monthly readers
out there.
This month's newsletter promises to be jam packed
full of new ideas and upcoming noteworthy events.
Everything from new ways to find hard-to-find
collectable items, help on how add HTML to your
emails and news about new domains you may see
in the near upcoming future.
Hope you enjoy the information and drop me a
note about what you like and want more of.
To Your Success,
Coach Danny
LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
IN THE JUNE ISSUE
- LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
- New Product Source for June
- eBay Wants .ebay Domain
- SnagIt 9 Nabs Attention
- Google Trends for Websites
- 5 Phases to Email Marketing
- How to Create and Send HTML Email
"In business, I’ve discovered that
my purpose is to do my best to my
utmost ability every day. That’s my
standard. I learned early in my life
that I had high standards."
-Donald Trump
New Product Source for June
Auctionblip Puts Real-Life Auctions on Collectors'
Radar Screens
By Jan Perry
There's nothing more exciting than winning an
auction that adds that perfect piece to your
collection. And there's nothing more frustrating
than discovering you missed the opportunity because
you didn't know the item you were looking for was
up for sale. Perhaps you learned about an auction
too late to place a bid or were simply unaware of
all the places that might be auctioning items in
your chosen field.
Such aggravations can now be a thing of the past
thanks to Auctionblip.com.
Online since last autumn, Auctionblip calls its
service "The collector's greatest tool." Its
international network is currently comprised of
approximately 70 auction houses including both
general sales and specific niche galleries. While
an excellent resource for individuals with a single
common collecting interest, the site can be a true
godsend for those whose collections are eclectic
or fall into a less-than-popular category.
Site creator David Epstein, a lifelong hardcore
collector himself, realized the impossibility of
successfully researching stacks of auction catalogs
on a continuing basis. According to Epstein, "With
so many auctions taking place each week, there is
no way for one person to search every catalogue for
a particular item. Auctionblip allows users to enter
specific items they are looking for and then sit
back while we take care of the rest."
Like most successful dotcoms, Epstein describes
his brainchild as, "A simple idea that came out of
need." The man who describes his boyhood bedroom as
"a museum," found himself spending hours looking for
auction houses around the world and scanning stacks
of catalogs to complete his own lengthy wish list
for items including Swiss Army knives, Matchbook
cars, baseball cards, Civil War items, coins and
one of his particular favorites - CrackerJack prizes.
"I knew I had something going," he said," when I
called the auction houses and people said, "What
a simple idea. Why hasn't anyone done this?""
For a monthly fee of $5.99, subscribers are allowed
to list keywords for up to 10 items of interest.
(Members are allowed to rephrase "wish list"
information or change items completely as often as
they like.) The Blip staff researches catalogs for
upcoming sales on a daily basis. When a listing is
found that fits a subscriber's criteria, notification
is sent (via email) with the name of the auction
house, the auction date, pictures and a detailed
description of the specific item as well as bidding
information and a link to the auction site.
Common wish-list items can bring collectors an
immediate response, while rarer or more obscure
items may require months on the list before a "hit"
is announced. In addition to general offerings, the
network covers specialty sales in antiques and the
fine arts as well as toys, wine, print materials,
jewelry, movie memorabilia and even vintage cars.
With partners around the world, and a list of
participants that is constantly growing,
Auctionblip provides subscribers with information
about auctions they might never have heard about on
their own.
As for the site's name, Epstein explains that for
most collectors, finding a specific item without
help is like shooting in the dark. But Auctionblip
puts thousands of items "on the radar" so its
members can easily find them.
www.auctionblip.com
eBay Wants .ebay Domain
by Ina Steiner & Danielle Nordine
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, the main oversight agency for top level
domains (TLDs) and regulator of the Internet, will
begin offering endless variations on domain
addresses.
The proposal would allow companies to purchase new
generic top-level domains ending in almost anything
they wished.
Rather than have a domain that ends .com or .co.uk,
an individual or company could have a domain that
ended .itpro or .ebay.
eBay is a current contender to use its name,
according to ITpro, angling to purchase the
domain .ebay. Cities such as New York and Berlin
have been campaigning for their own domains as well.
“We are in the process of opening up new real
estate, new land, and people will go out and claim
parts of that land and use it for various reasons
they have,” Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of
ICANN, said. "It's a massive increase in the
geography of the real estate of the internet."
ICANN estimated last year that only 17 per cent
of the original four billion network addresses
remained available, and that addresses are expected
to run out within the next five years.
If the proposal is passed, as expected, new domains
would be open to companies by the beginning of
next year.
The application fee for a domain name under the
proposed system has not been determined, but
estimates say the price could range from €25,000
to €250,000, placing such domain extensions out of
the reach of most consumers, as well as most
potential cyber squatters.
TOOL OF THE MONTH
SnagIt 9 Nabs Attention
by Jessica Dolcourt
Many users have always liked the top-rated
screen-capture program SnagIt. When you need
functionality beyond the standard Windows
PrintScreen (or Alt+PrintScreen), SnagIt has been a
reliable, flexible, and powerful solution for many
years.
Though SnagIt has been a long-treasured workhorse,
the latest Version 9 update takes the feature set
well past screen capturing, with new image-management
features like handling multiple open documents, an
integrated and persistent search box, and image tagging.
This program is from TechSmith, the publisher that also
brought to market the top-rated Camtasia Studio.
SnagIt 9 makes sceen shots as glamorous as they'll
get, letting you capture any part of your screen,
from a partial image to the entire contents of a
scrolling window. You can grab images of Web sites
and software applications or pictures from scanners
and digital cameras. You even can capture video and
record screen action in AVI format.
Version 9 completely overhauls the interface to
bring the wide range of editing tools and effects
to the surface with a simplified, icon-oriented
menu structure that makes SnagIt even more flexible
and easy to use. Tools to draw, resize, recolor and
annotate the images are there, as is a menu to add
rollover hotspots for linking an image to a URL.
SnagIt 9 also adds automatic image-tagging, a
library for saving and indexing every capture and
an image tray for getting to the most recent opened
captures. Balloon tips, wizards, and an online
video tutorial make it simple for beginners, and its
sophisticated capabilities will satisfy
advanced users.
Associate Editor Jessica Dolcourt is a tough critic
to impress, but this latest version of SnagIt has
already found a soft spot on her PC. Check out her
reasons to love the new SnagIt 9 feature, which
includes a video walkthrough of the new release.
Reasons to love the new SnagIt 9
SnagIt 9 is a familiar, intuitive, and much more
varnished capture utility whose image editor has
finally come of age.
A well-stocked catalog
No longer must you recapture images you didn't
perfectly edit the first time around. With the
new Open Captures tray, a ribbon along the screen
bottom, SnagIt matures from a screen grabber that
callously dumps any capture you didn't save into
a helpful tool keeping track of all your images,
including those unsaved files. You'll be able to
jump from one open image to another to interact
with images at any time for editing, saving in a
new file-type and exporting.
Tagging
Like e-mails, images contain information,
relevance and nuance. SnagIt 9 introduces tagging
in the library pane and the menu navigation that
uses a combination of flagging, autotagging and
keyword entry to assign searchable tags to an
image. Flag categories include important,
follow-up, personal, finance, and funny. Captures
are also tagged by URL if they're taken from a Web
site, by the name of the application you may have
grabbed it from and by a manually entered keyword.
Search
SnagIt's user scenario is to store every capture
you've taken in the application's lifespan. After
a couple hundred captures, browsing through tags
gets old and inefficient. A search engine
integrated into the library pane pulls up relevant
tags and dates. Clicking the folder icon at the
bottom right of the screen helps organize the
findings with more granularity--you'll be able to
sort by name, size, dimension, flags, and keyword
and display image clips instead of the usual
text-chunky file names.
video walkthrough
License: Free to try; $49.95 to buy
ONLINE RESOURCE OF THE MONTH
Google Trends for Websites
by Chris Stirling
I trust many of you will be familiar with
Google Trends? To give you a quick refresh,
Google trends is designed to give you a greater
understanding of current search trends within
Google and syndicated search engines.
Well, I recently came across a new addition to the
Google Trends tool, Google Trends for Websites!
Google Trends for websites enables the user to
enter in a popular URL and get a quick snapshot of
it's unique visitors, geographical traffic sources,
other sites visited and terms searched for. These
being the types of search terms that are possibly
driving traffic to the site in question.
trends.google.com/trends
trends.google.com/websites
5 Phases to Email Marketing
by Chris Stirling
When using email marketing to sell a product or
service you can’t just start selling to your
readers in the first email. The reason is the odds
of the reader knowing who you are or what you are
all about are pretty low, even if they subscribed
to your newsletter from a form on your website.
People do not purchase from those they do not know.
So the key to a successful email marketing campaign
is “warming up” your readers to the sell.
The "warming up" process can be broken down into
five distinct phases. It's a good idea to keep
these in mind as you work to warm up your lists.
Phase 1 -- "Cold Readers"
These are folks who have just filled out the form
on your website, or whose details you have received
via co-registration.
You know nothing about them, and they know nothing
about you, so at this phase, your primary job is to
introduce yourself, and begin to establish yourself
as a source of credible and useful
*free* information.
I emphasized the word *free* in that, because "cold"
leads are very unlikely to buy anything from you, no
matter what you do.
PHASE 2 -- "Curious Readers"
At this phase, people may have opened one or two of
your emails and have at least decided to stay on
your list long enough to find out what you're about
and what they can gain by reading your emails.
Another way of thinking of this group is that they
are the ones who are actually opening and reading
your emails, whether they open the first or the
tenth that you send them.
Your job with this group remains essentially the
same as was true at Phase 1 ... you are still in
the process of "warming them up" to the idea that
you are credible and trustworthy.
Again, not a time to be trying to sell them things,
because few of them will buy, anyway.
PHASE 3 -- "Interested Readers"
These are the folks who have opened and read
several of your emails, and now continue to read
them. Perhaps they have "moved" themselves from your
"cold" list by opting-in to one or your newsletters
or free mini-courses.
By doing so, they have "told" you that they are
interested in what you have to say, willing to read
more of your emails, and may, in due time, buy
something on the basis of your suggestion.
One way to know who your "interested" prospects are
is to offer a free ebook or mini-course and make
them "register" for it by opting in to a second
autoresponder.
Another is to run a survey form on your site,
invite them to participate, and capture their
contact information when they do so.
The point is they have taken some *action* based
upon your previous emails, and have told you by
that action that they are interested in what you
have tosay and willing to read what you write
to them.
PHASE 4 -- "Excited Readers"
These are folks who are almost ready to buy. They
may have written you asking for more information,
or visited your sales page several times. Maybe they
are thinking about joining your business opportunity,
but for some reason not quite ready to sign up and
pay their money. They need some sort of "push" or
"nudge" to get them to take action.
Maybe they need a "special offer" of some kind, or
simply a personal follow-up email or phone call from
you. Whatever it is, these are your *HOT* prospects.
PHASE 5 -- "Customer"
The final phase is, of course, obvious. These are
the folks who have bought your product, joined your
opportunity, or bought something that you promote
as an affiliate.
In the long run, these are the folks who will make
you the most money, because it will become easier
and easier for them to act on your recommendations,
as long as you don't betray their trust by endorsing
poor quality products or programs.
You need to think of these folks as *friends*,
because that is what they really are. They have now
given you permission to send them follow-up offers
and program endorsements.
Even though they may represent only a tiny percentage
of the entire population of your list, these people
are your long term gold mine group.
Treat them with respect, they have warmed up to you
and what You have to offer. Maintain a high level of
integrity and they will continue to follow you for
years to come
Copyright © 2008 Top-Work-From-Home-Directory.com
About the Author
Chris Stirling is the owner of
Top-Work-From-Home-Directory.com
His website is geared for people who are interested in finding
an online work at home opportunity.
How To Create and Send HTML Email
by Herman Drost
Until recently text-based email was the most
popular way to communicate, however with the advent
of html email you can now create and send beautiful
graphics, create clickable links and use
interactive forms.
HTML email can have the same appearance as a web
page. You can include your favorite photos, create
colorful newsletters or charts for your friends or
business associates.
It's now often used as a valuable tool in email
marketing campaigns.
HTML email has now surpassed text-based email
in popularity.
Read this survey on email format preferences and
and programs.
Let's first point out the pros and cons of sending
html email before we get into how to create it.
Pros of Using HTML Email
Visually appealing
Able to include graphics, icons, clickable links,
different fonts, interactive forms.
Increased interactivity with your customers.
Mostly used by advertisers, however more consumers
are using html email as they switch to
faster connections.
Ads can be more effective in HTML
Most of the popular email clients now support
html email
(ie Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Netscape
Communicator, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, Web TV).
Cons of Using HTML Email
Slow loading due to downloading of graphics
Takes up more space in your email client
Not all computers support html email
Users may not have the required bandwidth or may
have download quotas set by their ISPs.
Hackers can send viruses, trojan horses embedded in
html email.
Users may turn off the option to receive html email,
or use filters to quarantine it.
How to create a simple html email
1. Open your favorite html editor ie FrontPage,
Dreamweaver (you can also use MS Word 97 or 2000,
but it tends to bloat the code a little) to create
your email.
2. Always use absolute URLS for your graphics
(ie http://www.addme.com/images/addme.gif).
3. Graphics (ie images, icons, fancy fonts) must be
stored on a web server to correctly appear in email
software - you could save it as an attachment,
however most folks will not open the attachment
especially (and delete it) if it's from someone they
don't know.
If you don't want to use graphics, you can use
colored tables for different sections
(ie header, masthead, contact information
and footers).
4. Name and save the page you have created
(ie html-email.htm).
5. Open your Email Software - in outlook express
(since it's the most popular) go to
create mail -
insert -
text from file -
scroll to your saved html page.
You are now ready to send your html email.
6. Email a test to yourself before your send it to
your subscriber list. You may want to send it to
your friends who have different email programs so
you can be sure most of your subscribers can read it
on their computers.
7. Once you have created an attractive html page or
newsletter, save it as a template. Now you can just
open the template whenever you want to send html
mail and most of the work will be done for you.
HTML email is still rather new, but it is a great
marketing tool if used properly. The key is to
test, test, test to see if your subscribers prefer
it over text based email. If you are unsure your
subscribers can read html email, then offer both
text-based email and html email, to cater to
both audiences.
About the Author
Herman Drost is the author of the NEW ebook
"101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your
Web Site"
isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion
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