E-Biz Booster Blog

“Happy 2010”

I have recorded a short video with two tips for improving your marketing in 2010.

Update: This will work in 2011, and 2012, …

Actually I have already recorded it on December 28, but so far only had uploaded it to a private membership. But why not share it with everybody?

Here it is.

This year I will focus on improving how I use words and further build relationships.

Download the full transcript

• Two Tips For Marketing In 2010 (↑)
  [PDF file, 130 kibytes]

→ Continue reading:

Screen Dark, Data Lost?
Not For Me – Thanks to UPS

Did it ever happen to you? You are working on a complicated spreadsheet on your computer and all of a sudden… power is out. The screen gets dark, silence follows, and you might hear your neighbor through the wall shout out loud, “Oh, shit!”

I got used to those power outages lasting from 30 seconds to 1 hour. Like during the recent heavy rainfalls in early December. In 95% of all cases power comes back in less than 5 minutes.

• Other people suffer data loss.
• Some people even had their hard drives crash or other hardware damaged (Ouch!)

I am not one of them.

After moving to the Canaries I quickly realized that electric power is not as stable as in the big cities where I lived earlier.

Therefore, I got myself a UPS (uninterrupted power supply), a kind of a battery that keeps supplying your PC and monitor with juice even when power fails. Usually you can run up to 15 minutes on battery power with your normal PC or Mac setup.

The reason for writing this article is I want to share with you what I have learned about UPS during the last three years. I just replaced my UPS with a new one because the battery died.

Update: Just added a “How To Video” going through the process.

It's inside the blog post.

→ Continue reading:

Recently I have described how I fixed a wrong setup of the tweetmeme button on my blog. I manually modified the blog template and I only mentioned briefly there is a Wordpress plugin for Tweetmeme.

Acknowledging Wordpress as the most popular blogging platform I need to follow up with a more detailed description of the Tweetmeme WP Plugin.

The installation and configuration is straightforward and shouldn't be a problem for anyone who has installed Wordpress on her hosting account successfully.

I provide some screenshots for your orientation.

Update Dec. 21, 2009: I made a screencam video of the procedure as well.

How To Setup A Tweetmeme Button On A Wordpress [HQ video] (↑)

Installation of the Wordpress Tweetmeme Plugin

You can download the plugin from Tweetmeme (↑) or directly install it with the Wordpress Admin Interface.



→ Continue reading:

Without a doubt it seems that “Viral Marketing,” is a powerful buzzword. Just tap into an existing social network and have your marketing message spread — essentially — for free.

Sounds like a big money saver that can slash your advertising costs dramatically while increasing response. Your message is not yelled at a cold prospect but instead delivered by a friend.

And it spreads, … if it is done right.

• Usually big corporations are prone to not doing it right.
• Corporate managers are listening to their agencies …
• Agencies are doing it wrong because they still believe you can buy attention and sales for big money. Their share in this kind of deal is not insignificant.

Viral Campaign For Turning TV license dodgers Into Paying Subscribers

The idea is fun and spreads but I don't see much potential for making people pay a mandatory fee which they refuse to pay up to this point. Especially because the idea seems to spread more outside the intended target audience.

Have a look. I made a viral video for myself.


Note: Unfortunately the application has severe browser compatibility issues. If you cannot access it try the lower quality YouTube version (↑) I have made from it.

My wife and and my sister in law have been stunned when I surprised them. → Continue reading:

New rules and guidelines for online Internet marketers and vendors are coming up fast. The date they become effective in the USA is Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

I guess some webmasters will be busy over the weekend to update their sites if they have not taken action earlier.

But what is this all about anyway?

Why not ask an expert?

Jim Edwards did.

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Clarifies New Internet Marketing, Blogging & Affiliate Advertising Guidelines With Jim Edwards (↑)

I strongly recommend you go over there and take opportunity to get this FREE information. Jim offers you 3 options.

1. Webinar Video Replay
   
   
2. Webinar Audio Replay
   
   
3. PDF Transcript
   
   (The PDF version is for Jim’s email subscribers only. But guess what, you can sign up for his list on the spot.)

Get all that legal info for FREE.

Jim Edwards interviews Rich Cleland, Assistant Deputy FTC (↑)

In previous posts I have also written about those changes in guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission in the USA for Internet marketing practices. I also wrote about similar — even tighter — legislation for Internet marketers in the EU (European Union).


At this point I want to thank Andy Beard (↑) who mentioned this interview in his latest blog post, “Harder Facts About Comment Spam (↑).”

Take a legal notepad, some time in the evening and listen to that valuable information. Or at least get the PDF for later reference. No idea how long it will be online.


Enjoy the weekend.

Yours
John W. Furst

It just comes to my mind that I am writing posts about web site development issues only when something bothers me. Like the DNS problems with my ISP that I had in July this year.

It might not only be me who has noticed that many “Social Media Rich Web Sites” and blogs load very slowly. Even in a modern browser on a new computer.

The first guess is:

“It's all the widgets and external components they load.”

But it is not only how much you load. It is also about in what order you load it … and from what servers … So what do we usually have to deal with:

• many images
• various CSS style sheets
• Javascript files for improved navigation and AJAX trickery within the site
• Javascript widgets and iframes for interaction with other sites
• Flash files
• Java applets
• … etc.

The browser has to request each file individually. Some files are cached in your browser and will be downloaded only once (if your web server is setup correctly).

Then there are other cases where your web server might have to wait for data from third party web sites before it can complete to build a dynamic web page and deliver it to the browser.

The richness of Web 2.0 doesn't make it necessarily easier to be a great webmaster. It's true that widgets can be dropped into a site and add substantial interactivity to it in matter of minutes, but optimizing a site for performance hasn't become much easier.

A lot of different elements to deal with.

Examples:

• affiliate banners or affiliate data feeds
• RSS news feeds
• embedded video and audio content
• Digg, Reddit, and other social media votes
• Twitter, Facebook and Disqus widgets
• User avatars like from myblogcatalog.com or gravatar.com
• etc.

The list is really endless.

And last but not least the HTML part of the page itself (this one single file) could be already pretty big by itself. Or don't you have 20+ comments on your average blog post?

And don't forget, if you are running a content management system like a blog all this content is created on the fly out of a database. (Or are you using Wordpress Super Cache already — or whatever it is called.)

You will notice the longer you have been working on your website the slower it usually gets.

Time to speed up your web site again

→ Continue reading: