Saving Money Sites

Jan 242009
 

billeater

It’s 2009, and the U.S. economy has its hands full in rebounding back to normal, and being that one of the most primary concerns for this country is money, financial themed websites are popping up all over the place. It’s time to consolidate, time to save, time to lower your interest rates. I found one site, BillEater.com where I instantly loved the layout.

If it were my site I would change the size of that square Google ad they have, but there was something about the layout that I just liked. It was clean, nice colors cordination, great flow, and easy to read. I wanted to be on the site, and I don’t even really care for the topic of how to save money. It was a blog format, but they didn’t use the typical canned template that a million others have used. It was unique to them. Great way to seperate yourself from the others.

Besides being a blog with money saving tips they had a forum, calculators, and even a store. A store? Yep, they sell products that can save you money at home, like low wattage lightbulbs, and just little things like that. Unique site, and I found one article that was pretty good about ways to save money – 10 ideas.

Time for Marketing

Dec 082008
 

858

Ready to hit the road, and start marketing your product? 858 Graphics could be your trade show champion. Located in San Diego, CA 858 can do everything from setting you up with a tradeshow package to simple step and repeat banners.

Lots of Printing Services

The site offers lots of services, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they said they could detail your 18 Wheeler. They did have examples of smaller fleet vehicle details. The site is a simple layout listing all of their services on the left. When selecting any of their services they have a nice flash portfolio that quickly gives you an idea of quality, and type of product. Most products also have customer feedback displayed as well.

Besides the larger poster/banner type printing they also do stickers, and the rates seemed very competitive for some of the work I have done. One really cool product I saw was their promotional/customizable energy drinks. If you wanted, you could even buy just one custom drink, though it will cost you for the one, rates drop drastically for bulk orders. They also have it for bottle water. Online purchases are available, and they take the usual credit cards, plus offer Google Checkout.

Looks like a great service. As a guy who spends his days ripping websites, I did wish I had seen couple items to help sell their service. A great big phone number in the header, and an easy to find about us page. Believe it or not, contact information sells, and if it’s hidden, so is your creditbility.

PsPrint

Sep 242008
 

Do you do a lot of offline marketing for your site? If you do, you probably have favorite source for printing your material, a graphic artist, and a mailing company. Well you can consilidate all those to one source if you choose to use PsPrint.

Products

PsPrint is an online printing website that offers a large selection of services to handle most of your printed material marketing. In regards to their products here is a list of some of them they do:

  • Brochures
  • Business cards
  • Catalogs
  • CD/DVD sleeves
  • Envelopes
  • Letterheads
  • Postcards

All of these can be done online, and can either be shipped to your desired location, or physically picked up at one of their two locations in Oakland, California. or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. They give you a variety of shipping options to cover speed or cost.

Service

In regards to their services, they offer: mailing services, graphic design work, specialty printing, and pre-made templates for easy to make business cards and postcards. Their mailing services allow you to select what zip code, and other additional demographics.

Review

I tested their build a business card printing, and it was very simple to use. The one thing I really like about it was that I tried seeing how much it would cost to get the order worked on the same day, their “Super Rush” package. For $19.66 I could get 50 business cards. Depending on your choice of shipping, this is a pretty good price if you are in a pinch. Their economy five day turnaround was just $9.95. Your not going to get much lower that that, even if you use one of those “Free Printing” companies like Vista Print. By the way a tried Vista Print once for business cards, and ended up throwing the entire box of cards in the recycling bin. Their online layout did match the product I received.

Looking to consolidate your off-line marketing? Looks like PsPrint may be the way to go. Let us know if you use them already!

Business Plan

Jul 282008
 

Do you have a written business plan for your website? I am guessing the answer is a big “No”. I’m constantly reviewing sites, and I constantly find sites that don’t even have a tag line. Think they have a business plan? I think not, but maybe the owner has one worked out in their head.

Keeping your business plan in your head is a poor platform at best. It’s too easy to edit. It’s good to have change and keep up with the times, but your site needs to be highly focused if you want visitors to know what your site is about. If you desire action out of your visitors, like making a purchase, it’s even more essential. Are you marketing without a business plan? That would be absolutely crazy.

Business Plans Do Things

If you have never spent the time to create a business plan know that you are missing out. Business plans do things. A common occurrence in building a plan is new realizations. Here in an example I like to use based on a road rage site I did back in 2004. I was spending my marketing budget by advertising on Google. It worked, I got visitors, but after studying my business plan I was able to recognize a weakness within that plan. It was expensive, and it didn’t produce long term visitors. It also rarely produced backlinks. I then realized that spending my marketing money on PR, and doing the occasional press release was far more beneficial. I received more targeted traffic, and I also received lots of backlinks.

A plan also helps develop realistic goals. Don’t be surprised if your expectations don’t drastically drop after doing a market analysis. Sometimes seeing that even the best sites in your niche don’t accomplish what you are dreaming of can be a major awakening.

Writing Your Business Plan

A business plan could or should take as much time as building your site. It should be a work in progress, and require regular reading if you are actively making adjustments to your site.

A simplified outline of a business plan:

  • Company summary
  • Services offered
  • Market analysis
  • Product or sites benefits, advantages
  • Marketing strategy
  • Sales strategy
  • Actual, and future target milestones
  • Financial plan
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