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make money online

Could You Use Kickstarter to Help Build Your Business?

by EricHammer on February 20, 2012

kickstarter Could You Use Kickstarter to Help Build Your Business?One of the more interesting websites on the Internet has to be Kickstarter. This website is designed to allow you to build up a business idea by giving people a piece of the action (after a fashion – I’ll explain more in a moment). The idea is kind of like crowd sourcing for your venture capital, though your “investors” typically won’t get part ownership of your company.

Why This Could Work for Web Entrepreneurs

Let’s start by discussing you as a web entrepreneur. You have an idea for a business that you want to put on the web and you think it’s a really good one. Well, you need several things to make it successful. First and foremost, you need a great website which will attract people and get them excited about whatever product you want to sell them.

Second, you need a good SEO campaign which will allow you to get your website out there. Third and possibly most difficult, you may need some cash to make your project happen. Whether it’s for creating a software program you have an idea for or it’s for selling a physical product, testing and development does take time; and money. That’s where Kickstarter comes in.

What Kickstarter Does

In essence, Kickstarter is a place to share your idea for a new product or invention and get funding for it. Depending on the particulars of your situation, you may offer a freebie in exchange for helping out with funding (for example, if you were building a new kind of software program for viewing online TV, you may offer “investors” on Kickstarter a free copy when it’s done). You can also have tiered offering, including offering part ownership for those who have deep pockets to fund your business with large chunks of money.

How It Works

Basically, in order to get money on Kickstarter, you have to have an idea for a product which will attract people. Simply wanting to make a website is not enough. There must be an actual product being offered at the end of the road. You would then create a pitch for your product which describes what the product is and what you would offer to people. Browse through other Kickstarter projects to get some ideas for what you can provide.

Getting Funded

The fact is that getting funded at Kickstarter can be a challenge. That’s because they do not allow partial funding of any projects. If you want to get your project funded, then you must get all of your funding. That means that theoretically if you asked for $40,000 in funding and you only reach $39,897, you would not be able to get that $39,897.

After the funding period is over (you must specify how long you want to allow for funding to happen) you either get the money sent to you (if you reached your goal) or the money is returned to the “investors.” Note as well that there is a fee that Kickstarter takes off the top as well as a fee that Amazon takes for processing the payments.

Bottom Line

Kickstarter can be quite useful to internet entrepreneurs, however you need to have a clear plan for your business, a clear product you’ll be providing and clear ideas about how much you need to fund your project.

 

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Tagged as: internet marketing, kickstarter, make money online, startup, venture capital

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Should eCommerce Sites Be Worried about New Security Breaches?

by EricHammer on February 17, 2012

computer virus Should eCommerce Sites Be Worried about New Security Breaches?Unless you have been off in a cave somewhere or are one those people who automatically opens the back of the newspaper to read the sports section and never gets around to the front of the paper, you probably have heard about the newly discovered vulnerability in online security. The reports have been featured in most major newspapers and so I decided to do a bit of research and find out whether our industry needed to be worried.

The Original Report

First of all, for those who enjoy reading technobabble, here is the original report as provided by the Cryptology ePrint archive (they provide access to reports on cryptology issues). Now, as best as I understand it, the report indicates that there is a problem, but it’s not one which has been reported as being exploited as of yet.

98% Effective

This reminds me of the episode of Friends where Rachel finds out that she’s pregnant. I’ll let interested readers look up the reference, but the point is that the researchers found that online encryption methods are a little more than 98% effective, meaning that in the vast majority of cases, your customers will never have to worry. To put this in perspective, they tested six million keys and found serious flaws in 12,270 of them and more minor flaws in another 27,000 of them.

Reassuring Your Customers

Unfortunately, as an eCommerce website owner, there is likely precious little you can do to ensure that your customer’s data isn’t hacked along the way. Since the problem appears to crop up randomly rather than with a specific pattern, it’s a bit of a crap shoot to figure out when it will strike. The good news is that you can reassure your customers in several ways:

  1. Double Check Orders – If you want to be sure about things, then send out e-mails automatically to customers asking them to double check their orders, making sure that what they ordered really is listed there.

This is good practice anyway for any ecommerce site just to make sure your customers are happy and get what they asked for. Be sure to be ready to change orders or cancel them if the customer indicates they didn’t place the order or there is another problem. However, I’d suggest simply sending out an e-mail asking customers to double check their order rather than mentioning this issue.

  1. Answer Only When Asked – My feeling on this is as follows: don’t go making a public spectacle out of this. Unfortunately, until researchers find a way to plug this hole, it’s not something than any eCommerce site owner can do something about. Therefore, I suggest that you don’t address this issue to customers unless they ask. If they do ask, tell them you are working with your security experts to try to ensure that nothing will happen.

Be Sure to Install Updates Right Away

Finally, I suggest that as soon as your eCommerce provider (whoever it may be) has finished taking care of fixing any problems (if indeed your service is affected at all), you immediately install the updates as necessary. This way, you protect yourself and your customers.

Bottom Line

The bottom line here though is that I really don’t think there is much need to be concerned. Since this is a random flaw anyway, it’s very hard for a hacker to take advantage and the odds are good that your eCommerce provider will fix any security problems due to the encryption vulnerability shortly in any event.

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Tagged as: eCommerce, encryption, make money online, security, websites

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Microsoft Sunsets Office Live Small Business. Why You Should Care.

by EricHammer on February 7, 2012

office live Microsoft Sunsets Office Live Small Business. Why You Should Care.So I recently got an e-mail letting me know that Microsoft was closing down Office Live Small Business and offered me a deal instead to switch over to a paid service where a website could be hosted with them (I had forgotten I even had an account there – I had briefly looked at the service when starting my blog and realized that I needed to go for paid hosting instead).

Now this in and of itself is probably not particularly interesting news for us in the internet marketing community. After all, we all know that a serious internet marketer should be looking to do their own hosting rather than relying on a free host like Office Live Small Business, right? That’s true. However, there is a reason you should care anyway. Read on to find out why.

What Was Office Live Small Business Anyway?

For those who were not familiar with it, Office Live Small Business was one of the better options for free website hosting online. Unlike most other options, it didn’t require that you allow banner ads to be pasted all over your website (a small ad at the bottom saying that it was powered by Office Live Small Business was all that distinguished it – from the outside—from a paid site).

You were also able to host an actual domain name there (i.e. you didn’t have to do mysite.live.com. You could do mysite.com and have it point directly to your site there, making it look more professional.

The Limitations

There were however limitations to this which made it unsuitable for many online businesses. Office Live Small Business offered a very limited set of website tools (you couldn’t install WordPress for example) and was really designed to create an “online presence” for tiny businesses which likely wouldn’t have been online anyway (i.e. the local grocery store or the local barber shop).

There Is a Reason This Matters

Now as I said at the outset, in and of itself, this doesn’t really make a whole heck of a lot of difference. Most internet marketers don’t host with free sites anyway and most us know to use a reliable host like DreamHost or HostGator.

However, the reason that I think this is significant for our industry is that it shows a kind of a trend. It shows us that these free sites are slowly disappearing and this can only mean that things will get just a tad harder for the spammers.

Spam? How Did That Enter Into the Equation?

The fact is that spam is never very successful at making money for the people who send it out. If you send out a million spam e-mails, you may get 100 orders for your product from those million spam messages. However, the reason that spam is still such a scourge on the internet is that even that crazy kind of ration still pays when spam is so incredibly cheap and easy to use.

Free Sites Encourage Spammers

The fact is that free sites like those that were offered by Microsoft’s Office Live Small Business program were a magnet for spammers who would throw up junk websites on them and use them for clogging the web with useless crap which made it harder and harder for the rest of us to get our messages out. Now, will Microsoft’s switching to a paid site in and of itself make content spam disappear from the web? Not hardly.

However, the trend toward the free sites being removed in favor of paid sites (Google for example delisted all .co.cc sites because of spam) means that it can only be a good thing (even if it’s got a very tiny impact) for those of us who make a living online and pay for things rather than relying on free junk sites like those Microsoft offered with Office Live Small Business.

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Tagged as: internet marketers, make money online, microsoft, Spam

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When to Admit Defeat In Building an Online Business

by EricHammer on February 6, 2012

299648 3071 When to Admit Defeat In Building an Online BusinessI don’t want to discourage anyone, but the fact is that there does come a point where you have to admit that your online business is a failure and that you need try doing something else. What point is that exactly?

Stephen King’s Axiom

The decision of when to abandon a particular business differs for different people, but I am reminded of a line I read many years ago from author Stephen King about writing: When you should you give up trying to get published? After six rejections? Certainly not. After 600? Maybe. After 6,000? My friend, after 6,000 rejections, it is time to try something (anything) else.

I’m paraphrasing a bit because I don’t remember the exact quote (I read it back when I was a teenager [in the days when online meant using a text based BBS] and dreamed of publishing a novel – something I still want to do, but which looks increasingly unlikely as time goes on). However, the basic sentiment is that the point where you need to admit defeat differs for each person, though there is a breaking point that everyone needs to accept. Now, all that having been said, here are some pointers to help you decide:

Are You Making a Living?

Look, if your online business is a side thing and you enjoy it, then there is no real reason to throw in the towel even if you aren’t making a whole heck of a lot of money from running it. If you don’t enjoy running your online business, then it doesn’t really matter – you’ll lose inertia anyway. On the other hand, if you find that your online business is consuming your time and making it impossible to earn a living, then you may need to think about how you’re going to pay the rent.

How Long Have You Been Trying?

This goes back to Stephen King’s axiom. If you’ve been banging your head against the wall for three years and still can’t show more than fifty bucks for all your efforts in all that time, then there is something wrong and it’s time to look into other options. On the other hand, for some people, six months will be the breaking point. I do recommend however that you give an online business at least that much time since it does take time for SEO efforts to work.

Have You Tweaked Your Site?

Making money online means endless experimentation. Even when your site is successful, you’ll inevitably attract copycat competition and that means that you need to work hard to recreate yourself. If you’ve found that your site isn’t making any money, then you should ask yourself whether or not you’ve taken the time to actually do some tweaking of your site.

Are You Bored Out of Your Mind?

Finally, the question that you really need to ask is this: are you absolutely, positively bored out of your mind with running your online business? If so, then maybe it’s time to try something else. No job is perfect and no job is always interesting. However, if you really find the idea of writing one more article or page or creating one more video for your site fills you with dread, then my friend, it’s time to try something (anything) else.

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Tagged as: building a business, internet marketing, make money online, seo

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Why Your Blog and Website Need Backups

by EricHammer on February 5, 2012

padlock Why Your Blog and Website Need Backups

You may have noticed that I didn’t update the blog for a bit of time again. This time, the problem was a hard drive crash. I lost everything I’d been working on and had to rebuild my entire file system from scratch.

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the advice I usually offer and hadn’t created a backup of everything vital. Thus I was stuck with the unenviable task of redoing work which I had already done for a number of clients. However, this did lead to an interesting point which I want to make here.

Computers Fail

Computers are not infallible and they are prone to failure. This is simply a fact which cannot be changed, no matter how much we all may wish it were not the case. This means then that you need to be prepared when the worst happens and your computer goes kablooey. Moreover, the website that you invested so much time and money in also need protection – don’t forget that ultimately all it is is a file folder on someone else’s server computer somewhere.

Don’t Trust Your Host

I know what many of you are thinking – that your website host has backup servers for everything. Sometimes this is true. Other times, it’s not true. However, even if they do make automated backups of your website, ultimately they are making them in the same facility where the original is stored. That’s great if a hard drive fails and needs to be replaced.

However, what if there’s a fire? What if they get robbed and all the computers are stolen? What if they go bankrupt? There are too many ways this good go horribly wrong.

Offsite Backup Is Cheap and More Reliable

If you have a blog, I happen to love using the Amazon S3 service for backup. There is an automated plugin for WordPress which can send an exact copy of your blog to Amazon on a regular basis, ensuring that you can get back up and running quickly in case of a disaster. There is also a service called VaultPress which is used by many professional bloggers to run backups of their sites.

In both cases, these services are relatively inexpensive and work in the background to make things very simple and convenient.

For Giant Sites (Or Personal Files)

Now while I love offsite backups, there is a problem with them when it comes to giant websites or personal files. If for example you have hundreds of gigs worth of videos on your website, it’s not very practical to use offsite backups for your site anymore. This is all the truer for those who have personal video, audio or photographic libraries.

For backing up your website then, a simple nightly backup at home will do the job because you effectively have an “off site” backup since your backup copy is not located in the same place that your website is located.

Now, while this blog is about SEO and Internet marketing, a quick note about doing backups of your personal stuff is in order as well. Unlike when you do a backup of your blog or website, when you create a copy which you keep at home, you are no longer taking advantage of “off site” backup.

For this, my suggestion is to us a low tech method of backup – make a copy onto an external hard drive and either take the copy home (if you work in an office), leave a copy at the office (if its’ your personal system) or give a copy to a friend for safekeeping. This effectively creates the “off site” backup without any of the expense of backing up hundreds of gigs online.

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Tagged as: blog, internet marketing, make money online, website backup

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