Newsletters and shopping carts are two of the most used services for websites today.  It seems like everybody has something they want to sell for their business whether it’s a physical product or a downloadable product so they turn to their websites to increase sales.

As a website owner you also want to keep your clients and customers informed with what’s going on in your business and portray yourself as the expert in your chosen field so you start a newsletter.

The most popular service for both a shopping cart and a newsletter is by far 1SC (1Shopping Cart). After all, spending $99/month to offer a newsletter, physical products and downloadable products seems like a steal considering how much you believe you will earn from your products.

The truth is it takes time to get a website found online and even when it does get found, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your visitors will purchase your products.  You have to have a superior product and portray that throughout your website.  Your newsletter has to have something of interest for it to get subscribers.

Depending on what you charge for your product, it could take you a long time to just break even when paying $99/month. What if there was an alternative to that costly monthly fee?

There is and it’s called Virtuemart and Acajoom. Virtuemart and Acajoom are made specifically for the CMS, Joomla and they are both free.

Virtuemart-

Virtuemart is a fully functional, high powered shopping cart made specifically for Joomla.  Some of the features it includes are:

• Shopper groups-this allows you to be able to offer discounts to customer A but not customer B.  This is a great feature so that you can offer discounts to repeat customers.
• Multiple currency
• Shipping address based tax calculation
• Unlimited number of products
• Online Catalog
• Featured products
• RSS feeds to update subscribers on new products
• Easily add and remove products
• Live credit card processing or pre-defined payment gateways like paypal, authorize.net and more

Acajoom-

• Unlimited subscribers
• Subscription through URL
• Create a default HTML template for each mailing
• Unlimited lists, you can have a list for marketing tips, a list for startup tips, a list for whatever you want and have different subscribers to each.

You may be saying it’s great that all this stuff is free but I already have a website so I don’t want to redo it.  That’s perfectly understandable.

It will cost you approximately $900 or less to get a full-featured shopping cart, newsletter manager, and easy to update website. With 1SC, you are STILL going to either have to put in a LOT of work to set it up, template it, configure it, load the products, etc. In fact, the SAME amount of work that is required for a Joomla site. And you’ll have to either do the work, or pay for it, at about the same rate.

The real comparison is not in setup fees – those are the same. The real comparison is in monthly. A Joomla/VM setup can be maintained for $35 or less per month, and with that, you can often get assistance and advice on how to actually EARN with the site. Compared to 1SC, that’s a significant savings.

Let’s do the math:

Shopping cart and newsletter using 1SC-$99/month
Joomla, Virtuemart and Acajoom-$35/month
1SC for 1 year-$1188
Joomla, Virtuemart, and Acajoom for 1 year-$420
That’s a difference of $768 for 1 year

The proof is in the math.

I understand change is tough. Especially when you have virtual assistants, coaches, marketers etc telling you to stick with 1SC but the truth is, you could really be costing your business a lot of unneeded money waste.

If you don’t mind wasting thousands of dollars to keep in touch with your clients and sell your products online because 1SC is the “norm,” then more power to you. But if you are looking for a cost-effective, long-term solution to your newsletter and shopping cart needs, give us a call and we can help you decide which solution is right for you.

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One of the best ways to get your name out there and get more clients is to hold a seminar either online or offline. When you hold a seminar, it shows that you are an expert in your field.  However, in order to hold a seminar that will actually help you, it has to be about something of interest to people.

For example, unless you are targeting other coaches, it is not enough to just hold a seminar about being a coach.  You have to hold a seminar that is more focused such as how to get ahead of the crowd in business, how to gain self-confidence, or how to handle the more difficult aspects of business.

Potential clients don’t care so much about what you do; just how you do it and it works. They want to know that if they implement your strategies and ideals, they will get where they want to be. Once they start implementing your teachings and they see that they work, you will start to get referrals to your business.

If you want to use a Seminar for promoting your services, then the promotion of the services should be only on the edges, not the central content. For example, announcing at the beginning, who you are, and what you do. And then a short suggestion at the end, that they can get more, and where. If you hold an offline seminar, then bring handouts that are branded to give your attendees more info on what you offer, and keep the sales pitches out of the content. The majority of the time you spend should be on TEACHING, not on promoting. This is especially important if you charge for the seminar.

If you do a seminar about your industry and not actually teach them anything, they will come away feeling as if they were cheated and feel as if they just paid to sit through one great big huge advertisement.

For offline seminars, bring your own branded pens, and prepare a printed handout. Put some useful tips on the handout – not your whole presentation, but some nice “ah-ha” bullet points or tips that are useful even if someone DIDN’T attend your seminar. Brand it at the bottom with your logo, contact info, and a short line about what you do. Leave the back blank – for note taking. This handout can serve two purposes – combined with the pens, you just handed people a way to take notes. Plus, you’ve given them a sharable info sheet – bring extras, and invite your audience to share them with friends. If you just hand out business cards or brochures, it won’t have nearly the power it does if you prepare something about the seminar and send them home with that.

The secret to a good seminar is giving your attendees the feeling of empowerment. They need to feel as if they have learned something.

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I am looking for adoptable pets that are in shelters or foster homes to spotlight on my website every month.  I will also put a link to the spotlight page in my newsletter for even more exposure. I would like those interested to please send me a photo, place where they are being kept, background story, and contact information for any pets that need a forever home. I will go through them one by one and let you know when you can be expected to have that pet spotlighted. Before I place them on the website, I will also contact you to make sure that they are still available. If they are not, I will take another pet from your organization in place of the one that is no longer available.

This is a great way to get the word out about some wonderful pets that haven’t had the best of luck in their lives so far that are just looking for a home. You can check out my website at www.petloverwebsites.com Contact Us to get your pet spotlighted.

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Today I was watching Scooby Doo with my daughter and it was at a part where Scooby and Shaggy were afraid to go somewhere (of course) and Daphne convinced them just by telling them there would be every type of concession stand they could think of there. Of course it worked because it’s a cartoon but also because as we all know Scooby and Shaggy LOVE their food.  Wish I could eat as much as they did and still be that skinny but I digress.

Daphne told Scooby and Shaggy about the food because she knew that was something they wanted and needed so it encouraged them to take the next step. This same principle can be applied to websites as well.  The purpose of a website is to not only give visitors an overview of your business but to encourage them to take the next step.

Your website visitors need to know that what you offer them is what they need or that it will make their life easier. It’s not enough to just tell them “you need us and we can make your life easier”.  You need to tell them why they need you and how you can make their life easier.  This requires you to get inside the head of your visitors. Unfortunately unless you know exactly what kind of challenges your clients have, this can be a very daunting task.

For example, a company who provides therapy services to children with disabilities needs to show their visitors that they understand how protective they are of their children. They need to show their visitors that while they push their children to make progress, they also take the child’s innocence and vulnerabilities into consideration.  Meaning they don’t push them so hard that they are traumatized. Once the site visitors get the feeling of reassurance, they will take the next step.

Visitors to your site see your business as just a faceless company on the internet but if your content provides them with the feeling of reassurance and trust, you will see your visitors turn into paying clients. If they can see that what you have is what they want or need, they WILL take the next step.

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If you have Wildblue internet and have downloaded and installed the optimizer that they recommend and now you can’t login to your cpanels, chances are it’s the optimizer causing the problems so here is what you do:

1. Go to start >control panel
2. Click on add/remove programs or programs and features in Vista
3. Locate Wildblue Optimizer
4. Click to uninstall
5. Once it’s done uninstalling reopen your web browser and try logging in to your cpanels again and see if you can now login

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