Someone online asked me this today….

….I suppose it would be “technology and internet marketing consultant” but I don’t “consult” much. I invent things and integrate things and use them to help people. I’m an artist who loves detailed financial spreadsheets and a business manager that can sweep the floor or do big picture thinking. I can see the flowers singing.

When I find smart, ethical, interesting business professionals I try to help them…usually by partnering in some way.

I don’t play well with the RE Tech crowd because most of them are selling tools irrespective of business owners need for comprehensive planning i.e. it is stupid to SEO or run PPC ads if your IDX site does not generate “leads.”

It is stupid to generate leads if you can’t convert them because you haven’t analyzed your market, figured out how you are better than the competition, and generated the right kind of content for that market that will communicate

It’s stupid to sell a hungry business owner something if it’s not going to work for them, or if they are going to use it to peddle some crap to unsuspecting consumers.

Good online stuff is nothing more than good offline stuff just maybe done faster and more easily scaled….and I suppose one can use a lot more creative tricks so it’s more creative and fun.

GoDaddy Wordpress Websites have been hacked! This can happen pretty easily if your wordpress website is on a low-cost shared hosting provider. Kendra wondered early on why we couldn’t just use GoDaddy. This kind of wordpress hack attack on GoDaddy is why.

How were we immune from the GoDaddy Wordpress Hack Attacks? Hosting our own Wordpress websites on VPS.net with our own security protocols. I love wordpress and wordpressMU. I never liked GoDaddy much because of their – for years – high domain name prices. They were still over $20 while 1and1.com was around $7. Plus the clutter, upsells, and ads. Yuck

So where to host a Wordpress or WordpressMU website so that it is not as susceptible to hacking attacks like the ones that hit GoDaddy? Hackers are always going to go after shared server environments. Well, I’ve been thinking about offering it for awhile, but now may make the leap to specialized wordpress hosting on Vps.net We do it for ourselves, so we might as well do it for other people. No spammers allowed : ) We have controls for hacking and spam prevention.

With a big company like GoDaddy people usually feel that they are safe from the type of hacking attacks GoDaddy suffered. It’s hard to get people to spend money on premium hosting. “Wordpress Hosting at more than $7/month! No way!!!” Hah Hah. Tell me that when you spend 1 to 2 weeks with your websites down while you scrub every single file for malicious code. (This happened to me on 3 clients real estate websites on a discount shared server and that’s when I made the switch to VPS.net.)

I suppose I should add that Nick, the General Manager of VPS.net set us up a special server environment to it’s really fast. We earlier had a very secure fast system set up by Jordan Bedwell at EnvyGeeks.

What do you think? What would you pay for Wordpress Hosting that applied every security protocal you’ve been reading about? Let me know and we’ll see if we can make it happen.

Here’s some more info on the GoDaddy Wordpress Hack attack:

http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2010/05/13/hosting-with-godaddy-might-want-to-rethink-that-decision/

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/391658

I received a call from a business owner in San Diego who is looking to hire a developer. She was asking about an outsourcer that I’d used. This happens a lot. Normally, I end up saying the same thing i.e. that there are plenty of free tools and other tools you need to pay for that can be integrated into a wordpress website easily.

Most businesses need a “website organizer” more than they do a “website developer.” A website organizer knows how to put free/paid apps together in a way that make sense for a business…and knows when and when not to call in a programmer to do minor or major programming.

Here is the job description and my advice…

We need a developer(s) that can produce the site as described below and can implement effectively. We provide a robust website directory for consumers (customers) to locate specific niche business/products services by searching in our site by state, cities, neighborhoods, or type of service. Example given as illustration only would be (Mobile carpet cleaners in San Diego/Hillcrest).

The business revenue model is a paid membership for businesses who list their service so they can be located along with a brief description plus link to their web site. (Unique id code to track) (SEO optimized) customers, will be offered multiple membership options, (ex: platinum, gold, silver) at different price points.

Visitors, who use site will also be offered free, access to our mailing list for free offers and eventual up sell offers.

We need to focus on a good auto responder system with ready to go offers and information sent to mailing list.

We’ll need a highly functional shopping cart that can accept all major credit cards, including paypal, google, and bank transfers.

We would like the following functions:

*add members (and ability to charge them) – Wishlist Products

*add advertisers (and ability to charge them) – Wishlist Products, make individual ones, “Authors” with permission to write blog posts about their services as a bonus.

*email capture/sign up – GravityForms or FormSpring to MailChimp

*Google Analytics – easy to add yourself. Use Wordpress Stats plugin for easier/quicker analytics.

*Shopping cart *accept payments (credit card and bank transfers) – WP eCommerce probably best.

*sell products- e-books, etc. WP-eCommerce. Integrate Amazon links, etc…for extra upselling.

*ability to add categories (state/city/neighborhood) – any Wordpress site does this

*put in embedded video – Any wordpress site does this easily.

*must be a site that we, (administrators) can manipulate. – any wordpress Site does this easily.

There are also a number of valuable plugins for wordpressMU (that are probably available for Wordpress as well) that could enhance the functionality of the site i.e. Pop-Overs, WP Greet Box, etc…but that’s for another day.

Too busy to post on my own blog. See the posts below to discover why…

All the People and Projects I Am Thankful For

Today is the day after Thanksgiving. I am most thankful for my family and friends. I am also thankful for the opportunity to work on so many interesting projects with some amazing people.

When people ask, “What do you do?” I could answer with a less-than-accurate response, “Build websites and internet marketing.” Yes, I do these things but saying that lumps me in with the rest of the “VendorSluts” who hawk their own “products.”

What I really do is constantly scan the universe for technology or systems that can help business owners live happier lives by earning more money more easily. If these technologies can’t be put in a Comprehensive System to do the following, then we don’t use them:

(1) Attract Visitors,
(2) Capture Leads,
(3) Educate Prospects,
(4) Sell Products/Close Clients, and
(5) Work easily and efficiently

Sometimes my key guys (Hitesh, Ajmal, Laura, Niraj, Fernando, and Enric) do the work. Other times, we hire other people. Whatever is best for the client. To my wife’s chagrin I’m a lot more interested in helping people solve problems than in earning a buck. : )

I suppose I’m a business model developer and business consultant that does a lot of the internet marketing and technology work. Because my stuff works, I often end up partnering with people who start as potential clients. (Frankly, any internet marketer worth his salt will not bang their head against the corporate contract wall for long until he or she realizes that they can pick a product and sell it for themselves or JV with a business owner and get 10-50% of the net profit.)

At any rate, I was supposed to slow down when the baby arrived but now find myself busier than ever with the following projects:

#1. Kendra Todd Group (Real Estate)
Development of KTG comprehensive internet marketing strategy and building website, PPC, SEO, Social Media campaigns. The goal is for her real estate team to be in the top 10 in the US within 2 years.

#2. KendraTodd.com and associated SEO websites (Personal Branding)

Under development, these 4 main website sare designed to build her personal brand including dominating the first page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines on keywords related to her name. This also involved creating hundreds of accounts on social networking and social media sites for SEO content distribution. We also dropped the cost of SEO content page creation to about $5 rather than the $100 or more charged by many SEO firms.

#3. GrowRichGodsWay.com (Religious)

Kendra appears on the Christian Broadcasting Network and wants to share stories of God working in the workplace so we created a simple blog designed to build a large mailing list through strategic placement of registration forms. Very pretty, simple graphic design by Lisa of UrbanLifeDesigns.com

#4 – #8. FIVE Big Real Estate IDX Websites/Blogs

For these sites we’ve integrated IDX listings into several of the most popular Wordpress Themes including StudioPress, AgentPress, Frugal, and DIYThemes Thesis. Because the listings are integrated into Wordpress and we have re-written the URL structure, they SEO perfectly. The designs are notable for their use of large photos, Google Street view, and a VERY focused and flexible approach to Lead Capture. Lise Howe, James Harner, Fernando, Carlos Rodrigeuz, and Tim/Ed have been very patient as we work through a lot of technical challenges and tweaking for the highest possible lead capture rates.

#9. ListingBlog (IDX Company)

We are standardizing these designs and working on an awesome application of WordpressMU that will allow agents to instantly an unlimited amount of SEO niche market blogs that are automatically filled up with content. A key 2nd part of this project is to integrate a CRM for wordpress that tracks visitors’ site activity and provides instant notification capabilities. The simple thing we do is create a great website with full IDX capability and manage the PPC and SEO strategies to guarantee a specific number of visitors and leads per month for clients. I am working with a new partner who left one of the top IDX firms to basically handle Sales. Thank God!

#10. HOAHelpDesk.com (Home Owners Association Website system and Social Network)

This is a wide-open niche market with very poor competition. Can’t say much more, but this could turn out to be the most profitable project of all.

#11. CSPFG & LifetimeStrategies (Financial Planning)

I consider most of the stock market and investing universe the unproductive shifting of paper. However, this company got people out of variable 401k and stock market investing and into much better Equity Indexed Universal Life polices, Annuities,and other safer, tax advantaged investment options that saved their customers millions of dollars during the crash. This is a agent website and lead capture system but built on WordpressMU which gives the company the best security and control features of Replicated Website systems but with the blogging, flexibility, and SEO capabilities of Wordpress.

#12. PhoodClub & PhillyPhoodClub

First rule of Phood Club – always talk about Phood Club. This website and internet marketing system will bring together 5 – 20 people weekly to review the food of 48 Philadelphia area restaurants per year. While these folks are together the Philly Phamilies i.e. the spouses/others get together with their kids and cook. The original idea was to simply get Yale alumni together once per week but the concept has the potential to become the #1 on-line destination for food and restaurant reviews in Philly. it could go nationwide. Finally! An internet project my Wife will Love, especially since I am working on it with her best friend (a hot, single Physician who loves beer and sports in case you do/are too.)

#13. The Local Expert

We started this project by providing niche marketing websites and super-inexpensive Book ghostwriting services to real estate agents but pulled it off-line to restructure it for several industries. The key is that people want to hire experts. If you write a book or “publish” you are an expert. Big companies like Bob Proctor’s charge $40,000 to help you do this kind of thing. We’ve figured out how to do this for $1,000 – $5,000 – but that’s our secret.

#14. q2Results

This is my own corporate site – conceptually based on Stephen Coveys “Quadrant 2″ statement regarding “important but non-urgent” tasks like – Comprehensive Internet Marketing systems : ) which is what we do for businesses. I have to do for myself what I tell other clients to do regarding the automation of ALL my lead capture, prospect education, client conversion, project management, billing, etc…systems…otherwise, as you can see, I can’t possibly handle any more work.

#15. OctagonTactical.com

This is just a quick website for a friend who provides Personal Self-Defense, Firearms, and law enforcement training. Chris Springfield is the best combination of law enforcement, military,  organizational systems, and teacher that I’ve ever met.

#16. For the People You Love (Life Insurance and Annuities)

Another project for a friend Sean McCullough. This is a simple lead capture website that – when finished – should steal ALL the traffic from those companies say they “give quotes” but really just capture your information and sell the leads. Can’t give-a-way the strategy, but if it works, the system could dominate any Financial Services or Insurance market we go into — and these are really competitive markets.

#17 & #18. Other Market Domination Projects

Albuquerque and an interesting Denver Vacation Rentals project should begin soon. I’m also working on a website f

#19. WordpressMU Duplicator Plugin

This allows us to turn a Wordpress website into a perfect corporate or networking marketing Replicated Website system

#20. Wordpress CRM

There is nothing like what we are doing which should really help extend wordpress into a full featured business solution.

#21. Wordpress Theme Add-on Package

Wordpress theme/frameworks like StudioPress, AgentPress, Frugal (my current favorite), and Thesis allow website/blog owners a lot of customization capability. The problem is that most website owners do NOT understand color, spacing, typography selection, copywriting, or – much less – how to select and place lead capture, contact, and interactive elements (usually wordpress plugins) for maximum increase in their sales. Soooo….we are developing add-on graphic design, copywriting, and plugin packages based on Best Practices that they can buy and integrate very easily.

#22. WordpressMU Server Set-up and hosting

Since we do so much on WordpressMU we hired one of the best cloud server guys in the world. He’s an engineer (not a software guy) who can expound for hours on what big companies like Twitter screwed up. People ignore this stuff until their hosting becomes inadequate and costs them tons of money. My challenge is documenting and communicating why clients need to pay for this kind of stuff they do not “see.”

Wow. Ok, I’m tired and am taking the baby off to nap.

Happy Holidays!

Sam

This is a comment I posted on a real estate technology blog. It has to do with sales methods and social media strategies.
———————————————————————–
Blatant sales pitches stopped working because the pitch-ers had nothing of quality to sell or lied about the quality of their products. This is true in the Real Estate industry where very few agents could actually claim and prove that they could sell homes for more or help clients buy for less better than other agents.

So instead of helping agents to focus on their Unique Value Proposition which has to do with Product Selection, Quality, Service, Price, Likability/Trust and reflecting that via a good copywriter and a little work collecting statistics and testimonials – vendors first sold people on lousy technology gizmos.

Now vendors are selling agents on Social Media strategies.

Most of what I see is not “respect” for the consumer – that should be about improving the quality of your product/service – but rather fooling the consumer by focusing on the “Likability” part of the UVP and/or communicating things that have nothing to do with why an Agent’s service is better.

For example, Agents are told to post about local market statistics. That’s fine for generating traffic, but doesn’t say a thing (usually) about how the agent will use those statistics to help, for example, a seller realistically price their houses, or proof that the agent knows how to do this better than her competition. It used to be that your friends were your friends and the sales guys were sales guys and you could tell the difference. Now courses are being taught on “how to pretend to be friendly and helpful so you can sell your junk.”

I understand it and even have advised on people how to do it when I couldn’t get them to improve their product/service…but it’s a little distasteful. (BTW, my last home sale after 1.5 years of being an “agent” was a 1.25 million home but I soon quit working as an agent because I thought my taking business away from really experienced/great agents was a crappy deal for consumers i..e my product wasn’t the BEST and I didn’t have time to improve it, so I Stopped Selling It.)

If you are not doing at least 6 transactions per month – stop worrying about Wuffie and Twitter and Blogging. Learn how to improve what you offer so it is better than your competition, how to succinctly communicate that (hire a copywriter), and get yourself a Home Search site “that captures leads,” and then follow-up instantly and constantly.

I’ll get off IDX sites for a moment, and recommend Matt Jones Favorite Agent “Listing Presentation” and a few of his Calculators that can help you show Sellers why other agents are lying about the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and when they say the home will sell.

Ari Galper, who is not a real estate guy, has the best way to offer a service or product in a straight-forward way without either False-Relationship Building or coming off as a sleazy salesman.

And yes, pick up a book or too on Usability in website design like “Keep it Simple”, subscribe to Marketing Experiments, hire a $15 php programmer out of India, and download the ListingPress plugin and design your own search website.

The Listing Press Plugin is a real estate industry technology breakthrough for agents who want to earn more money, more easily.

If you are a Real Estate Agent or Programmer that is interested in using or working with the ListingPress Plugin, please contact me at 484-842-0062. You can see our latest work at www.TheLocalExpert.com.

The ListingPress Wordpress Plugin is an easy-to-use application that lets real estate agents display the information on thousands of homes for sale in their Wordpress website or Wordpress blog. This solves two problems real estate agents face:

#1. Attracting Visitors to Real Estate Websites via Search Engine Optimization Using ListingPress
Almost all Real Estate technology companies that provide a similar service – display the photos and information on homes in an “iframe.” This means that Google Search engine spiders do not index the data.  The ListingPress Plugin fully integrates the data into the Wordpress website or blog.

#2. Generating Leads by Giving Visitors What They Want Using ListingPress
Most of these iFrame solutions come in a one-design-fits-all-agents i.e. the photos are one size, the font is one size, and the IDX company owners (programmers) have no clue how normal people use websites.

Simply put –  Big Photos and Google Street View and Big Font sizes get visitors to stay on the real estate website longer.  Big Lead Capture buttons get more clicks and generate more leads.

That’s the easy way to understand this stuff.

FOR THE EXPERTS:
The really cool thing about the ListingPress Plugin is also how we can combine the functionality of ListingPress with the many functionalities of other Wordpress Plugins.

#1. We can Automatically create thousands of self-updating, non-dupicated, keyword rich Search Engine Friendly content pages. (There’s a trick to doing this that only we know.)

#2. We can Automatically create thousands of individual SEO Niche Market websites for specific towns or even Keywords with this automatically updating content.

Put ListingPress Plugin and Wordpress together with our “Book Cover” design and Ghostwriting services found at www.TheLocalExpert.com, and we can just about Guarantee any real estate agent can double the number of monthly transactions he or she does – within 6 months.

www.TheLocalExpert.com

The new Listing Press Plugin by Jason over at Real Estate Tomato has allowed me to finally create the real estate IDX website I’ve worked off and on for 4 years.  Here’s a sneak peak at an early draft. Instead of one graphic design of homes for sale, we are putting in about 10 so the agent can test which are better at lead capture for their own niche markets. Bigger photos of homes = more leads for real estate agents.

Click on the image to see the demo website http://www.PAHouseQuest.com BUT be sure to scroll down on the COMPARE HOMES page to see the different designs we are working on.  These ListingPress designs are optimized to make sure no Visitor on a real estate website ever goes to a competitors’ site, and for “lead capture.”

Listing Press Plugin: More Visitors, More Leads, More Prospects, More Clients, More Referrals

The Listing Press Wordpress Plugin solves several of the problems traditional IDX Home Search technology companies solutions.  Tech savvy real estate agents know that most home buyers start their search on-line. Smart agents with a little bit of money use internet advertising to drive visitors to their Home Search website. The problem “historically” with most home search “IDX” real estate websites is that they did not give visitors what they want i.e. big photos of homes.  While real estate search technology companies have become better at this their “home search” solutions still are not what real estate agents and consumers really need or want.

Listing Press is a solution. More to come…

You know that old saying, “You can’t polish a turd.” Not true. I showed some of my clients, how, yes they could look good enough for a book cover.

Here’s 6 steps to polishing meturd. (Click on photo for closer view and scroll down for a more interesting post.)

#1. erase wrinkles
#2. erase bags under eyes and squint
#3. even out fang teeth
#4. get rid of 5 oClock shadow
#5. straighten deformed chin
#6. even out blotchy skin color

I was just reading a report by BorrellAssociates.com on the huge numbers of businesses who advertise on Google and then quit. They call this the “Churn Rate” and the numbers are huge at 50%-60%.

Note that Internet Advertising is unlucky step #13! You got a lot to do BEFORE advertising on Google. see below...

These business owners do not see a high ROI because – their websites are poorly designed; their products and services are not better than their competitions’; they don’t communicate well using large font sizes (much less audio and video); they don’t use text, photo, audio and video testimonials well; they don’t pay attention to Social Media Optimization strategies; and they don’t have automated or effective CRM or sales systems. Most SEM companies don’t help businesses do any of these things well.

Many technology companies that sell individual services do not tell business owners, “Gee, the problem is You,” and give internet advertising a bad rap. I hear, “I hired this company to advertise online and we got a few clicks but no leads,” all the time. Well….duh!

“The Great Pay-per-Click Scam” is that Search Engine Marketers know all about their own Churn rates but still keep selling their services, instead of forcing every advertising to go through some kind of market research, strategic positioning, usability, copywriting, and sales training bootcamp!

I swear to never, ever run a Google Adwords campaign unless my clients have gone through the Step-by-Step process which (oddly enough) is the subject of my next book.

Now, if you really want to dominate your market, then you build these into a comprehensive plan following these 22 Steps.

*You might not need to do all of them in the exact order but this is a really solid outline.

22 Steps to Earning More Money Easily

#1. Start with Market Research & Strategic Positioning

#2. Use Measurable Goals to Create a Sticky Plan for Success

#3. Choose & Get the Kind of Website You Need & Will Use

#4. Design Your Website for Lead Capture & Sales

#5. Program Your Website for Visitor & Spider Love

#6. Use Chat, Phone, Video so Website Visitors Contact You

#7. Create Simple Content that Sells – Automatically

#8. Engage & Interact via Blog & Social Network Apps

#9. Use Website Audio, Video & Graphics to Communicate

#10. Use Analytics & Usability Testing to Improve

#11. Implement Auto Follow-Up Systems that Work

#12. Stop Selling! Use Better Words & Some Tricks

#13. Advertise on Google to Generate More Leads

#14. DO Search Engine Optimization that Increases Sales

#15. Sell Yourself via Social Networks & Content Distribution

#16. UpSell & Add Revenue Streams for Higher Profits

#17. Use Print Materials to send Contacts to Website

#18. Become an Author & Be THE Expert in Your Market

#19. Teach & Coach to Learn & Earn More than Your Students

#20. Use Staff Communication Systems to Cut Costs

#21. Outsource &

#22. Streamline to Increase Profits

I usually only do this for a select group of clients (and usually under Non-Disclosure Agreements) but I’m considering creating a Webinar series and/or coaching series to train folks – more easily.

Are you interested?

If I do this it will be for a very limited number of people.

Comment below to join the waiting list…