Get More Clients Online

Jotform

I never got the hang of creating forms on web pages in HTML. Something would always hang up in the form I created, rendering it useless to me. I've tried many online form creators, both paid and free, and hadn't found one that was really intuitive and easy to use until recently.

Jotform is a WYSIWYG form creator that lets you easily create online forms for a variety of purposes: contact forms, survey forms, payment forms, etc. I found the interface easy to navigate, and in a short period of time, I had a great contact form created. It's easy to customize your form to your site's look and feel, and you can embed the form on your own site, or send people to your form online.

Jotform offers a great drag-and-drop feature lets you re-order your form components as many times as you need. You can also customize an email and thank you page that goes to participants once they have completed your form, and Jotform collects responses in your account as well as sends you an email of each response, if you desire. From your account, you can easily export your responses to a CSV or Excel file. Thus far, I haven't discovered a form feature that Jotform doesn't provide.

You get an amazing number of advertising-free features with a free account, and the subscription accounts begin at $9.99/month as of this writing. The fact that they don't plaster your form with advertising with a free account is certainly remarkable and makes Jotform stand heads above the other online form creators that I've used.

Create your form here.

Moz Backup

Everything on your computer should be backed up, including email. About a year ago I switched my email client from Microsoft Outlook to Mozilla Thunderbird and have been so happy with the ease of transition, not to mention the fact that Thunderbird doesn't hang up my entire computer like Outlook used to. Recently I discovered a way to back up my Thunderbird email.

MozBackup is a backup tool for many of Mozilla's products, including Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird, Songbird and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, email, contacts, history, extensions, passwords, cache etc. You can backup as much or as little as you want.

Depending on what you choose to backup, it may take 10-15 minutes for the backup to complete. Fortunately, I've never had to restore from the backup, so I'm not sure how that works. The downside to the program is that you cannot schedule the backups through the application itself, although you might be able to set a macro to automate this process and make it a regular backup routine.

The downloadable software application is free of charge, although the developer does have a Paypal donation request on the web site. There is a limited FAQ section provided in the way of technical support for users, but beyond that, not much support is provided.

Backup your email here.

Twitter Karma

I recently decided I need to pare down my list of people I'm following. The determining factor in whether I continued to follow some was whether the person was following me back. In a quick review of my account, I discovered many of the people I follow weren't returning the favor, and so needed a tool to help me clear my Twitter account.

To help me with this task, I turned to Twitter Karma. Twitter Karma is a Flash application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the "Whack" button, and then displays them for you, letting you quickly paginate through them. You need to use your Twitter login info for Twitter Karma to access your account, and there's no software to download or install.

By default, the list contains all your friends and followers and is sorted by last update, showing those who most recently updated first. You can sort the list alphabetically either ascending or descending by Twitter ID. You can filter the list in several ways: only friends or only followers, all friends or all followers, and mutual friends. Based on how your sort your list, you can look at your list in any number of ways and decide how to proceed with paring down your list from there.

It may take as long as 10-15 minutes if you have a large list of Twitter followers. In some cases, if there are too many requests on Twitter at one time, your request will not initially succeed and you'll need to try again in an hour or so. That's the price you pay for a free service. <g>

Pare down your Twitter lists here.

LovelyCharts

I've never been a big fan of any type of graph or flow chart, since I find many of them difficult to read and follow. However, when I was recently trying to help a client think about how to visually graph her client conversion process, I dove again into my box of resources for an online flow chart program.

LovelyCharts  is free online diagramming program that helps you create professional looking diagrams of all types, including flowcharts, sitemaps, and organizational charts, for starters.

With Lovely Charts' extremely simple and intuitive drag'n drop drawing mechanism, you'll be able to focus on what really matters when you are trying to create your visual depiction of something. You won't have to draw boxes or arrows, and you won't have to worry about what symbol to use. Based on the type of diagram you're drawing, Lovely Charts will make assumptions that will streamline the drawing process by filling in the blanks for you. I love this feature!

Normally, I HATE any type of diagramming software because most diagramming software require you to draw. Lovely Charts' motto is "You think, we draw!" And, it really is that easy.

Other features of LovelyCharts include:

• History management. While you work, Lovely Charts keeps up to 20 versions of your diagram in memory. This means you can always undo an operation if you are unhappy with its result.
• Clipboard support. This means Cut, Copy, and Paste are all possible.
• Exporting as JPG or PNG.
• Unlimited printing in any size and/or quality, only limited by your printer's capabilities.

Unlike other online charting programs, all your diagrams are private in Lovelycharts. In order to create/view/edit/delete a diagram, the application requires that you log on with both your email address and a secret password, known by you alone.

You can try Lovely Charts for free. You can even use it as much as you like, export as much diagrams you like, print any number of drawings. The only limitation the free version has is that it only allows you to keep one editable diagram within your account. If you're a regular or professional user, you might consider upgrading to the Professional version, which will allow you to save as many diagrams as you like or save multiple versions of the same diagram.

Start your flowchart process  here.

TurboNote

I think I'm the queen of sticky notes. Some days I come into my office and easily have 10 of them scattered all over my desktop. Rather than continuing to kill trees by buying more packages of sticky notes, I decided to seek out an electronic solution that would sit on my desktop.

TurboNote  desktop sticky notes help keep you on track, whether it's reminders about your dental appointment or a quick heads-up message to staff about a morning meeting. This trim, easy-to-use program makes your life easier and lets you keep important information at your fingertips.

Features include:

• Alarms -- If you've got tasks that come up time and again, TurboNote´s recurring alarm function will help keep you organized. The alarms are quick to use, and can even be set to ignore weekends.
• Calendar -- The versatile calendar lets you see at a glance all the important dates in your life, highlighting those which have an associated alarm note. You can make it transparent and let it sit on your desktop for a quick handy reference. Double-click on any date to quickly make an alarm note.
• Customizable --Easy-to-use menus allow you to customize individual notes or set up the default look you want. Change the color and size, choose your preferred font, lock them in place or create special templates. Pick a color or background image to suit you. Notes with ruled lines, phone message templates, checklists and other built-in styles let you quickly and easily select the kind of note that suits you.
• Password protected  -- Keep the contents of your private notes secure by password protecting them so others can't see them. Or send notes to others in encrypted form — very handy for shared workstations and groupwork. If you're worried about forgetting your password, they also offer a special Password Recovery service. You can also lock a note to provide additional security for its contents. Use the hide feature to clear your screen and see the notes you want to, when you want to.
• Easy to manage -- Avoid cluttering your screen by arranging your notes the way you want. Make them roll-up automatically so only the title shows, and auto-stack them for neatness. Use the built-in Note Manager for fast, efficient control over grouping, organization or filtering; or for quick searches, checks of titles, text, alarm status and so on.
• Automatic backup -- Use the backup files to transfer all your notes from one computer to another — handy for when you're out of the office, or on the road. Keep daily backups for up to 999 days so you've always got access to historical data, and you control where they are stored. For additional security, you can choose to have a monthly backup kept permanently.

You can try TurboNote free of charge for 30 days  here.

Word Count Tool

So often when I fill out forms, the form limits the amount of words I can submit. Sometimes it's a 50-word bio or a 25-word classified and I don't want to open up Microsoft Word to do a word count.

That's when WordCountTool.com comes in handy. This online tool permits you to paste your copy into their form, click on submit, and you have an instant word count of your copy.

This tool counts words made out of the alphabet, words made from a combination of letters and numbers, as well as words including an apostrophe ( ' ) and a hyphen ( - ). It will not count words starting with an apostrophe ( ' ) or a hyphen ( - ), words made solely from numbers (like 1234 Jones Lane -- the 1234 will not be counted), or HTML tags.

Start counting the words in your copy here.

Dragon Naturally Speaking 10

For a long time I've been recommending Dragon Naturally Speaking to my clients, especially for those clients who do not like to write.  Dragon Naturally Speaking is transcription software that will translate what you say into written text.

Early editions of Dragon Naturally Speaking did not work as well as promised, but their newest edition, version 10, works like a charm. It takes about 20 minutes or so for you to train the program to understand your voice. And, if you have an accent like I do as a native Texan, you can tell the program that fact in the training process and it will take that into consideration as it creates your user profile. The program also gains information about your writing style by going through your Outlook email outbox as well as your written documents to get a sense of how you compose sentences and then it makes adjustments accordingly.

The results of your dictation aren't perfect by any means. However, it is a very great tool to help you create information on the fly. I've recommended it to clients to help them create articles and blog posts, as it's much easier for them to speak their content rather than write it.  They say that editing a document with content is much easier than starting with a blank page. I love the flexibility this program gives me and highly recommend it.  I've got to create some training docs for my assistant, and being able to speak my way through my office procedures and have that speech transcribed will be so much easier than trying to write the procedures as I go.

As a matter of fact, I dictated this article into my plain text editor, and the program did remarkably well. However, I need to practice my dictation skills because I'm not accustomed to clarifying my punctuation and sentence structure when I talk, like telling the program when to create a new paragraph or insert a comma or end a sentence with a period.

Get your copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking  here.

How to Grow Your List and Make More Sales with Your Signature Teleseminar

I love being a guest on other people's teleseminars.  What I love best is the fact that all I have to do is show up and talk when someone else is sponsoring them. I'm responsible for none of the marketing and promotion and registration involved with sponsoring a teleseminar. Best of all is that I don't have to schlep all over town to do these guest speaking gigs.  I'm presenting my expertise to my target market from the comfort of my own home office.

How can you add a signature teleseminar to your marketing mix?  Here's my 10-step process for creating and profiting from your own signature teleseminar:

1.  Create 3 info-packed 50 minute teleseminars.  Have at your disposal at least 3 information-packed signature teleseminars that you can present at a moment's notice. So many of the teleseminars and webinars that I have attended recently are nothing but thinly disguised sales pitches for a very expensive live event, product, or mentoring/coaching program. I don't object to being sold to -- after all, I'm a business owner and I realize that others can't simply give away their time at no charge solely for the joy of doing a presentation.  However, what I do resent is wasting my time listening to 45 minutes of sales pitch and 5 minutes of questionably valuable information.  Ensure your listeners great value each and every time that you present a teleclass, and provide information that they use today in their businesses.

2.  Craft your description and learning bullet points.  Write a one paragraph overview of your teleclass and include 3-7 bullet points outlining what the participants will learn as a result of participating in your teleseminar.  Your host will love you, as you've just provided the bulk of the text she'll need to market your teleseminar.

3. Write your bio and have your headshot available.  Teleseminar hosts like to begin with a short introduction of the guest and often post the guest bio to their web sites or send it out as a part of the teleseminar promotion to their lists. In this version of your bio, craft a succinct description of who you are and what you do that includes any certifications you may hold, authorship of books, and your unique selling proposition.  Then provide a very short overview of your background and your current company.  The goal is to have a short, compelling bio (around 150 words) that takes the host about 20 seconds to read to introduce you.  Include a small version of your headshot and logo to help your host add graphical interest to the teleseminar promotions.

4. Determine your call to action/sales pitch.  Prior to the call, determine your most desired action from the participants.  Is it to buy a particular product?  Sign up for a complimentary consultation?  Send for your free gift and be added to your newsletter list?  Ideally, you should offer participants the ability to buy into your business at 3 levels:  free, low-cost, more expensive.  You'll then have a wider appeal to the audience to capture them at wherever they are in terms of price point.  Include your call to action in the promotional emails as appropriate, in your handout, and within your PowerPoint slides.  In order to create a sense of urgency, you should set a deadline that falls 24-48 hours after your presentation that serves as the cutoff point for your special pricing offer. If participants are encouraged to register even if they can't participate on the live call (i.e. all registrants can access a recording of the call), create a special offer available only to those on the live class to increase live participation numbers.

5.  Create a landing page on your web site for participants. If your call to action involves special pricing on your product or service, create a landing page on your web site that greets the participants by name, i.e.  Welcome  XYZ Conference Participants.  Customize your page several more times to refer to the participants by name, and be sure to include the deadline for the special pricing offer in the text of the page as well as in the PS of your sales page.  I simply take my traditional sales page and customize it for the group for which I'll be speaking and update the deadlines for special pricing.  In order to make this most effective, you have to remember to remove the sales page on your designated deadline and replace it with a page that indicates the visitor has returned after the deadline but can still purchase your product or service at its regular price.

6.  Design a PPT and handouts.  Even if I'm doing a teleseminar with no visual component, I still put together a PowerPoint file of my presentation.  I provide that to the host if I'm doing a webinar or presenting in an audio conference room.  For teleseminars, I turn my PowerPoint file into a PDF that serves as a handout for the participants.  I add a first page that contains my contact information as well as resources mentioned during the call and my call to action.  Talk to your host to determine if she will be distributing the handout via email or on her web site prior to the call or if you need to have it available for download from your web site.

7.  Determine your guesting requirements.  When I'm a guest presenter, at a minimum I request a recording of the teleseminar that I can use in whatever way I want in my business. I may place it on my site as a free download, send it out as a podcast, make it a members-only benefit, or sell it or include it as a part of another product available on my site. If the host is providing a transcript of the session, request a copy of that as well to use in your business.  Lastly, inquire if the host is sending out a followup email to participants after the teleseminar.  If so, ask to have your contact info and special offer sent to them again.

8.  Research venues offering teleclasses and request to be a guest.  Most of the invitations I've received to be a teleseminar guest have resulted from articles I've written in professional and trade publications, from someone visiting the speaking page of my web site, or from having been heard speaking to another group.  However, don't wait for people to contact you.  Start to research companies sponsoring teleclasses or workshops for your target market and ask to be a guest.  In your request, be sure and provide detailed info about the topic on which you'll be speaking, as well as a copy of your handout.  You want to make it as easy as possible for the host to pick you as the next teleseminar guest.

9.  Repackage your teleseminar for different markets.  You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you speak to a different target market.  With a few changes in your materials, you can usually change the focus of your presentation and make it appear customized for the target market to whom you'll be speaking.  Many times just changing the title and inserting the name of your target market is all you have to do to create a seemingly customized presentation.

10.  Ask for a testimonial to add to your web site.  Once you've completed your presentation, don't forget to ask for a testimonial from your host that you can place on your web site. In order to be valuable to you, the testimonial should include info about how much value you provided in the presentation, sample of positive feedback from participants, or how your presentation enabled some type of change or ability to take action from the participants.

Spend a few hours designing your signature teleseminar and begin to offer to present it to various groups.  You'll see your both your list and sales numbers grow from this easy-to-implement marketing strategy.

Internet Security: 8 Proven Tactics to Eliminate Threats from Spam, Viruses, and Hackers

As an online business owner, you face treacherous Internet security risks every single time you're online. Viruses, hackers, and spam await you at every turn. The reality is that these threats are always going to be a component of being online and doing business online. Unfortunately, they seem to be here to stay.

Given that, there are a number of precautions you can take to make yourself, your business and the visitors to your site as safe as possible. Here are 8 tactics proven to enhance your Internet security:

1. Virus Protection. Make sure you have the latest virus updates installed on your computer and let the software thoroughly scan your entire computer daily to ensure that no viruses successfully planted themselves on your hard drive. Set your virus checker to scan your email when it downloads, as well.

I use  AVG Free to scan both my computer and my email,  They also have a fee-based version that provides complete Internet protection. McAfee and Norton also offer similar products.

For spyware and malware protection, I use  Counterspy.  The company that makes this software also has a new product to protect against viruses and spyware called VIPRE.

2. Spam Blocker. I have a spam blocker that I use with Outlook called Cloudmark Desktop that does a great job of helping me train my email program to recognize spam. What I like about this program is that the program users tell Cloudmark what spam arrives in their inboxes, and the programmers update Cloudmark accordingly to recognize those kinds of emails. Other spam blocker programs include  IHateSpam and  MailWasher.

3. Web hosting Spam Blocker. To block spam before it even hits my Outlook inbox, one of my hosting accounts offers Postini spam blocking on my server. I pay a few dollars extra each month to add this service, but it is well worth it, as it routinely blocks at least 100 emails per day that are spam. I always have the option to log into that account if I am missing an email that may have ended up there accidentally, and I can "whitelist" the sender so that it goes though without a problem the next time. Every night this service sends me a list of emails that are questionable (i.e. the service isn't sure if it's spam), and I quickly scan them to approve any that have been misidentified.

4. Email Address Spam. One of the easiest ways your email address gets added to massive lists of spammed email addresses is by including a clear link to your email address on your website. Spambots routinely patrol the Internet looking for readily available email addresses to harvest online. Even if you have the link "cloaked" by saying "click here to email", which will bring up your email address in the visitor's email program, the spambot is able to read the HTML sourcecode and harvest the email address.

Instead, remove your email address off of all of your websites. Use a contact form for people to email you that incorporates CAPTCHA technology (where the form filler has to read a graphic representation of a word or set or numbers to prove that s/he isn't a spambot). I use the free version of Freedback for this task.

5. Discussion List Spam. If your email address must appear on any discussion lists, blog posts, or forum postings, use a free email address like the ones available at Gmail or Yahoo. In this way, you protect your "real" email address from being picked up by spambots.

6. Catch-All Email Address. If your web host company permits, create a catch-all email address that receives all email not specifically marked for a set POP email address or email forward you may have set up. When you sign up for someone's free giveaway, for example, that will add you to their marketing list, you can then enter an email address that reminds you of the site or giveaway where you used it.

For example, if I'm signing up for Jane Smith's free dog training tips report, I might use dogtraining@mydomain.com, which will then end up in my catch-all domain email address. In this way, you don't have to give away your "real" email address, and you can determine if the list holder sells or rents your email address to another. So, then, if you suddenly begin to get emails to your dogtraining@mydomain.com address from
a dog food company you've never heard of, you'll know that Jane sold or rented your email address to them.

7. Firewalls and Hackers. Make sure that you are using Windows firewall protection, at a minimum, to protect your computer from being hacked while you're online. Or, use a free firewall like  ZoneAlarm. You can also upgrade for a fee to get enhanced protection.

If you use a wireless router, be sure to set a password to secure it so that anyone passing by your home or office cannot hijack your signal and potentially hack your computer. I was resetting the wireless connection on my laptop just last week and discovered that there were 3 unsecured wireless connections in my neighborhood. I live in a residential section with no businesses, so I know that these were unsecure wireless routers in my neighbors' homes.

8. Secure Server. If you're selling something online, either your website hosting account or your shopping cart provider needs to have a security certificate so that any monetary
transactions can be made over a secure server. You can check to see if your checkout process is secure by looking for https:// in the address window of your browser when you are on the payment page of your site/shopping cart. Some browsers will also show a gold locked padlock icon when you are on a secure server.

I had to purchase a security certificate from my hosting company for my membership site, as the secure server wasn't built into the shopping cart that is integrated into the membership site software. If you use Paypal or some version of 1ShoppingCart.com, you are safe, as your customers' transactions are being carried over a secure server.

When you make sure that your computer and email are protected from spam, viruses, malware and the like, your customers are then safe when you email them or upload something to your site for them to access. Responsible online business owners need to take every precaution available to them to enhance Internet security for all involved.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it:  Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses by demystifying the steps needed to successfully market a baby boomer business online. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.OnlineBizU.com

How to Automate My Business

Q:  Where do I start in the process of automating my business?
Jacqueline Jones

Hi Jacqueline--

The place I would start is with your website.  If you don't currently have a website, you should think about starting a blog.  I use and highly recommend Typepad, and you can have a blog up and running in minutes for as little as $4.95/month. The feature that makes a blog easier to manage than a website is that you don't have to learn an HTML editing program to get it up and running.  You can simply choose a template and a layout, and you're ready to begin posting.

The second piece of your business you need to automate is you online list/database management.  You'll need an autoresponder or shopping cart type program to do that.  I have 2 recommendations for that service:

1.  GetMoreClientsAutoresponder.com --  This service, provided by aWeber, enables you to place list signup boxes on your website so that you can begin to grow a marketing list.  Once you've developed the list, you can then begin to send out an ezine to that list on a regular basis.

2.  GetMoreClientsCart.com --  This service, provided by Kickstart Cart, is a full-featured shopping cart that also includes autoresponder and list management, affiliate program management, and ad tracking.  If you will be selling info products from your site, this may be the one you want to use for all of your business automation needs.  You can purchase this service as its most basic level, which includes the shopping cart features, and upgrade to higher levels as your needs change.

Other tools I use to automate my business can be found here on one of my sites:

Top 10 Tools to Turbocharge Your Productivity

Top 10 Tools to Turbocharge Your Marketing

Got an Internet Marketing question?  Ask it here: AskDonnaGunter.com.