Do you like your site’s design but your graphic artist or web designer is no longer available? Now you want to make changes but you have images that use fonts and color schemes and you don’t which fonts or color schemes were used? 

Aside from things like ftp login info, domain registration documentation and all of that stuff, you also should know what the colors and fonts were used in creating your site graphics. It can save a lot of aggravation later.

By the way, a couple of nice tools that will help you solve these mysteries if need be…

To find the name of the fonts used, check out “What the Font”. I used this on a recent client site where we were building a new header for his blog which used the existing site header but needed a new label. 

To figure out the color I use a Firefox addon called Colorzilla - it’s simple and works quite well. 

Tara Kachaturoff, posting at AndyWibbels.com reminded me that one man’s stupid business idea is another’s gateway to that two story colonial on Easy Street in her post on Creative Business Ideas. In it she references a NicheGeek.com blog post on 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich. It reminded me of an idea for running tights that I conceived for a college marketing class years before running tights started showing up in the stores. But my marketing professor panned the idea so I never pursued it only to be bemused and frustrated because, not only did someone else introduce them and make – no doubt – a fortune but I got a stinkin’ C- on my report. (Fred Smith’s idea for FedEx was also panned by his professor; good for him that he didn’t pay attention.)

Point is take a look at the NicheGeeks list and then think about those crazy ideas you’ve had in the middle of the night or when frustrated by one of life’s little stumbling blocks (anyone po’ed like me by top sheets that are always un-tucking themselves – how about ‘Top Pocket® sheets?’; top sheets with a mattress shaped pocket attached to one end … “Never retuck a top sheet again!” Silly idea? Maybe. My wife thinks so anyway but is her opinion standing in the way of my millions?!

Because often that’s the difference between daily drudgery and financial freedom. We don’t have the guts or gumption to pursue our dreams, our crazy ideas, our ‘Spose® – Sport Hose for Athletes’. We let the lack of imagination of friends, colleagues or relatives dampen our own enthusiasm.

So what to do. For starters, reconsider your list of crazy ideas. Or start one to hold all the ideas and opportunities that occur to you. Write ‘em down. Come back to them in a few days or a few weeks, if an idea still resonates then consider what it will take to take them to the next level. And … take … those … steps! What do you have to lose except your negative net worth?

Marketing Profs published an article by Jordan Ayen of SubscriberMail that lists the one hundred sure fire words and phrases guaranteed to get your emails blocked if you use them in your subject line (and often in the body of your posts as well). The seven they reference are George Carlin’s infamous list – I guess they still have legs in email if, increasingly, nowhere else. Funny, huh, that email is so prudish.

Interesting that while Cialis and Levitra made the list, Viagra was not to be found. Hmmm. Spam blockers as market research tool … you know that your product is hitting the skids when it can’t even make the list of top spam terms!

My favorite on the list was, you’ll never guess, online marketing, followed by search engine listings… No wonder I can’t get any of my clients to return my emails!

Common sense advice for email marketers:
Read the list. Post it at your desk or your online copywriter’s desk. And, at the end of the day, never use terms in your subject lines that you would block if you saw them in your email inbox!

You know the old entertainment saying/joke? The one that describes a person has “having a great voice but a face for radio.” The implication is while their voice is show biz quality their looks leave something to be desired.

Well, sometimes that’s the case in podcasting too. Except my twist is, “he has a voice for print.” In other words, his content his brilliant but his audio delivery is sleep inducing at best, painful at worst.

This became ‘painfully’ apparent to me while listening to a audio intro to a new information product offered by an internet copywriting guru. I won’t mention his name because he’s a pretty brilliant guy and I’ve been following his e-newsletter for years.

However, he’s now using Free IQ – which bills itself as The Marketplace for Ideas – to promote his products. Free IQ gives you a place to post an introduction to your product and a media window where you can deliver video or audio content with the capability to sell that or other content from that page. It’s actually a pretty cool idea for all of us infopreneurs. You can sell content, give it away or do both. They host and distribute your free content for free but if you sell it, hosting is free but FreeIQ takes 5% (and CC processing fees) of the selling price.

Anyway, my copywriting guru is using this to sell eReports. Unfortunately, he’s using the audio component to pitch his product and listening to him is actually so painful that I haven’t been able to make it all the way through. I click away.

My point is, if you’re into podcasting or vidcasting, practice. Practice your delivery, your inflection, your breathing, your pacing, your enthusiasm – all of those things that positively or negatively impact your listener or viewer. Don’t just drone into the microphone in your less than Paul Harveyesque voice. Subconsciously or consciously I’m equating the quality of your audio delivery with the quality of your content so when your voice or video delivery drives me away, it’s driving me away from your opportunity to capture me as a customer.

Like the other old joke goes, “Q. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? A. Practice, practice, practice!”

Wow! I always knew that you could get different prices for the same or similar configurations at Dell – depending on what part of their site you went in through but this is ridiculous – and fascinating. Read the confessions of a former Dell Sales Manager for insight into the Machiavellian machinations of Dells pricing machine. What I find really interesting is that the route you take, Small Business vs. Home Buyer, makes a difference in whether you get on or off-shore sales and service support. Makes sense since you can generally get a Home machine for a few dollars less and they support the lower price by offering lower cost (to Dell) support.

The question I have is, in the long term, does the increased frustration, anger and buyer dissatisfaction outweigh the few bucks saved in off-shore support?