Sunday, March 29, 2009

Review of Krish's Manual Directory Submission Services

Submission Services Review (This is not a paid review and I am not an affiliate)

Short Review:
Krish's service provides very good quality directory submissions at a nice price. They work fast and deliver what they say they will. If you have any questions or concerns, let them know.

With any submission service, you HAVE to provide them with good information for the listings. If you don't use good keywords, have a description that makes sense, and spell-check your listing, you only have yourself to blame if you don't get good results.

Confirmation Emails
Krish will deal with all the confirmation emails, but if you don't do a lot of submissions, you may want to create a temp email and see what you get. After two packages that totaled about 1,500 directories, my folder has 1656 from the emails, confirmations, and confirmation replies. It did take some time, but I wanted to get those because you can see what was submitted, and also get an idea of over what time period the submission took place. In my case, the emails came in over 4-5 days, with a few that keep showing up every day, and this will continue for a couple of months as editors review and approve the listings.

Submission Reports
I also chose to get the emails because Krish is the second submission service that does not provide a list of where they submit. I was a little concerned about that because the first one that didn't provide a report also didn't submit our site ANYWHERE. Yeah, they were a total scam. But I am happy to report that this is not. I would like to get the reports, but in my case I don't need them when I see these emails come in.

If you don't get the emails, ask that they send you and email with the information they are going to submit BEFORE they start working. This protects you from any errors and also protects them from the same thing. Mistakes happen, and if your site is submitted to hundreds of directories, no matter who is to blame, it would be a bad thing that is easily avoided. :-)

Summary:
This submission service is a great value and I have used 5-6 others in the past, as well as doing my own hand submissions for many years. As long as you know what you are buying and what to expect, you should be very happy with the service they provide.


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Job Search Script Perfect For Parked Domains

I bought a review copy of this script for a domain I had been holding onto, http://www.EmploymentAgency.cc/. In return for a price discount, here is my review:

Installation:
This is one of the easier scripts to install. There is no database, the script pulls job listings from Indeed.com under your partner ID. You will need to get one and then change the ID to be yours. You will also have to add your AdSense code to the search results page. And there is an "advanced search" page that also needs to have to code changed.

I didn't see any mention of what changes are needed and there is no "readme" file that I could see. You almost don't need one, but it would be very helpful for newbies to cover all the basic steps, or better yet, use a config file so you can just make changes in one place for the entire site. After I install the script it didn't work, and once I worked through some things and exchanged several emails with the developer it was decided that I was not running PHP5 that this script needs. Lucky for me a quick addition of an Apache Handler for PHP instantly fixed it. The problem was not clear, because the error message had talked about  an unexpected character or something that seemed fine...

I'm going to include here that one you have the site working you may want to customize it. The site logo says "Indeed", and the meta tags all say things about Indeed and Indian job searches. The footer also seems to promote the script rather than be relating to my site. I don't even know if I can remove the link to the developer's site, but I left it in place for now.

The Indeed partner ID is important, because if you register and get one you have the chance to earn some kind of commission from Indeed. There are a lot of job sites you can pull or scrape listings from, but I don't know of any others that say they will pay you.

So if you don't have any problems, the basic install will be 5-10 minutes. Average customization could take you an hour. In my case I changed the logo, added meta tags, and added dynamic SEO to the title and description tags. And also a little more the page.

Negative Notes:
No documentation to speak of. This is minor since the script is so easy to use. But creating a read me with information about configuration and requirements like PHP5 would save user frustration and developer support time. There were some delays in communications, but not too bad. And they did offer to use FTP to troubleshoot and get it running for me.

The search results page does not have a link back to the home page, unless I missed it. Maybe this is not needed, but I prefer to have it so I added a home page link to the logo.

The single license of price $60 is too high, in my opinion. $35 is better, but I think this script should be sold in the $15-30 range. There's not too much too it and the support needed should be little to nothing as things are documented. I also say this because this is not a site, with a number of pages and a variety of content.

Positive Notes:
The home page is very clean. I made a replacement logo for the site and the home page still looks ok. Later I may add a better logo. I'm tempted to add some text near the bottom of the home page for SEO purposes, but for now I will just leave it as it is. I would like to add a list of the last 10 search queries or something, but that will have to wait. I'm happy with the design and function.

The search results page is great. If you look at my site I have modified if from the default in a few ways:

- Changed Google ads from black to white, moved up the page one line, added logo to the left side (if the logo appears on top of the ads your screen width is too narrow. I may add a table to fix that). And the top Google ads can be text or image ads. But for the two sky scraper ads on the right and left, I specified that they would both be image ads. I did this because the top is mostly text ads, and since the site has no images except the logo, the image ads add images to  make the site more interesting, I think. And for a site about job search there should be a LOT of image ads for this topic.

The job listings are pretty nice. Very relevant and easy to read. If the listings pay me, that means that almost every link on this site should earn me money. That's nice compared with other sites were perhaps only have the links have earning potential. If I can set a default location and make the results page the home page, I might try this script on one of the local job domains that I have.

If you have job search traffic to your domain you should make some money, but how much remains to be seen. Our domain has a PageRank 2 that it got while parked and we'll have to wait and see if it keeps that or it goes up or down.

Summary:
This is a great script if you are looking for something to throw on a employment or job domain in place of a parking page.  The asking price is somewhat high in my opinion given the limitations mentioned above, but most customers should be happy with it.

http://www.namepros.com/scripts-for-sale/557888-earn-1000s-auto-automated-job-search.html

Monday, March 23, 2009

10 Internet Marketing Tips for New, Small-Law Firms

LexisNexis Offers 10 Internet Marketing Tips for New, Small-Law Firms

An unprecedented series of law firm layoffs has thousands of lawyers looking for work. Many are hanging a shingle for the first time as solo practitioners or as part of two- to five-partner "micro" firms. To turn the pink-slip trend into a profitable new business in this tough economy, every non-billable hour needs to generate leads and build business. Debra Regan, vice president of the internet marketing agency at LexisNexis, offers suggestions for budding solo practitioners and micro practices.

NEW YORK March 22, 2009 -- An unprecedented series of law firm layoffs has thousands of lawyers looking for work. Many are hanging a shingle for the first time as solo practitioners or as part of two- to five-partner "micro" firms. To turn the pink-slip trend into a profitable new business in this tough economy, every non-billable hour needs to generate leads and build business. Debra Regan, vice president of the internet marketing agency at LexisNexis, offers suggestions for budding solo practitioners and micro practices.

1. Advertise Online. Print yellow page advertising alone won't cut it. The investment for a one-time, print display ad is an expense unsupported by demonstrated or measurable data. Investment in online marketing will likely yield more qualified leads and enable easier measurement of ROI as compared to a similar investment in print advertising or print directories.

2. Invest in a professionally designed and developed web site. A polished, professional web site is a must-have for anyone launching a new firm, regardless of size. In 2008, 32 percent of solo attorneys and 20 percent of firms with two-to-five attorneys did not have a web site, according to a 2008 Harris Interactive study on Marketing among Small Law Firms. Don't be one of these unfortunate few.

3. "Consumerize" your web site. When prospects seek an attorney, they want someone with obviously good credentials, but they also want to know what kind of person their attorney is. Pepper in some personal data about schools, hobbies and outside interests.

4. Incorporate video on your site. Develop an introductory video of the managing partner that showcases personality as well as expertise. Post the video on the web (and YouTube) and even consider a TV spot down the road.

5. Get listed in and link to online directories. Identify all online directories available for posting attorney and firm profiles. This includes attorney-specific portals and social networking sites. Link to these on your web site and don't forget to add your firm's web site to each online listing you post.

6. Hire an expert. You practice law and let others grow your business! Consider outsourcing your internet marketing campaign to qualified experts. First, ask for a consultation and determine a comfortable budget (earmark usually 2-5 percent of monthly budget as a good start point). Let the experts generate leads for your fledgling practice.

7. Optimize your web site. Search Engine Marketing experts can be tremendously helpful in improving online visibility and optimizing a firm's organic search rankings. Select a search marketing team that offers transparent and results-driven metrics.

8. Engage in pay-per-click advertising. No firm is too small to reap tangible benefits from pay-per-click campaigns. Ensure your marketing experts select appropriate keywords, based on analysis, that are geographically and topically suited to your firm. This strategy helps favorably position small firms to directly compete with larger firms in your market.

9. Understand and use appropriate metrics. Learn how success and ROI are measured in an online marketing campaign. While you don't need to be an expert, you do need to understand the difference between organic and paid search, as well as "clicks," "impressions" and "conversions." Tracking leads is an appropriate metric used by only 20 percent of attorneys.

10. Be responsive! While your internet marketing team brings in qualified leads, put a system in place to respond to each one. Make a phone call, send an email in response to an inquiry, or schedule a meeting. Keep these leads in a simple database so when you're ready to send the first newsletter from the firm, clients and prospect lists are easily accessible. Don't forget to reference the LexisNexis marketing checklist to get the marketing wheels turning!

Debra Regan is vice president of the internet marketing agency at LexisNexis, part of the LexisNexis Lawyers.Com and Martindale-Hubbell networks since 1999. For more than 10 years, LexisNexis has delivered a full suite of online marketing services to lawyers as a trusted brand. The in-house agency is staffed with search marketing, pay-per-click, video and web design experts along with a full team of web developers with key industry certifications.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Jayme Soulati
LexisNexis
937-312-1363


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