One of the best business tools I have in my toolbox is my Droid Incredible smartphone. It’s not only cool to look at, it’s a workhorse. Truth be told, I should probably consider it a microcomputer with a phone app.

But it wasn’t cheap. Although I consider it to be worth every penny, both in initial cost and monthly wireless service charges, a smartphone can get pretty pricey especially if you decide to outfit your entire staff with one.

So if you’re in the market for a new smartphone for you, your staff (or even family members), and you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for one of the cool, new android phones, you owe it to yourself to check out what AmazonWireless has to offer.

I don’t think there’s a week that goes by without an Amazon delivery to my door, so I was thrilled to find out they offered sales and connections for wireless service (at a great price!).

AmazonWireless is a website by Amazon.com that offers cell phones and wireless plans, easy shopping without rebate hassles, and free two-day shipping. That makes them pretty easy to trust.

With this service, they make it easy for you to upgrade your phone (if you already have a plan), add a line to an existing family plan, or even establish new cell phone service. The process looks really simple to use and find the right phone, service plan, and options.

What’s pretty neat is that you can shop for phones by carrier, phone feature, price, color, and brand. Their shopping cart will guide you through each stage of the purchase process, where you’ll find familiar Amazon features like bestseller lists, detailed product descriptions, and customer reviews.

I wish I’d known about this service before I got my fabulous droid phone — my $199 Incredible is only $69 — but do plan on shopping there soon to move my husband to a new phone.

If you’re in the market for a phone for your staff or a family member, make sure you check out AmazonWireless and save yourself some cash.

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Please enjoy this guest post by Wendy Lowe of Campaigner.

When small businesses are preparing to do email outreach to a list of customers and prospects, often it is very hard to decide what to highlight in the content. Is the special offer you have crafted really going to appeal to your customers? Does a new email template perform better than your existing layout? With all the options available, it’s often tough to determine ahead of time which one will deliver the best response. There’s nothing worse than sending an offer to your entire list only to find it resulted in few or no responses.

This is where small businesses can learn from the big brands. Before you send out that coupon or product offer to everyone on your list, consider using a technique called A/B or split testing. This can give you just enough information to select the content that will generate the best results.

If you have a good email marketing application or service, creating an A/B test is simple. Just follow these steps and you’ll find your email marketing campaigns will generate better and more consistent results.

1. Start by taking your mailing list and pulling a representative sample from it. If you have one main list with no divisions, that’s easy – just take 5 or 10 percent of it. If your list is already divided into sub-groups, such as by gender, age group, where they live, income, etc., take random names from each applicable segment until you reach about 10 percent of your total mailing list.

2. Take that 10 percent and divide it in half. Again, if the list is segmented take half from each segment and place them in group A. Then place the rest in group B. If there’s no segmenting involved, simply divide it in half.

3. Prepare your email using your email campaign service and include the first offer in it. Then perform a “save as” and substitute the second offer. It is very important that the only thing that changes is the offer. There should only be one variable. If you change the offer and the color, or the offer and the body copy, you won’t know for sure which change drove the better performance, which could lead to a misstep.

4. Once you have the mailers ready, send one to half of your pre-divided list, and the other to the other half. They should be sent around the same time on the same day.

5. After the email A/B test is sent, use your email campaign service’s reporting tools to see which was opened more quickly, which was opened most often, and what actions were taken (if any) for each. If you are asking customers and prospects to call instead of click, be sure to track how many calls you receive for each offer.

6. If you have a virtual phone service with unlimited extensions, consider tracking phone responses. Assign a different extension to each email marketing offer, and then track how many calls come to each extension using the service’s reporting tools. Just be sure to change extensions for each new test so your response numbers remain accurate.

Once you have this data, see which offer achieves the best results. You can then roll that email marketing offer out to your full list (except the people who have already received it, of course) with a high degree of confidence that it will be a success.

If both offers are effective, you can choose one for your current mailing and save the other for the next. On the other hand, if neither offer is effective you have learned something about your customers, and will need to work on different offers that will be more intriguing. If one offer is effective with a certain group in a segmented list, and the other offer is effective with a different group, you can adjust your marketing efforts accordingly while gaining insight for future mailings as well.

No matter what you discover, you will have real-world feedback that will help you maximize your responses while minimizing the risk of customers and prospects asking to be removed from your list (also known as opting out).

Building a habit of A/B testing can really help you improve the success of your email marketing campaigns. By investing a little more time up-front, you’ll gain that 20/20 hindsight everyone talks about – but you’ll have it before you launch your full campaign.

Wendy Lowe is Regional Development Director for Campaigner, an e-mail marketing solution that enables organizations to have personalized one-to-one e-mail dialogues with their customers, measure how they respond, and analyze those responses.

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If you sell your time for money and keep a calendar to track your appointments with clients, here’s a cool online solution for you.

I can see online appointment scheduling being a real time saver for consultants, virtual assistants in any industry, doctors and dentists, accountants, mechanics, household service techs — and many more I just can’t think of right now.

A fairly new service called Setster can help you set and track appointments directly from your website.

Once you sign up for Setster, you can configure your account to match your availability — from 15 minute increments on up. Then you add a tiny bit of code to your website so an online appointment tab appears to your visitors.

When the online calendar is active, the appointment tab will appear on the right side of your website page.

To schedule an appointment, your client will click on the appointment tab and your details plus availability will pop up in a calendar view. You can include the details you want to reveal like website, phone number, address and google map to identify your location.

The calendar will display the current week and your current availability.

To set an appointment, your client will click on the preferred time in your calendar which will take them to the appointment schedule view. They’ll enter their details, press confirm and the appointment request will be sent off to you.

Next thing you know, an email advising you of the appointment will pop into your email box. It would be easy to configure your email box with a notifier about these appointment emails since the title is very descriptive.

And the email contains the details you need to know to confirm the appointment with the client.

Plus you can always check your online appointment calendar to see what you have scheduled right online. They also have an import option if you want to import your appointments into your Outlook or Google calendar.

Setster is very cost effective for small business owners — anyone from an independent professional to a small office with several staff can use this affordable service. Each service package comes with a 15 day free trial (or you can choose the free option with a lot less features)

I think Setster is a really cool online appointment calendar tool that can help you save time and money with the ultimate goal of getting that calendar as full as you desire. Hop on over and give Setster a try today.

(And please leave a comment if you’ve already tried it!)

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I am so excited! I have a box full of computer headsets. None of which I like. They are either uncomfortable, or I can’t hear, or people can’t hear me, or, or, or… Until now.

I’ve had getting a new computer headset on my “I want it” list for a while and am just not really good at shopping around. I’m not big on “in person” shopping at all and often there are so many choices online, it’s tough to make a decision. Plus I like to hear about other people’s experience with techno-gadgets before I leap.

So when my colleague Lynn Terry talked about her wireless computer headset recently, I sat up and paid attention. The wireless option sounded really super to me — to not be tethered to my computer would be a really cool thing!

Well, it arrived on Friday and I put it to work right away. This headset is awesome! The sound quality — both from a listening and speaking perspective is excellent.

Heck, I even activated my Skype for Business account and am looking forward to using my new VOIP phone service (more on that in another post).

Here’s what I really like about this computer headset in addition to it being wireless.

>> It has a 40 foot range. While I was catching up on my long list of audio recordings last night, I walked all over my house (even outside!) and never lost the signal. My house isn’t huge (about 2300 sq), but my office is at one end while everything else is at the other. The headset never missed a beat.

>> Up to eight hours of usage. Eight hours is a pretty long time to wear a headset (unless you’re a gamer — I’m not). This amount of time will be plenty for me on a daily basis, even when I spend an entire day on conference calls.

>> Super comfortable. The ear covers and top of the headset are covered with comfy, cushy padding. Even after a few hours it was easy to forget I was wearing this headset.

>> Controls on the headset. The left ear cover has volume and fast forward controls which is really convenient. And all you have to do is lift the mouthpiece to mute your sound.

The only thing that might be a drawback for some people is that you can’t use it while it’s charging. I don’t see that as a problem for me as I plan to charge it at night while I sleep.

I am so looking forward to using this headset over the long term. If you are searching for a comfortable, high quality wireless computer headset at a modest price, you owe it to yourself to give the Plantronics Audio 995 Wireless Computer Headset a try.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this headset or another that you’ve used. Please take a moment and leave me a comment.

P.S. I love this headset so much I bought two! That way I always have a fresh, fully charged headset for my listening (and talking!) needs.

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I’ve used an online fax service since 2007 and have been totally happy with it. If you’re looking to ditch your fax machine and “go green” with faxes, it  might be worthwhile to take a look at my online fax review.

Recently Nextiva contacted me and asked if I’d take a look at their service. I’m always open to looking at new (to me!) providers on the market so they set me up with a temporary free account that would give me a chance to take their online fax service for a test drive and tell you about it. (Note: You can take a 30 day free trial here.)

I was impressed. Their online dashboard is simple to navigate and easy to understand. I was sending and receiving faxes in minutes. The service is very quick so faxes show up right away.

Nextive fax service allows you to send and receive by email, from the web, or via your cell phone (if you have email access on your phone), and you can fax from any Microsoft application too.

I didn’t have an opportunity to use their support system, but based on the research I did on Nextiva it appears their customer support is top notch, which can be a huge differentiator for an online service provider.

Based on my test drive and what I’ve been able to ferret out, I’d say Nextiva is a top notch choice if you’re moving to an online fax service. And you can’t beat the price. Right now you can get service as low as $6.95 a month if you choose to pay annually. With that option, you’re allowed 500 pages a month (a lot!).

So if you want to be “more green” to help the environment, save time and money in your business, you owe it to yourself to give Nextiva online fax service a try.

Have you used Nextiva online fax? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Note: I liked the service so much I became an affiliate. That means if you choose to sign up with them, I’ll get a commission. That’s how I provide the free resources on this website for you.

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Who doesn’t want more blog traffic? I recently took the 31 day challenge to build a better blog. It’s an enlightening experience and one that newbie or veteran bloggers alike can learn from.

I’ve been blogging since 2004 and it’s easy to get into a rut. The 31 day challenge helped me refresh my blogs (and my habits!) to make them better than ever before. I was reminded of how to make sure buried posts can be refreshed to help drive traffic and much more. I learned a new process of creating a “sneeze” page that can help you drive traffic down to key places in your blog.

Now ProBlogger has compiled his 31 day (email) challenge into a helpful workbook. I picked up a copy so I can have it as a ready reference in addition to the daily emails I received during the challenge. And now he’s made it available to the public at a very modest price. You can pick up your copy here. It’s a great resource full of step-by-step tips to get your blog where you want it to be.

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Sometimes I forget to put my critical thinking skills hat on — that ever happen to you? Today I was tinkering with my autoresponder files for one of my subscriber lists and decided to add a new message into the mix.

I created an exclusive report for those folks and decided it would work best if sent about seven days after their initial subscription. I figured at some later date I would send out the invitation to the people who were already on my list. Great plan, huh?

Not quite.

Purely by accident I discovered that when you add a message into the mix of autoresponders, if the time is past it will automatically send to your subscribers. Oops.

No harm done to my list of subscribers, I’m sure. But it was a big surprise that I’ll be prepared for in the future. I use Aweber for my service, so consider yourself forewarned. I’m not sure how other services handle this type of change, but it’s worth checking into if you decide to add or modify messages.

Have you had this happen to you? What service do you use? Got any special tips to share? Please leave a comment. And don’t forget you can get more great email marketing tips (free!) here.

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It’s no secret that I’m a fan of RingCentral. I’ve been a customer for over two years and the service just keeps getting better — providing me with more and better options for managing my phone service at a low cost. It simply is the best choice for small business owners.

So I wanted to let you know about a special deal (that only lasts until 5/31/09) RingCentral is offering right now. In addition to their 30 day free trial, is you sign up before 5/31/09 you’ll get an additional $10 off your first month of paid service. What a great way to start! Head on over by clicking this link:

Free Trial Plus $10 Off

to take advantage of this special offer before time runs out.

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This is a guest article by my colleague Marcia Yudkin who is a prolific writer and marketer. In these days when everyone is hopping on the internet bandwagon to make money, this advice will get you more of what you are looking for.

Terminology greatly affects how people perceive value. Call something a “brochure” and no one will want to pay for it. Call it a “booklet” and it sounds small and insignificant, perhaps worth up to four or five dollars. Call your digital document an “ebook” and people instinctively compare it to tangible books and will pay no more than what they’d pay for something they can pick up at the bookstore. Indeed, according to Angela Adair-Hoy, co-owner of Booklocker.com, the magical price point for ebooks is just $8.95. Consider these alternatives.

“Special report.” In the business world, people will spend much more money for timely business information or instruction when it’s called a “special report” than for an “e-book.” A dollar per page is not unusual — $4.00 or $5.00 for four pages, $97 for 90 to 100 pages.

My research turned up many even higher priced special reports, where the author already had impressive credentials, such as $195 for a 114-page report from usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s firm and $945 for a 245-page report on Russia’s aerospace industry from Jane’s, a well-known U.K. security and international affairs information company.

“Manual.” Contrary to what you might expect, packaging material in an old-fashioned three-ring binder or a copy-shop coil binding, sent through the mail can also increase the perceived value of information, compared with “e-books.”

This can go for as much as several hundred dollars when it’s up-to-date, advanced professional knowledge not available in bookstores, libraries or on the Web. Fancy packaging may even lower a manual’s perceived value because it counteracts the implicit exclusivity of such a purchase.

“Course.” Instead of calling the sections “chapters,” try calling them “lessons.” Presenting information as instructional material also raises its perceived value, because people are accustomed to paying much more for
seminars and classes than for books.

A writer I know sells 120 pages of printed material, divided into eight lessons, as a $295 course. The price includes feedback from the instructor on assignments, which most purchasers do not get around to submitting. Likewise, copywriter Joe Vitale has charged as much as $1,500 for a limited-enrollment seminar consisting mainly of five e-mailed lessons.

So before jumping on the “ebook” bandwagon, ponder the alternatives!

Marcia Yudkin is the author of 11 books, including Persuading on Paper and Web Site Marketing Makeover. The above is adapted from her popular report, “Profiting from Booklets & Special Reports,” available from Marcia’s website.

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When I started my business in 1996, my first accountant kept all the records manually. Then when we parted ways, my next accountant suggested QuickBooks Pro. Boy was I glad. It’s way easier to use than doing manual stuff and saves a bunch of time too.

Over the years, I’ve upgraded to new versions a couple of times and used different add ons depending on the needs of my business at the time. I even tried the online version for a while but discovered I prefer the desktop version.

So I was thrilled when Intuit decided to offer a promotion for you to get QuickBooks — plus they are throwing in free shipping.

If you want to find out more about this special offer — highly recommended if you are currently shopping for small business accounting software — then just pay a visit to — the QuickBooks site — Buy Now and Save Up to 20% + Free Shipping.

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