November 3rd, 2008
1) Choose a market with people that have problems they are willing to pay to have solved.
2) Build a "Squeeze Page" to funnel and capture users and track progress.
3) Drive traffic to the Squeeze Page.
4) Build a relationship with your email list.
5) Build a product funnel that meets people’s needs.
Articles should be based on one quick thought or concept from the web site. Tell people how to do something quick in that particular market niche. Give people one thing from the site that they can apply to their business or lifestyle. We want them to read it and say "Oh that makes sense. Let me go to the site to see what that is about".
Not looking for journalistic quality articles. Spelling and grammar correct, but quickly written.
300-word articles on average.
100-word introduction:
1) First sentence tells the reader what the article talks about and gives the definition of something.
2) The second sentence poses a challenge. Indicate whatever the problem is that you are trying to solve in the article.
3) The third sentence tells the reader what you’re going to teach them and how to do it.
200-word Body (2 styles)
1) 6 ot 7 bullet points, approximately 30 words each (roughly 2 sentences for 30 words).
2) Paragraph style, if the topic lends itself to that. Use the same style of step-by-step explanation, just in paragraph form.
If the article needs more than 300 words, split it in half and publish as Part One and Part Two.
Posted in Financial, Technology | No Comments »
November 3rd, 2008
RSS Component:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/wa-aj-rssphp/index.html
Requires cURL and SimpleXML
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November 3rd, 2008
http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/18/citigroup-sageworks-nyu-ent-fin-cx_mf_0118mostprofitable.html
Seven Businesses You Can Start Tomorrow:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/07/small-business-startup-ent-manage-cx_mf_1107biztomorrow.html
Businesses That Don’t Exist, But Should:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/07/merck-qualcomm-intel-ent-tech-cx_nc_1207bizdontexist.html
Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23343225/
Posted in Financial | No Comments »
November 3rd, 2008
Three weeks ago, DMA rolled out an enhanced version of its DMAChoice Web site. The service is free and it lets you select which catalogs you want to drop. There are about 1,500 of them in the database.
http://www.dmachoice.org/index.php
A new Web site, catalogchoice.org, was launched in October by a coalition of environmental groups, including the National Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation. Already, more than half a million people have become members. So far, they’ve opted out of more than 6 million catalogs.
http://www.catalogchoice.org/
[more...]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22918522/
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November 3rd, 2008
How to boost your health in almost no time:
* Eat the peel. The bulk of an apple’s benefit lies in its skin.
* Take the right supplements. Getting enough vitamin D and calcium brings a remarkable reduction in cancer risk…
* Slow aging: Sniff some lavender or rosemary. The scent of lavender can bring you a restful night’s sleep — but the plant can do you a world of good in daylight, too.
* Cut cholesterol:
Sprinkle pistachios on your salad. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University recently gave volunteers a pleasant task: Eat 1 1/2 ounces (about a handful) of pistachios every day. At the end of 4 weeks, those who munched the nuts reduced their total cholesterol by an average of 6.7% and their LDL ("bad") cholesterol by 11.6%.
* Replace sugar with buckwheat honey. This sweet substance has been used for medicinal purposes since ancient times; when it’s applied to a wound, honey is a natural antibacterial salve. Now researchers say that its benefits may be much more than skin deep.
* Keep your vision sharp: Eat an egg. No offense meant to carrots, but research shows eggs are an even better source of the eye-friendly antioxidants known as carotenoids.
* Reduce dangerous inflammation: Pour a bowl of whole grain cereal. Whole grains are about much more than "regularity" — they can save your life.
* Boost antioxidants: Add avocado to your salad.
* Snack on dried figs. Dried fruits are known to be rich in antioxidants — but some of the less popular types are the most nutritious. Figs and dried plums (aka prunes) had the best overall nutrient scores…
* Have 2 cups of green tea daily. Studies have shown that green tea helps keep cholesterol in check and may lower cancer risk. Now researchers say the drink may also work to maintain cognitive function.
[...more...]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21820386/
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November 3rd, 2008
Testimony of Al Schweitzer four years ago as offering the simple recipe for obtaining this kind of information. Schweitzer, who described himself as a former pretexter, said he used various "gags" to get the data he needed, and always followed a simple five-step formula:
"Identify the piece of information you are after; identify who or what institution is the custodian of the information sought; based on real world situations or actual operational procedures of the target institution, figure out under what circumstances and to whom the desired information would be released; be that person under those circumstances."
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/12/thanks-to-last.html#posts
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November 3rd, 2008
IIS Custom Error Pages – Must be greater than approx 4K bytes in order to be recognized by IIS. Otherwise a 404 error is returned. This is still aproblem in IIS 6 on W2K3 box.
Posted in Technology | No Comments »
April 19th, 2007
Great little tool to help get familiar with color theory concept. It’s also useful if you like to manually choose colors schemes and need ideas:
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html
Adobe has a very impressive color theme generator:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/kuler/
1 Million Stock Photos:
http://www.everystockphoto.com/index.php
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April 18th, 2007
The study demonstrates the importance of comparing cost-of-living differences between two markets.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16545234/
All figures used in the study were collected last year by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau’s occupational profiles can be accessed at http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm.
Posted in Consumer, Financial | No Comments »
January 16th, 2007
There are many things you can do even before you pick up the phone to increase your chances of success.
My Favorites:
One: Make sure you have a decent speakerphone. Nothing makes those 22 minutes pass more slowly than a strained neck from pressing the phone against your ear. If you can move around while you’re waiting — say if you can fold the laundry — the time won’t feel quite as wasted.
Seven: Know your enemy. Picture this: You’re a college student earning extra money at night dealing with a steady stream of manic customers upset about cell phone text message rates. And you must take 50 to 100 calls a shift. To give you an idea of their perspective, here’s what one cell phone customer service representative wrote to the Red Tape Chronicles recently: “I say ‘no’ because its fun,” he said (picture David Spade in the Capital One credit card commercials). “If somebody wants to be rude with me, I’ll step down to their level because my company allows it as long as I don’t use profanity.”
Now, imagine you as the one friendly call this agent receives on a given night. You are warm, you are even keeled, you are reasonable. You say “please” and “thank you.” You will have a leg up on every other caller that night.
11: Run out the clock on call centers, which are often paid per call.
“The strongest tool a customer has is call length,” he wrote. “They pay these companies a very small amount for each call taken, so the call center wants to have the shortest call length possible, and take as many calls in a given period of time as possible. They want to see 3 to 5 minutes per call. … If your call goes 10 minutes, you (or the rep you’re talking to) have the attention of a supervisor. The supervisors have computerized call monitors that alert them to long calls.”
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/01/win_those_custo.html
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