« July 2009 | Main | September 2009 »
It's the hot, lazy end of summer, so I'll make the prize giveaway contest easy this week:
Just leave me a Comment below. We'll draw a name from among those who Comment here.
Comments with style, insight or humor get entered in the drawing twice!
I'll be happy to send out a personally autographed copy of e-Riches 2.0: Next Generation Online Marketing Strategies to the winner.
Happy Friday!
I’ve spent years now writing to help you succeed online.
My first book, Internet Riches, came out in 2006. It was the first practical and detailed guide to how anyone, even non-techies, can start their own e-businesses online.
Then this spring I published e-Riches 2.0: Next Generation Online Marketing Strategies. That book is on its way to best-seller status because it's helping people worldwide understand and profit from new social media and online marketing strategies.
And in between the books, I’ve shared over 400 blog posts, dozens of podcasts, and 1,500+ Twitter tweets with you, too.
Now I’m Curious – What else can I do to help you succeed?
What are the areas where you are having difficulty? What are the top topics where you have questions and need help?
And, how do you want to hear from me? Is email the best way to dialogue? Or blog posts, Twitter, video, or podcasts?
I’m really asking you here.
My personal mission is to help share the success that the Internet has brought into my life with you. What can I do to help you succeed on line and in life?
I’m developing a new membership service for launch next month. It will be designed to help you, but to do that effectively, I need to hear from you about what you need.
Let me know what I can do to help you and I’ll do my best to build it into the next generation of Scott Fox services for you!
Please leave me a comment below? (or send a private email to whatsnext @ scottfox.com if you’re feeling shy!) Thanks.
"What hosting company should I use to host my web site?"
I get emails from all over the world asking me for my recommendations. I'm happy to share my thoughts (see below) but honestly, stop worrying about it!
Times Have Changed Since 1999
10 years ago the costs of web site hosting and bandwidth were high. They were worth your worrying about, especially if signing a long term contract.
But since then, Moore's Law has continued to crank up computing power at a rapid pace.
So here's the deal: Don't worry about your website hosting company. Online storage and bandwidth have both become so much cheaper that no small e-commerce startup business today needs to worry about them anymore.
Find a reputable hosting company and get started! Worrying about finding the "perfect" hosting company is no excuse for delaying your e-business progress.
5 Tips for Finding A Good Enough Web Site Hosting Company
Since I know you're going to ask anyway (and there are lots of vendors to choose from), here are 5 tips for finding a website hosting company good enough to trust with your venture's website :
1. Reputation and SLA: Is the company known by anyone other than your nephew who recommended it? If so, does it offer a Service Level Agreement ("SLA") that guarantees your web site will be available online at least 99.99% of the time?
2. Easy to Use and Included Services: If you try their hosting tools, administrative control panel, and own corporate web site, are they easy to use? Do they include potentially useful extras with your account like email, photo hosting, blogs, or search engine optimization (SEO) tools? Included tools can save you money and make managing your web operations easier, too.
3. Good Customer Service: See what other customers are saying by Googling the company's name and the words "customer service" or "problems". 5 minutes doing this can save you lots of pain and suffering later!
4. Go Direct: Unless you have a middle man ("consultant" or "agency") that is really adding value, try to deal directly with the company that actually hosts the services, rather than a reseller. This can save you money and hassle.
5. Price: Of course price is a factor, but it should not be your first concern compared to the points detailed above. The web site hosting needs of most startup e-commerce ventures today can easily be handled for less than $25/month (and maybe as low as $5.00/month). If you can't afford this, you should not be starting a business...
Notice anything familiar here? These are the same rules you'd probably use for selecting a service provider in the "real world."
Don't suspend your good business judgment just because you're new to technology. And don't waste time worrying about the easy stuff like web site hosting. Save your energy for the more important stuff like product design, marketing, and making money!
Get Going Today!
Try GoDaddy, 1&1, Hostgator, my personal favorite Typepad, or my own InternetMillionaireDomains.com. Any of these retail level solutions are likely more than enough to get your new web site up and running with reliable service at an affordable price.
What do you think? What web hosting companies do you like? Am I making this sound too easy?
To help you keep up, here are the most informative articles, research statistics, and blog posts that I have recently shared with my Twitter followers.
This compilation of links is a quick, helpful summary of the latest news, trends, and gossip in the social media business-sphere just for you!
The best explanation I've ever seen for how Google Adwords works: http://is.gd/1KE16 Outstanding work from Wired's Joanna Pearlstein
More than 2x people watching video online this year than last year: http://is.gd/2aLfq Thank you, Hulu.com...
Big domain name sale: $4.9MM for Clothes.com as Amazon acquires @zappos. Nice one, Bill Gross! http://is.gd/28ePA
Finally watched this amazing wedding video. THIS will make you happy to be alive: http://is.gd/212un
New 20 min podcast on hear2.0 Radio blog by @mramsey1 Topic? Yours truly on how radio can use social media better! http://bit.ly/KD9oQ
Conference Board reports that social media gains usage among the elderly! http://is.gd/24uKM
Did @scobleizer and @mashable help us finally kill the EVIL of auto-follow on Twitter? http://is.gd/25nGU
Hilarious "100 (Geeky) Things Your Kids May Never Know About" from Wired magazine's Nathan Barry http://is.gd/1KDbw
RT @latimesnystrom: Facebook had 100x UVs than Friendfeed June '09 but FF's UV's grew 75%+ in last year [@Compete] http://bit.ly/8dDir
Surprisingly moving video tributes to Michael Jackson from all over the world! http://www.eternalmoonwalk.com
NYT profile confirms: the Internetz is taking over r lives... http://is.gd/2aLRZ
RT @joygan88: No need to worry; things will work out just fine. All is well.You will Overcome; just be yourself, love yourself and b Happy!
If you're not yet on Twitter, you're missing a lot of great free real-time updates that can help grow your business.
Follow me on Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/scott_fox to get my latest "tweets" like these in real-time.
Tweet you later!
Next week I’ll be taking your questions LIVE for an hour during a special readers-only FREE Teleseminar.
We’ll talk about online marketing, web site strategies, e-commerce, Twitter, email promotions – whatever is on your mind that will help build your business!
Would you like to join us?
Ask Scott Fox YOUR Questions LIVE
This rare, one hour LIVE event will be held:
Next Thursday, August 20
3pm ET (Noon PT / 8pm UK time)
>>> Call-in details for this f.ree special event will be emailed to those who qualify for the offer detailed below.
The Catch? This is a "HIDDEN" Offer!
This fre.e special event is only for readers of my new book, e-Riches 2.0.
If you have read it, you know that there's a "Hidden Offer" buried in the book. Simply respond by email to the offer detailed in Chapter 7 of e-Riches 2.0 and you're in!
If you haven't picked up a copy of e-Riches 2.0 yet, now's a good time! You'll get private access direct to me during this fr-ee readers-only Teleseminar. You can ask me your questions by phone or email! So order now so you can join us for this special Teleseminar event. I'd like to meet you, too!
Today leading social media blog, Mashable, breathlessly posted a piece called: “TWITTER PURGE: Top Twitter User Unfollows 106,000 People.”
It details the "shocking" discovery that when top social media user Robert Scoble (@scobleizer on Twitter) UN-followed 100,000+ people, he suddenly received a lot fewer spam tweets.
Scoble is quoted as saying “When I unfollowed everyone all my spam just stopped. Dead. No more spam. Not since Monday. Twitter is actually quite enjoyable.”
No Kidding!
Is this really news? Back in March I posted a piece called “4 Annoying Twitter Myths about How to Use Twitter.” That post was a long time coming.
I had been struggling for months to reconcile what many gurus were saying I was “supposed” to do on Twitter with what made sense to me personally as a marketer and businessman. #3 of my four points in that post was “Myth: You must follow back everyone who follows you.”
My “4 Twitter Myths” post turned out to be my most popular post EVER. People worldwide visited ScottFox.com to read and agree and comment.
Now, 5 months later, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore (@mashable on Twitter) concludes: “…it seems, users are learning that having 100,000 “friends” you’ve never met is much less valuable than connecting with a select number of people you know well.”
Oh, really??!
Can’t say I’m surprised…
The lesson here? Be sure to balance what the "gurus" say against your own common sense. New social media doesn't change the fact that no one knows your business better than you do.
Read the rest of my most popular post ever “4 Annoying Twitter Myths” here and follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/scott_fox.
What "Twitter Best Practices" are working (or not) for you? Please let me know in the Comments.
[Twitter bird courtesy of Latulippe.]
[UPDATE - November 25, 2009: Almost 4 months later, another online marketing "guru", Joel Comm, today announced he is unfollowing everyone, too. His reason? Because "...my (Twitter) stream had become unmanageable. There was no way in the world to keep up with the natural flow of the people I was following."
No kidding! I would have thought that was obvious to guy smart enough to write a whole book about Twitter! As I detailed here almost 9 months ago, Twitter is about following quality people, not quantity. Read my "4 Annoying Twitter Myths" blog post here for more helpful Twitter guidance.]
As usual, the Internet offers you lots of resources to help outsource your troubles.
How to Find Help Online
I recommend the following services as good places to post your project needs. Posting in these online project marketplaces can help you attract qualified help at great prices.
These "virtual assistants" and short-term contractors can often cost much less than you think because they attract a worldwide audience of part-time workers.
Of course, you can engage full-time professionals and agencies, too, but the part-timers active on many of these sites are often just looking for extra income (or live in places with much lower costs of living). They pass that cost savings on to you and free you from long term commitments, too.
* Elance.com and Buyerzone.com: Both of these marketplaces offer services from all kinds of contractors, from administrative help to web designers to engineers to designers to transcriptionists to lawyers to telephone installation.
* Getafreelancer.com and Rentacoder.com: These two services specialize more in technical help, so if you have a web production project, they can help you find affordable help worldwide.
* Amazon's Mechanical Turk: Short-term repetitive tasks that can be performed online are listed here. You can pay pennies per micro-task to get help with small tasks like categorizing photos, proofing grammar, or comparing products. Great for high volume digital grunt work.
* Craigslist.org: Most cities covered by Craigs List offer a section called "Gigs." Here you can post short-term projects of any sort. This can be especially useful for projects that require local, in-person help (like moving your office or posting flyers around town).
Your most precious asset is your time. Try using these project-based services to hand off to contractors and virtual assistants some of those nagging projects that chew up your time.
Try Scott Fox's new 
Recent Comments