Category Archives: Instructional

Grockit Test Prep Review Courses

Posted on by
Reply

Grockit has entered the market for online test preparation. You can prepare and study for the following: LSAT, GRE, GMAT, ACT and SAT. There are many ways to study. For those who like to study on your own, as it is an online course, you can study any time and any where. There is also the ability to group study with others studying or preparing for the same course. Most interestingly to me is their professional instruction in either groups or as a one on one session to study just what you need. Read more about Grockit and use a grockit coupon to obtain a discount. There is also a free trial so you can go directly there and check out their service.

Free Email Marketing Webinar

Posted on by
Reply

Free Webinar about Email Marketing
I have not association with Lyris, I just thought this looked like a good opportunity to learn about email marketing. Here is an excerpt regarding their webinar.

10 Trends That Will Make or Break Your Email Results
Top 10 Vital Factors for Email Marketing Success: How to Generate Results in a Tough Economy.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
10:00 AM Pacific Time / 1:00 PM Eastern Time

In this informational, one-hour Webinar you will learn:

* Why email is still an important tool in every marketer’s toolbox
* The surprising trends that will make or break marketing success in 2011
* How to capitalize on these trends and create efficiencies that can dramatically improve results

Here’s a sneak peek at the 2011 Trends:

1. Opt-in list Building: Automatically
2. List Maintenance & Hygiene – Stop the Churn
3. Deliverability & Authentication Today
4. Drive Relevance through Segmentation
5. Engagement Strategies
6. Leverage Social Media
7. Test and Analyze
8. Automate for Impact
9. Mobile is the “New” Standard
10. Integration – Pulling it All Together

As a special bonus, all Webinar attendees will receive our free complementary 2011 Trends guide as a follow up to the Webinar presentation. This actionable how-to guide is designed to improve your online marketing results now and in the coming year.

You can register here.

Game Design Degrees and Mobile Courses

Posted on by
Reply

GMU Computer Game Design Degree
My Alma Mater George Mason University is offering a Computer Game Design Degree, a four year degree and I believe it is the only one in Virginia or surrounding area. I am not biased as I did go there for undergrad (Computer Science) and Law, I generally believe this is a great idea. They also have classes specific to mobile as well. This is a program that is apparently booming as the Washington Post has some enrollment numbers in their article about the degree.

Mobile, mobile gaming, gaming in general and many other industries need designers with the skill sets that are becoming increasingly more specialized. A four year degree, even classes in general is a great idea as it will become too much of a learning curve for companies to hire individuals that need to be trained from the ground up. A program like this allows the students to hit the ground running and become much more marketable upon graduation.

Entrepreneurs
Personally I am hoping to see multiple new start-up spinouts from GMU based on this program. Seed funding is growing recently and a program like this along with a hot seed market could create a nice startup industry in and around the Nations capital. Or so I can hope.

Milk the Whale

Posted on by
Reply

We created a LinkedIn group to utilize their platform and facilitate discussions centered on all things related to customers. A new site entitled Milk the Whale will be launched this month. More details to follow on the site as soon as it is launched. You can join the Milk the Whale Group here on LinkedIn.

Here is the welcome message for the new LinkedIn group.

Welcome – it’s Time to Milk the Whale
milk the whale
Thanks for joining. This group focuses on customers and revenue. How to get them, how to keep them, and how to “milk” them. Milking a customer may sound terrible but it is meant to get your attention. The point is that every business wants customers, wants to retain their customers, and wants to derive as much value from each customer as possible.

Definitions for the purposes of this group.

“Customer” – anyone your business/site interacts with regardless of whether or not they actually buy anything from you. They may directly or indirectly impact your revenue.

“Value” – the goal that you want to derive from a person or group of people.

Examples of “Customer” and “Value” to emphasize how broad these terms are:
- an individual (Customer) purchases a subscription (Value) to your service;

- an individual (Customer) buys goods/products (Value) from you;

- an individual (Customer) returns to your site to read articles thereby increasing your pageviews (Value) and potentially advertising revenue (Value);

- an individual (Customer) buys a product (Value) and loves your customer service telling everyone they can via Twitter becoming an evangelist (Value) for your business;

- a developer (Customer) uses your API, becomes and affiliate, and creates a site displaying your products for sale or other content and drives traffic to your business (Value);

The above illustrations are to emphasize the point that a “Customer” and “Value” can be defined by you depending on your business model.

Whether you run a business, market a business, am an affiliate of one/or many, or just wish to learn about customers are revenue, this is the place.

Technology Guides

Posted on by
Reply

Here is a non-business related but a helpful holiday post. I happen to use TigerDirect quite a bit and one feature they have that I find very useful, especially around the holidays if you are buying electronics. Tiger provides an excellent resource that they call their Additional Resources Knowledge and Information – apparently they could not agree on what to call it so they threw in all the words they wrote on the white board. Regardless, it is very useful. Here is a link to the Resources.

tiger_direct_resourcesI particularly like their guides, for example they have one on basic networking as a refresher or to point your friends and family to if they consider you to the “tech guy/gal” and you are tired of fixing everyone’s issues. I doubt that is the case as I am sure you enjoy being the tech person in the family a whole lot.

Holiday Hook Ups of the Electronic Kind
What led me to this post is my desire to determine how to best connect old components with new ones, media centers, computers, TVs etc. Here is a quick HDMI tutorial that I found helpful.

Happy Holidays and enjoy all the electronics you may be getting or giving. If you need assistance take a look at the Tiger information.

FTC, Affiliates and Endorsement Guidelines

Posted on by
Reply

Let me first say I am not being paid by the FTC to write this article.

Now for the fun stuff. The FTC has updated their guidelines and of particular interest are the Endorsement Guidelines. These are being applied to bloggers. They have created a series of short videos to answer the basic questions, all the videos are found here.

There is not much clarity in the guidelines other than to say the bar has been raised with respect to disclosure. Exactly when you must disclose, how and in what form is a little gray. They do provide examples however questions still remain around affiliate marketing.

If you only have time to watch one of the videos take a look at this one entitled: “What do the Endorsement Guides mean for bloggers?” By the way you may want to read them all, whether you are an advertiser or a blogger as civil fines can be as high as $11,000 per violation.




An excellent discussion can also be found here at the Reve News blog.

Free Entrepreneurial Advice

Posted on by
Reply

There is only so much time in a day, and so much information freely available. Also you see advertisements for paid content quite frequently on specific topics. When it comes to business and information for entrepreneurs the web has an amazing amount of information. I follow a decent amount of venture capital blogs, entrepreneur’s blogs, as well as CEO blogs. Here is one of my favorite which is actually a vlog (video blog). This is an individual that is both a successful entrepreneur and CEO, Bob Parsons of GoDaddy. He also has a motorcycle company.

Parsons Site
You can see the Bob Parsons site here. He has tips for startups and online businesses. The insight he provides from building three successful businesses is fantastic. He has built GoDaddy into a public company with over 7 million customers and over 35 million domains under management. Remember this is a very competitive space.



Above is a recent video of Bob explaining how he built 3 multi-million dollar businesses. A great site with excellent content. It is also very entertaining at the same time.

Getting to Plan B and Randy Komisar

Posted on by
Reply

If you have read the book The Monk and the Riddle you are no doubt familiar with Randy Komisar. Randy is currently a partner with KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). Per his bio on the KPCB site he was ‘co-founder of Claris Corporation, served as CEO for LucasArts Entertainment and Crystal Dynamics, and acted as a “virtual CEO”‘ for multiple companies. His background is extensive and impressive to say the least.

I have been fortunate enough to meet Mr. Komisar while I was at a startup in the valley. As one can imagine, of all the KPCB folks, he is a wealth of information. If you are like me you strive to learn from the best in the industry, so pick up a copy and enjoy the book as I am sure it will be enlightening.

New Book
Randy has a new book out, along with co-author John Mullins entitled Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model. This is not a review of his book as I have just ordered the book but I am sure it is going to be an excellent read. Here is Amazon’s description:

Unlock better opportunities with a new strategy for reinventing any business model. Succeeding with a new business whether in a corporation or a venture based setting requires taking a leap of faith. But in order to grow, the business will need to morph and adjust many times before it meets the needs of a viable market. “Getting to Plan B” guides you through specific steps to effectively reinvent your entrepreneurial business model.

Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model

 The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

GoDaddy Hosting Promo Code

Posted on by
9

GoDaddy Hosting

Use GoDaddy hosting promo code FAN20 for 20% Off website hosting. The FAN20 hosting coupon for 20% off on hosting is always the better deal. However, if you choose a month to month plan you will want to use coupon PETS1 for 10% off web hosting. With the free online advertising credits you actually make money on this deal. Go to GoDaddy Here.

GoDaddy Hosting Coupons
FAN20 – 20% off Hosting plans of 1yr or more [ direct link here ]
PAN1 10% off month to month plans [ direct link here ]
FAN123 20% off Website Tonight Website Tonight is a point and click website setup and design product [ direct link here ]
HOSTFEB1 $7.99 34% Off Hosting – 1 year Deluxe Hosting for $68 instead of $103 [ direct link here ] February Special

* See the entire list of Go Daddy Coupons here for hosting, domains, auction accounts, SSL certificates and more.

Most think of GoDaddy for domains but they are also very competitive in their hosting. For 12 months of web hosting you get a great package and it ends up only costing $45 with the promo coupon FAN20. Simply enter the promo code at checkout. On the right side of checkout you will see a box that reads Enter Promo or Source Code. Click that link and a box will appear where you enter the godaddy hosting coupon. Once you enter it hit the Apply link and the discount will be applied.

Step by Step Instructions for Applying the Coupons at Checkout.

Web Hosting Perks
With the $45 a year package you also get $95 in free advertising credits. These are credits with Google, MSN and Facebook. Looks like you can make $50 after you redeem the credits. Same information can be found on the Squidoo page about GoDaddy Hosting in detail.

Website Hosting Types
godaddy hostingThere are multiple types of hosting accounts available. There are the typical hosting accounts to create any presence you like. Also available are accounts specific to WordPress, blogs, podcasts and more. You can also have entire servers, dedicated servers, virtual dedicated servers and even cloud servers. You can even have application add-ons, analytics and additional IPs if needed for your hosting.

Recently they added what they call their 4GH Hosting. This is their 4th generation hosting. There is also a godaddy wordpress hosting account to get up and running fast. Most hosting companies put your site, your web space, on one computer. Other websites are also on that one computer. This is the typical definition of shared hosting. There are problems that can arise. For example if someone elses website that is on the same computer has problems and brings down the computer than your site goes down also. If your website or another website on that computer becomes very popular the amount of traffic can also cause server problems. That can bring down your site. What larger companies typically do is use a load balancer. Load balanced web hosting takes the incoming traffic and routes it to one of many computers, your website hosting files are copied onto multiple computers and therefore the “load” (which are visitors to your site) is spread among many computers. Now your site does not go down due to too much traffic, nor will another site cause you problems. There is much more that the 4GH godaddy hosting does for websites you but that gives you an idea of it’s website hosting capability.