Hey guys,

What do you think of the new design?

This weekend I was hanging out with my friend’s Bob & Lisa. Lisa is a really talented graphic designer. She works for Tidewater Workshop and Lego. We were helping them do some work around the house and they wanted to watch the first season of Lost which we have on DVD.

I asked Lisa what she would charge for a Logo. Keep in mind Lisa is a really top notch graphic designer but she offered to create the logo for us for free!

What do you think about the new logo?

What do you think about the new layout of the site with the 3 columns instead of 2?

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 7% [?]

I used to run the Under 30 Mastermind for young entreprenuers, investors, and real estate mavens. Basically a site for young people to get together to learn and share ideas about starting in business, investing, and real estate. A year or so ago we rolled the site into the Youth Cove which was started by Jonathan Wold. Jonathan is a bright young guy and I felt he could better see for the interest of the Under 30 market than I could. Jonathan has done a great job with Youth Cove.

One of the recent threads on Youth Cove was Where are all the clickers? Two things I don’t understand about Google adsense ads?

You should read the entire thread because Jonathan wrote a very excellent response. I followed up with a couple of tips I wanted to share here:

Several people have asked Where should I place Google ads on my pages? This is a copy of the Google heatmap. The dark orange areas are the areas where adsense ads typically have the most success. The pale yellow areas are the worst places.

If you want to know where all these tips come from… Login to adsense and look in the very TOP right hand corner and click on HELP. Thats where they hide a bunch of their guides. The best one is the optimization tips

Doing a bit of research since I originally answered this post today I also discovered some new things I didn’t know. I knew you could have 3 adsense ads on your page. However I didn’t know you can also add one of the Google Adsense “link unit” adds and it doesn’t count towards your 3 ads. According to Google you can have three adsense ads and one link unit ad on the same page.

Here is another new tip for you. You can add Chitika eMiniMalls to your page without violating the Google Adsense terms of service. The way that eMiniMalls work is that you can place content sensitive ads on your page. So if you have a page on Ipods, the ads would be Ipod based. However if you do that you cannot have Google Adsense ads on your page without violating the terms of service.

Instead you can select specific categories or specific products to advertise on yournpage. If you do that, it is not a violation of the adsense terms of service! I’m going to write an article on Chitika soon, however if you want to join now, you can signup for Chitika eMiniMalls and get started today.

Got more questions about Adsense? Leave me a comment and ask your questions. I’ll be glad to answer as best I can!

- Ben

Popularity: 4% [?]

My friend Charles Chapman just turned me on to this cool tool. Its a map of the world where you can put in your location and it will show where you live. It then shows you where all of the various readers of our blog are. I think its kinda cool to see how broad our reach is. So check out our map and let us know where you live!

- Ben

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hi guys,

Sorry I didn’t get this information sooner!

Skaffe.com is having their second anniversary sale. You can now submit your web site to their directory for only $2. Considering their normal prices is $30 per site, this is an excellent deal!

However keep in mind TODAY October 24th is the last day for the special offer. You need to act on it today!

What is Skaffe? They consider themselves an international directory of web sites, kind of like a small version of Yahoo. Their home page is rated a Google PR of 6 and the inside pages rank from 4-2. You aren’t neccessarily going to get a big boost from them, but for $2 what do you have to loose?

So go get your Skaffe.com listing today!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’ve been doing a bit of research on Podcasting lately. I think for us internet marketers Podcasting is where the next big wave of money is going to come from.

Why I do I think this?

Many of us know Blogs are where the money is now. Email marketing lists are still good but they can be blocked by anti-spam software or ISPs that put you on a blacklist. Blogs are cooler because the RSS feed requires the user to subscribe to it. Currently ISPs don’t block rss feeds so if people subscribe to your feed they will GET your content. Whereas people who subscribe to your email list won’t neccessarily get your content!

Now blogs are where the money is today, but you can already see where Blogs are going to fail in the near future. Google’s blogger has been dealing with thousands of spam blogs. Software has been created so that spammers can fill blogger with hundreds of bogus blogs promoting their products or affiliate programs.

This is where spam filters will start coming in. If splogs (Spam Blogs) become a problem will people continue going to blogs? Will ISPs and others begin to create spam blog filters? Or is this something that we should rely on the search engines to fix? Is it even in the best interest of Google to filter out the splogs?

Thats why I think Podcasts are the future. I just bought the book Podcast Solutions: The Complete Guide to Podcasting (Solutions) on recommendation from my friend Charles Chapman.

I think the future of Home Business Blogs is going to be adding Podcasts to our mix. I’ll keep you guys posted as I continue to do research and prepare content to launch our podcasts!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 5% [?]

Quick History lesson.

In 1969 the ARPANET was born. This was the predecesor to today’s internet. At the end of 1969 the ARPANET connected 4 computers. One at UCLA, one at Stanford, one at UC Santa Barbara, and one at the University of Utah.

The Internet grew from this initial network of 4 computers known as the ARPANET.

At first it wasn’t intended for mass consumption. We didn’t have domain names like Yahoo.com. However when the internet grew from 4 computers to 50,000 it became neccessary to come up with an easier way to address those computers.

Thats how the domain name was born. I recently stumbled upon the first 100 .com domain names ever registered! There were some pretty interesting names on this list.

You’ll recognize a lot of the big name corporations who were smart enough to jump on the bandwagon early were technology based. However you’ll also find a few interesting ones mixed in. One example is allied.com. I don’t know if it stood for something different back in 1987 or not? However it now belongs to Allied Van Lines, the moving company! Is it possible that Allied saw the value in registering a domain name back in 1987? Is it possible that they were the 84th domain name registered on the internet?

Or how about fmc.com. What do you think they do? How about chemical company that makes things like insecticides and polymers and all sorts of things that I don’t understand. But would you imagine they were the 18th domain on the internet? Before companies like Boeing, GE, GTE, 3com, Cisco, etc?

How about toad.com. Thats an unusual sounding domain right? You’d think all the original domains belonged to corporations. Well that isn’t true. Some of the original domains belong to geeks like me. Ok well I wasn’t on the net in 87, I didn’t get on until 1993. However toad.com was registered by John Gilmore who is one of the more intelligent technology gurus of our time. John is also a bit of a political activist especially in regards to big brother and protecting ones rights through cryptography.

Anyway there are some interesting domains on this list. Click through and check them out and let me know if you find some other cool stories like John Gilmore’s toad.com, FMC, or Allied.

Rank	Create date	Domain name
1.	15-Mar-1985	SYMBOLICS.COM
2.	24-Apr-1985	BBN.COM
3.	24-May-1985	THINK.COM
4.	11-Jul-1985	MCC.COM
5.	30-Sep-1985	DEC.COM
6.	07-Nov-1985	NORTHROP.COM
7.	09-Jan-1986	XEROX.COM
8.	17-Jan-1986	SRI.COM
9.	03-Mar-1986	HP.COM
10.	05-Mar-1986	BELLCORE.COM
11.	19-Mar-1986	IBM.COM
11.	19-Mar-1986	SUN.COM
13.	25-Mar-1986	INTEL.COM
13.	25-Mar-1986	TI.COM
15.	25-Apr-1986	ATT.COM
16.	08-May-1986	GMR.COM
16.	08-May-1986	TEK.COM
18.	10-Jul-1986	FMC.COM
18.	10-Jul-1986	UB.COM
20.	05-Aug-1986	BELL-ATL.COM
20.	05-Aug-1986	GE.COM
20.	05-Aug-1986	GREBYN.COM
20.	05-Aug-1986	ISC.COM
20.	05-Aug-1986	NSC.COM
20.	05-Aug-1986	STARGATE.COM
26.	02-Sep-1986	BOEING.COM
27.	18-Sep-1986	ITCORP.COM
28.	29-Sep-1986	SIEMENS.COM
29.	18-Oct-1986	PYRAMID.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	ALPHACDC.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	BDM.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	FLUKE.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	INMET.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	KESMAI.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	MENTOR.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	NEC.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	RAY.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	ROSEMOUNT.COM
30.	27-Oct-1986	VORTEX.COM
40.	05-Nov-1986	ALCOA.COM
40.	05-Nov-1986	GTE.COM
42.	17-Nov-1986	ADOBE.COM
42.	17-Nov-1986	AMD.COM
42.	17-Nov-1986	DAS.COM
42.	17-Nov-1986	DATA-IO.COM
42.	17-Nov-1986	OCTOPUS.COM
42.	17-Nov-1986	PORTAL.COM
42.	17-Nov-1986	TELTONE.COM
42.	11-Dec-1986	3COM.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	AMDAHL.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	CCUR.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	CI.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	CONVERGENT.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	DG.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	PEREGRINE.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	QUAD.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	SQ.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	TANDY.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	TTI.COM
50.	11-Dec-1986	UNISYS.COM
61.	19-Jan-1987	CGI.COM
61.	19-Jan-1987	CTS.COM
61.	19-Jan-1987	SPDCC.COM
64.	19-Feb-1987	APPLE.COM
65.	04-Mar-1987	NMA.COM
65.	04-Mar-1987	PRIME.COM
67.	04-Apr-1987	PHILIPS.COM
68.	23-Apr-1987	DATACUBE.COM
68.	23-Apr-1987	KAI.COM
68.	23-Apr-1987	TIC.COM
68.	23-Apr-1987	VINE.COM
72.	30-Apr-1987	NCR.COM
73.	14-May-1987	CISCO.COM
73.	14-May-1987	RDL.COM
75.	20-May-1987	SLB.COM
76.	27-May-1987	PARCPLACE.COM
76.	27-May-1987	UTC.COM
78.	26-Jun-1987	IDE.COM
79.	09-Jul-1987	TRW.COM
80.	13-Jul-1987	UNIPRESS.COM
81.	27-Jul-1987	DUPONT.COM
81.	27-Jul-1987	LOCKHEED.COM
83.	28-Jul-1987	ROSETTA.COM
84.	18-Aug-1987	TOAD.COM
85.	31-Aug-1987	QUICK.COM
86.	03-Sep-1987	ALLIED.COM
86.	03-Sep-1987	DSC.COM
86.	03-Sep-1987	SCO.COM
89.	22-Sep-1987	GENE.COM
89.	22-Sep-1987	KCCS.COM
89.	22-Sep-1987	SPECTRA.COM
89.	22-Sep-1987	WLK.COM
93.	30-Sep-1987	MENTAT.COM
94.	14-Oct-1987	WYSE.COM
95.	02-Nov-1987	CFG.COM
96.	09-Nov-1987	MARBLE.COM
97.	16-Nov-1987	CAYMAN.COM
97.	16-Nov-1987	ENTITY.COM
99.	24-Nov-1987	KSR.COM
100.	30-Nov-1987	NYNEXST.COM

This list was part of a 30-Nov-2004 Jottings.com blog
entry entitled My Kingdom for a Time Machine!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Earlier I wrote the beginning of a series of articles on building strong customer relationships. I outlined four ways to communicate, by email, by phone, by direct mail, and in person. In this article we’ll specifically discuss email communication.

One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is to not purchase their own domain name. If they owned their own domain name they could send email from their domain.

I bet 99% of you realize it is not professional to use a free email account like Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, or Gmail for your business email right. You guys are smart enough to read my blog, so you realize that these free email accounts are not professional, right?!? Hello? Are you listening? Free email accounts are not professional! Spend a few extra bucks to get a domain name and email, ok?

So you probably think your ok right? You are smart enough that you’d never use a free account like Hotmail for your business? Right?

Are you however making the same mistake by using your ISP’s generic email account for your business email? Is your email address something like mycompany@comcast.net or mycompany@earthlink.net?

Come on guys. Whose brand are you building here? Are you helping earthlink and comcast build their brands or are you building your own business? We’re talking $20 a year here to have a professional image for your business.

So Step One is to signup for your own domain name. I recommend you check out GoDaddy. They offer awesome prices and also offer additional services such as email hosting, web site hosting, etc.

Tomorrow in Step Two we’ll discuss how you can PROPERLY use email to send mass communication with your customers.

- Ben

Popularity: 4% [?]

I originally sent this message out to all my team members from one of my network marketing ventures. This is how I track the success of my advertising. I even found this tip helps me in online advertising as well as offline ads!

Hi team,

On the training call a week ago I mentioned one way I track leads is by using a voicemail service that sends me all my voicemail messages via email. It also includes the caller id information for each person so that I can contact them even if they didn’t leave a message.

Some people asked me what voicemail service I use.

I use Kall8 from Cognigen. There are a bunch of Cognigen agents on our team. If I tried to mention them all I’m sure I’d miss someone. So just ask your upline if they are a Cognigen agent or if they know a Cognigen agent.

Kall8 is a toll-free service which starts at $2 per month. It includes voicemail and you can have it send every voicemail message to you as an email. You just have to click on the little .wav file in your email and it will play the message through your computer’s speakers.

You do also pay per minute charges, but if you are routing all the calls to voicemail, how many minutes worth of calls are you going to get? At 6.9 cents per minute you can handle a lot of voicemail messages for less than $5 a month!

This is my strategy. When I am doing a new advertising campaign I purchase an additional toll-free number for another $2 per month. Thats a small fee to pay to be able to track the success of my advertising. In some cases I’ve found a little $12 classified ad to do as well as an ad that cost me $50 per month. One way I track the success is by using a different toll-free number in my ad. I can then cancel the toll-free number if I am nolonger using it, or I can use it in a different advertisement. Right now I have 5 different toll-free numbers I use in my advertising.

Kall8 also allows you to buy local phone numbers for some cities both in the US and internationally. If you don’t want to use a toll-free number you can still use their service using a local telephone number. This is a really neat service because sometimes people don’t like to respond to toll-free numbers in classified advertisements. This way you can have a local number even though you don’t live in that city.

Hope this helps give you guys some ideas about how to track your ads!

Don’t think that just because you don’t use classified ads you can’t use this trick! I put a toll-free number on one of my web sites and orders went up by 30%! Keep in mind however that you HAVE to call them back. Sometimes these people are time wasters and you waste a bunch of time on a small order, HOWEVER many times these people will be placing big orders and they want to talk to someone and ask some questions. It is worth it for the $2 a month.

Try it! Try putting a toll-free number on your web site and see what happens!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 4% [?]

This is one of the first questions I ask small business owners in my consulting business. How do you communicate with your customers?

The answer is often, that they don’t! This is especially true in small businesses.

Sometimes they are in an affiliate business and their customers are not their own. So they don’t really have a way to communicate with them. Other times they just don’t understand the value of their customers.

When I begin working with a client my first task is to get them to understand the importance of their existing customers. Studies show that it is easier to sell an existing customer than it is to get a new customer. Existing customers who have had a good experience are often willing to purchase additional products/services from your company. Who better to get referrals from than your existing customers. If you want to build up a referral business then you need to build strong customer relationships.

So how do you build strong customer relationships?

The first step is to communicate with your customers!

Now, how do you go about communicating with your customers?

There are basically 4 ways to communicate with them.

1. By Email
2. By Direct Mail
3. By Telephone
4. In Person

I’ll talk more about how to communicate with your customers in future articles. At this time however I want you to think about your customers. How much information do you have on your customers?

Do you have their email address? Do you have their mailing address? How about their phone number? Do you know anything about them other than the basics? Do you know if they have kids? Do you know what they do for a living? Do you know when their birthday is?

So then next step will be talking about how you can gather information from your customers with their permission! Take some time out and think about it. Think about the information you have now, and the information you’d like to be able to collect from them… and what ways you might be able to come up with to encourage your customers to freely give you that information. Then later we’ll talk about how you can use that information in your customer loyalty programs and in building that customer relationship.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 4% [?]

I just put up a little web site showing off our Send Out Cards’ team Infomercial. We are the only team in the entire company with our own infomercial. You can check out my site to see a 3 minute clip of our new Send Out Cards Infomercial.

Our infomercial is begining to air nationwide on the Hallmark Channel and on Bravo! I’m very excited! This is an awesome opportunity for our team.

If you are interested in the Send Out Cards business opportunity then send me an email at: ben [at] benjaminfitts dot com. Send me your name and your mailing address and I’ll send you one of our greeting cards with a DVD copy of our infomercial inside.

If you reach this site and are already a Send Out Cards distributor, I apologize. Our infomercial is not available to you. I have no problems saying this, You joined the wrong team. I’m proud of my team and what they have done and I am proud to say that our team is the best team in Send Out Cards!

- Ben

Popularity: 5% [?]