Part of what kept me from finishing off the last post was moving my blog to the actual domain rather than a sub-domain of Ridgeline Management Consultants. I am not quite sure why I did it but it seemed like the only thing that I could think of to get past the Google AdSense authorities. Previously, when I attempted to register for AdSense, they would always reject me with things like “Difficult site navigation” and other obtuse sorts of reasons. Anyway, its now on its own domain and has a new look and feel. Hope you like it. Let me know what you think and thanks for reading.
I have a couple of great tools that I wanted to write about, some of them new to me, some older but all useful. These tools have been working very well for me and they could probably help you with your life. Just to note, I am not going to gain financially from this posting unless someone comes along and offers me a reward (which I am not expecting).
The first tool is a new service from Adobe called “Acrobat.com“. They have had a web conferencing service for quite awhile for companies. However, they are now offering this service for free as long as you only need three people or less. The tool provides the ability to share desktops and have audio through either VoIP or a landline. There are other functions as part of this tool but the web conferencing is the superstar, in my mind.
The second service is GoToMeeting / GoToWebinar. These services are ones that I have been using for almost a year with the local PMI Chapter (Mile Hi) and it has worked very well. As opposed to the Acrobat.com free service, these services have a cost involved (Adobe has a paid version of their web conferencing as well). The nice thing about these services is that they are “flat rate”. You can use them as much as you want for as many meetings / webinars as you need. The primary issue is that the number of attendees is limited to 25 for GoToMeeting and 2000 (with only 25 able to speak at a time) for GoToWebinar. The other issue is that there is no “toll free” capability. Everyone that dials-in on a landline has to call a non-800 number. Once you get passed these limitations, the service works very well especially when you are doing both VoIP and dial-in. I just held a meeting the other day with folks from Canada, US, Vietnam, and Australia and there was no difference in the sound quality. Also, the price for these services are very reasonable as well; just $49 per month for GoToMeeting and $99 per month for GoToWebinar.
The last tool that I have been using is “LogMeIn“. It is a service that is used to access a computer from a remote location just like the Windows Remote Desktop but for any source and destination computer. These service is similar to (I think) the GoToMyPC service that is provided by Citrix in the same fashion as GoToMeeting. However, the LogMeIn service has a free option that works great. The only limitation is that you can’t transfer files, hear sounds or print to the remote or local printers. But, if you want to pay a price, you can get these capabilities as well. I just haven’t found enough of a need for it but I am sure there are lots of people out there who might need it. The service appears to work well with pretty much any platform. I have used it with Windows and Mac remote machines and Windows, Mac and Linux local machines and a large number of different browsers. I highly recommend it, especially if you are your family’s non-resident IT expert.
I have been using all of these tools and they work great.
In addition, I came across a couple of other tools that I want to try but haven’t gotten the time yet. These are EverNote and BackBlaze. The EverNote tool is intriguing because you can take pictures of hand-written notes, charts and boards and the software will (supposedly) do OCR and then index the images for search on your local machine. They have an app for the iPhone (doesn’t everybody?). Looks pretty cool!
BackBlaze is an online backup service that seems to be pretty inexpensive ($5 per month per computer for unlimited storage). Sounds very reasonable as long as they stay around and you can get your data off when you need it. As I said, I have not used these and don’t have a recommendation either way. Just thought they were cool!
I welcome your thoughts about these tools and any other tools that you think are as good or better than these or just any tool you think is cool!
Okay, so I should know that I am going to learn some lessons along the way but some of them I would like to avoid. I have had a couple of big ones over the last 10 days that I would just as soon as not had.
First, I found out that my landing pages were still sitting in test mode which meant that when folks clicked through to go to the sales pages, they were getting a test feedback rather than getting there. Doesn’t make for great sales that way.
After I got that fixed, everything was cruising along just fine with good CPC, CTRs and decent hops. However, I wasn’t getting any sales. Isn’t that the point of this whole thing? So, I got in touch with my mentor and described the problem. he looked in his ClickBank records and didn’t find any hops from me. Surprise, surprise!!! Why is this.
Well, after going back and forth a couple of times, we figured out that my links were not pointing at the right place. I was going to a sales page that has one of the lowest gravity factors in this niche. Oh well, it only goes to show that you really need to test and be very careful about making sure that the details are correct.
Now that I have everything fixed up, my two Landing Pages (LPs) (DIYSolarPanels and MakeSolarPanels) are working fine and its just a matter of time before we see what the real results should be.
Well, here I am again. I am getting to the point where I need to write and am willing to take on the management of this blog. We will see how it goes. Thanks for coming and I hope you enjoy. Best wishes, BUD
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