Formspring.me
Posted by Mitch on Apr 27, 2010
This is something different that I bet most of us wouldn’t really have the courage to use; at least I know I don’t.
It’s called Formspring.me. What it allows you to do is set up an account where people can anonymously ask you questions about pretty much anything, and you answer them. You have the opportunity to tell people the types of things you talk about so that maybe people will stay on topic, but they can deviate at any moment and ask you about pretty much anything.
How did I discover it? One of my Twitter friends, a local young lady, created an account that she’d heard of from someone else, and started promoting it there. She answers questions about sex, mainly about her own escapades, and no, I’m not going to link to it. Yeah, she’s pretty open about it on Twitter with people who follow her, and if she decides she wants to post something here about it then that’s on her.
Suffice it to say, she created the account, put it up on Twitter, and I tracked it there to see what it was all about. It’s eye opening stuff, and she’s really open about her thoughts and experiences. I didn’t know someone could experience so much before the age of 25; man, I’ve not lived at all!
Anyway, you’ll find it’s a pretty simple page. There’s no searching; you pretty much have to tell people you have an account once you create one, and you’ll probably have to keep telling them to keep them coming back. Actually, it might be a good thing for business sites; I might have to rethink this one for one of my sites. We’ll see.
Klout
Posted by Mitch on Mar 27, 2010
There’s another neat little web service that will tell you what they’ve perceived is your clout on Twitter. Of course, it’s called Klout.
What you do is put in your Twitter account name, it does some calculations, and then it comes out and gives you what it calls a Kscore. My score is 56, and strangely enough, out of everyone I personally know, I have the highest score of all of them; pays to have been around awhile, I figure. Then I checked some other names, and the only person I could find who was higher than me, that I kind of know (since I wasn’t interested in looking up Oprah or Ashton Kutcher, or any other celebrities for that matter), is Guy Kawasaki, who has an 82; ouch!
Klout tells you a bit more than that. Without signing up, it also gives you the names of people who are following you that you’re influencing in more than just a totally casual manner, and how you’re influencing them, as well as who’s possibly influencing you and how they’re doing it. One oddity about that is that one of the categories of influence is “casual”, and Sire happens to be the one person in that area for me. And it will also tell you the Kscore of those people. There’s one guy who supposedly influences me a lot, yet I don’t know who he is, and I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen any of his Twitter posts.
If you register you can get other information as well, such as statistics and content and some type of influence tracker. I’m not sure what any of those things are because I didn’t register yet, and I’m not sure if I will or not. Sometimes when you register for those things, they automatically go onto Twitter and tell everyone, and if I can’t control that I’m not going to be a happy camper. There’s also the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to cancel if I signed up, which has happened to one other thing that I just can’t figure out how to get out of.
Anyway, it’s just another bit of fun people can have with Twitter; give it a shot.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Webshots
Posted by Mitch on Jan 30, 2010
One of the longest computer wallpaper image programs, and probably the most underrated today, is Webshots. I remember seeing it on computers as far back as 1998, which drove IT people crazy at the hospital because anyone could load it, but no one was supposed to.
The program initially comes with a photo package that loads automatically when you install the program. You get to decide up front if you want to use it as a screensaver, wallpaper, or both. Most people choose both, aas I did. Then, if you want more images, all you have to do is go back to the site. They allow you a small number of new photos you can download from tens of thousands, probably millions by this time, each day, from all sorts of categories. Or you can pay a small yearly fee and have unlimited downloads whenever you’re in the mood.
What most people don’t know, which surprises me, is that you can also add your own images to Webshots. That’s actually the thing I like to do the most. Any time I see cool images on the net, I download them, then add them en masse to my Webshots program on both my main computer and my laptop. All you have to do is open the program, which is sitting on your taskbar, and select Photo Manager. To the far right is a selection that says “add more photos”. Select that, and it then gives you the option of selecting a folder that’s already there, if you have some (there’s always the main folder by default), set up categories if you choose, then you hit Next and you can search your computer for your photos.
I know there are other programs that do the same thing, but I think this one is perfect, and it’s free. What you can’t do is alter images with the program, but what you can do is alter images using another program while they’re sitting in a Webshots folder and it will accept the changes. You might have to search for your folders to do that, however. What I did was moved where the Webshots folders were stored so I could have full access to them through my C drive.
One minor caveat here. Though it works well with Vista, if your computer goes into hibernation mode sometimes the program will mess up and stop working properly as a wallpaper. All you have to do then, when you come out of it, is shut down the program and restart it again. That’s a really minor inconvenience if you ask me.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Everyone’s Got An Opinion
Posted by Mitch on Nov 5, 2009
Yesterday I was going through some of the forums with my little bit of advertising on my writing services. When I’m posting those articles, I always include a link to some article samples so people can see that I can write different ways on different topics. None of them are overly long, as it’s only supposed to be a sample.
I ended up getting a response from one guy on one of those forums. He wasn’t looking for a writer; he was looking to basically be a jerk. He wrote that he didn’t like my presentation and that no one would ever hire me as a writer if that’s all I could do.
What did I do? I went back to that forum and thanked him for his comment, and moved on. I figured there was no reason to get into a back and forth with the guy because, after all, what would it have solved? My articles are what they are, on my website that I really market the writing services from, and that’s that.
Now, what he could have been griping about is my website, and if that’s the case, well, then that’s only one person’s opinion of what they expect certain websites to look like. Now don’t get me wrong, because something I’m known to do is look at websites and judge them on how well I think they look. However, what I look for is more balance and readability than whether I overly like something or not.
There are things that put off many people, and one of those things is a lack of balance from page to page. Another is multiple fonts on a webpage, and images that suddenly show up without any rhyme or reason. Or content with lots of spelling mistakes. Or a lot of flash or too little flash or, or, or… you decide it.
The truth is there are many different websites, over 120 million at this juncture if we include blogs. Many that look the same are template websites, and many of us hate those because, well, they’re template websites. There are also websites on free platforms, although many of those are starting to go away. There are people who put a website together using programs like MS Publisher, which isn’t really a website tool, and, well, you get what you get. Usually those people haven’t studied some of the nuances of what might make a good website, but still, it assaults your senses.
With that being said, not every webpage is going to be pleasant for everyone. And not every style is supposed to be the same either. My SEO website looks like it does because I wanted it to look that way. Every page is outlined the same, and the menu is in the same place on each page. I marked a couple of my products on each page also; that’s fair, since they’re my products.
No, I’m not asking people whether they like that page or not. I probably should, since it’s supposed to be a business website, but I’m not. It is what it is, just as your site is what it is, and your blog is what it is. I like it, it’s doing okay, and until I get sick of it, that’s just how it’s going to look.
Because, in the end, everyone has an opinion; how often are we supposed to bend to everyone else’s opinions?
Revamp Of SEO Xcellence Site
Posted by Mitch on Sep 5, 2009
SEO Xcellence is my SEO site, where I market myself as an internet marketing consultant for small businesses.
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A few weeks back, I decided it was time for a redesign of sorts. I use the site to also help advertise my writing services, and decided I just had to move some things around and change a few things up.
The first thing I did was widen each page. I don’t know what I was thinking when I left it kind of condensed, but condensed has never been my style. And now that I have this great wide screen monitor, it just looked worse to me. So, I took advantage and changed up the coding and now I love how it’s more spread out. This way, more of my content appears above the fold, and since it’s a business site, that’s a great thing.
Something else I did was finally add my ebook Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool, which I’m not linking to since it’s over there at the top left. I also added my webinar Social Media, SEO & Your Business, once again not linking to it since it’s underneath the ebook. It made a lot of sense putting both of those books on that site.
What I also did for most of the pages was remove the Adsense links. It just didn’t make sense, as a business site, to have Adsense on every page. After all, I don’t want to drive people to other sites for business I can do, right? However, I left it on all my articles, along with some affiliate ads on some of those pages, since their focus is somewhat different. I’m not sure about that, to tell you the truth, but it stays for now.
I also decided to break up how I advertise my services on the site. So, I added a new tab and created a new tab and a new page. The new page highlights all the writing services I do, while my other page, which I renamed in the menu, highlights all the other services I can perform.
Then I went through and read some of my content, changing a few things here and there, but otherwise, I left most of it alone. I actually did all of this last week, so I expect that in another week it’ll probably move up a little bit on Google for its main search term, which is “Syracuse internet marketing consultant.” I’m also hoping its Alexa rank changes a little bit; I’d like to get it under a million.
I have one last thought for that site, but I’m not sure I should do it. I’ve been thinking about adding a blog to the site in a subdirectory. It’s a recommendation I make to most of my clients, but the truth is that I already write 3 blogs, and I’m making most of my living writing. Do I have the time for a fourth blog, on a topic that many others are writing on already? I’m not sure, which is why I haven’t done it yet.
Anyway, I thought I’d share this one with y’all. I still have to figure out how to revamp one of my other sites, but for now, it’s on the back burner.
Affiliate Marketing Linx
Posted by Mitch on Apr 10, 2009
A friend of mine, Justin, writer of Internet Marketing News, and the guy who I bought my finance blog, Top Finance Blog from, now has a new service that those of you who say you talk about affiliate marketing might want to take a look at.
It’s called Affiliate Marketing Linx Directory (or AML for short), and, in its own words, is “a human-edited affiliate marketing web directory.” Justin accepts submissions, but edits them himself, to verify that spam submissions aren’t getting through.
I just listed this blog under the category of “affiliate marketing blog“, and it’s a super easy process. The only thing you have to do is put a link back on your site to theirs, and in my opinion that’s not asking too much. There are also paid options that offer a couple of other neat things which you can decide upon for a higher placement.
I remember a time when I would try to join every single directory that came along, but I’ve pretty much stopped doing that. Most directories are kind of unwieldy, and expect you to put specific language on your sites. Here, all he’s asking for is a link back, so you see his link in my Marketing area there on the right. Life doesn’t get any simpler than that.
So there you are; a short post for a Friday.
Copywriting: Headline Color (Guest Post)
Posted by Mitch on Apr 6, 2009
This is another guest post by Diego Norte; you can view his contact information at the end of this post:
As many of you know, I did a decent sized study on headline color of other people’s sales pages.
Both profitable and unprofitable pages were included in that study. In the end, I reported that we found red headlines to be the most unprofitable color. Green, blue and black were all found to be closely tied for the most profitable headline colors.
This was in stark contrast to the findings of many famous copywriters who insisted that they consistently saw red headlines outperform other colors in split tests.
What happened?
I still don’t know, but I did throw in “red” as a test case for most of my sales letters.
In most cases, my split tests agreed with the study I had performed of other people’s sites.
However, one multivariate result runs completely counter to that result.
The sales page where red is winning by a long shot is Glyphius.com.
Here are the numbers:
Visitor Value: $0.59
Bright Red (#ff0000):
Visitor Value: $1.76
Wow! That’s a huge difference. The amount of visitors and sales to that page is definitely significant.
Why is the color “red” winning on this particular site, but blue, green and black win on a vast majority of sites?
What is causing such a large difference in the results?
We’re talking about almost 3 times as many sales with the red headline? How can that be?
Why would headline color matter that much in any case (unless it was an unreadable color like yellow on white or pink on purple)?
Unfortunately, these aren’t things I can answer with the aid of statistics. Those are just the facts. On that one site, red is king. I don’t know why. I don’t know how to figure out why. It just is.
These kinds of mysteries don’t need to be solved to profit from the results though. You simply have to make sure they are under test on your sales page. The easiest way to do that is with TestiVar. You simply set it up once and it takes care of everything after that.
It changes the frequency that each version of each variable under test is shown every time you make a sale. Eventually, it will notice that you have a statistically significant result and it will change the frequency that it shows the losing versions of that variable to 0% and show only the statistically significant winner.
You start making a higher percentage of sales long before a statistically significant amount of traffic and sales though. TestiVar is optimized to utilize statistically insignificant data to influence the frequency that likely winners will be shown.
In the above case, the red headline was shown three times more often than the blue, green and black headlines after only three sales. That resulted in more sales more often because red would eventually be found to be the statistically significant winner.
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