MobOpt.com Mobile website Services

For small business owners it’s hard to let things go and learn to delegate tasks as we feel we have to do everything ourselves.

The one thing I hate doing is anything IT related as it’s not my forte. My job is to run my business and have other people do that for me.
So when I came across MobOpt.com’s mobile website service, I thought here’s a company that gets it.  There’s a lot of DIY website builders out there to help you build a site.  But when I saw what these guys are offering at the price they are offering it at, it’s a no brainer for me.

Let’s face it you don’t have the time to use a site builder and get it to work they way you’d like it to. I find them to be quite generic looking with a lot of overkill features I don’t need.  After awhile you won’t even use it any more and your site will be incomplete or not really what you wanted.

Here’s what they offer for only $55 and by the way, they build it for you! Taken from their site …

• A mobile site that matches your current site. We do the work for you!
• Up to 10 static pages (Option to purchase additional pages.).
• Dynamic pages: A page you can update, contact form, and photo gallery.
• A Google Map
• Click to Call: No wasting time trying to find your number. Customers can call you by clicking a link from your site.
• Quick loading: We cache your content and optimize the images so they load faster.
• Hosting and traffic included for the first year: You pay only $30 annually for hosting, maintenance, and domain renewal ($50 value!).
• Support for your site on over 5000 devices.
• SEmO: A Search Engine Mobile Optimized site.
• Google Mobile Sitemaps: We create the mobile xml sitemap that’s gets you discovered on Google.
• Socialization: Share with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more…
• Analytics: Track your customers. We integrate AdMob mobile analytics to your site so you can track your visitors.
• Your own .mobi domain included! The .mobi domain tells the world you are mobile ready.
• Monetization: If you wish, we can put Google Ads on your site.
• In 3-5 working days turnaround time.

This is an unbelievable offer for any one trying to go mobile.

Why You Need To Be Mobile?

Simple. You can get up to 30% more business as more and more people are surfing and browsing online exclusively or on the go.
Building a mobile site will make you want to pull your hair out (believe us) … they have the technology and infrastructure in place to maintain and update for future, current and previous devices.

It’s totally worth it and affordable. Check them out here…

As the Yellow Pages Group becomes more desperate for sales, so do their agents.  There have been a few reports out of Canada and the US that YP agents try to get you to renew by telling you to sign the renewal even if you are not interested. They tell you if they don’t hear back from you in a few days, they will scrap it. Unfortunately they lie to you and submit it.  Before you know it, you are back on their monthly billing that’s added to your phone bill.  One restaurant proprietor attempted to get in touch with his local Yellow Pages, but they just gave him the run around and never called him back. What’s worse is that the agent knowing what he did was so sleazy, didn’t even bother to ask him to update the ad, so outdated info was used from the old ad.

Agreed, one should never put their signature on anything unless they are absolutely sure what they are signing. But one would never expect such deceiving sales tactics from such a so called reputed organization.  They and their agents are implementing tactics that you would expect from a third rate telemarketing agency. They have decided to put themselves in the same category.

A recent news release in the Times of India reported that the IT industry will create over 10 million jobs in rural and small towns (Considering the population of India, I’m sure small towns have substantial populations as well).  This is quite amazing and empowering to those people, but couldn’t our politicians think of ways to keep some of that in our country?  After doing some snooping around I came across this site http://www.ruralsource.com/ which I found quite interesting.  It is the same principal.  If we decide to outsource jobs to other countries because it has become too expensive to do business in out major cities, why don’t we just source the jobs to smaller towns in the US.  The standard of living would not be as high as say San Francisco or New York, but we compensate accordingly to the standard of living in those communities. If you speak to anyone living in a major city, almost 25-35% of their salary goes to living expenses.

I feel we just need to restrategize and come up with he next industrial revolution for our small towns that have been devastated by factory closures.  Let’s stop thinking like dinosaurs.

Times of India release…

Rural Source Website …

Apple’s next revolution is about to take off.  There was a lot of hype around the iPad even before it was launched. The web world was abuzz about a touchscreen device rumored around Apple and what it would look like.  If you searched for ‘apple’ touch screen’, user renditions and prototypes popped up and some were even quite nice.  But, nothing on what would be called the iPad, and what it actually looked like.  Considering this day and age where everything is so hush hush, it’s amazing that they are able to keep such things a secret. When it was finally revealed at the keynote, the Apple lovers in the audience were on Steve Job’s every last word like bees’ to honey. And finally the touchscreen we all anticipated didn’t really excite us. A lot of questions arose at the purpose of it, its cost, and it’s usefulness.

But you have to actually observe Apple’s history and see why this product will be so revolutionary.  When they came out with the iPod, we all bought it. Not only did we buy it, we bought more than one generation. Why?  It served the same purpose as the last, yes it got more stylish, held more songs, got a color screen, now plays video, we bought all the necessary accessories and stereo that we felt looked and sounded the nicest for the price (By the way, there are no more boom-boxes, did Apple do away with those as well?). Then the iPhone came out, we bought that too.  There similar phones out there at the time that did more.  It took 2 generations for the iPhone to get a video camera, my old cellphone already did that just fine. But I still bought it

Their laptop market is phenomenal. If you are going to buy a laptop over $1000 bucks, chances are you are going to buy a Mac.  Not to mention all their products interact so well with one another as I am sure it will with the iPad.

So why are we going to buy the iPad? It is a leisure device. I don’t want to disconnect the 5 wires connected to my laptop every time I want to move to the next room. I need a device that is more portable, but hopefully will not be used as a coaster (even though I’m sure Apple has thought of that.) At the next family event, I will show my family pics, movies, let my uncle do his surfing and mail checking on my iPad, cause I don’t want my 2 year old nephew to start playing with my Mac Pro.

Who’s worried? For one Amazon. Not only will this device blow the Kindle out the of the water, it will do at least 20 other things, and my assumption is that Apple will integrate eBooks into the iTunes store causing a whole new set of controversies like the music industry has.

Your business? This will be a great device for service and product demonstrations, especially geared towards sales-people. Portable enough to keep around the store, just make sure you keep your eye on it at all times.

Wow, for a recession, Apple seems to being doing quite well, especially at the price range they are in.

Real Estate Advertising

With the recent news of states in record foreclosure rates of homes, it’s more important than ever for agents to find ways on getting noticed online.  Speculators will be on the prowl to jump on that deal, which means more brokers to pick and choose from and over commissions. There will also be a lot of motivated sellers as more families will relocate to cities and and states with better job opportunities.  As a real estate broker what are your advertising options?

Offline:

• Postcards and mail. Well if your neighborhood is like mine, I get 10 of these a week that go straight into my recycle bin.
• Cold calling.
• Open houses.

Online:

• Your MLS listing.  Just too many too choose from and competitive.
• Your website. Unless people know specifically who you are, they will look on a search engine.
• Online directories: You plus 5000 other agents and companies.

You will need to stand out which is where we come in. Check us out today or contact us.

Another day that we are all aware of this time of year (other than the last day to file your taxes of course) is Valentine’s Day.  This is usually a great time of year for local florists and jewelers and once again, should be a good for online retailers.  Check out some of our previous tips to help you promote your business locally here and read our blog for more tips.

Income Tax Marketing

This is the time of the year to start marketing your tax business.  If the holidays taught us one thing, it’s that we can not ignore an online presence.  Same goes for services. You’ll need to target your business locally and be highly visible as people will scramble last minute to get their taxes done. ‘I have a website already’ you say. Good, so do the other thousand or so competitors. By advertising in the 10bestbiz.com directory you will gain more local exposure online. Income tax preparation marketing is going to be key to the amount of files you process this season.  Think it’s only a season? Think again. People will always procrastinate to get their taxes done (uhum, uhum, me ) last minute and through out the year. Your marketing money will go a long way with 10bestbiz.com as what you pay monthly for an enhanced ad with Yellow Pages, you’ll pay yearly with us.

Start your search today and get noticed online: http://10bestbiz.com/list.php?cat=taxes

Click Fraud

It seems that every quarter the news does not seem to get better for pay per click advertising. For sure,  if you do some research and plan your online ad campaigns correctly, track your results, you will definitely get a good response form your ads. If not you need to get back to the drawing board, and reassess you targets and keywords.  But if this study is correct, then that means you will have to spend that much more to make sure you get the traffic you really want, and if you do not control your spending on advertising, your budget will get out of hand. Track, track and track some more. Always look where your traffic is coming from. Otherwise it will get expensive.

Don’t forget, at 10bestbiz.com, you can add and update keywords at any time.  Also, we do not charge per keyword, it is included in your annual fee.

Read Search Engine Watch article…

With all the investments going south and people losing lots of dough for their retirement savings, there seems to a beam of light.  The cash balance pension plan allows participants to make tax deferred contributions towards their retirement savings.  If you are young enough to get in for 30 years, you will get 4 percent annually compounded with little risk.  So why haven’t you heard of this before?  Chances are your CPA doesn’t know about it either. It’s only till the recession hit that people started looking for alternatives to their dwindling 401(k)s, stocks, and mismanaged funds.

Here are some article links for more info…

• CNN Money
• Wikipedia
• Investopedia
• Suite 101
• Dept. of Labor

Twitter's Fail Whale

Oh Twitter, why must you taunt me so often.  Once again ‘fail whale’. You would figure that  an online company this large, with the millions of users it has, and the power to deliver real time news worldwide would be able to scale as well as its counterparts.  But they have not been able to.  Recent reports show that their popularity has halted globally either due to lack of interest due to features, competition, or the fact that you can only send short messages (Maybe you just crash too damn much!). Regardless, a site this important should not have the many issues it has, especially compared to sites like Facebook with it’s multiple interactions, applications, and global reach, which takes more traffic.  Just shows that not only the small guys have woes .