Archive for the ‘inspiration’ Category

If you think out of the box then you’re not alone. Recently we came across a story about flat hot dogs in The Star. It highlighted how off beat and original ideas can really turn into prosperous decisions. You compete with thousands of other businesses and the only way to win is by taking your own angle on a common offering. Differentiating yourself from your competition pays dividends. By doing this you create buzz for your business and you give people stories to tell.

There’s a similar article in the New Haven Independent about the Caseus Cheese Truck–which uses Twitter to relay its location every day and in doing so has garnered a loyal following. This shows that you’re bound to see increased profits whenever you’re able to get people excited about and involved with your brand. So if you do things a bit differently just think about the burger shaped hot dog and say “why not?”

What is a free way to get my business website ranked higher?
- Shane S. M / Tampa, FL

It’s always helpful to have more information about your domain and keywords but here are some general things you can do:

1) Make sure your home page title tag has your major keyword and regions of influence. So if you have a shoe store, you might have your title tag be:
Kids Shoes Tampa FL | Bridal shoe packages in Florida

Try and draw out a niche for yourself and try and get the best ranking you can for these more specific phrases. It’s far easier to gain a ranking for so called “long tail” search terms that specify your region.

2) Improve your link popularity, which means to get more links pointed to your homepage. Links are perhaps the most important measure of whether your website deserves a first page ranking in Google. Some methods to do this are:
a) Exchange links with other business websites in your area
b) Find stories on blogs related to your industry and comment on them, making sure you take advantage of the [Website] field when placing your comment.
c) Setup a twitter account and make posts/tweets about inner pages on your website with a link to the page.

If you spend 1-2 hours per day doing the above, you’ll see your rankings start to rise after 3 weeks and continue to as long as you remain diligent in your new, free SEO ranking improvement habits!

We know that the West Hartford Food Pantry will make every penny of the $6400 count towards helping low-income families and soup kitchens feed the hungry. Good job!

I’m entering new product to the market (forex trading robot), to be sold on clickbank.com. How to increase number of affiliates selling my product? Any forum where I could advertise? Maybe there are some sites where affiliates look for new products? Any ideas?
- Kamil B. 30 / M / Zielona Góra, Poland

There are a lot of affiliate directories out there but what you’ll probably find is that 5% of your affiliates produce 90% of you sales.

Try and find websites that have an audience that would buy your product, and convince them that if they allow it to be sold on their website, that they will make a steady profit from the affiliation.

How do I find a promoter or investor to develop a great idea for a website ?
- Subhash S. M / New Delhi, India

Find someone in a related industry that is successful and plan and execute a pitch to them about why they should invest in your idea.

Identifying the right person to present to is half the battle, the other half being a clear, concise presentation of your idea, what’s involved to startup and at what point business begins to break even and turn a profit.

Thanks!
- Subhash S. M / New Delhi, India

My pleasure, another bit of Free Business Consulting from 3PRIME.

Besides Dreamweaver, what would you say are the most marketable skills for a web designer in today’s market?
- Joshua G. 28 / M / San Diego, CA

Dreamweaver isn’t a skill, creating manageable code to present web pages is a skill. Similarly, photoshop and illustrator aren’t skills, creating modern relevant web and vector designs are skills.

As a web design company, 3PRIME considers what we do to be the next stage in professional web design. Besides designing a website that fits the customers needs and budget, you should be creating websites that will work well in search engines and provide the critical opportunity for visitors to convert into contacts.

I’d say the 2 most marketable areas a web designer should focus on, besides translating client conversations into a satisfactory web design, are search engine optimization principles and visitor conversion and traffic analysis.

Are there any tips for getting into graduate or medical school with a lower (still > 3.0) gpa?
- Kasey L. 24 / M / Nolensville, TN

I have 3 suggestions, but it’s not my area of expertise…

1) Research the professors you’d be working under
Make sure they know your purpose is not to help you get in but to find out if you are a good fit for their program. They don’t want to work with students just there for a degree, they want to form productive relationships, if you give them the opportunity, it can kill 2 birds with one stone.

2) Identify high needs by the institution you are applying to
Maybe they need to grow their bi-lingual students, maybe they want more girls, find out, it could make all the difference.

3) Make sure your cover letter and application are geared for the specific institutions
Consider your audience, they are the decision makers. What can you offer that no one else can? Failing that, what can you offer that few can?

All the best!

Recently, we came across a very interesting op-ed piece that the New York Times ran. It was a picture based review of the last decade. It’s funny and poignant to view the past ten years in such a stripped down and concentrated fashion. This is one of the most unique and worthwhile attempts to sum up the past decade that we’ve seen thus far and we hope you’ll feel the same. You can view the piece here.

Happy New Year from everyone at 3PRIME.

1) An article about companies using free games on Facebook to generate leads for advertisers, this was really interesting to me, mostly because it explains why half my facebook friends keep trying to pry me into Mafia Wars or some damn thing.

www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/

2) Another article from TechCrunch concerning Facebook, see a pattern here? This one concerns more general advertising, and really draws attention to why spam exists; It makes a profit.

www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/how-to-spam-facebook-like-a-pro-an-insiders-confession/

3) Can’t help but get into some political news, despite my general attempt to avoid it during business, but this one deals with how money affects politics and I think it’s important for everyone to pay attention to such things.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574515681098665524.html

Finally purchased some new VPS space for our FormTracks service, and the migration process is well underway!

The new environment is a very robust entity to say the least - memcached, zend optimized, and fully loaded with automation up the ying-yang to make even the seasoned admin say 01000110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01011001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00100001 (gotta copy the text in to translate it…)

anyways, short post today, more tomorrow, so check in then. Tah-tah…s

-C