Stuff

Geekspeak alert. The following is a horror story about playing with Joomla, VirtueMart and its PHP files. May this help anyone looking for a solution to the itemID problem in VirtueMart. The following may not be a perfect solution, however, in the particular situation it worked like a charm and continues to work. (more…)

…or how to get people to give you money with your copy

When writing for anything that has the goal of someone giving you money, tell them why they should do it. We as buyers are only interested in your product or service for selfish reasons… what is known as the WIIFMs (or What’ s In It For Me).

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This is not news, this is barely something that should matter, except for the fact that is funny. Of course, some healthy fun is always great. This has gone all over the web, has been in the news in different places and now Antoine Dodson (the guy in the video) has a website and has created some controversy in his hometown in Alabama.

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Let’s talk about digital marketing. Gone are the days when people used to think about the internet as only for nerds in a basement. Kids are at it with so much intensity, that any 5 year old can now explain you the best new tricks for Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Internet marketing was about promoting a website and helping it be seen by potential clients. We used to have only PPC and SEO (which is older than people think – some nutjobs want to make it as old as 1970!), and then came along social media. Youtube made the web a TV and Twitter and Facebook made it a thing to be carried everywhere. So what is digital marketing all about? (more…)

There is a growing awareness of the need to go online. Most business owners today understand that you have to be online to even exist. The question that most of these business owners have is: Is it really for me? Or as an extension, if I go online, will I be able to sell? Is people really looking for my product online?

We tend to confuse online marketing with creating websites. And even though creating a website is an important decision and can be a powerful tool for your product’s marketing, it is hardly the only way to market online. The internet has more than websites, it is used for email, for social communication, for information and for entertainment.
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Amazed, as most of you, that Spain and Netherlands made it through to the final. At the beginning of the World Cup no one could have predicted this final, most would have said they were good teams, with possibilities, but Germany, Argentina, Brasil, France, Portugal and even Italy looked like better options to most.

I thought Spain would get a nasty defeat from the Germans, I wanted to see this final between two nations that have never won the cup, but really thought it wouldn’t happen. Germany seemed simply formidable and yet, it fell by the closest of margins and by a defense player’s goal (Puyol).

I have some very dear friends in Spain and they are wild with excitement. Most in Spain can’t believe it either, after many cups being big contenders and not living up to expectations.

How is this related to marketing or the web? (more…)

So here we are, getting ready to move to a new city. The usual boxing of all the old stuff and the review of what stays and what goes… time for a complete cleansing. Time to see all the stuff we have accumulated over the years and audit our past decisions.

We are about a month away from the move and this boxing game has already taken most of our space, the apartment is a mess. Its all for good, we are moving to a bigger space in a better, quieter, safer and kid friendly area. But as in every change, the fear of the unknown is quite palpable. Leaving all the connections and all the work we have done these past years, a question keeps popping in my head… are we doing the right thing? (more…)

Spain is a beautiful country. Beautiful scenery, great people, delicious food (a bottle of 5 litres of extra virgin olive oil for only about $20CAD, excellent wines for only 3 bucks, cheese from heaven – made in La Mancha… crazy!). I was invited to talk about different subjects related to online marketing, business promotion and personal branding for entrepreneurs in different events through several cities.

I learned a lot from this trip. Usually you go thinking, “here’s what I will teach”, but you often come back getting more than what you give and that is the true value of sharing. Spain is in the middle of very hard economic times. It is a country trying so hard to reinvent itself, to find unification and to find growth and stability. In spite of this (or maybe because of all this), people seem to be having a lot of fun. In the streets of Granada, you could never guess that the city is going through one of its worst economic crisis in years. While going about through several small cities and towns in La Mancha, everyone seemed happy and to a big extent, contempt. People in Huesca, Madrid and Zaragoza share a smile and are courteous, all talk about how the times are bad, but no one actually complains, all keep working and keep living. (more…)

While doing some research for a couple of speaking engagements in Spain, I found a video about the nature of teamwork and some interesting insights into ways to accomplish anything.

Lessons to be learned. This also applies very well into any process. Instead of spending a lot of time planning and thinking, spend a little bit less and focus on making it happen. Try as many times as needed until success is achieved. Edison said it: (more…)

It is not uncommon nowadays to hear someone say, “I do internet marketing“. It just seems that there are just simply too many of us out there! Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There are a LOT of MLM guys out there. Most have found the web a nice place to do their “work”.

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This is part two of the little odyssey that could from some time back.

So, to whoever was or may be interested, the person removed the article after some heckling and nagging. Didn’t respond to any message or email, but simply removed the offending article, which was good, right? Unfortunately, other blogs have shown up. Nice! Now, the question is, is it worth it to chase all this copying? Guess not. (more…)

We are in the best season for the retail industry… the holidays. Most retailers have been working hard on preparing for this season, but some, lagged and are still trying to catch up. What can you do if you are in dire need for a fast strategy to promote your products or services for this holiday season? (more…)

Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc… all search engines designed to help us find websites that otherwise we would not know they even exist. All is good and great until you start seriously thinking about it. (more…)

Most traditional marketers were only (and still are) interested in earning an income while promoting whatever product. There were no laws and people would use any dirty tactic to sell, no matter the consequences. Then they learned about product loyalty, quality over quantity and other marketing elements that make products and services desirable. (more…)

So Windows 7 is out and most people are now getting used to the new settings. It has very little change in regards to eye candy compared to Vista, but has a couple of interesting improvements. While so many have reviewed the goods and bads, I think it is pretty much the same as Vista but with a couple of very nice fixes that were more than needed in the previous system. (more…)

Verizon has launched an aggresive baiting campaign and its breaking the iPhone’s marketing to give Android’s spot in the world of smartphones (and very soon, superphones).

Verizon’s new ad not only spoofs and mocks iPhone’s advertising style, but completely trashes iPhone’s known issues and annoying quirks. (more…)

The Web Surfer’s Guide to the Free Internet

Here be the first edition of the Web Surfer’s Guide.

Before the free parade, please read the following pointers about downloading free stuff online:

1. Be careful what you get. Most free stuff comes with a risk. This may mean its bad stuff (as in bad free music or movies) or that the product is not final (as in alpha and beta software releases full of bugs).

2. Stay as far as you can from Warez and Piracy sites. Even though you may be attracted to the lure of free (illegal) stuff, the risks are extremely high if you don’t know what you are doing.

3. If so inclined, donate, comment, provide feedback, report bugs, help with code, give ideas, promote the product. This will help those who give you for free and will give people a reason to keep supplying free stuff.

Now the good stuff. The free sources links (some here for now, more coming in future revisions of the guide):

Here be “Freeness”

www.frostclick.com/ – Free Music, free movies, free software… free all and very, very legal. How cool is that?

www.frostwire.com/– Free download software – Torrents and Peer to peer (like Limewire)

www.ubuntu.com – Free OS with a huge fanbase and support forum. Almost all issues can be solved there or you can post yours and get help. Try it with the software below.

www.virtualbox.org/ – This is like a computer within your computer. Allows you to safely test other OS without having to do a full hard disk install.

www.drupal.org/ – To build websites you can use this free content management system (CMS). Its all the rage with programmers. Not so user friendly though.

www.joomla.org/ – Same as Drupal, but easier for less skilled programmers. Excellent system for regular users without much programming skills (even without programming skills at all)

www.wordpress.org – A highly popular CMS for blogs. Use it in their site (www.wordpress.com) or install it in your server for more options, scalability and benefits for your site.

www.sourceforge.net/ – Open Source home. Programmers and developers post their newest work here and let you download it free. Search for a tool you’ve dreamed of, chances are, you may find it there.

www.iconpot.com/ – Free Icons for personal, commercial use without having to provide credit everywhere.

www.1001freefonts.com/ – Most of these fonts you can download and use in personal projects, some require permission or to be purchased for online use.

www.net-matrix.com/ – More free software. A huge collection of free software.

www.hulu.com – Free TV shows and some movies. Only available in the US.

www.archive.org – A very interesting initiative to create an archive of all human. There are free movies, cartoons, antique acetate records (music), home videos (yes, home videos). Want to see how a website started? You will find all its changes here too.

www.legaltorrents.com/ – Free legal torrents. Movies, music, animations, images, etc.

www.wikipedia.org – The world’s largest free encyclopedia. Ok, everybody knows it, I just felt I had to mention it.

https://translate.google.com/ – Free Google translator for almos any language. Very good, not as a real translator, but does the job for non important things.

This is a very, very short list of the wonders hidden on the web. I have a much larger collection of free legal stuff sites, but for the time being, this is the first edition… I will come back and work on this guide some more. If you ask for a source of free stuff for a particular subject, chances are, I’ve got it. Post in the comments what you would like to find out and I will add it to the guide on the next revision.

They say that the measure of your importance is in how many people copy you. Online, this may or may not be true. (more…)

Online advertising spending has a downward trend and some believe it will continue

As internet users evolve, they stop clicking at the first thing that moves. I remember when the internet was this strange new thing (circa 1993) and most of the time I was just trying to find what to click. That certainly changed over time. The internet has become an every day tool for most of us. The internet has permeated the way we do business, make purchase decisions, share information, keep in touch and work. (more…)

Wow! I love Apple! Its always a marketing inspiration, no matter where I am and what I’m doing. Most people like the brand, heck, even love it. Some poeple are extreme fanatics and go out and constantly promote it. That kind of brand loyalty, WOM (Word Of Mouth) and supermarketing effect makes Apple a sure marketing example to quote. This edit of Apple’s Keynote address in September 2009 is a way of dissecting the event. Notice how the keywords are related to each product and subject.

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Talking with someone today, we were discussing about how the online marketing has become some sort of wild new west. Every man for himself, no law other than the gun you carried and ripe with opportunity… if you survived! (more…)

Before you think  this is some sort of tabloid blog, let me assure you that the headline is related to marketing in many ways and marketing is my subject here.

I was waiting for a meeting with a client in a lawyer´s office today. While drinking a very nice cup of coffee, a newspaper article on a table caught my attention. The headline read “Michelle Obama: First Lady of flex” and it turns out that her secret is exercising regularly and something called “supersets” which are a set of triceps pushdowns and hammer curls. Now, there is not much marketing in this so far, is it? (more…)

Now, that is a good question. To judge by the language and styles we internet marketers use online, in our blogs and sites, I would certainly say yes. Just like rockstars, we have our trends and styles. (more…)

Granted, internet marketing is all over the place these days. To hear all internet “gurus”, internet marketing is the non-plus-ultra of the marketing world. Not to swim against the current, your friendly neighbourhood marketing guy, a.k.a. me, has decided to make a list of the 10 top reasons why the web is hot and will continue to be hot for a while longer (some even predict that it will not stop for a very long time).

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It is quite unbelievable that most companies and business owners still think that being online is just about creating a website and forgetting about it. As most people already know, creating a website is just the very first step of many, many more steps in creating a successful marketing strategy. In fact, nowadays, some marketing gurus do not even use a website to promote products or services.

All is good and great as far as creating a website and promoting it goes. But that is far from it. There are several tools to measure the marketing efforts. It is vitally important to measure every single thing done online, otherwise, there is a big possibility that our efforts may go in vane.

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