Mike's Biz Talk posts

The downside of a news plugin

This is a tale of how I missed an opportunity; hopefully others can benefit.

I'd been running around so hard preparing for some seminars I'm giving that I didn't realize what was happening. I set up the AWSOM news plugin a few months back, and didn't really pay attention to what it did for me. The announcements popped up where I'd set them up - on the home page. So I thought everything was great.

BUT

• I'm getting good traffic from Twitter, driven by the TwitterFeed plugin which sends tweets for new blog posts. (One directional - I don't want a personal tweet turning into a blog post).

• My blog posts are fed to Biznik. I get traffic from Biznik too, but probably more important, updates on Biznik boost my search results.

• Posts also go to LinkedIn which also generates some traffic.

• And of course my posts are also going to Feedburner and whoever has signed up for RSS.

I could look at a different kind of news plugin that perhaps sends tweets, but I'd miss the other benefits. Lesson learned - post news as a post.

Oh, and the seminars? Half-day classes to teach do-it-yourselfers how to create professional quality survey. I just created a promo for Biznik, so use code biznik0907 for the best deal when you check out http://tinyurl.com/mp5wto

--Mike

I'm getting

Restricting area of blog

Hi Bob. I'm still formulating what I want to do, so please excuse me if this is vague.

I want to offer an information area on my blog that is more targeted - SurveyTips. I'll be providing valuable information to people doing their own surveys and I want to have the ability to connect with these people to offer seminars. If I simply put the pages in an open blog, I'll get the benefit of all the search engine juice etc., but I won't have a way to connect unless they voluntarily sign up. If they sign up, they should be able to get the tip in email, or to read one or more on the website.

I think I can use a signup to my mail service to capture email etc. But how can I integrate that with Wordpress registration? And can I restrict access by category, or do I have to password protect each post? Or set up a new blog.

It looks like the Members Only and Registered Users Only plugins might help, but I haven't investigated yet.

Thanks

--Mike

Looking for a Testimonial Plugin

Has anyone already found a great plugin for random testimonials?

I'm currently using random testimonials hard coded into a PHP file, provided by my developer. While this works, it is a pain to maintain, and also includes all the testimonials (visible or not), in the pages.

I've just tried WP Client Testimonials by J. Oldenberg, but there doesn't seem to be much documentation. It isn't possible to edit the testimonials - just create and delete.

I'll keep looking.

Thanks

Mike

Wordpress squeeze pages

I don't know if this is a good place for the question, but here goes:

Is anyone using squeeze pages on their Wordpress sites? For those (like me) who weren't familiar with the term, a squeeze page is a landing page that requests information (typically email address) before allowing access to a piece of information to be downloaded.

I thought at first that I could just use a Wordpress username registration (which I also want to use for something else, and haven't figured out either). But I think there are differences.

I wish I knew the questions :) but would appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks --Mike

Getting started as a Paypal merchant

I know that I'll be looking for other options before long, but I wondered if Biznikers could offer some clarification and insights about the lower end Paypal options.

I just sent someone a request for a down payment (a new client arriving to my newly promoted website - yeah!). Since I have a Paypal account already, I just asked the client to pay that way.

But, my current Paypal account is a personal account. I was just going to upgrade to Premier or Business, but of course made the mistake of trying to figure out the differences.

The first thing I spotted was that Personal accounts don't pay anything to receive money, while Premier/Business accounts pay 2.9% plus $0.30 (or less for higher volume). I guess that's just the way it is. If I'm selling on eBay I don't have to pay a fee. but as a business I do (sigh).

But I'm not seeing much difference between Premier and Business accounts that might affect me - other than being able to use my business name and have access to different payment methods. I probably don't care much about payment methods if I set up a different payment system, but want Paypal as a fall back. I'm assuming that Premier is more for eBay volume sellers who are sole proprietors. Is that right?

But the real questions are about the right way to set up the Business account.

Would it be better to upgrade my existing 6 year old Paypal account to Business? Do I get some benefit in reputation or credibility from that history?

I guess I'd have to set up a separate personal account if I wanted to sell personal stuff on eBay, and do I then lose reputation from its newness? I'm assuming that it would be dumb to use the upgraded account for personal selling, partly because if would look odd to a purchaser.

Any insights would be most appreciated. And do check out the new website (www.5circles.com) if you get a chance. I just posted a blog about Nate Silver's Oscar predictions - so it isn't all just arcane research details!

Thanks --Mike

Market Research: What do you know, what would you like to know, how would you like to learn?

I'd like to start a discussion about Biznikers' understanding of the value of market research, costs, etc.

When I meet entrepreneurs and small business people, it often seems that they don't think much about market research, don't know what they could/should be doing, or think it might be too expensive. I'm developing tools and educational opportunities, and I'd like to incorporate more of the thoughts of potential users.

Rather than survey the group, how about a dialog to share more of the group's perspective? Any comments are welcome, but here are a few questions to get us started:

• Have you done any market research, and was it valuable?

• Would you recommend market research? What kinds?

• What would you like to know about research?

• How would you like to learn more? Would you attend a seminar for a couple of hours? Would you like to read articles?

Mike

PS - if you have used one of the self-service tools (SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, etc.) please fill out this survey

WANTED: Simple Ad design. OFFERED: Survey services

I need to get an ad developed for a Trade Show guidebook. Nothing too fancy (this is for the WA State trade show for vendors), but I'm coming to the conclusion that it might be better to have a professional do it. Just to add a wrinkle, time is short (I only found out about the event recently) - the copy needs to be supplied by 9/26 and I will be on vacation for a couple of days next week.

What I'm offering in exchange is survey services. My new SurveysAlaCarte service is designed to allow people who want to run their own survey (using SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, etc.) to get help to make the survey effective. We can develop questionnaires that work, plan the research to match your objectives, test, analyze, or any other part of the project. We also do full-service market research which could be discounted. More details are on my website - www.5circles.com

As a small business, you might be interested in research for customer satisfaction (very important in tough times), new markets, competition, or any number of other things.

If you are interested, let's talk!

Mike