New Orleans Internet Marketing

Earlier this week, WebHostingTalk.com, one of the biggest forums on the web for web hosting discussions, was maliciously hacked. According to a WHT representative, the attacker got in through their backup, deleted it, and moved onto the main server from there. Apparently the reason they lost so much data was that they weren’t making “backups of backups,” something I posted about the importance of a while back. Just more evidence that you can never be too careful.

A long time ago, I remembered that I forget a lot, so I started making lists.

I realized that I had plenty of great ideas to market my business, but if I forgot them, it could be like losing the winning lottery ticket. How dumb would that be?

The thing that’s really sad about it is the fact that probably 99% of my best internet marketing ideas come to me at a time when I’m completely unable to act on them, and the ones that I can act on right away, usually wind up costing me a lot of money because I don’t let them hibernate on a list for a short while!

How could such a simple, intuitive task escape me for so long?

So I started making internet marketing to-do lists, and to-date, I have 3 running to-do lists (general, blogging topics [this wasn't one btw], and press release topics). I keep them on my PDA phone, so that wherever I am, there they are. Now, I never forget my good ideas, and I actually get most of them done. I can’t begin to tell you how much this has increased how productive I am. I rarely sit at the computer board, trying to think of something to do when I feel like working. Nowadays I just check my to-do list.

The other good thing about the internet marketing to-do list, is that it makes things easier to prioritize. Instead of starting and stopping different tasks I know I should be working on, I just look at the list, and it’s usually pretty obvious what I should be working on.

In the past, if you tried to contact MySpace about advertising, you’d be lucky to get a response. Then if you did, you probably wouldn’t be considered unless you spent $10k / month or more. Well that’s all changed with MySpace’s introduction of “MyAds Beta.” I recently tried out MyAds by running some banners to promote my forums, and here are the results. Read the rest of this entry »

and stick to Fox News Channel. It’s amazing to me that even though the Clinton administration is almost singlehandedly responsible for the financial mess we’re in today because of the pressure they put on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand mortgage loans to low and moderate income people in 1999, networks like CNBC never mention that kind of stuff. Instead, they support the filthy rich Wall Street crooks who blame George Bush for everything and use smoke and mirrors to shake down the American public.

Well, maybe not masses. Not now at least :)

Over the past few days, we launched a new site that I am very excited about. This is a project that I’ve been wanting to do for years, and once I got the ball rolling, like with my first real blog, I had this nagging realization that:

1. It was something I should have started long ago.
2. There is no doubt that it will be successful.
3. That it has tremendous profit potential.

My interest in dedicated severs and the market began back in the Fall of 2007 when I was looking for suggestions for a new hosting company. If you follow my blog, you know I did my homework and ended up with my current dedicated server at LiquidWeb.

Since that time, the topic of servers has become of great interest to me, and I noticed that it was a niche not often written about in the blogosphere, but there are plenty of people out there looking for information. There are also plenty of dedicated server companies out there trying to reach these people.

This is where Dedicated Sever School fills its niche and accomplishes its task. The goal of the dedicated server school blog is to create a library of blog posts and information for the public on web server FAQ’s and solutions, while at the same time referring visitors to the dedicated server company best suited for their needs. We have a professional staff writer with experience in the industry, and brand new partnerships with the best and brightest server providers in the industry. Over the next few months we will be networking with other bloggers, to create a well known oasis for server information. So if you are someone who has an interest in the industry or a related blog, let us know! We should connect!

If you’re a small business who can’t afford to have a professional PPC management company run your Adwords campaign, then use this simple guide to get started on the do-it-yourself plan:

• First and foremost, make sure you can track conversions so you know how your Adwords campaign is performing. Start by getting a cheap 1-800 number from Kall8.com and forward it to your regular number. Replace your phone number on your website or Adwords landing pages with this one so you can check your call detail to see which calls came from your Adwords campaign.
  
  Then make sure you set up conversion tracking in Adwords, this usually only requires putting a small bit of code on your “thank you” page.
  
  It also helps to have Google Analytics installed on your website, with “Goals” setup properly. With “goals” in Google Analytics, you can easily track conversions whether it be a lead submitted through a contact form or purchase through an online shopping cart, and Analytics allows you to see quite a bit of information about the different types of traffic your website receives, much more than what you will get form the Adwords interface.
  


• Second, make sure that your site is conversion-friendly. Internet users have short attention spans, and some may not visit more than one page of your website. Since you are spending your hard-earned money to get these people to your site, it’s of utmost importance that you can turn a visitor into a conversion on that first page.
  
  This may mean setting up landing pages that are targeted for each type of ad you’re running in Google. For shopping carts, the ads should send the visitor to the specific product page or category that they are targeting. For lead generation sites, the ads should send the visitor to a page that deals specifically with the ad and keywords you’re targeting. Most importantly, web pages should have your 1-800 number displayed prominently on the website, and if it’s a lead generation site, there should be a contact form on every page.
  
Read the rest of this entry »