Happy New Year 2009

List of Best E-Mail Marketing Software

I love to send blog announcements and new developments through e-mail news letters. But that’s not the purpose for which most of you uses e-mail marketing software.

Basically e-mail marketing software use to promote products/services, to run e-mail campaigns where you can send bulk e-mails to hundreds and thousands of your opt-in lists of subscribers. No wonder people send bulk unsolicited e-mails using this computer application software.

E-mail campaign is very powerful tool to make money through affiliate marketing. In simple English,

1. You register yourself with an Affiliate Network,
2. Choose a product or service to promote,
3. Create a promotional e-mail campaign,
4. Inserts your affiliate link into this
5. And send it across in massive volume.

If on receipts of these e-mails someone open it through your link and buys a product/service then you get your due commission from your affiliate network for selling their product/service.

Most email marketing software has features that assist the user in the process of organizing contacts, creating campaigns, and scheduling communication. In addition, the software usually provides features, such as an “unsubscribe check” that assist in complying with the CAN-SPAM law. Email marketing software can also provide tracking functions such as how many people have opened an email, how many emails bounced-back, how many people visited the hyperlinks provided in the marketing message, and how many people actually purchased something as a result of the email.

But I would suggest you to check for these features before buying e-mail marketing software:

1. Email Marketing White paper
2. Message Scheduling
3. Spam Check
4. Open and Click through Tracking
5. Bounce-back Handling
6. Subscription Management
7. E-mails HTML Templates

One more thing that you must assure that the e-mail marketing software must have capabilities to import your present subscribers list. But that’s not a big issue as most of these programs have built-in import subscribers list tools; anyway you must check it that it should be there; otherwise you will need to create your news letter/ e-mail updates subscriber list again from scratch.

I am giving here e-mail marketing software list as per my preference based on their performance and other features.

1. MailChimp

2. FeedBlitz

3. AWeber

4. GetRESPONSE

5. Bronto

6. Icontact

7. Listrak

8. MindComet

How To Build A Google Freindly Site ?

Remember a few days back Google gave us a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guide for webmasters. Now that guide helps us understanding the much hyped SEO stuff.

To help us developing a “Google friendly” site, google webmaster help Group has come up with a 30 slides presentation to show you how to host a better site.

You can download this presentation from HERE

Or Watch video presentation HERE.

Meet My Mascot

So today I join the gang of Tyler Cruz, Zac Johnson, Jim and Paul Piotrowski. All these guys have cool mascot to represent themselves in blogsphere. My friend Yan told me a couple of week back that he is very desperate to be “Mascoted”. I think he has not trap any one yet to get his mascot.

But I am very excited to see this funky guy above, I think he look exactly like me, what say.

If I go on explaining the term Mascot :

The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck- colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fictional spokespeople for consumer products,.

So I can hope this will bring me luck, I need some more subscribers desperately and very keen to get my dignity back from Google.

Suggest A Cool One Liner And Win A Special Prize

What comes in your mind when you first see this mascot of mine? Write up your cool one liner and you could win a surprise prize. It can be anything an ad spot, a text link , premium theme or may be any crazy stuff, but sure you will love to have it. I will give it to the one who write up the coolest one liner for this mascot of mine.

And yes one more thing if you want FREE Mascot, Banner, Logo, Icon or any other stuff like that then e-mail me [shanker@shankerbakshi.com] with your request I can help you to get one.

Do You Think 140 Characters Are Not Enough To Say -What Are You Doing?

Today I tossed a question before my twitter followers “Do you think 140 characters are enough to express your thoughts & tweet about what are you doing or do you want more?”

There is a strong reason why suddenly I am asking this question, because some Sam Sethi has come up with this crazy idea of twitblogs. It’s a mixture of twitter and Blog, where you can not only micro blog your “doings’ but you can also post images, media, or any other embedded object. The service is in Alpha stage, you can use twitblogs with your Twitter credentials, just login to twitblogs with your Twitter user name and password and start using this new crazy service.

In twitblogs you have the options to write a complete blog post or Micro blog your thoughts simultaneously. So when you feel like 140 characters are just not enough to say or show what you really want to say then twitblogs is the perfect twitter companion for you. Give it a try.

Before heading over to Twitblogs let’s have a look at the answers by my fellow twitter user in response to my quarry.

Miscellaneous Ramblings of a dot Com Guru – December 2008

I learn photoshop only to write a post on How to make ebook cover

I don’t know from where I got this feeling but that was in my mind somewhere that if I can wrote a post on “how to make ebook cover in photoshop” then I can take it to the No. 1 position in Google search index. My only purpose to learn photoshop was to wrote this post, so I installed photoshop on my laptop, search for tutorial notes on how to create “Various Stuff” in photoshop. If you are keen to learn photoshop there is tremendous information flooded on the Internet about it. And then finally I wrote this post on “how to make ebook cover in photoshop”. No surprise, my intuition were right, I was able to hit the No. 1 search result in Google search index for phrase “how to make ebook cover in photoshop”. If you click the picture below you can see the result.

Mean while here is the article which teaches you “how to make ebook cover in photoshop”

Cross the Twitter 1000 Followers Mark

Everybody loves twitter and me too, my twitter following reached above 1000 mark. Its a good thing, it mean whatever I will write in twitter’s 140 character small wonder box it will be serve to more then 1000 twitter followers on mine including President elect Barack Obama. How I reach up to that mark so soon is a secret, I will soon post a write up on “how to increase your twitter followers”. Subscriber to my RSS feed or by e-mail so you don’t miss the tip. Follow Me on twitter

Which Word I write frequently in this blog

My new blogger friend Ben Tremblay posted a Blogging Tutorial video on his blog last week and ask his readers to count how many times he pronounce the word “Right” in that video. He believes that he speaks this word “Right” a lot. He was right, in that 4:45 Minutes video he pronounced the word “right” nearly 29 times. Interesting na?

I don’t post any video tutorial on this blog; so I ask myself which words I write frequently while writing posts. I google my quarry to see if there is any tool which can give me an idea which word I use frequently.  I find this cool tool at Wordle.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Write in your blog URL and you will find the answer.

Look like in the picture below that I speak about “google” a lot. (Ghoos!!!)

My 4 years old son Aditya Sharma now has his own blog.

I have already introduced to you to my little cute son “The Shanker Bakshi Junior” a couple of month back. As a blogger what the best I can offer him is to create his own Blog. I wonder how he would feel after 10 or 14 years when he will see how his dad is updating maintaining his little blog over the years. He is probably the smallest blogger from I N D I A at present. Head over to this link if you wish to visit his blog, there is only couple of post over there.

I am passionate about my blogging and as I said earlier I want to blog till my last breath, may be one day my son Aditya will write a guest post on this blog and inform you that his dad is no more in this world, and try to win your heart too.

Grab Free Custom Built SEO Site

You love it, you hate it doing, but you can not ignore it. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a thing every blogger try to manage, and why not, because if you succeed managing it traffic mechanically rushes from various search engines to your blog.

But if you find it hard managing your site SEO then there is chance for you to grab a free custom built “SEO” site in any niche, Jeff Johnson is world known SEO expert currently giving away to you.

So if you planning to start a brand new niche site, try his custom built “SEO” site.

Head over to this link to know more about Jeff Johnson and his “SEO stuff”.

Google is Dead Here is Another Unexploited Goldmine

If you are an affiliate marketer, I know you do every bit to seduce Google (should I use this word) to generate striking traffic for your keywords. You live by Google, Google is your god, your marketing tool is Google’s AdWords, right, and you have just learned from a marketing Guru that Google is a goldmine and you should armed yourself with “his secret system” to dig your maximum share out of it.

Bullshit, you’d have to be world’s biggest Idiot if you are not making profit with Yahoo, Google is almost dead.

No harm, I am not saying all this, two guys who just explore the possibilities to make profit with less competitive yahoo has this opinion about big G.

Dean Cassady & Jason Phillips invented a system which works like charm with yahoo, funny; they call it “Yahoo! Cash 4 Idiots”.

I agree with them, not fully but to some extent; hat off to Dean and Jason at least they come up with something which has nothing to do with Google.

They try to prove their point that Google is dead:

Saturation: Google is no more a profit generating machine due to high competition for competitive bidding on highly priced keywords.

Google Hates Affiliate Marketers: if you are playing with “some” specific affiliate networks Google may treat you like a spammer because Google hates “those” affiliate networks.

Google Will Never Let You Win: Because every time some affiliate gets top search position, a bigger client is speed-dialing them to scream about it. According to Dean & Jason major corporations pouring millions every month into AdWords for paid search campaigns. If you are small get out of these big guys way.

Google’s Giant effects: Almost 90% online advertising agencies use Google, so when you enter into this market your competition is with some really giant advertising agencies, if you don’t have enough budget to contend with these agencies they will easily toss you aside.

“The Only People Getting Rich With AdWords Are The Ones Selling You Products About How To Get Rich With AdWords!”

That’s a funny situation, it just like when you make money by teaching other people how to make money. But this is the real situation,

So what do you think? Do you think yahoo have that power which can make you rich, if you are a  affiliate marketer then would you like to spend some money on this second biggest search source?

Yahoo is fast, open, cash pulling machine (?) and always eager to hug you, it won’t slap.

So if you like what they (Dean and Jason) says then head over to this page ( no affiliate link here)  and check yourself whether their secret ” Yahoo cash 4 Idiot” system is worth trying.

Did i mention somewhere above that they made wooping US$ 463,590.22 in just 58 days using this system.

The End of New Beginnings

If report from TechCrunch has to believe then 89805 headcounts has been layoff since August 27, 2008. This is due to recession, which also leads to financial crunch and slow down the possibilities of new startups. Founders finding it hard to get the Venture Capitalist fund their new projects.

You may scratch your head, can find some new idea to go with, can dream to pull off your shocks to march ahead but the a big question -is this the right time to cook a whole new business idea? . Your dream may ruin owing to lack of funding, as they (VCs) not willing to flow in fresh cash into new business enterprise right now.

Things are not getting better, yet few predict the same can go along for two years or so. Money is drying and running out of the briefcase of that smart guy who used to carries it with style in Silicon Valley chased up by Blue Shirt Gray trouser young lot of entrepreneurs running before him to throw some money over their dream projects.

We blogger always welcome new startups as it always give us an opportunity to grab a chance to write up paid reviews and make some dollars out of it. Money is shrinking; money is rare, so its become difficult to wash your hands with it easily.

Would You Like to Outsource Your Blog Content Writing Job To India?

There were these two articles published in last couple of days which indicates that like few other services Indian can also grab blog article writing work also to India. [ 1, 2]

I know most of you bloggers like to spend most of your valuable time doing marketing of your blog, tweaking your WordPress themes, twittering and commenting around but  when its comes to blog post writing, you find it a very hard job specially if you are blogging from long time  ( may be you feel run out of topics   So are you in mood to outsource your blogging content writing work to India?

Well you already knows that India is the huge Business Outsource service provider in the world. The overall outsource services that India provides to the world amounts to more then US$ 7 Billions. More then 400,000 people working day and night in approximately 400 Indian BPO companies. These are basically providing services like IT, Financial Services, Communication and consumer goods.  Several print media companies already outsourcing their services to India but what about blogging content writing Services?

You may ask that why so many outsourcing of jobs to India, the reason is pretty simple, it’s cheaper to get these jobs done here in India then any where in the world. Russell Smith note on this economic saving is very interesting, he says:-

Well, there is absolutely no argument about the economic brilliance of such a choice. It’s irresistible. Currently freelance writers in Canada are mobilizing in an effort to raise their rates in magazines and newspapers: The standard maximum rate ranges from 35 cents to $1 a word and has been that way for about 30 years (online writers usually get less). At 0.75 cents a word (that’s v3/4 of a cent), publishers will make major savings, and they won’t have to worry about bolshie personalities either.

Blogger Beware -writers in India can replace you -Russel Smith

Let me ask this question directly to you, keeping all economic and other benefit in mind, would you like to outsource your Blog content writing job to India.

Give me your answer in comment below.

Picture Courtesy: Time Megazine

How to Become a Successful Blogger?

Top Shot bloggers Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick showing us The Path to achieve our aim of becoming a successful blogger. Yaro releases his free report “Roadmap to become a blogger” to download, so now you have a chance to grab a copy of this. I have gone thru some of the pages of this e-book and can tell you on the basis that it really has certain master’s stroke which you must learn to become a successful blogger in your niche.

Download it from HERE

Winners of Lets Win This Contest Season 2

All Good things come to an end so our Lets Win This Contest Together – Season 2 also. Initial response was huge, slow down in the middle and few takers at the end. Overall it’s been satisfactory to me; don’t know how you will take it.

My aim was to make a prize pool and try to provide maximum gain to my contest sponsors so there was a condition that if you want to win prizes from first category which contains all big prizes then you must blog about the contest. The result is here, there are more entries in term of condition one in comparison to condition two which was to subscribe by e-mail to this blog.

How results have been drawn

Prepared a list of all participants and randomized the list at random.org You can see the pictures of randomized list at the bottom of this post.

Congratulations to all the winners.

How to Claim the Prize – The million dollar Question

In a day or two I will send e-mails to prize winners as well as to the prize sponsors informing them about your winning. You can then directly contact the sponsor to get your prizes. It’s as simple as that.

How to claim prizes – Winners of Entrecard Ad Spot Sponsors

You will receive the wining EC Credits in your Entrecard account directly from Entrecard. Please provide me your Entrecard Account e-mail address at: shanker@shankerbakshi.com

Please make the Subject line of above mail as: Winner of Entrecard Ad Spot Sponsors

In the end thanks very much for all my sponsors once again and all those who supported Lets Win this contest Together -Season 2

See you in Season 3 (very soon in a blog near and dear to you)

HERE ARE THE WINNERS

Themes Logo/Banner/Design (Total 8 Prizes worth $533)

1. Two Custom Banner Design from Buy Templates worth $99 winner Chie
2. One Custom Logo Design from Logo Angel worth $99 winner Phoenix2life
3. Premium WordPress Theme plus Bonus Make Money Online Theme from Neil Duckett dot Com worth $75 Winner Yen
4. Two WordPress Template Design from Buy Templates worth $60 Winner Eljon
5. One logo Design from Mr Javo worth $50 Winner Topen
6. One Professional Header Design from worth Graphics Design by Nilo $50 Winner David
7. One professional Header Design from Mohit Aneja worth $50 Winner Pinnaymama
8. One professional Logo Design from Photoshop World worth $50 Winner wiehanne

Some More Prizes (Total 8 Prizes worth $189.99)

1. One copy of WP Auctions Gold V.2.0 from Sponsorview worth $24.99 Winner Sherry
2. One Free Review from WebTrafficROI worth $25 Winner gengen
3. One Free Review from NSpeaks worth $25 Winner Chie
4. One Free Review from Inspiritblog worth $50 Winner Paco
5. Cash $20 via PayPal. From JoeTech Winner Yen
   
6. One 468×60 banner for one month from Submityourcontest worth $10 Winner blogywalkie.com
7. One 468×60 banner for one month from NSpeaks worth $20 Winner Marlene
8. One Free featured listing of winner’s contest on Submityourcontest worth $15 Winner David

125 x 125 Square Ads (Total 13 prizes worth $ 173)

1. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Abhinav Sonkar’s Blog worth $30 Winner Lankapo
2. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Mr. Javo Worth $25 Winner Kris
3. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from WebTrafficROI worth $20 Winner Eljon
4. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from NSpeak Worth $15 Winner Luis Torres
5. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Eyespi20 Worth $15 Winner gengen
6. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from JoeTech Worth $10 Winner Rosh
7. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Name Sherry Worth $10 Winner Sherry
8. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Shopping ad space Worth $10 Winner Indocontest
9. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Submit Your Contest Worth $10 Winner Phoenix2life
10. 125×125 Square ad for Two months from My Life’s Adventure Worth $10 Winner Suwari
11. 125×125 Square Ad for two months from Wonderful Things In Life Worth10 Winner Paco
12. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Tech By PC Worth $8 Winner Bintage
13. 125×125 Square Ad for One month from Slightly Mordant Worth $5 Winner Yen

Link Ads (Total 5 prizes worth $91)

1. One Featured link for One Year in PR3 Directory Dawsoneng from Abhishek Deshpande worth $36 Winner Hussein
2. Two featured links for One month from WebTrafficROI worth $20 Winner Khristen Jane
3. One featured link for One month from Medan Daily worth $20 Winner wiehanne
4. One featured link for One month from NSpeaks.com – worth $10 Winner Karun
5. One featured link for One month from Ragnarok Guide worth $5 Winner Marlene

Entrecard Ad Spot Sponsors (Total 33 Prizes of 65000 Credits worth $390)

1. 5000 EC Credits from Techbypc winner John doro
2. 5000 EC Credits from slamblogger winner BBx
3. 5000 EC Credits from nukeit Winner wiehanne
4. 5000 EC Credits from snapshotcap Winner Guru
5. 3000 EC Credits from semuaorank Winner ThemeLib.com
   
6. 3000 EC Credits from abhinavsonkar Winner Topen
7. 3000 EC Credits from gewgawwritings Winner wiehanne
8. 3000 EC Credits from JoeTech Winner Dhadha
   
9. 2000 EC Credits from babyerika Winner gengen
10. 2000 EC Credits from sofhaljamil Winner  Indocontest
11. 2000 EC Credits from wpbeginners Winner Chie
12. 2000 EC Credits from realmofprosperity Winner Sweetytots
13. 2000 EC Credits from jdoqocy Winner  Pinnaymama
14. 2000 EC Credits from suki-desu Winner Sherry
15. 2000 EC Credits from days of my Life winner The Fitness Diva
16. 2000 EC Credits from impnerd winner Navjot Singh
17. 1000 EC Credits from Kisahberuang Winner Aiza
18. 1000 EC Credits from Random Detox winner  John doro
19. 1000 EC Credits from Google Stalking Winner  Sherry
20. 1000 EC Credits from Moneyne.ws Winner gengen
21. 1000 EC Credits from communicatebetter Winner MOJ
22. 1000 EC Credits from work-at-home-wealth Winner Hobo.he
    
23. 1000 EC Credits from Getting Personal Winner Yen
24. 1000 EC Credits from theonlydevice Winner Icon
    
25. 1000 EC Credits from tenforty Winner Lankapo
    
26. 1000 EC Credits from skidzopedia Winner wiehanne
27. 1000 EC Credits from eleanormordenoaguilar Winner Pinnaymama
28. 1000 EC Credits from sofhaljamil Winner Karun
29. 1000 EC Credits from seo-tuneup Winner Sherry
30. 1000 EC Credits from medandaily Winner David
31. 1000 EC Credits from lolcelebs Winner Sherry
32. 1000 EC Credits from bestjoanne Winner wiehanne
33. 1000 EC Credits from ajabgajab Winner  Kris

Other Entrecard Credits Sponsored (Total 10 Prizes of 11000 Credits worth $66)

1. 2,000 EC Credits from Wonderful Things In Life Winner Khristen Jane
2. 1,000 EC Credits from Make Money Online Winner ThemeLib.com
3. 1,000 EC Credits from My Life’s Adventure Winner  gengen
4. 1,000 EC Credits from SimplyWP Winner  MOJ
5. 1,000 EC Credits from Wiehanne Lounge Winner The Fitness Diva
   
6. 1000 EC Credit from Michael Aulia Winner  wiehanne
7. 1000 EC Credit from Contest Whiz Winner Kris
8. 1000EC Credits from Heart Random Winner Hussein
   
9. 1000 EC Credits from Fantasy Baseball Advice Winner Dhyarga
   
10. 1000 EC Credits from Amorfrancis Winner Luis Torres