Resources

So you are ready to start building your online business! Great. When I started I didn’t have a clue where to start. I’ve spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to develop a team of partners and services that I trust and which provide good value. Here are some that I personally use and recommend to you without reservation …

Where To Get Your Website

Do you need a website and don’t know where to go or what to do first? You could go to a web designer. The advantage is that you have a pro designing your site. The disadvantages are that: a) it can be expensive, b) it can often be a lengthy process, and getting small changes done can be both #a and #b; c) you really should learn to do some web changes yourself. I often want to change my copy or a price, or perhaps put up a “Special” for a special occasion. If you can do it yourself you are miles ahead.

We use Adobe Photoshop extensively to prepare graphics and photos for our website. Learning to use Photoshop is one of the essential tools of a web designer/entrepreneur. You can learn more and download a free trial by clicking here.

Where To Host Your Website

We have over 40 different websites, all running on one “Reseller Hosting Account” at HostGator.com. This type of account gives me the capability to sell web hosting to others, just as if I were a big independent web hosting company. I could even brand it myself any way I wish. I don’t promote that service to the general public, although I could (I just don’t want to provide technical support to a lot of people at all hours), but I do sell enough hosting accounts to friends and business associates to cover hosting all of my own sites for free and return several hundred dollars per month in profit. You can’t beat a deal like that. Managing a hosting account is easy and for me – just plain fun. I very highly recommend HostGator.

Where To Get Beautiful, Inexpensive Images For Your Website

You want beautiful photography and attractive graphics on your website. Where do you get them? We buy a lot of professional photos for our many websites and know what a huge impact good photos have (both Rick and Kim have degrees in photography). Some stock photography agencies charge a fortune but you can get good photos for only a couple of dollars each at Dreamstime.com.

How To Host Videos For Your Website

You can put videos on your own website. We have done that a lot and it has worked fine. However, when you reach a certain amount of traffic you may have problems. We now store our video files on Amazon’s S3 storage system. You can get an account with them directly. It is a very inexpensive way to host your videos and other files and server them robustly, all over the world. To put your files on Amazon S3, we use and absolutely love a service called EzS3. It makes putting your files up there and managing them super easy.  I highly recommend you give them a try.

What are “keywords” and why do you need them? Find out here …

Keywords are how potential customers will find you in the search engines. You use them in your own advertising to target just the customers you want clicking on your ads. Here is a really cool tool that I’m using to spy on my Adwords competition, and come up with more keywords I can use for my campaigns. It’s It installs right into your web browser and I can’t even tell it’s running when my browser’s open. It is a great way to “spy” on your competition to see what keywords they are bidding on in Google Adwords. Visit PPC Web Spy to learn more.

How To Write Good Copy

Writing good copy not only on your website but also on all of your marketing materials is essential to getting your customers to buy from you. You need to step into the customer’s shoes and ask, “why would I buy it?” You need to sell the benefit of watching the DVD and answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” It’s what gets people excited about buying your video. To get you started, consider downloading this ebook 10 Steps To Killer Web Copy. In this eBook, you get two hours of that exclusive marketing interview where one of the top copy writers, Alex Mandossian, reveals his 10 step proven formula for writing killer web copy. It’s one of the most step-by-step and well detailed systems for writing copy that we’ve seen. We’re offering it to our web visitors for $9.99 although it should sell for much more.

Click here to order your copy today.

Add Amazing Animated Slide Shows To Your Videos And Web Pages

Animoto is just the coolest thing! Turn a folder full of photos into a mind blowing slide show video that your clients will love. They will think you are a genius, so don’t spoil that magic by telling them that you made it in minutes with Animoto. If you are asked to produce video slide shows for wedding receptions, anniversaries, birthdays… you will go crazy over it. You just have to try it.

Printing Your Direct Mail And Advertising Pieces

Direct mail is not dead and it is a very important component to any good marketing plan, from your business cards to product packaging and brochures. Print Place is our “go to” place for quality, inexpensive printing. We use them regularly and have always been completely satisfied with the quality of their work and the prices are really a bargain.  Tip: get good business cards and hand them them out freely. (Maybe get some images from Dreamstime.com mentioned above – that’s where we got ours).

How To Look Like A Network News Anchor

Do you appear on-camera in your own videos, or ask others to do so? Do you have trouble smoothly delivering your lines? I sure do. Although I know my subject matter, I just get tongue-tied when I’m in front of the camera. I solved my problem quickly and easily – with a teleprompter. Now I (or anyone) can deliver long passages of verbage flawlessly. In fact, I just completed a shoot with a Catholic priest who had to recite long passages based on a book he wrote. The sweet man is 82 years old and his memory is not as sharp as it once was. He loved the teleprompter. We use the TELMAX OS-15 Teleprompter, from ZAPrompt.