Grow Your Online Sales Review

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(More customer reviews)Greg Jameson begins by telling you the many reasons that you should have a website online. In addition, he provides helpful suggestions for choosing a good domain name. What I fould beneficial are the "types of pages" he says should be included on your site. Questions that I also had that were answered in this book are:
- what are the free ways to generate traffic to a website & the multiple places to get links
- he explains how to do email marketing, what to include, and why it's important
- how you can get usable content for your website, newsletters, etc. He points out a clever trick to find free downloads of
pdf's about any subject which you could utilize to create your own content
- an explanation of what resolution is best for images used on your site & the importance of getting this right
- why creating videos to take advantage of youtube is a smart thing for businesses & how setting up a youtube channel is valuable
to users
- why adding a pop-up written message from within youtube could possibly cause a person to visit your website
- how to get the most from your presence on facebook or position yourself as an expert by blogging
- his description of different problems that your site could face & what one thing you can do to find out these problems have
happened sooner to protect you from revenue losses
But the part of most significance to me was his breakdown of decisions you need to make when dealing with the setup of money collection from customers. These include what you need to make customers comfortable in making a purchase at your site, why your shopping cart choice is so important, and his simplified chart which illustrates what happens when a customer uses his credit card. All-in-all, this is a great book to have. It has so much interesting and unique information that I most definitely would want to own more of Greg Jameson's books. It contains items that can prevent you from making some costly mistakes and ways to create more customers for your site.

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Practical advice on getting the most of your internet presence

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Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional Review

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(More customer reviews)These days, newspapers and magazines are full of "work-from-home" business opportunities. Most of these advertisements claim to provide the gullible consumer with a way to make thousands of dollars each month in their pajamas. The truth is there are no easy ways to make a living as a small business owner. Owning your own small business means constant hard work in promotion, administration, client meetings and endless planning for the future. It also means doing due diligence in an effort to discover exactly what transitioning into a new line of business fully entails. For those interested in developing their own business dedicated to the discovery, packaging and sale of information, Mary Ellen Bates, with the assistance of Reva Basch (Editor), has put together a comprehensive how-to manual devoted to the burgeoning profession of the Independent Information Professional. Any effort at discovering what this field is about should include a study of this book.
Readers will note from the very first sentence that this is not a get-rich quick business scheme, nor is this a business for the faint of heart. Through the work's thirty-five chapters and four appendices (443 pages total), Mary Ellen Bates deftly guides her readers through the myriad intricacies of starting and growing an information brokerage. This book contains many of the things that one would expect from a book that directs the reader in the business of running a business: Finances, accounting, rates and fees are all addressed. What sets this work aside from others though is the depth of the information Bates gives her readers. For instance, most people starting a one or two person business might think about the most obvious things like desks, bank accounts and the like. However, what about errors and omissions insurance, confidentiality, networking and professional development? These are but a few of the critical issues that the small business owner would be remiss to overlook. All are covered in depth in Building & Running a Successful Research Business.
In the first three chapters, Bates provides her readers with a detailed job description, if you will, of the "Independent Info Pro", a glimpse into what might be a typical day in her business life and some insight into the joys and frustrations of the profession. This is exceptionally useful information that covers finding clients, real-life experiences and a section of frequently asked questions. This is exactly the type of information that potential info pros need to help them make decisions about the viability of joining this profession.
This book truly begins to soar when Bates launches into details about the research process and the resources available for use in the field. I have to admit an almost guilty pleasure in reading this section of the book. Like many who have taken advanced degrees in Library and Information Science, I learned long ago that it's all about the information and our ability to communicate that information to our clients and patrons. While many of us lean toward the joys of interacting with clients, there are others who enjoy interacting with the information resources maybe a bit more than interacting with humans. I count myself in that latter group. For this reason, I felt a palpable chill in my spine as I went through Bates' description of online resources, public records, special collections and the like. For the information junkie, this is simply outstanding material.
As a detailed reference tool and guide to the profession, Mary Ellen Bates has constructed an impressive work that will leave readers well informed about the career. Those contemplating a career change into the field of Independent Information Professionals, as well as those who are just starting out, will be well served by this outstanding work. I highly recommend Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional.
--- Reviewed by
Timothy E. McMahon, M.S.
Executive Editor
Northeast Book Reviews
tim_mcmahon@northeastbookreviews.com

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Online research is one of the hottest work-from-home business opportunities of the decade, and this handbook provides the information necessary to launch, manage, and build a successful research business. Explained is every step of the process including getting started, running the business, marketing, and researching. The important question of "is this business right for you?" is addressed in detail, as are how to close the sale, managing clients, promoting services on the web, and tapping into powerful information sources beyond the web. Also provided are a description of the types of research independent information professionals are expected to provide and surveys of the online and offline tools necessary to build expertise and ensure a satisfied clientele.

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The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting a Web-Based Business Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a web designer who has done work for Fortune 1000, non-profs, and govt, but I have little experience with small e-commerce sites, so I thought this book might be helpful.
This book is written at a *very* basic level, a small step up from explaining what a website or search engine is. Much of it is common sense, but there are some pretty good points that not everyone will know. So on that level, I think its good for beginners who have no experience with web development or even how to run a business.
What concerned me was that because the author is not actually in the field of web development, he seems to just "improvise" some info. This book contains some incorrect information and there are some issues with the author's own websites.
-The author's websites should be models of well designed e-commerce sites. They are "fine" and functional, but there are some design and usability issues. forcopywritersonly.com does not look professionally designed, has some basic usability issues such as lack of breadcrumbs, nav states not staying on at the tertiary level, an inconsistent use of text links and button links, blog missing most common blog functionality, use of the word "click here" which is seen as a big faux pas in the industry, etc. I just showed my girlfriend forgraphicdesignersonly.com (his second site), and told her the guy on the homepage says he is a graphic designer. Her response was, "Are you f-ing kidding me?" It doesnt look professional at all despite the author saying he is a "Registered Graphic Designer" (NEVER heard of such a thing).
-He defines terms he says are common in the industry that just arent. "Beta site" is a not a demo site used by designers, it is a site used for web applications before they are done. I have never heard a designer use that term. We might call them staging sites or testing sites. We don't use the term "masthead". The author must be thinking of magazines. We call them headers or banners. On page 105, he says, "This is tricky because most internet web browsers, like Foxfire.." The author must be thinking of Firefox. Typo perhaps, but at the level this book is written, one assumes the readers havent heard of these different web browsers.
-He mentions applications or services that are not common or forgets some common ones. For example, he says Dreamweaver and Microsoft Expression are "used by most professional designers". Dreamweaver, yes. The second I have never seen used ever (and I have worked lots of places). When he mentions email marketing software, he forgets the number one most popular, MagnetMail (and yes, it was big at time of publication too).
-When talking about web development, he only talks about web design, the word information architecture never appears and that is a big part of it too.
-His lists of websites to consult or applications to use that exist throughout the book are deceptively long. Usually the first couple are commonly used and the next 12 or seem to be just the result of the author doing a web search and entering the results into his book w/o actually knowing anything about them.
Anyway, again, I wouldnt completely discount this book because it has some pointers on promoting your business and such, but there have to be other books out there written by professionals in the industry (people who work at reputable web development or PR firms) who really know what they are talking about.

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The web-based basics! Aspiring web entrepreneurs will find here everything they need to know about starting and running their own small-scale online business. Whether they intend to sell goods, services, subscriptions, or advertising, this book provides them with the specific nuts and bolts of planning, designing, build­ing, hosting, marketing, and operating their online businesses. •The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Starting Your Own Business has over a quarter million copies sold in five editions •1.6 million web-based businesses in the U.S., a $175 billion market in 2007 •Online businesses benefiting from increasing number of Internet users- with increased traffic for subscription, advertising, and affiliate program revenue

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