inspiring design - inspiring solutions for an online world

How Much Google Juice Do You Have?

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:46:37 -0600

The inspiring design, llc. PageRank Tool

With all the talk of SEO, SEM, SE... What is important, and what is not??? Google makes it a bit easier to rank yourself and find out, "What is your Google Juice?"

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. When one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes , the more important the page must be. But, it is also important to realize that Google also measures the importance of the page that is casting the vote, so one vote can be of more “significance” then another. Google then uses all of this information to calcualte a PageRank or PR. A very technical analysis can be found at Wikipedia, Google, and WebWork Shop.

Whats Your Google Juice? Check out Our Page Rank Tool at inspiring design, llc.

Why is it important? Read about Online Marketing - why its important, why you need to do it, and how you can do it now.

Google Gadgets - Make Your Site a Hub

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:20:08 -0600

In previous articles I combed over Google Gadgets for your iGoogle homepage. Now, I move into looking into Google Gadgets for your website. How can you male it that a user of your site doesn't need to leave? Simply give them all of what they need online in one place - your place. The following are a few of the google gadgets we have been experimenting with. Leave us a comment if you use one on your website and have received positive feedback on it. Most of these gadgets lend themselves well to blogs, but can work on a website if incorporated ina tasteful and thoughtful way. Not like we have here...

SEE THEM IN ACTION HERE...

Easy 1099 and W2 Filing for the IRS Challanged

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:29:07 -0600

Its that time of year again, and I am not talking about Groundhog Day, even thought it is an undervalued national holiday (and a equally undervalued and spectacular Bill Murray movie.)

Nope, its tax season. And if you are like me, and run a small business, that’s great for your accountant, and not so great for you, your free time, or you wallet. I wanted to pass on a small tool that made my life just a touch more manageable this year. I work a lot with contractors and consultants, which means a bevy of 1099 activity. There are several avenue you can travel down for your employee W2’s or 1099’s. You can let your accountant take care of it, you can do it yourself, or you can let the magic of the world wide web help you along.

Since I am a believer in magic (an an online solutions company), I opted to explore my options on the web. Most services out there will do your 1099’s, but for a price, and most only make sense if you are doing bulk submissions (20-30+). However, I found a little site, with a very apt name: FileTaxes.com

I searched and searched, and stumbled across this one. One can file single 1099’s or multiple 1099’s for a flat rate of $3.49, a great price for the small business that don’t need a ton of them filed. It also efiles with the IRS, mails them to the recipient, provides you with hard-copies, and emails a conformation upon delivery. You can read more at http://www.filetaxes.com

Personal Intro to Your Business Website - Gizmoz

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:27:19 -0600

I try not to blog too much about what has already been talked about, but could only find one article on gizmoz.com, and since I have been playing with it extensively this morning, thought I would share a bit, and hopefully solicit some feedback.

So to start, what is gizmoz? In short - it is a service that will allow you to generate a talking avatar. You can upload a picture of your face and it will build a 3-D image. It also allows you to put voice to your digital communications. Personal service to the comical extreme.

For most of us, once you complete the easy process of building your first (what they call) character-based visual expression, it may come out looking like a dysfunctional mini-clone; eerily reminiscent of the 80's pop culture icon Max Headroom. So can their be a legitimate business application to this.

I have decided to experiment.

I have produced a short 20 second video clip (see the sidebar to the right) that can be played upon entering my website. From this point on, for the next month or so, I will monitor my analytics account to see if I can keeping more people on my site for longer. Take a look:

Now - I didn't use myself, since I was trying to give this a hint of professionalism and no matter how many different pictures I used, I couldn't get it to a point that didn't make me want to reconsider this experiment. Maybe I am just digitally self conscious, but I'd rather use one of the provided (and admittedly better looking) provided pictures. Does does this work? We shall see.

I will have statistics next month, but in the mean time, take a look, let me know what you think, and if you could ever see using this as an application in your business.

Justin

inspiring design, llc.

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Custom Web Design and Hosting @ Affordable Prices

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:30:59 -0600

Web Design and Hosting Packages

Location: DC Metro Area

.inspiring.design. is a professional web design company in the Washington D.C. Metro Area .inspiring.design. supplies services of web design/development, web application development, website hosting, search engine promotion (SEO), online marketing, and graphics/logo design.

Whether you need a custom Web application, or simply a place to display company information online, our Web development team will work with you to provide solutions that are tailored to the needs of you and your clients.

When you need your Web site to go beyond the basic online info pages, our web programmers can take it to the next level. We can create custom PHP and MYSQL business applications to meet your needs.

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40+ Real Estate Web 2.0 Websites, Applications, and Communities

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:56:25 -0600

The following is a list of 40+ online web 2.0 websites, applications, and communities, some that are in beta (or even alpha) development stages. If you know if one we missed, by all means tell us, this should be an organic, ever growing list.

Home Values

Zillow

It allows anyone to find rough estimates of the valuation of their home by searching comparable properties. While values are not always accurate, the site continues to get it better.

RealEstate ABC

Beta property valuation tool competing directly with Zillow. It uses Google Maps in its technology mashup and allows you to do cool things like adjust values of properties given certain market conditions.

Cyberhomes

Valuations give you access to most of the same information that real estate professionals use to evaluate homes. Whether you own your place, are thinking of buying, or even just looking around, you can explore data ranging from property facts, value estimates, and a variety of important indicators of local and national changes in the housing market.

eppraisal

Free service that allows anyone to quickly and easily take the first step to buying, selling, or refinancing a home by providing instant access to property valuations, real estate professionals and additional services. eppraisal pulls together public record data from over 70 million homes to quickly and easily give you an estimated value range.

HouseFront

Use HouseFront to find a house value, homes for sale, property value, a home appraisal, local real estate guides, and connect with local real estate agents.

Listings

Trulia

Scrapes real estate sites to find listings and brings it all together in a clean, well designed site. Using Google maps and RSS feeds, the site seems to have taken the lead in the future of online property listings.

Smarter Agent

GPS real estate searches from your cell phone

HousingMaps

Craigslists – Google Maps mashup to find properties for rent or for sale in your area. The interface is deceivingly simple; dive in and discover how content-rich HousingMaps really is.

Retrove

Retrove is a national vertical real estate search engine that allows you to search all types of real estate listings such as MLS listings, FSBO, foreclosures, classifieds and other types of property listings across the nation. Retrove provide you real estate search results that take you directly to the real estate listing source.

City Cribs

Buy, Rent or Sell US Apartments and Homes. A comprehensive real estate marketplace featuring millions of listings.

ZoomF

Property search engine Google maps mashup,aggregating listings from many online sources and making them easily searchable with a GoogleMap-based visual interface.

Prop Smart

Next-generation, independent real estate search engine. We crawl and index millions of homes for sale and other properties, then organize and display them on a slick Google Map interface.

Roost

Roost offers parallel services - a search for consumers and a new platform for Realtors. Unlike other site, they dedicate their time and resources to being a great search engine and having up to the minute data for a dozen or so markets, with more being added daily.

Google, Craigslist, Oodle

Neighborhood

WalkScore

Help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property.

YourStreet

Community of homeowners, buyers and renters sharing inside knowledge about their local neighborhoods. Discover a new neighborhood or share knowledge about your own. Track local real estate conditions in your area - what's selling and what's not. Connect with neighbors across the country and find out what a neighborhood is really like.

Rotten Neighbor

The first real estate search engine of its kind allowing you to rate and review good and bad neighbors before and after you move so you can make a smart real estate decision.

Home Thinking

Online service that helps home owners choose the most remarkable neighborhood real estate agents to sell their house.

Hubbuzz

Apartment search by neighborhood website. In addition to finding apartments, users can search neighborhood profiles, photos, interactive maps and user generated blogs and events. Hubbuzz is an apartment site that incorporates extensive neighborhood information and user generated blogs and comments from anyone in the community.

Terabitz

Comprehensive and customizable real estate Web site that fundamentally changes the online real estate industry by helping consumers make smart decisions before, during, and after the property transaction in ways never before possible. We, at Terabitz, realize that every home exploration is unique.

Estately (Washington State Only) - Beta

Created with the belief that home buyers need context when they're looking for a home. At Estately you can learn about the surrounding area, the nearby shops, the character of the neighborhood and the style, size and price of a property.

Blockhunter

New way of finding a place to live. If you want to move, you can let people in the area know you're looking. If you want to sell or let a place, you can find interested people quickly. No hassle, no obligation, no estate agents.

House America

Real estate information service that gives those of us who are not real estate professionals independent access to actual unfiltered information that is relevant to what is often our most valuable investment—our home—or any other real estate.

Agents

Agent Scoreboard (Some States)

Search for agents in your local area and read reviews and comments posted by real people that have used their services.

Incredible Agents

Real estate agent review service that helps home buyers and sellers find an Incredible Agent who can assist them in their real estate transactions.

Agent Match

Free service to consumers that enables you to search for real estate agents using meaningful criteria including: commission, location, sales history, services offered, experience level, and the estimated value of the home you are selling or buying.

Marketing

VFlyer

Classified ad creation, management and submission platform that enables online sellers to quickly and easily create attractive classified ads or "virtual flyers" that can be posted on dozens of leading online marketplaces in a few simple clicks.

Postlets

Free template and photo hosting for craigslist classifieds

WellcomeMat

Video network that connects you with people and resources to most effectively market real estate, neighborhoods, cities, events and local businesses.

Real Estate Shows

Use your digital photos to create stunning Internet Shows in less than 5 minutes! They will look and feel like TV commercials!

HomePerks

Online rewards system that enables real estate sellers and professionals to give Buyers and other users rewards.

Info

HotPads

Supply housing shoppers with the info they need to make sound financial decisions about whether to buy or rent.

Foreclosure Radar (California Only)

Only place where you'll find complete up-to-date information on every foreclosure opportunity available in California, including exclusive daily updates on every auction.

DIY (always good to know the competition, right?)

Redfin

Industry's first online brokerage for residential real estate.

ChoiceA

Users are encouraged to list their property for sale for free. Buyer's can browse listings with new technologies including drag-n-drop favorites, endless scroll searches and can view properties using data, pictures or maps.

BlueRoof

Way to buy and sell a home—bringing together buyers and sellers in one place, and connecting all the resources you need to buy or sell your home.

RealEstate Communities

Active Rain

Free Online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business.

BiggerPockets

Real Estate Social Networking site out there. With a focus on networking, dealmaking, and education, the site brings a professional approach to the world of real estate for both the consumer and professionals.

Zolve

Online real estate referral network, a business exchange that connects real estate practitioners and service providers across the country and around the globe.

Just Plain Cool Sites

Realius

Fantasy Real Estate

iiPorperty

Manage your properties with software that lets you track rents, bills, advertisements and invoicing.

Tools of the Times - Part I

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:51:47 -0600

Spokeo

When I stumbled upon this site and looked at the tool for a minute or two, I thought, "hey this could be interesting". After I entered my email and fed it my contact list of 450 people, I went from interested, to amazed, to nervous, all in about 3 minutes. I think for what the tool was designed to do, it works well, and was nice to see people I never even thought to track down in mySpace or Facebook. It also felt a bit like I was intruding, since most of these people post to site not ever thinking that a tool like this would come along.

So whats the tool, and what does it do? You feed it a list of email addresses and it goes and searches 22 sites (everything from flickr, picasa, myspace, to your wish list at amazon.com) and brings you a list of your "friends" (or anyone you have an email address for) and their pictures, blog posts, twitter thoughts, and products they hope to soon buy.

The first thing I thought, is oh boy, I hope that at some point I didn't add anything embarrassing to my wish-list on amazon. It was a brutal reminder that everything you post on-line sticks around for a very long time and can and will be found, even if you don't intend it to. Don't get me wrong, this is a amazing little tool they have going one here. It will consolidate my social networking for my business in ways I couldn't have imagined just yesterday. You can enter yourself and track all of the places you network in one central hub.

I guess this is the way we are trending with the web. Web 1.0 connected information, web 2.0 connects people. Give it a shot and let me know your feeling on this tool and implication on privacy and your social networking plan.

http://www.spokeo.com

Local Portals, Targeted Marketing, Amazing Results

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 09:25:38 -0600

Why you should use them to get local info, list your business with, and even own your own…

It started out as the World Wide Web. It was amazing the reach one could have, chatting to someone in Ireland, buying something from South Africa, emailing someone in New Zealand, all from your living room. Everything was about big, wide, and breaking down the invisible boarders of distance that have so long separated neighbors of the world.

Now, we are starting to see a trending back toward local and the community. Google, Yahoo, and AOL all have local portals and searches. Also, independent local portals are becoming big business in the web world. Why, because everyone wins. The people or companies that develop the site do so for branding, marketing, advertising, etc and the users get information on their local community quickly and easily, a service that even the biggest companies have a hard time providing. Why, because it is users of the local community portal that drive the content, and not even Google can keep up with real time information on every local community. It can be expensive to list with nationally based portals, so local small businesses can advertise for much less on a local, community based portal, sometime even for free.

At sites like UrbanaMD.info, a local Urbana Maryland community portal, all businesses can obtain their own webpage for free. This seem counterintuitive if the owner of the site hopes to make some cash, right?, Well, if you look at it, once again everyone wins. The more information listed on the site, the more end users, and the more revenue from advertising. Most of the time the owner of a site is a development company hoping to gain market share through branding - or a local real estate agent or mortgage broker hoping to gain community trust, appreciation, and recognition through providing a community service based application.

If it isn’t obvious by now, my company runs several of these sites, just recently releasing UrbanaMD.info. AT UrbanaMD Joining is FREE, Classified Ads are FREE and UNLIMITED, and basic Business Listings are FREE. Once you join, you will be able to post to the forums, add your business, check out our recipe Xchange, and even create your own "My Urbana Space" page much like MySpace.com. These are only a few of the things going on around here, and new things are being added daily. There are now over 160 local businesses and restaurants now listed under the "Our Urbana" Section

A site like this provides a public service and in using open source software such as Joomla, can be sold as a reasonable priced, pre-packaged application to anyone that is interested (contact us if you are). But this isn’t just a pitch; you should list your business with every local portal possible, getting your name out there as much as possible. But owning and operating a local portal can take your business to the next level.

Some more articles to mull over:

Get Thee To Thy Local Portal

Promote Your Business through Local Web Portals

Local Portals Mean Big Business

Geolocal - Local Internet Marketing for Small Business

Increase Online Productivity with iGoogle

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:26:53 -0600

iGoogle is a customizable homepage allowing users with a google account (get one here) to add Google Gadgets and RSS Feeds to your homepage. There are over 25,000 gadgets available and there is the ability to create your own from a template. We have sifted through thousands of gadgets to bring the top ten gadgets that increase your ability to get work done on the web, since there are a million out there that hinder it.

1. Google Analytics - If you have a website or blog you need to track user statistics. GA also allows for integration with Google AdWords. This module will Display Google Analytic Stats on your homepage. Provides access to all profiles created in your account. Allows user to set refresh interval for real time updates.

2. Timesheet Recorder - Freelancers, contractors, or even one of your employee may need an easy way to keep track of their time. Here it is.

3. Google Services - If you’re like me and use wmany different Google services, add their gadgets to your iGoogle homepage: Gmail, Google Reader, GCal, Google Docs, Googe Talk.

4. Compound Gadget - Allows you to combine several gadgets into a tabbed interface, allowing out clean up your page a bit after you add all the new gadgets mentioned here.

5. Google Map Search - Find places with Google Maps without leaving your homepage. Ajax Based, which means Coolness. Find restaurants to wine and dine clients, or get direction to your next meeting.

6. Document to PDF - If you send invoices or documents often, this will allow conversion to the standardized pdf format.

7. Microsoft Outlook - If you use Outlook, put your inbox and calendar on iGoogle.

8. Stickies - Movable, resizable, dockable post it notes. Finally remove those yellow stickies from all over your office…

9. Pandora Radio Gadget - Everyone needs some inspiration while working, and what better way then listening to some tunes from the internet’s coolest radio - since it only plays songs you like (how? find out more about Pandora here)

10. Create Your Own - if you are inspired like us, or just can find what you need, Google created a wizard allowing you to create your own, using seven templates, including ones for photos, a countdown, lists, etc.

.inspiring.estates.

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:20:30 -0600

.inspiring.estates. is a content management system (CMS) geared specifically to Real Estate agents, that allows you to manage properties on your website in an easy and effective way. This powerful combination enables you to run a real estate website and use the most user friendly open source (read FREE) Web Content Management System (CMS) available today - Joomla CMS!

Our products are developed based on several case studies and feedbacks from our users. Now you can list and manage your real estate properties easily using .inspiring.estates.

Easily Manage Properties and Site Content
Publish and Showcase Properties at the Click of a Button
Attach an Unlimited Number of Photos per Property
Advanced On-Site Search Engine
Search Engine Optimized
Recommend Property to Friend Feature
Company and Agent Information
Allows Individual Agent Login and Listings
Featured Property Module
Print Property Details
Save Property Info as PDF

These are several reasons you can be assured that choosing our .inspiring.estates. is the right investment for your company. Many realtors interested in .inspiring.estates. also love our .inspiring.mail. program, an email managment system.

BNI - Business Networking International

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:01:03 -0600

BNI is a referral based networking group for professionals, plain and simple. Most people have heard of it and some have considered joining. I weighed the option for a year before taking the plunge and wanted to share my experience. Some background…

BNI allows one and only one person per professional group into a chapter at once. SO, there can be only one real estate agent, one web designer, one marketing exec, etc. This allows you to lock out the competition and have sole access to your fellow members (or sales staff if you want to look at it that way) and their network of contacts.

Why it worked for me...

The positive aspects of the group are many. The thing that BNI has helped me and my company does is shape, mold, and hone our image. You have a wide variety of members with diverse background and experience. It is necessary to be able to effectively communicate your business ideas and goals to them and to communicate what make a great referral for you. In my line of work, I tend to speak in straight up DORK. Now, I have brought it down to a slight dweeb accent.

You learn how to forge effective partnerships with others, learning how to listen as well as speak (as previously mentioned). The motto is givers gain, and it is not just a sappy one liner. The more you work to develop the personal and professional relationships within the group, the more you get from the group and the experience as a whole. Each person not only can impart wisdom from years of experience, but your clients and other non-BNI associates will benefit from your acquisition of knowledge as well as your ability to refer experience professional from a diverse array of professions and backgrounds.

Nothing like telling a client, “I got someone for that…”

You will most likely find your “other” in the group. It is that one profession that you just have to have (mortgage broker and real estate agent, web design and computer fixer guy, etc) – they just fit together. This is the low hanging fruit and this keeps the pocketbook happy while you spend the time and effort to train the rest of your BNI associates as your own sales staff.

BNI is a commitment. This isn’t an optional thing, and you can show up late. It is a weekly appointment, just like any other meeting. Some find it hard to make an hour a week commitment to the program. Others find it hard to make the commitment of the 1000 plus dollars it will cost over the course of the year for dues and meeting fees. And to you, you may be right, BNI may not be for you, but it was, and still is for me.

This isn’t a cure all, and should only be used as a small part of your overall business plan, I have seen some sink all their eggs into the BNI basket and wonder why they don’t do the business they want. I have more than paid for my dues and fees a half a dozen time over, and I am still the new guy. I can’t wait to see what happens as I grow and help build the group.

If you are in the DC area and want to stop by a chapter to see if BNI is right for you or you just want to knwo a bit more about BNI, take a look at our website at http://www.bni-gaithersburg.com

UrbanaMD.info - Local Portal with Traffic, News, Message Boards

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:53:52 -0600

http://www.urbanamd.info

Parallel Facebook Group

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:52:57 -0600

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7633835247&ref=mf

Facebook Parallel Group

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:51:10 -0600

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6368228491&ref=mf

10 Steps to Promoting You and Your Business using Social Media

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:22:40 -0600

December 23rd, 2007

Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I heard “you’re too old for MySpace”. If I did, I wouldn’t have to try and grow my business at all, I would be retired. Problem is, people are quick to judge and I am short on nickels. In today’s online world, you either promote yourself and your business online in some capacity - or you fade away. Period.

Social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and it brings a profound change to your potential client’s experiences. Now, not tomorrow, is the right time to implement features that will make you and your business social media friendly and will allow you to implement networking and marketing techniques that will realize increases in traffic to your website, and your bottom line.

Step 1. In the immortal worlds of Pete Townsend – Who Are You?

Let the world know who you are and what you do. People don’t deal with unknowns well, and when you are just starting to build a web presence; you are exactly this, unknown. Create a personal website along side your business website. From your personal website, link to your many vehicles of online networking; such as Linked IN, Facebook, and MySpace (to name just a few). Today’s online entrepreneur has multiple online presences and you need a central hub to manage all of these. Promote your online presence from this centrally managed online personal page.

Step 2. Create Online Profiles…

So, you need to start somewhere, but where? Start by creating a Facebook and LinkedIn account, Facebook is the online leader in social media and Linked in is the premier networking site, with just these two, you are well on your way. Spend two hours a week in the beginning building your profiles, connecting with colleagues, associates, and friends, and publishing content to these sites. Below is a list of other website which will let you create free online profiles or communities - for after you get your feet wet with Facebook and LinkedIn and have the need for more…

Step 3. Start a Blog…

This is free and easy. The obvious choice for the beginner is the Google owned blogger.com, but for a more serious approach that allows customization, you may want a custom setup of Wordpress, LiveJournal, or other software. This allows for customization and you can provide an easy bookmarking feature to social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us or other listed in step 4.

Step 4. Yes, It Is A Popularity Contest…

Provide an action button for direct posting of blog articles to Digg. Digg, and others like it, are community-based popularity website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication. A well dugg article can bring thousands of visitors (read: potential clients) to you.

Step 5. Short and Sweet…

Provide RSS feeds for your blogs, forum postings, websites, etc. An RSS feed provides easy access to your user base and allows them to quickly and easily navigate your information. Frustrated people often do not hang around long, and if they don’t hang around, they won’t learn about you or your business. Keep people happy and keep them on your site.

Step 6. Get it out there…

Publish all your feeds at Feedburner (or others from the list below). Much like Facebook, Feedburner is the premier RSS provided media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds. They custom RSS feeds and management tools to bloggers, podcasters, and other web-based content publishers. Services provided to publishers include traffic analysis and an optional advertising. If you have something worth reading, you will be able “bank it” using their services.

Step 7. Going Viral

A Viral video refers to video clip content which gains widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or IM messages, blogs and other media sharing websites. Now, not all of us have the potential for this, but we all have the mechanism. Remember, if you have a camera phone, you could have a viral video, which is posted, can drive traffic to your site, regardless if it is relevant to your business.

If this form of advertising and social media shenanigans is not for you, then take comfort, you can still provide video. Your video can be educational or service oriented and aspire to inform your clients or users on products and services you provide. Video is a medium maybe more powerful then the written word, but takes a bit more knowhow and thought.

Step 8. Spreading the Virus…

Provide embedded links to your remotely hosted videos from your blog, website, or social media sites. YouTube as well as others allow a community driven video sharing experience while keeping the load off of your server.

Step 9. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words…

Use social photo sharing sites like Flickr and SmugMug to share pictures related to content on your site or blog. Use many of the techniques discussed earlier for social video sites.

Step 10. Sharing is Caring…

Provide a “Send to Fríend” feature for all the products and services you provide, your RSS feeds, your videos, and your pictures (pretty much everything we covered above. This feature is a link that sends the article, product description, etc. to a recipient via e-mail. This allows people to spread the word at no cost to you, and after all that’s what we are trying to do here right? Put in the work up front and let the internet and social media take over. It will take time, but it will be worth it.

These steps are not a get rich quick recipe, but a strategic formula for long term success in an overwhelming online world. If you have questions or comments, please leave them here or contact us.

How to Promote Your Business Online

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:44:01 -0600

Being a complete online solutions company doesn't come easy. Even we have a hard time keeping up with the cutting edge application that come online each and every day to help you (and us) promote ones business in a world that online. So, how do we do it? Probably in a lot of ways that you have done it for the past 20 years, but with a twist. Below we will walk though some of the tools we use, hopefully inspiring you to dive into the the world of cutting edge online marketing.

VFlyers

The way it was...Flyers You would print them up, and put them under car windshield wipers, post to telephone poles, hand them out on a street corner.

How it is now...Vflyers Create and manage attractive virtual flyers that can be automatically or manually submitted into leading online marketplaces!

With this application, you can create multiple flyers, image galleries, and post to craiglist and dozens of other advertising sites with the push of a button. Vfler tracks flyer views and contacts and you can manage these all in a very intuitive and user friendly interface. Best part of all, like most application we use here at inspiring design, llc - IT IS FREE. No better way of cutting costs then to do free online advertising.

Blogs

The way it was...Editorials

How it is now...Blogs, Blog, and more Blogs Even my grandmother has one.Everyone now a days has a blog, and if you don't, just get one, it is easy, cheap, and we can help you set one in in a snap. Once you have a blog, you have a voice, and if you get people interested in what you have to say, you have an audience, and then you have prospective clients... So, once you have one, how do you get readers? Here are some sites, tips, and tricks on how to promote your blog.

Blog Rush
Submit to RSS directories
Submit to blog directories
Submit to general directories
Find out how much your blog is worth
Social Media - Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube
Forums - AuthorityBlogger, Bloggeries, SitePoint, Blogger Forum, BloggerTalk

Google Adwords

The way it was... buy ad space in local newspapers to promote your business, pay even if nobody sees it.

How it is now... buy ad space though Google, only pay if someone clicks the link Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a paid form of advertising, popularized mostly by the Google Ads. The concept is fairly simple. Businesses bid to be placed at or near the top of the search results for particular keyword phrases. The bidding is done on a "per-click" basis, meaning that a company pays a specific amount every time the engine sends them a visitor. In addition, the top results on Google also show up in the results of many of the popular search engines (usually listed as "sponsored" or "featured" results).

.inspiring.mail.

Justin Johnson (inspiring design, llc.) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:54:11 -0600

I Have had many clients interested in an effective way to communicate with clients or potential clients through email. IF any of you have ever tried to do this before, you know it is unwieldy, and if done incorrectly, very ineffective. So, I have taken this input and along with a year or so of research, have finally released

.inspiring.mail.

We put you in the drivers seat by letting you create and send your own great looking emails in-house. Once you pick a template (or we can design you one from scratch), you can easily add your own content, select your recipients and schedule delivery in your own time.

Preview the email as you build it
Our live editor allows you to see your email as you build it. You can add your own text and images to your template and even change the order any items might appear. The moment you add your own content we'll automatically save your draft so you can come back and finish it later.

Complete sender control
You can use your own 'from name' and email address, so the email always looks like it comes from you. You can also select your own subject and which email address any replies should be forwarded to. We take all the messy work out of the equation by processing any bounces and unsubscribes for you automatically.

Send now or schedule for later
Once you're happy with the email, you can send a test version, send it immediately or schedule it for delivery at another time. This way you can build your campaigns in advance and schedule them for delivery tomorrow, next month, or any time in between.

Our servers have been whitelisted
All of .inspiring.mail. delivery servers have been whitelisted by many of the larger ISP's, including AOL and Yahoo! Our servers are also integrated into the spam reporting systems for other large ISP's such as Hotmail and MSN. These arrangements ensure the best chance of your emails being delivered and also allow us to keep any sender not following best practice off our servers.

Other Great Features

    * Easy List Managment
    * Simple Import and Export of Contacts
    * Track Subscriber Growth
    * Detailed Usage Reports
    * Simple Billing