Wordpress plugins izit uses

I’ve tried dozens of WP plugins and my favorites, which are used here on izit.com, are:

• Askimet - intercepts spam making it very easy to zap the crap before it stinks the place up
• FeedBurner feedsmith - captures all RSS feed subscriptions and reports the total subs in one place
• Share-This - consolidates all of the social bookmarks into one neat-n-clean icon
• Vipers video - makes it super easy to add video clips from a wide variety of sources
• All-in-one SEO pack - easy way to boost the SEO value of posts
• Google XML sitemap generator - creates and then updates sitemaps with a click. Notifies Google, Yahoo, MSN, ask.com automatically.
• Wordpress stats - Very nice presentation of site stats including referring sites, etc….
• Wordpress Automatic upgrade - A major timesaver in keeping WP and plugins updated as the quest for perfection continues.

There are hundreds of other quality plugins here: WP Plugins

If you have suggestions or questions please feel free to post them in the comments section.

Free Email Marketing eBook

My good friend Raj wrote a great book about email marketing that he’s giving away. His company, mailermailer, handles the email list management for thousands of clients and this is his way of turning more people into successful internet marketers that may use his mailermailer services. They don’t ask for anything in return, not even your name or email address. Just download, learn, and check into mailermailer.com when you’re ready.

Download here:The 2009 Guide to Easy Email Marketing - 59 pages stuffed full of useful information.

For more info on mailermailer visit their Website: mailermailer.com They offer one of the best set of services available and their pricing is always super competitive.

One Stop for Job Searching

Ran across indeed.com today, a site that pulls job postings from a ton of sources including the main sources like monster.com and careerbuilder.com. It was very easy to use and brought quite a lot of positions to my attention that I would have otherwise missed in my searches earlier in the day on a couple of the “main” sites. When I returned to the site just now the previous searches (brain surgeon, rocket scientist, genetic engineer, male dancer…) were politely saved for me making it very easy to resume right where I left off.

They don’t charge job search sites to add thier listings leading to a solid critical mass of listings which will lead to continued rapid traffic growth. This is a solid job search site to bookmark so in the likely even that you will someday be looking for a new gig you have it handy.

Use Zuberance to Build a Volunteer Salesforce

We know word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing and we also know that the internet contains more customer feedback and opinions every day. Zuberance offers a hosted service that helps companies identify highly-satisfied customers who are willing to spread the word about a product or service they’re thrilled with. By verifying the “volunteer” salesperson is an actual satisfied customer their comments and opinions are actually believable.

Seems to be a great grassroots way to increase sales. If the product or service is awesome there won’t be any shortage of thrilled customers willing to spread the word. If rapid growth causes product or service quality to lessen then the word-of-mouth is reduced providing an appropriate reduction in growth.

For more information check out their Website: Zuberance and download a Whitepaper on the Zuberance solution.

I feel compelled to inform you that this post was not paid for in any form nor did Zuberance know about it at the time of posting. (Wouldn’t want to taint their reputation for offering only authentic heartfelt reviews.)

Google Politics and Search Results

Call me a cynic but I have long suspected Google employees made sure their politically favorite Websites received better placement in their search results then their counterparts.

Google CEO, Eric E. Schmidt, is such a political animal that he is more interested in joining the Obama team then in working to grow Google. Most likely the political leanings of the Google staff as a whole is more like that of it’s CEO then that of a random slice taken from the general population. To think that this bias doesn’t play a role in the split second decisions that human editors at Google are faced with all day every day is to be naive.

A recent article in The Register out of the UK, Google cranks up the Consensus Engine,  included this commentary “Make no mistake, Google is moving into new territory: not only making arbitrary, editorial choices - really no different to Fox News, say, or any other media organization. It’s now in the business of validating and manufacturing consent: not only reporting what people say, but how you should think.” As the article states this is no small thing. A Google that filters the internet with bias of any kind is a Google that has no business being used for search.

Mauiman the Digital Man

————————————-

No point… just found it interesting.

Nintendos Viral Marketing Masterpiece

This Nintendo Wii promotional piece for it’s Wario Land has already been viewed by millions and the cost per view for Nintendo… zero. Sure they have their sunk costs invested into the production of the video, but viewers who love the piece are spreading the URL like wildfire. Enjoy!

Selling Domain Names

With the downturn in the economy and cashflow getting tight for a lot of people more quality domain names are showing up for sale then I’ve seen in some time. If you have a domain name you’ve been hiding under your mattress for years waiting for the perfect time to cash it on for millions of dollars here are some sites you should know about before you put the For Sale sign on the domain name:

• The Domain Name Journal - This site tracks the sales of domain names with a weekly list of the top prices paid for select domains. It will give you a better idea of what domains are worth. The automatically generated values some sites prepare for you on the fly are worthless by comparison. A domain name is worth what someone is willing to pay for it and nothing more.
• Domain Name Sales - This site has a searchable database of all aftermarket domain name sales from 2003 to the present. Type in a keyword that is relevant to your domain name and you will see what was paid for similar domains and where the sale was made. You can sort it by sales price giving you a good sense for what names are worth the most.
• SEDO - SEDO has over 1.5 million domain names in their database that you cansearch by keyword or browse by category, price, and other variables. It’s a good place to list a domain name you might want to sell. In researching some of the highest sales recorded SEDO was the firm handling a healthy percentage of them. Pizza.com, which sold earlier this year for $2.605 million, was sold on SEDO.

• Afternic - I’ve had an account at Afternic for years and have used them to park some of my domains and to offer a few for sale a couple of years ago. I didn’t receive any inquiries, but I do believe it is a reasonably good place to sell quality domains that they will feature.

There are plenty of other sites where you can sell (or find) unique domains that might be of some value, but these are the ones I have found to be the better ones with enough critical mass (i.e. eyeballs, traffic, inventory, prospective buyers) to produce worthwhile results.

Getting Ideas to Stick

If you’re an entrepreneurial type like myself you’re probably afflicted with the curse of constantly coming up with ideas for businesses as I seem to be. So when I discovered the book, ‘Made to Stick’, written by two brothers it caught my attention. The book takes a serious look at why some ideas take hold (i.e. stick) and some die a horrible undeserved death, or so the person with the idea would have you believe.

It’s a great read and I encourage all of you idea-people to grab a copy to help you significantly improve your odds of getting sponsorship of your next brilliant idea.

Made to Stick from Amazon

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Be sure to watch the current featured video: Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us. It’s an interesting perspective on how the net is being built and fun to watch.

« Previous Page — Next Page »