OfficeArrow – This was one of the first business-to-business group buying sites to appear. OfficeArrow isn’t just cranking out office related daily deals, they’re building an online community for small business owners to learn and thrive. Their partnership with BuyerZone helps connect businesses to trusted companies that specifically address entrepreneurs needs. This includes offering valuable business guides and tools to help the business owner make smart buying decisions when it comes to choosing phone systems, email marketing services, credit card processors, payroll service, and other products and services businesses require. Other resources that OfficeArrow provides include free business documents, forums, groups, business webinars, podcasts, management videos, and how-to business articles. Through a partnership with BizUnite, OfficeArrow’s Discount Club allows members to obtain further savings that aren’t available to non members. To further sweeten the deal, their Employee Perks program allows business owners and their employees to receive discounts on over twenty five thousand business related products and services such as wireless plans, travel services, restaurants, computers, business electronics, accounting software, freight services, and more.

BizyDeal – A more traditional group buying site that’s leveraging social buying to deliver big deals to small businesses. Some of their recent deals include professional receptionist services, on-hold messaging services, credit card processing auditors, design and printing services, and office products.

RapidBuyr – Delivers both local business daily deals and national business daily deals for entrepreneurs. Small business owners can signup to receive a daily email of business related offers in their area. Recently they’ve served up deals for online storage providers like Mozy, shipping services, computers, web design services, printers and faxes, and catering services.

OfficeDeal – This business to business group buying site features lots of office furniture deals and office accessories at discount prices. All products sold by OfficeDeal include free shipping so you never have to pay extra fees for delivery.

BizGrouper – Another B2B collective buying site that’s targeting business owners. Most, if not all, of their recently post deals are national and not locally based. So far they’ve offered discounts on advertising products and services, coaching sessions, website development, mobile credit card processing devices, and website hosting.

GroupPrice – Serves online daily deals for businesses and provides a loyalty program in which the buyer earns points for each purchase. GroupPrice offers a no hassle guarantee for all purchases so if you’re not completely satisfied you can request a refund.

Empire Steals – Partners with product and service providers to offer the daily deals for entrepreneurs, internet marketers, web developers, and online publishers. Recent daily deals include article writing, stock photography, virtual assistance services, and website SEO services.

BtoBcity – A business to business group buying site that’s covering a wide range of online daily deals. These include logo design, website design, text messaging, legal services, email marketing services, and business software.

Startups – A question and answer site for businesses that has morphed into a yet to be launched B2B daily deals site. Once Startups.com launches, it will feature discounts geared toward online business owners for things such as ebooks, web applications, business software, various business related devices, and many more products and services needed to run a web based business.

MarketSharing – Another yet to be launched business to business group buying site that’s supposed to be offering group buying deals for business owners. Information posted on MarketSharing’s website suggests they’ll be hosting a daily deal marketplace and targeting local businesses as well as delivering nationally available deals to entrepreneurs. MarketSharing is currently targeting New York business owners but it will soon launch in six more locations within a few months.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Top 10 Best B2B Group Buying Sites For Business Based Daily Deals

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A WordPress question and answer plugin or a WordPress Q&A theme can add another powerful dimension to your WP site. It’s a fantastic way to incorporate additional content to your website and build authority in the search engines. What’s more, the content is all generated for free by your users. User generated content is a driving force behind many large question and answer sites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers. These website tools can be used to gather feedback from your site’s visitors, permit users to vote on popular issues, build a community around a topic, and much more. Whether you’d like to merely add a question and answer plugin to your existing WP site or use a Q&A theme to build a standalone Quora-like site, there are several options available to you. In the review list below, we’ve identified some free and premium question and answer themes for you. For additional WP resources, see our premium WordPress plugins directory.

WordPress Question and Answer Themes

Answers – Templatic’s premium question and answer theme that features an quick and easy 1-click installation with the ability to auto-create sample questions to get your Q&A site up and running in no time. Questions are separately through large tabs marked as recent, most responses, unanswered, and recently answered. The header offers two menus with drop down capabilities, login and registration links, and a search bar. Users have the ability to vote answers up or down and the individual that asked the question can assign the best answer. The admin may allow users to post questions for free or charge them a fee to do so via PayPal. Every user has profile page that keeps track of the user’s answered and asked questions as well as how many votes he/she has received. Each question can be assigned a category and the total number of view are registered. Also included in this theme are two sidebar widgets to display the top users and the most active questions. Templatic’s premium Q&A theme is available as a single site ($65) license and a multiple use site ($99) license.

WP-Answers – A premium WordPress question and answer theme that adds a few other bells and whistles. A points system has been added so users can earn points for asking and answering questions. The more points a user acquires, the higher their rank on the leaderboard. Each user has his own profile page that displays his questions and answer stats too. Login and registration can be completed via WordPress, Twitter, or Facebook. Content from Yahoo! Answers can be imported from multiple countries to include both questions and answers plus comments. The WP-Answers premium theme comes in three different licenses: single site ($89), multi site ($179), and developer ($249).

QnA Theme – DailyWP’s premium question and answer theme for WordPress sports many of the same features that the other Q&A themes offer. Its features include the ability to ask and answer questions, submit comments, track the number of view each question receives, add categories, add tags, a top user widget, import Yahoo Answers content, assign points to users, answer voting, and much more. Some standout features include the ability to flag questions as spam and multiple language support. This theme is available in a single site license ($59) and a developer license ($99).

Instant Q&A – With its three column layout this premium question and answer theme boasts the most unique design of the bunch. It features the ability to easily add your own logo, choose from multiple color schemes, and incorporate banner ads and Google Analytics code. Like the other themes listed here, users can collect participation points for asking and answering questions and each user has his/her profile page that displays their user statistics. This WordPress Q&A theme can be obtained by purchasing a single site license for $35.

WordPress Question and Answer Plugins

Question and Answer Forum Plugin – A free WordPress question and answer plugin that utilizes a shortcode so you can display the Q&A section within any page of your WP site. The Q&A forum plugin takes advantage of the WordPress custom post types feature allowing you to assign categories and tags for each question. Other features include a submission form and customizable email notifications to alert both users and the administrator when a new question or answer has been received.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best Question And Answer Themes, Plugins For WordPress

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SalesForce – The leader in hosted CRM solutions to help you acquire new customers and retain existing clients. SalesForce’s basic plan costs $5/user/month and includes activity tracking and history, Chatter (Twitter-like messaging), accounts, contacts, document sharing, Google Apps integration, MS Outlook integrations, MS Word integration, MS Excel integration, mobile access, reports, and tasks.

Capsule – A hosted CRM software service for small businesses that want to improve customer relations and automate sales processes. User can share contacts with coworkers, categorize contacts, add tags, create notes, track all email based discussions with a client, attach documents, import contacts, track opportunities and share them with team members, create tasks, set appointments, and create lists. A 30-day free trial is available to let you kick the tires before signing up for a paid plan. Capsule offers one paid plan that’s priced at $12/month/user.

FreeCRM – An online CRM software application that provides a free plan for up to 50 users with limited features and no support. Upgrading to their cheapest plan (14.95/user/month) gives you access to their synchronization tools, email campaigns, and additional storage. Extra features include alerts, sticky lists, saved import maps, and the removal of ads.

TactileCRM – Provides web based CRM software solutions for small businesses. Users can track sales, view history, manage contacts, track conversations, share notes, schedule calls, create reports, track value, and forecast revenue. TactileCRM also integrates with some of the most popular online services for businesses like Google Contacts, FreshBooks, Zendesk, Shoeboxed, and more. TactileCRM is one of the most affordable CRM solutions with service plans starting at only $9/month/user. A free plan is available with no obligation to upgrade and for the first 14 days you’ll have access to all the premium features TactileCRM provides. All accounts also come with 30-day free trial with no obligation to buy.

Infusionsoft – This web based CRM software is a mashup of customer relationship management meets email marketing mixed with some ecommerce tools. Users can create tasks and notes, process orders, manage invoices, host an online store, add a shopping cart, and integrate affiliate tracking. While Infusionsoft is quite comprehensive, at a starting price of $199 per month, it’s much more expensive compared to the other CRM services listed. Thankfully, they do offer a 15-day trial that allows you to test most of the features for free.

Highrise – A web based CRM software application that is geared towards small businesses. Their free plan is limited to two users, 250 contacts, and you’re not allowed to upload any files. Features include task management, contact manager, quote tracking, proposal tracking, sales tracking, notes, group related notes, and tags. Their lowest paid CRM package cost $24 per month which allows up to six users, five gigabytes of storage space, and 5,000 contacts.

BatchBook – A hosted CRM software program that adds a social layer to customer relationship management. With a click of a button you can quickly see a contact’s social networking profile information from popular sites like Twitter and LinkedIn in addition to viewing their latest status updates and posted content (photos, videos, etc.). BatchBook integrates with several other online business services like ZenDesk, Freshbooks, Shoeboxed, MailChimp, Eventbrite, and many more. Their least expensive plan is for one user, 2 GB of storage, an unlimited number of contacts and it only costs $9.95 per month. Features include lead tracking, user permissions, calendars, deals, tags, supertags, to-dos, records, recent activities, commenting, locations, related contacts, and lists.

Zoho CRM – Offers a free online CRM software solution for up to 3 users and 100 MB of storage space. This plan includes sales force automation so you can track leads, contacts, accounts, and opportunities. Marketing automation, customer support, tasks, reports, email marketing campaigns, email templates, and web forms are included too. Upgrading to their least expensive plan ($12/user/month) will permit you to access features for inventory management, workflow management, and security administration in addition to more storage space.

Relenta – Web based CRM software that combines task management and email marketing help you get things done for your business. They offer a free plan for up to two users, 100 contacts and 100 MB of storage. Their least expensive package ($25/month) comes with two user accounts, 1000 contacts, 1 GB of storage, and a 10,000 email sending limit.

Doorbell – An online CRM software program for business owners that need to quickly address leads, complete tasks, and take advantage of new opportunities. They offer two free plans: the Business Starter and the Personal Contact Manager (PCM). The Business Starter package includes two user accounts, 5 MB of storage, up to 250 contacts, and two opportunities whereas the PCM is merely what the name implies. Their least expensive payment plan will handle up to six users, ten opportunities, 5,000 contacts, three gigabytes of storage, and three teams.

WORKetc – Another hosted CRM software solution that integrates multiple business needs with customer relationship management tools. WORKetc mixes project management, online billing, and support technology with CRM, document sharing, and lead management to provide a all-in-one solution for serving customers and automating business tasks. Plans start at $29.95 per month with access for a single user and all the software tools available. It includes unlimited contacts and projects, unlimited billing, 500 MB of storage space, and SSL security. WORKetc allows you to register for a free 14-day trial of their online CRM software solution without entering your credit card information.

PlaybookIQ – Allows you to manage contacts, generate reports, assign permissions, share notes and calendars, create tasks, add tags and labels through the web based CRM software. PlaybookIQ also lets you create what they call “playbooks” that are a detailed plans on how to best address customers needs and follow-up with them at certain time points. PlaybookIQ’s software plans start at $29/month and they offer a 30-day free trial with no credit card required upon sign-up.

SalesNexus – A hosted CRM software application that combines the best of email marketing service with customer relationship management practices to help you automate sales. Users can collaborate and share documents, send reminders, create notes, draft newsletters, create email marketing campaigns, and much more. A free 30-day trial is available for all SalesNexus service plans.

Commence – This online CRM software solution is targeted for small businesses that need to track sales, convert leads, and automate tasks. Commence offers tools for reporting, group calendars, email integration, account management, contact management, email campaigns, document sharing, mobile access, QuickBooks integration, sales analytics, quotes, partner relationship management, and much more. Their small business edition is priced at $39 per user per month.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best Web Based CRM Software Solutions

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A well developed WordPress ad plugin will not only help you quickly incorporate Google AdSense and banner ads into your WP blog but it can make managing your site’s ad inventory much easier. Some of the desirable features for WordPress ad plugins include things like performance statistics, the ability to rotate ads, revenue sharing, click tracking, impression counting, the ability to integrate third party ads, and automated expiration dates for banner ads. If used correctly, ad manager plugins can help you identify the most effective strategies for dramatically improving ad revenue on your WP site. In this review list we’ve identified some of the best premium WordPress ad plugins as well as several free WP advertising plugins. Keep in mind that premium WordPress plugins tend to offer better support and more frequent updates which may or may not be important depending on your specific needs.

Premium WordPress Ad Plugins

OIO Publisher – An awesome premium WordPress ad plugin that focuses on boosting your revenue and saving you time when it comes to managing your ads. OIO Publisher puts the advertiser in control by letting them upload their own information and images as well as pay for their ad directly on your WP site. Numerous payment modules give advertisers several ways to pay for their ads (Alertpay, Google Checkout, PayPal) and easily purchase ad placements for a single month or multiple months via a subscription option. Features include the ability to send weekly ad reports to advertisers, list your ad inventory in OIO Publisher’s private banner ad marketplace, run your own affiliate program, and track clicks, impressions and CTR rates for ads that are purchased on your site.

Billboard WordPress Ad Manager – Another simple WordPress ad plugin that is best used to add images and banner ads to your sidebar via a WP widget. Billboard is a premium WordPress ad plugin that’s priced at $45 per 2 sites, $75 per 10 sites or $150 for use on an unlimited number of websites.

DirectAdsMarket – Another premium WordPress banner ad plugin that allows you to sell ads on your site through PayPal. This one, however, allows you to sell Twitter and Facebook profile ads. The user can simply add their Twitter or Facebook profile link and pay for his/her profile to be displayed on the publisher’s website. Publishers can charge any amount on a per minute, day, week, month, or year basis. Free banner ads are also available in case you’d like to use the plugin to reward the most frequent or most valuable visitors to your WP blog. The plugin counts how many clicks are generated for each banner and ads automatically expire accordingly. The banner ads can be displayed in a Direct Ads Market widget or any other location within a WP page or post using shortcodes and conditional tags.

Free WordPress Ad Plugins

Advertising Manager – Great for rotating Google AdSense along with other ad networks like AdBrite and Chitika. There are 15 ad networks that are automatically recognized and you can insert ads just by pasting in the ad code. You’ll be able to use ads from multiple networks together with no problem. You can insert ads into your blog posts with the click of a button, by posting the “[ad#name]” shortcode, or by adding the sidebar widget. If you would like to insert ads anywhere else in your theme a PHP based tag is available as well. Another nice feature is the ability to set limitations by author, tag, and page type. For example, you can choose to have ads not show to administrators and authors, or you may want to display a Twitter related advertisement only on posts that have “Twitter” as a tag. Additional features include revenue sharing for site owners that have multiple authors and support for multiple languages.

Author Advertising – A free WordPress advertising plugin for site owners that want to incorporate an ad revenue sharing program for their authors. The plugin is compatible with most of the popular ad networks like Microsoft and Google AdSense. The admin can set the percentage of the time the owner’s ads will show and what percentage of the time the authors’ ads will display. You can also specify which level an author has to be in order to participate in the ad revenue sharing program. For instance, perhaps you only want authors that have been writing for three months or more to be able to acquire revenue from their articles. Not only can the Author Advertising plugin be used as an ad manager, but it can also be used to manage photos, text, and widgets. Advertisements can be placed in three different locations on the blog and if you don’t like the locations offered, you can use a PHP tag to place them elsewhere.

OpenX – The OpenX WordPress widget is pretty simple as it merely displays advertisements from OpenX in your WP sidebar. Before you can begin using this plugin to display ads you must be signed up as an OpenX publisher. OpenX is an open source ad server that helps you manage your advertising inventory and rotate ads from Google AdSense and other advertising sources.

WP125 – An ad manager for the common 125×125 square ads that you see on the sidebar of most blogs. Whether you have a one or two column theme, WP125 can display your 125×125 banner ads in a professional manner. You can show as many ads as you want in a very specific or random order via widget or a PHP based tag. This plugin can also track clicks for each ad so you can quickly identify which ones are the most popular. Another desirable feature of WP125 is that you can set each ad to display for a certain number of days. Once the expiration date is reached, an email notification will be sent to the advertiser, the ad will be automatically removed, and a placeholder ad will take its place until another ad is sold.

Max Banner Ads – A wonderful WP ad plugin that makes it easy for you to manage rotating ads without having to edit your theme or use messy codes. Max Banner Ads permits the admin to display ads at different locations every time a page loads. This can be particularly useful at making sure regular visitors don’t become accustomed to the same ads appearing in the same location. Other features include a sidebar widget, click and impression tracking, and the ability to upload ad images.

BuySellAds – This WP advertising plugin allows you to quickly and easily insert BuySellAds (BSA) codes into your blog. Before you can begin using this plugin, however, you’ll need to be signed up as a publisher on the BuySellAds website. BSA is a popular banner ad marketplace where advertisers and publishers can buy and sell advertisements. The plugin permits the admin to display banner advertisements on his site via a simple widget or by manually inserting a PHP tag in a WP theme.

AdRotate – This free WordPress ad plugin delivers exactly what its name implies; it helps you rotate ads on your WP site. It also gives you the ability to preview banners as you’re editing them, display ads between a certain set of dates, and send a notification when an ad expires. There are an unlimited number of widgets that you can use in the sidebar, and you can even track clicks, impressions and CTR for each ad. Advertisements can also be displayed by using a WP shortcode or by placing a PHP tag into your WordPress theme.

WhyDoWork Adsense – This WP ad plugin attempts to make it super easy for you to incorporate Google AdSense based adverts into your blog without having to modify your template. One standout feature of this plugin is that it allows you to display different types of ads for articles that are older than a certain number of days. For instance, you may want to display a smaller ad on newer posts and larger ads on your older posts. Another cool feature is the ability to block ads from appearing on specific posts or pages that you choose.

Post Layout – A WP ad manager plugin that lets you display ads from popular ad networks like Google AdSense, BidVertiser, and Chitika. Advertisements can be shown before, after, or in the middle of a blog post using a simple WP shortcode. You can also insert any kind of HTML, JavaScript, and PHP-based ad tags directly into your blog articles.

WP-Insert – This one is much more than just another WordPress ad server plugin. Besides managing your ads you can use it to manage your RSS feeds, monitor your Google Analytics account, reorder WP pages via a nifty drag and drop interface, edit your themes, and manage your privacy policy as well as your site’s terms and conditions. WP-Insert supports multiple ad networks so you can display just about any kind of ads on your site. Adverts can be displayed anywhere on your site through ad widgets and you can conditionally display ads by post/page ID, category, or tag.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best WordPress Advertising Plugins For Your Blog

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Tender Support – A hosted web application service that helps you deliver quality support to your customers in a timely fashion. Tender Support offers a 30-day free trial that allows you to test all the features available. Monthly paid accounts range between $19 and $199. Depending on which package you choose you can add your own logo, modify the look and feel of your site, and upload files. Each account includes your own site’s knowledge base, a forum, auto suggestion responses for support inquiries, automatic logins, widgets, and the ability to use your own email address.

UserVoice – This web service allows you to setup your own public and private forums where customers can submit feedback and feature ideas to your team. It’s a very simple yet powerful way to gain valuable insight about your product from the people that use it the most. A 15-day free trial is available with no obligation to continue using UserVoice after the trial period ends. Free accounts are also available and they include one public forum. Paid accounts start at $19/month and go up to $589 per month depending on functionality you need. Features for paid account include single sign-on access for your customers, SSL encryption, email support, commercial API, white label design, domain aliasing, moderation tools, and the ability to export data to Excel.

Get Satisfaction – Another web based system that offers a lot of tools that business owners can use to handle customer support issues. Get Satisfaction provides free accounts and paid accounts starting at $19 per month. Features include moderation tools, custom branding, widgets, multiple login options (Facebook, etc.), Zendesk integration, Salesforce integration, email support, SSL support, statistical reports, and the ability to easily add or remove users or employees to your support site.

Ideaffect – As a fairly new competitor in the online support and feedback industry, Ideaffect offers lots of features that the larger players like UserVoice and GetSatisfaction deliver. Ideaffect’s pricing list is very competitive with other web support services starting at $19 for their least expensive plan. Features include idea submission, voting, comments, tags, graphical reports, export utilities, private label branding options, widgets, moderation tools, geo-location tracking, single sign-on, SSL support, email marketing service integration (MailChimp, Vertical Response, etc.), bug reports, private messaging, and page ratings.

Zendesk – One of the most popular web-based customer support software services that’s available. Over five thousand companies use this software as a service (SaaS) solution to handle support inquires for their customer base. Zendesk has applications for all the top mobile platforms (Android, Blackberry, iPhone) and their API permits you to integrate other popular online services with ease. The service plans start at just $9/month/agent but for $49/month per agent you can get everything (analytics, data portability, etc.). Agents represent your team members that handle the support requests from customers. A 30-day free trial gives you access to all the features without requiring your credit card number.

Zoho Discussions – Zoho is a well known provider of many online B2B software services. Their Zoho Discussions application integrates many helpful tools that enable business owners to engage their clients and provide excellent customer support. Notable features include private forums, a web chat interface, user profiles, private messages, built-in search, RSS feeds, custom domains, widgets, custom branding, login options, question and answer submissions, voting, sticky posts, announcements, post to forum via email, user management, and much more. Pricing starts at $12 per month but there’s also a free account available that includes two private forums.

UserEcho – A web-based customer feedback service similar to UserVoice where customers can submit input and ideas to business owners about a product or service they’re using. Members can vote for ideas, submit new features, ask questions, answer questions, and report bugs. Notable features are comment voting, nested comments, open id, comment tagging, https support, feedback tagging, and widgets. UserEcho offers a free account and paid accounts begin at $15 per month.

IdeaScale – A customer feedback and crowdsourcing mashup that attempts to harness the collaborative spirit of your customer base and transform it into a workforce for your business. IdeaScale has integrated tools like wikis to promote user-generated support indirectly. Users can submit feedback and ideas, leave comments, and vote on submitted feature ideas. IdeaScale is competitively priced at $15 per month for their basic plan and $99/month for a custom branding option that includes a few more bells and whistles.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best Online Feedback Tools, Help Desk Software To Support Your Customers

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Both free and premium WordPress rating plugins are frequently used to rate and review blog posts, compare products and services, and vote up/down visitor comments. Many of these ratings plugins for WordPress act as powerful tools to help improve your site’s search engine rankings, assist you in further engaging your readers, and gather important research data about any particular item or topic. Below is a review list of some of the best WordPress rating plugins currently available for commercial and free use. To find out about more great resources for your WP blog, see our directory of premium WordPress plugins.

Premium WordPress Rating Plugins

Rating Plugin – A premium WordPress rating plugin that gives visitors the ability to rate and vote (thumbs up or down) on anything you choose. You can use as many micro-posts as you want inside a main post. Your visitors will also be able to comment on your mini-posts. Comments can be approved or deleted in the admin area there and the Facebook and Twitter integration permits easy sharing across social networks. The Rating Plugin will cost you $49.95 for a single site license, $99.95 for use on up to 10 websites, or $199.95 for use on any number of sites that you own.

GD Star Rating – A robust premium WordPress ratings plugin that allows you to rate and review posts, pages and comments. This plugin’s rating system is very versatile and it includes several widgets that can be used to display rating comparisons in your sidebar. GD Star Rating comes with Google’s Rich Snippets feature and it’s available in 10 different languages with premium support for all premium account holders. If you’re looking for an advanced WordPress ratings system with lots of customization options, this is it.

Free WordPress Rating Plugins

WP-PostRatings – This plugin incorporates an AJAX rating system to your blog. It can be used in widget form, or you can add it to your blog posts, pages or comments section. This will involve editing your blog template and inserting a small piece of code. This piece of code can be customized to show additional information like lowest rated post, highest rated post, most/least related posts and more. You will also be able choose your rating image and individual rating text.

I Like This – This free WordPress rating plugin adds a simple “like” feature to your posts. A counter is displayed to allow visitors to like your posts and the number of “likes” you get is displayed as well. This can be installed automatically at the top of your post, or you can install it manually wherever you like by inserting a shortcode in your WP theme. There’s also a widget that you can use to easily display your most liked posts.

Mombly Review Rating – A dead simple rating plugin that only allows the WP authors to rate WP posts. Authors can insert ratings into any post and review them by adding a shortcode. For example, to give a product a 2 out of 5 rating, you’d add [Rating:2/5] in the location of the blog post where you wish it to appear. Rating images can be customized to your liking and the WP admin can place multiple ratings per page.

Comment Rating – Allows visitors to rate comments in a like vs dislike system of ratings. This plugin will add rating images to each comment and display the total number of likes and dislikes you’ve accumulated. Comment ratings are very stylish and the built-in anti-fraud voting measures only permit visitors to vote once per IP address.

Comment Rating Widget – This plugins is an add-on to the Comment Rating plugin listed above. You can use the widget to display comments and ratings in your sidebar. You can control the appearance by specifying the number of comments to show and listing them by post or publication date.

Xavin’s Review Ratings – Another great ratings plugin for WordPress that lets you add a rating to your blog post with a simple shortcode tag. For instance, if you wanted to give a product a rating of 3 out of 5, you’d add [xrr rating=3/5] to your post. There are additional tags you can add to the code like a label, group, image set and more. You can have your ratings display as a fraction or percentage, and you can use any amount of rating stars from 2 to 100.

Visitor Like/Dislike Post Rating – Similar to the Like plugin, you can let visitors like or dislike your posts. No one will be able to rate a post more than once and no one can rate their own article. The Like/Dislike Post Rating plugin can also be used to permit visitors to like or dislike comments.

Post Star Rating – Another free WordPress rating plugin that allows WP blog owners to rate posts using a 5-star ratings system. The plugin includes a few shortcodes you can use to display your best content of the month.

PollDaddy Polls & Ratings – Allows you to develop polls and ratings using PollDaddy and seamlessly incorporate them into your site. The admin can create polls and choose from 20 different polling styles. Administrators are able to view results of their polls in real time and embed star ratings for posts, and vote up/down comment.

JR Ratings – A simple WordPress rating plugin that lets your visitors vote on your posts using gold stars. It’s fairly new and doesn’t include many features but it gets the job done.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best WordPress Rating Plugins For Your Blog

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99Designs – Arguably one of the best if not the most popular logo design contest sites. They not only offer logo design services but competitions for web design, WordPress design, icon design, stationary, print, brochures, powerpoint, banner ads, buttons, and t-shirt design. Creating and launching your own design contest is simple and easy. A basic logo design contest will cost you $295 and it will attract roughly 30 designs. For $495 you can double the amount of submissions and for $695 you’ll get about 100 logo designs to choose from. 99Designs also offers plenty of upgrades to help you obtain greater exposure for your logo design competition. More exposure usually results in many more logo designs. These exposure upgrades include getting your contest featured on the 99Designs homepage, highlighting your listing, and promoting your listing on 99Designs Twitter account. Extra options include private contests and a fast tracked contest option to end the standard 7-day contest earlier.

CrowdSpring – Each year this site serves thousands of contests for web design, graphic design, and industrial design. Additional services include naming research, creative writing, business writing, online writing and editing, as well as proofreading. Listing fees for logos start at $39 with a minimum prize amount of $200. CrowdSpring states that each project gets on average 110 entries but they do not provide the average fee to obtain those 110 entries. However, each project includes a money-back guarantee such that they’ll refund everything minus the listing fee if you’re not completely satisfied with the results of your design contest.

Design Crowd – A graphic design marketplace where freelance designers compete against each other for prize money provided by the project creator. DesignCrowd features competitions for corporate identity, web design listings, print design, and graphic design. Whether you need a flyer or poster designed for your marketing campaign or a simple WordPress design for you new site, DesignCrowd has you covered. The minimum prize amount required for a logo design contest is $170 and that does not include the $30 listing fee. For that price DesignCrowd estimates that you’ll receive approximately 15 logo submissions. DesignCrowd offers a money back guarantee for projects in which the prize money is not guaranteed by the listing creator. If you ever run into any problems using the service, you can reach their support team via email or by calling them directly.

Logo My Way – This logo contest site features a logo marketplace where designers feature original, ready made logos that you can simply add your company’s name to and checkout. They offer traditional logo competitions as well with their least expensive package starting at $200 with a 10% service fee. Members have access to the forum where they can discuss related issues and support is handled via email and phone calls.

Hatchwise – A design contest site that allows you to create listings for all kinds of design projects ranging from logo contests to writing assignments. Hatchwise offers web design, logo design, brand development contests, resume writing, newsletter writing, SEO writing, book writing, article writing contests, and lyrics and poetry writing competitions. If you’re just starting out and need help with your business concept they also provide competitions to help you dream up names for your company, products, slogan, taglines, and the perfect domain. A basic logo design contest includes a $29 activation fee, a 10% winning creative fee, and a $100 minimum prize amount. Upgrading your listing to appear as a featured project or adding highlighting will attract more designers and therefore more entries to select from.

Guerra Creativa – Offers graphic design contests for logos, stationary, print, packaging, and icons. Their web design contests are available for WordPress sites, landing pages, small and large website needs, banner ads, and social networking customizations for sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Other design competitions include flash animation and 3D modeling and rendering contests. For comparison, logo design contests start at a minimum prize amount of $150 with a listing fee of $14.99. These economy logo competitions only receive about 25 entries but you can increase the number of submissions by raising the prize amount or paying for extra exposure.

Design Contest – Currently this design competition website only offers logo design contest projects to be listed. Their most inexpensive logo design project is priced with a non-refundable listing fee of $30 and a prize minimum of $250. The logo project can be listed for three to 14 days and it should receive about 30 to 35 entries. Private design contests and allowing all registered members access your project listing incurs additional costs.

48Hours Logo – Provides logo contests for the lowest prize amount available compared to other logo design contest websites. Starting at just $79 you can list your logo design competition and begin reviewing entries from professional designers. 48Hours Logo takes a 10% fee for providing its services and requires a $29 initial payment for each project you create. The remaining prize balance is deposited after you see the logo concepts and it is dispersed to the winner of your choice. Listing upgrade options include the ability to make your project private to prevent non-members, competitors, and search engines from indexing and viewing your logo contest.

Logo Tournament – A logo contest website where small business owners and startups can get hundreds of logo ideas submitted to them from top design pros. Logo contests start at $250 and they generally get about 50 to 200 logo concepts submitted. Logo Tournament offers a money back guarantee such that if your listing doesn’t receive at least 30 different logo entries they’ll send you a full refund.

Astada – Another design contest site that allows you to create competition based listings for your design needs. They also offer a marketplace were buyers and sellers can negotiate the sale and transfer of design works, domains, and whole websites. Astada provides contests for web design, logos, flash, buttons, icons, banners, t-shirts, and any other design competition you want to create. A simple logo contest will cost you a $20 listing fee and a minimum cash prize of $150 for the winning logo designer.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best Logo Design Contest Sites And Services For Small Business Startups

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Deals that are featured on PayLessNow will start off much like other group buying sites in that they will offer huge savings of 50% or more for customers. However, every day after that, the discount will be reduced by X percent until the third or fourth day at which the savings will level off. At that point, the deal will be offered at the same price for the next 30 days. These structured deals should provide great incentive for customers to purchase early while also improving the business owner’s ROI and maximizing the amount of exposure the business receives.

In addition to PayLessNow’s sliding scale deal structure, they’re launching iPhone and Android applications that tap into hyper-local markets. These mobile applications will not just notify users of deals in their city but they also permit users to indicate what types of deals interest them. Taken a step further, PayLessNow’s Push Card feature permits users to subscribe to categories of interest for which they can be alerted of nearby deals. For example, if a user is a golfer and happens to be walking or driving by a relevant merchant, the business owner could push a deal to the user’s mobile application that would then notify the user of the golf related deal.

PayLessNow recently premiered in Chicago but they’re planning to expand rapidly into other U.S. cities. Their approach to each city is a bit different as well. Instead of targeting each city as a whole, they break up the city into sections to ensure that residents receive location-based offers from establishments within their immediate vacinity. This may give residents further incentive to seek out nearby merchants and buy locally rather than traveling outside of their neighborhood. Furthermore, this solution provides the nearby merchant with a leg up on his competitors that happen to be on other side of town. In addition, PayLessNow plans to offer not one, but up to three different deals per day per city area. These hyper-local deals will be scheduled so that merchants are not directly competing against one another and subscribers do not receive multiple deals for similar products and services.

Disclosure: PayLessNow has an ad on TM

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

PayLessNow Introduces Business Friendly Daily Deals For Hyper-Local Markets

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Why Groupon’s Worth It For Local Businesses
Unlike many traditional advertising options, such as print, radio, and television ads, Groupon can deliver measurable results for local businesses that need new customers now. Customer acquisition is the life’s blood of every successful business and conventional advertising mediums can’t produce the customer acquisition rates that Groupon supplies. That’s exactly why Groupon is able to charge merchants such high rates and why it’s a very real game changer for the local advertising market. No other advertising medium can rival Groupon’s ability to push foot traffic into local storefronts, let alone do it in such a measurable and expedient manner.

Are Groupon’s Merchant Stats Accurate?

Groupon proudly displays claims that over 95% of the businesses that use its services “are satisfied with their Groupon experience”, they “would use Groupon again”, and they would “recommend Groupon to other businesses”. A recent study performed study by Utpal Dholakia, an associate professor of marketing at Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, has finally put those claims to the test and provided some real data to backup the cost effectiveness of Groupon. Dholakia surveyed a total of 150 businesses that ran promotions with Groupon between June 2009 and August 2010. The study covered 19 U.S. cities and 13 product categories ranging from restaurants and spas to educational services and tourist attractions. Listed below are some of the key findings from Dr. Utpal Dholakia’s Groupon study.

Key findings of the Groupon study:

• 66% of businesses that used Groupon were able to attain a profit from their deal offering
• 42% of businesses said they would not run another Groupon promotion
• Restaurants faired the worst of all categories; 20 of 48 reportedly lost revenue with their Groupon promotion
• Spas had the greatest success; 14 of 17 reported a profitable Groupon promotion
• Of those businesses that gained profits, 50% of redeemers purchased beyond the coupon’s value
• Of those businesses that gained profits, 31% of redeemers purchased a second time
• Employee satisfaction with a Groupon promotion was the strongest predictor of profitability
• A promotion’s effectiveness in reaching new customers was another predictor of profitability
• More sales are achieved with 1) deals that set a maximum sales number limit, 2) a longer promotional duration, and 3) restaurants

Tips For Businesses Using Groupon
Dr. Dholakia suggested that businesses offer structured deals that spread out the coupon’s discount over several visits. For example, instead of a one-time coupon that offers $30 worth of services, the business should offer a deal that includes three coupons that are each worth $10 in services. Doing so may help develop a rapport with the customer to encourage return visits and increase the probability that the business would make a profit with their deal promotion. Other suggestions include offering discounts on specific items rather than the total bill, cross-selling products and services to customers, targeting less popular product or service items, and setting coupon redemption dates to increase off-peak or seasonal traffic. Using our Groupon calculator you can clearly see how businesses are able to earn revenue from daily deal sites if their promotion is carefully constructed.

Groupon As A Better Local Advertising Platform
Despite the criticism that one-third of all businesses don’t profit from Groupon promotions, it’s actually pretty amazing that an overwhelming majority (66%) of merchants do. Businesses should NOT expect to turn a profit when they discount their products by 50% and split the remaining 50% with another party like Groupon. Incredibly, however, the majority of merchants are able to do so without paying any upfront costs, gaining hundreds to thousands of new customers, and injecting a huge amount of cash flow into their business within just a few days. What other advertising platform can do that? None. And that’s how Groupon is changing the advertising game for the better and why daily deal sites may be the most effective advertising option available for local business owners.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Groupon’s Not A Daily Deal Site; It’s A Better Local Advertising Platform For Businesses

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A WordPress ecommerce theme can be easily added to your default WP installation to transform your regular blog into a well oiled online ecommerce store. E-commerce themes for WordPress come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you need to sell physical products or digital products from your WP storefront, there’s a theme that can do that. There are several free WP store themes available if you’re just getting started and need to save a few dollars. The downside of using a free WordPress theme is that they’re not well supported or updated and you may not want to take the risk of something breaking and then losing customers. A great alternative is a premium WordPress ecommerce theme that includes quality support and frequent updates. Below we’ve put together a review list of the best WordPress ecommerce themes available today. These include both premium and free themes that you add to your WP site to start selling today. For more WordPress resources to improve your online store, see our list of premium WordPress plugins.

Emporium – This theme is built on top of the ecommerce line of WordPress functions that Templatic includes in many of their WP themes. The design is very professional and clean with large beautiful imagery and slick image transitions. The homepage features a very large slideshow where the admin can feature products and a smaller slider for additional items. The store page can display products in a list view or a grid view depending on the owner’s preference. The theme’s product page includes a featured image and a gallery for displaying multiple images for the product. The Emporium theme comes in four skin colors which are white, red, blue, and grey.

Store – A straight forward WordPress ecommerce theme that includes a shopping cart and the admin can sell both physical and downloadable goods. The admin can easily create and edit products, manage orders, add product photos, and accept coupon codes with purchases. The WordPress Store theme is compatible with multiple payment gateways and multiple shipping options. It even allows the admin to set tax rates and import/export product data via CSV file.

e-Commerce – Another WordPress ecommerce theme built by Templatic. It offers many of the same features that are included in the Store theme plus a couple others. These include a guest checkout option that lets visitors purchase without registering and an affiliate module that permits customers to sign-up as affiliate members.

Store Front – A two column WordPress ecommerce theme developed by Templatic. This theme offers all the same features of Templatic’s ecommerce themes but the layout and a few other things are different. For instance, the product page doesn’t include a gallery and it comes in five skin colors.

Kidz Store – As the name implies, it’s a premium WordPress ecommerce theme that’s geared towards businesses that sell products for children. It offers a very colorful two column design that’s also very simple and easy to navigate. The product page features a large image of the item with additional thumbnail photos that can be zoomed in so the customer can have a closer look.

eShop – An elegant WordPress ecommerce theme created by Templatic that resembles the Apple store. This is another of Templatic’s ecommerce line of WP themes with a few additions. The homepage includes a large featured product slider to display popular items in your WordPress store and it comes in five skin colors: green, pink, light blue, yellow, and purple.

WP Store – Templatic’s WordPress ecommerce theme that includes a large product slideshow on the homepage with additional feature product modules underneath. Customers can switch between a list view and a grid view on the store’s products page. It includes search engine optimized features such breadcrumbs, descriptive URLs, meta keywords, meta description, and much more. The theme is available in grey and black only.

ShopperPress – A premium WordPress ecommerce theme that comes chocked full of features and options to help you build a great looking online store. ShopperPress includes 20 payment gateways, shipping options, tax management options, Google AdSense and Google Analytics integration, and the ability to import Amazon and eBay product information. The theme supports multiple languages and it offers more than twenty different designs.

eStore – A lusciously designed WordPress ecommerce theme built by ElegantThemes. Features include multiple color schemes, integration with popular shopping cart plugins like eShop and Simple PayPal Shopping Cart, automatic image resizing, ad management, localization for translating the theme into multiple languages, shortcodes to change layout configuration, and much more. The theme is easy to modify through the settings panel and it includes SEO options to ensure your store is visible to search engines.

Ecommerce Theme – A basic WordPress ecommerce theme that makes it easy for you to get your online store up and running in no time. It comes in six color schemes and offers standard features found in most online storefront themes for WordPress.

AppCloud – An Apple AppStore-like WordPress ecommerce theme that includes a shopping cart function. The theme’s design is very clean and colorful. The homepage features two large javascript slideshows so the WP admin can display featured products and the week’s top selling store items. Other features include the 960 Grid System (960.gs), horizontal and vertical layouts, re-captcha integration, and a widgetized sidebar.

MarketTheme – This theme comes with an integrated AJAX shopping cart and custom fields to let you add sizes, colors and any other specifications to products. Each product page displays a large product image, an “add to cart” button, and drop down menus for product specifications that are assigned. The admin can also enter a description for each product page and add product tags and categories.

The Jewelry Shop – A complete online ecommerce storefront with loads of options and features that you can use to sell your products on the internet. The Jewelry Shop isn’t just for jewelry sellers as the name implies. Everything is localized such that the theme doesn’t depend on any plugins to operate. It includes a membership area, a customer wishlist, over 30 different widgets and widget areas, categories and subcategories, plus lots more.

Viroshop – A very professional looking WP ecommerce theme that offers a plethora of features and functionality to help you sell online. Notable features include coupons, thumbnail images, a shopping cart, an image slider for featured products, member pricing, product image galleries, product size options, product color options, set quantities, add to wishlist button on each product page, PayPal and Google Checkout payment gateways, multiple currencies, tax rate options, flat rate shipping options, and email notifications.

The Furniture Store – Contrary to its name, it is not a furniture-only ecommerce theme for WordPress. The homepage contains a very large slideshow that the admin can use to display his/her best products. The theme uses a two column design with categories and related products listed in the sidebar. The product page can be used for both physical goods and digital goods. The admin can easily add images, audio files, or videos to display and describe products. A shopping cart is included along with RSS feeds for each category. Additional features include 18 widgets, a customer wishlist, two child themes, and login/registration area.

enVirashop – A simple yet stylish WordPress ecommerce theme that lets you quickly post products for sale. It offers Lightbox integration for viewing product images up close, multiple shopping cart colors, multiple payment gateways, a jQuery slider, product options, and tax rate options. The WordPress administrator can easily upload his logo and favicon as well as modify banner colors to give the theme a customized look.

The Clothes Shop – This is a very well designed, modern WordPress ecommerce theme with large photos and slick actions to keep the visitor’s interest. The theme’s homepage displays three large images that slide over to reveal product categories. Underneath those are featured product placements where you can add more product photos and product links. Multiple images can be uploaded to display multiple views of a given product on its dedicated page. In the sidebar you’ll find related products that can be tagged and categorized. The WP theme includes a grid view for parent categories, 30 different widget areas, 17 widgets, a member wishlist, and a blogging section.

WPA Storefront – A premium WordPress ecommerce theme that utilizes the WP e-Commerce plugin and some additional code to create a fully functional online storefront. A large slideshow adorns the home page to feature your most popular products and a secondary, smaller slider is positioned below it to display additional items for sale. Positioned at the bottom of the page is a set of category images with borders that change color when the visitor rolls over them with his mouse. The theme supports Google Analytics, logo and favicon uploads, flat rate shipping, several payment gateways (Google Checkout, PayPal, Chronpay), downloadable goods, social bookmarking, and it’s SEO friendly.

OScomm – Another Apple-looking premium WordPress ecommerce theme with a clean brushed stainless steel feel and a pleasant color scheme of white sliver and light blue. It comes with a shopping cart, a jQuery slider, featured products that display a details link and a buy now button, a categories widget, account page, and a checkout page.

Simple Cart – A free WordPress ecommerce theme that works in combination with the WP e-Commerce plugin to provide a simplified online store. Visitors will be able to view individual products, add the to their shopping cart, view product details, and checkout.

Shopaholic – A nice theme with rollover menus and jQuery slider to feature top products. Visitors can comment on products and rate them. Uploaded product images are automatically resized for thumbnail photos. The theme’s colors are white, grey, and green by default.

Crafty Cart – This free WordPress ecommerce theme also works with the WP e-Commerce plugin. It’s a no frills online store with all the essential functionality that you’ll need to start selling. Admins can use either PayPal or Google Checkout as their payment gateway. The owner needs only to enter his or her PayPal or Google Checkout information to begin. Products are displayed in a list format with thumbnail images, an add to cart button, a checkout page, item categories, individual product pages with descriptions, and a photo gallery for each product.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best Ecommerce Themes For WordPress

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There’s no denying that daily deal sites like Groupon are incredibly effective at getting new customers to visit local storefronts. Despite their powerful ability to generates sales for merchants, the costs that business owners incur by advertising with group buying sites can be overwhelming. Many business owners have reported that daily deal websites have actually done more harm than good for their company. Common problems that businesses experience when offering group buying deals include things like a drop in online ratings (i.e. Yelp), overselling coupons, overbooking appointments, and a lack of staff members to handle the flood of new customers. Many issues that arise from group buying campaigns can be tempered with strategic planning and some foresight but it’s important to remember that each marketing tool has its own limits. While there are many advantages for businesses to use daily deal sites, there are many disadvantages for using social buying sites like Groupon to promote your business as well.

1. Greater expenses – Typical deals featured on sites like Groupon are discounted by 50% off the original retail price. On top of that, Groupon keeps 50% of all voucher sales that it obtains for its clients. Thus, business owners generally earn only 25% of what they’d normally make an any sale generated through a daily deal website.

2. Brand dilution – The huge price cuts that are required to be featured on daily deal sites like Groupon severely damage a brand’s image. This can be especially harmful to brands that are associated with higher quality products and services. By discounting the price your brand becomes susceptible to a reduction in perceived value by the customer. Premium quality product and service providers aren’t the only ones that can dilute a brand. Discount stores that utilize deal websites too often may train their customers to simply wait until the next promotion is offered before making another purchase.

3. Attracting the wrong customers – Some business owners that have used Groupon to promote their services in the past have commented that Groupon buyers are not the kind of customers you want. They’ve complained that daily deal buyers are just out for the deal and they will spend as little as necessary at your establishment in order to redeem their deal. This includes lower tips on average and a lower rate of tipping.

4. Too many customers too soon – The power of group buying can rally enormous numbers of people to your place of business. While it’s always great to earn new sales, the high traffic in a short period of time can be disasterous to a business that’s not prepared. If you don’t have the man power on hand to accommodate this huge influx of new customers, the quality of service you provide for your customers will suffer. As a result you’ll see your online ratings on review sites like Yelp and OpenTable crash and burn.

5. Less online traffic and links – Sure you get the foot traffic to your physical storefront but your website doesn’t get the bump in online traffic it normally does through traditional web based ad campaigns. The diminished online ads results in less incoming links that could be gained by publishers visiting your website via the online ads. Furthermore, daily deal sites feature your business over a single day or two whereas online ad campaigns can increase awareness as long as they’re running.

6. Hiring more employees – The huge influx of new customers that result from your deal offering means you’ll likely have to hire a few extra employees to handle the increased workload. This requires that you create and pay for job listings, setup interviews, and train the new workers. All of that costs extra so you’ll need to take those costs into consideration as well.

7. Lower profit margins – Forget about making any profits from customers that buy deals. Most businesses that offer deals are lucky if they break even. Remember, you’re only making about 25% of what you’d normally earn if your deal discounts the original price by 50% (Groupon takes half too).

8. Short lived exposure – While daily deal sites can generate an enormous amount of attention for your business, that intense spotlight only lasts for a few days. After that, it’s all downhill in terms of deal impressions and the battle to deliver unprecedented customer service to stingy deal crazed consumers begins. Can your business and employees survive that added pressure?

9. No customer addresses gained – Growing one’s customer database may be the single most important goal for a business owner. A strong email list is essential for nearly every business to achieve success in a market. Unfortunately, Groupon and other daily deal websites do not share the buyers’ contact information or email addresses with the merchants.

10. Employee morale may suffer – Business employees have complained that Groupon customers tip very little because they’re trying to squeeze the most out of a deal. Simply put, lower tips combined with heavier workloads may leave your employees clamoring to find another job.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Top 10 Reasons Businesses Shouldn’t Use Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon To Advertise Locally

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WordPress comment plugins allow you to completely customize the design and functionality of the default WP comment section of your blog. While commenting systems like IntenseDebate, Echo, and Disqus offer lots of nice features, a common complaint is that they slow WP page loads and most comment plugins aren’t compatible with them. To help you trick-out your commenting section, we’ve put together a quick review list below of some of the best WordPress commenting plugins currently available. We will continue to update this list as other terrific comment plugins for WordPress are discovered. For other great WP plugins that can improve your WordPress blog, take a look at our directory of premium WordPress plugins.

Comment Plugins For Email Subscription

Action Comments – A great little plugin that adds a powerful feature to your commenting section. When you install this premium WordPress plugin it will place a check box under your commenting section to allow commenters to effortlessly subscribe to your email list. It offers a double opt-in feature, a snappy popup to ask commenters if they’d like to sign-up for your newsletter, and a silent sign-up (NOT recommended) feature for adding subscribers.

StandoutComments – Another email subscription plugin that helps you grow your email list by promoting subscriptions through the comment section of your blog. The unique aspect of this premium WordPress plugin is that it allows you to promote your Twitter account and RSS feed as well. It does this by simply adding another set of small check boxes below your blog’s comments. Thus, all the commenter needs to do to sign-up for your RSS feed and newsletter, or become a Twitter follower, is to checkmark each box.

SubscriberMagnet – A premium WordPress plugin to help you increase the number of email subscribers for your blog. It auto-fills the email subscription form once the visitor is logged into your blog or after they comment. Hence, all they have left to do is hit the submit button to join your email list. It offers single or double opt-in, a form builder, a toolbar, a delayed popup, and a check box at the bottom of the comment form. There’s also an option to send a personalized email message to each commenter (i.e. similar to what the Comment Relish plugin does). SubscribersMagnet users can even track each email sign-up method to quickly identify which ones are the most effective at gaining subscribers.

Anti-Spam Comment Plugins

Akismet – The default WordPress anti-spam plugin that utilizes Akismet’s web service to determine if a comment is spam or not. When a person marks a comment as spam that information is transferred to the Akismet web service so other WP blog owners won’t get spammed with the same message. In order to use the plugin, you must obtain an Akismet API key by signing up for an account on WordPress.com.

Bad Behavior – This free WordPress commenting plugin stops spam by identifying the software and the method of delivery that is used to submit comments. In comparison to Akismet, Bad Behavior doesn’t depend on the collective intelligence of others to tag a comment as spam. Instead, it can block spam that no one else has seen yet.

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam – Adds captcha to the WordPress comment form, login form, registration form, or all three. The administrator can select which forms should display the captcha and which ones shouldn’t. It offers audio captcha and additional customization features like hiding the captcha for registered users with certain rights (admins, edit posts, publish posts, moderate comments).

Plugins That Incentivize Commenting

CommentLuv – Adds a link to the commenter’s latest blog post, tweet, or digg underneath their comment. The commenter can choose only one link to display underneath their comments. When you hover over the CommentLuv icon located at the end of each link it will display information about the commenter. CommenLuv is compatible with the IntenseDebate comment plugin for WordPress.

Dofollow – A free WordPress plugin that let’s you remove the nofollow attribute from all comments. This encourages commenting as it passes authority/PageRank to the commenters’ links.

NoFollow Free – Just like Dofollow, this free WordPress comment plugin allows you to remove the nofollow attribute to from comments. However, it offers extras not included with Dofollow such as support for multiple languages and the ability to remove the nofollow attribute for a user only after X number of comments have been posted.

Top Contributors – Lets you reward your blog’s top commenters by displaying them in a sidebar widget or anywhere else on your site. It includes options to display the commenter’s Gravatar, style the design, exclude blog authors, and caching to speed up loading. You can even add an extra field to assign special recognition to your top commenters.

Easy Comment Uploads – Permits WP site visitors to upload images and files to their comments so others can view them. This added feature can be especially enticing to for design focused sites that attract a lot of visual designers and photographers that want to share their latest work and comment on your blog all at the same time.

Comment Styling Plugins

Highlight Author Comments – Allows authors to draw attention to their comments by assigning a different background color to them. This free WP plugin will work with your existing WP theme, you just need to add a snippet of CSS styling to the text box that provided.

Quote Comments – A free WordPress comment plugin that simply adds a quote link to each comment so other commenters can reply to a specific line of text from the previous commenter. This is particularly useful when the WP admin has disabled nested replies for all comments.

Comment Management Plugins

Minimum Comment Length – From time to time you may get visitors that merely comment for the sake of getting traffic without actually contributing anything to the conversation. Adding this free WordPress plugin to your blog allows you to set a minimum number of words that must be included in the comment before it can be submitted. When the commenter doesn’t meet this minimum they are shown a customized message that encourages them to say a little more.

Ban Hammer – Enables you to ban unruly commenters or spammers via email address or a common email domain. This free WordPress plugin uses the Comment Blacklist feature located in your Discussion Settings to determine what emails should be blocked. Instead of sending all the submitted comments to the spam inbox, users attempting to comment using these emails are blocked completely. The WP admin only needs to update the Comment Blacklist with the correct email address to block anyone. When a user attempts to register using a blacklisted email, they will see a message telling them they cannot register.

Comment Plugins For Social Media

Twitoaster – This free WP plugin automatically tweets your blog post to Twitter and then retrieves all replies and retweets to the original tweet into your WordPress comments section. The imported tweets are threaded within other WP comments so that the conversation can be tracked easily between Twitter and your blog. The plugin also comes with two widget that display reply and retweet stats as well as your latest twenty conversations on Twitter.

Facebook Comments for WordPress – Allows visitors to submit comments to your blog using their Facebook profile. Users that are already logged into Facebook can post comment with ease. If the user is not logged into Facebook they can comment using the default WP commenting form. Additionally the admin can choose to hide WordPress comments on any posts where Facebook comments are allowed.

Comment Rating & Voting Plugins

Comment Rating – This free WordPress plugin delegates some of the comment moderation to the users allowing them to vote comments up or down. Comments that receive more thumbs down votes are minimized in a click-to-view manner and popular comments are highlighted to give them more attention. Votes are counted per IP address to prevent voting fraud and widget is provided to display the highest rated comments. The premium version of this plugin comes with more features, easier customization, and additional measures to prevent fraudulent votes from being counted.

GD Star Rating – A star ratings system that can be used to allow readers to rate posts and comments. Plugin owners can display stars or thumbs up/down images for voting purposes and allow multiple ratings. The free version of GD Star Rating is compatible with popular caching plugins like WP Super Cache and it supports multiple languages. The premium GD Star Ratings plugin version offers that same features as the free version plus it includes priority support, additional modules and templates, video tutorials, extensive documentation, a features wishlist, and nightly builds.

Plugins For Subscribing To Comments

Gurken Subscribe to Comments – The popular Subscribe to Comments plugin created by Mark Jaquith isn’t supported any longer and there are several bugs that exist for it. Thankfully, Martin Spuetz has written an improved version to replace it. Gurken Subscribe to Comments is a free WP plugin that fixes all the known problems with the old Subscribe to Comments plugin and it also includes a double opt-in feature to confirm email subscribers. If you’re using the old Subscribe to Comments plugin, make sure you deactivate it before you try installing the new one.

Plugins For Corresponding With Commenters

Multi Author Comment Notification – By default WordPress only sends email notifications to the author of a blog post when comments are submitted. If your WP site has multiple authors however, you can recruit other authors to contribute to the discussion just in case the primary author isn’t available for comment. The Multi Author Comment Notification solves this problem by pushing the notifications to the individuals you select.

Email Commenters – A very helpful and free WordPress commenting plugin that adds a link to each post permitting the administrator to send an email to all the article’s commenters. This is a terrific option for when you update an article and you want to notify all interested parties.

Comment-Emailer – Lets the WP admin totally customize the approval email notification that WordPress sends when new comments or trackbacks are created. You can alter the ‘from’ address, email message, remove the author names, change the website title, reply address, and even the IP address.

Commenter Emails – The purpose of this free WordPress commenting plugin is to extract the email addresses of all commenters on a given post. Like the Email Commenters plugin you can use it to later send an email message to interested commenters about an updated article. Unlike the Email Commenters plugin however, you can use your own email service to include photos and professional email templates that punch-up the design.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best WordPress Comment Plugins For Your Blog

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Daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial offer huge discounts on products and services through partnerships with local merchants. These deal of the day websites can produce wonders for local small businesses that need foot traffic. Traditional online advertising isn’t nearly as effective as social buying platforms for getting people to visit local storefronts. For approximately the same price as a decent-sized online advertising campaign, a collective buying site will feature your business’s deal offering on their website and notify local email subscribers. With many of these online services boasting readership in the millions, they can literally flood your store with hundreds to thousands of new customers within a single day or two. Moreover, these daily deal websites only charge you when sales are generated. So not only will this promotional tool earn a bucket load of cash flow and new customers for you, but you’ll only have to pay when real results are obtained for your business. A pay per sale model combined with a powerful distribution system, time-sensitive discounts, and social media based user referral incentives make group buying sites a hands down winner for most local business owners seeking to gain new customers and elevate sales.

1. Instantly acquire new customers – For budding small businesses that are starved for clients, group buying sites are the most effective solution to acquiring new customers. Groupon and others like it can send you hoards of deal crazed consumers for you to convert into long-term customers. Your return on investment (ROI), in terms of getting new customer in the door, is unmatched compared to other advertising options.

2. Quickly generate cash flow – Top daily deal sites like Groupon have generated sales in the tens of thousands for some business owners. If a merchant sold 10,000 vouchers at $10 each, that’s $50,000 (minus Groupon’s standard share) in cash flow that was raised in just a matter of a few days. No other advertising model rivals the rate at which deal sites can inject cash flow into a business.

3. No upfront costs – Deal sites utilize a pay per sale (PPS: a.k.a. cost per sale; CPS) model to generate revenue which means business owners pay nothing upfront to use their services. In contrast to traditional cost per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per click (CPC) advertising fees, a cost per sale charge ensures that you only pay Groupon when a sale is generated for your business. Barring unauthorized purchases or any refunds that buyers submit to the deal site, your advertising expenses produce real results in terms of customer acquisitions and the production of sales.

4. Measurable results – Companies can spend millions of dollars on local radio, television, print, and online advertising campaigns and never see any clear increase in offline sales, let alone any change in traffic to their local stores. Vouchers require that the customers visit your storefront in order to redeem them. When they do this, you can easily track the profits and expenses for each voucher sale that’s generated. Before that however, you’ll already know exactly how many people received your deal offer in their inbox, how many people opened it, and the number of people that purchased it.

5. Increase offline visitor traffic – Previously, the resources available to convert online sales into foot traffic for local store owners was limited to gift cards and simple coupons. The conversion rates of the latter are quite poor and without a discount, gift cards don’t fair much better when it comes to getting customers into stores. Social buying sites on the other hand represent a very efficient way for merchants to push traffic into local storefronts and acquire new customers.

6. Gain Facebook & Twitter followers – People love businesses that offer deals to their customers and they’re more willing to hit that “Like” or “Follow” button on Facebook and Twitter because of it. Business owners have reported that their Facebook fans and Twitter followers have increased after being featured on daily deal websites like Groupon.

7. Minimal time commitment – Groupon and other daily deal sites do nearly everything for you. Your time commitment upfront is limited to gathering a few images and creating some text copy regarding the limitations of your deal offer. Groupon employs nearly one hundred full-time writers to ensure your featured deal pops off the page and it creates quite a buzz for your establishment. In comparison, effective online advertising requires a much larger investment of time to create the ads, complete the necessary keyword research, and setup conversion tracking.

8. Incredible business exposure – Large social buying sites like Groupon have millions of email subscribers and they get just as website visitors each month. They distribute your deal offering to local site members that then retweet and share your deal throughout the Web. Since you only pay when a sale is generated you’re essentially getting free advertising to boot and lots of more buzz for your business.

9. Highly desirable customer demographic – The average user of daily deal sites like Groupon tend to be educated females with money to spend that are socially active both online and offline. If you’re a local business owner that utilizes Groupon this means that those new customers possess a great potential to return to your establishment and share their experience with their friends.

10. Reduce your advertising budget – The primary goal for advertising is to acquire new customers for your business. Social buying websites are much more effective at this than traditional advertising channels. By redirecting your company’s advertising budget to offer a group deal instead of traditional local ads allows you to spend less on advertising and still acquire more customers.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Top 10 Reasons For Using Groupon, Daily Deal Sites To Advertise Your Business

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

• Top 10 Reasons Businesses Shouldn’t Use Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon To Advertise Locally
• Small Business Owner Success Tips For Using Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon
• Group Buying (aka Socal Buying, Collective Buying, Daily Deals)
• Group Buying: When Is It Not Cost Effective For Business Owners?
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• Best Social Group Buying Sites For Daily Deals And Deep Discounts
• Top 10 Best B2B Group Buying Sites For Business Based Daily Deals
• Groupon’s Not A Daily Deal Site; It’s A Better Local Advertising Platform For Businesses

WordPress slideshow plugins can be very powerful tools for both publishers and designers. If used correctly, a slideshow plugin for WordPress can effectively highlight featured posts and images within your WP blog to capture the reader’s attention. The WP plugin repository is overflowing with jQuery slide show plugins but many of them either aren’t well supported or they are poorly developed. We’ve sifted through an incredible amount of those to select our favorites. Below you’ll find a list of free and premium WordPress slide show plugins that are both well supported and frequently updated. We plan to keep adding to this list as new ones are launched. After reviewing those below you should stop by to see our premium WordPress plugins directory which contains other kickass WP plugins that can help you juice-up your blog.

Premium WordPress Slideshow Plugins

SlideshowPlugin – A premium WordPress slideshow plugin that allows you to create elegant and professionally designed slideshows for your WP blog. You can add background music, display your slideshows in any page or post using shortcodes, showcase them in widgets, easily change the width and height of any slideshow, modify the playback and time intervals between slides, or display a location map. The administrator can even place titles, descriptions, and links on photos within the slideshow album.

WordPress Slideshow Plugin – Another commercial slideshow plugin for WordPress. This one doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as the one above but it offers a simpler design and cleaner action. Setting up and managing multiple galleries, positioning slideshows via shortcodes, and configuring the display of slides is near effortless.

SlideDeck – This premium WordPress slideshow plugin is geared towards publishers that want to feature their content in a more interactive and professional manner. The pro version of this jQuery slideshow plugin includes vertical slides, touch support, priority support, a graphical user panel, RSS feed importing, and you can even add your own branding. The plugin is available in Javascript form in addition to the WordPress plugin version, and SlideDeck offers a branded, non-commercial alternative that’s free (minus the pro features).

Free WordPress Slideshow Plugins

SmoothSlider – A free WordPress slideshow plugin created to help you to display featured post excerpts with thumbnail images. It offers a lot of different features which include customizable CSS, an SEO optimized display, the ability to easily feature slideshows in both posts and pages, slider previews, conversion to image-only slider, multiple sidebar integration, and much more.

Slideshow Gallery For WordPress – Tribulant’s Slideshow Gallery plugin lets you display both images and featured content complete with descriptions for your site visitors. Underneath the main slider sits a secondary one that allows the user to quickly preview or jump to any slide without viewing them in playback mode. Site owners can quickly change the style and size of any embedded slideshow that the plugin generates.

SlidePress – This is one of the best WordPress slideshow plugins that I’ve ever seen. The rich display possesses a quick response time, it loads images fast, you can add music, it includes a preview slider, mouseover image magnifier, volume control, multiple slide transitions, auto-play functionality, full screen view, and a gallery display view. The plugin utilizes the SlideShowPro service to render all slideshows on your WP blog. Unfortunately that service is not free but considering all the capabilities it provides, you’d be hard pressed to not find it well worth the cost. Fortunately they also offer a free trial version that you can test before buying.

Cincopa Multimedia – A WordPress multimedia plugin that serves not only simple slide shows but video players, photo galleries, music players, and podcasts. This option is going to be overkill for most users that just need a simple WP slideshow plugin but it offers tons of features and different layouts that other users may find very attractive. Cincopa provides the software to display your media files for free and they charge you a small fee to store and deliver them to your site. They utilize Amazon S3 to host and serve files which is highly scalable and quite inexpensive. Cincopa offers a free account that comes with 400MB of online storage space (~1200 images) and a pro account that comes with a 14-day free trial and costs $4 per month.

Portfolio Slideshow – A free jQuery slideshow plugin that gathers all the photo attachments in a post or page and displays them for your visitors. It’s a great tool for displaying large images and it renders photos very quickly. There’s very little lag when switching between photos. You can either display a single slider or a main slideshow with thumbnail previews. As the name implies, it is ideal for showcasing portfolio works for photographers and designers.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best WordPress Slideshow Plugins For Your Blog

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Groupon’s Service Fee For The Gap Deal
Groupon has not publicly disclosed the exact fees it charged Gap or whether it charged any fees at all. It’s possible Groupon executives believed that the nationwide publicity would be payment enough considering all the new email subscribers they would obtain. However, given the amount of free publicity Groupon gets on a daily basis, I highly doubt CEO Andrew Mason would have allowed it. Furthermore, waiving fees for Gap would result in a backlash from other clients desiring the same waiver. With this in mind it’s logical to assume they charged Gap the same fees it charges its other clients.

Gap’s Income And Losses From Groupon Deal
Using our Groupon ROI calculator, we can quickly discover how much cash flow this generated for Gap and how much this promotion cost them. With Groupon earning 50% of all sales, and vouchers priced at $25 each, the income that Gap gained was the same amount Groupon earned, $5,562,500. However, what this simple calculation doesn’t include is the value of the coupon. Each coupon is redeemable for $50 worth of Gap products so Gap lost twice what they made ($25 x $445,000 = $11,125,000). Of course this figure doesn’t include 1) any revenue gained from additional products customers may purchase when they redeem their coupon, and 2) income generated from customers that don’t redeem their vouchers.

• Redemption rate – The expiration date on the Gap voucher is November 19, 2010 so it’s very possible that some customers will fail to redeem their coupons for the entire $50 value given this short 3-month window. While constructing the Groupon ROI calculator we discovered that a shop owner reported reaching a redemption rate of 56% within four months of offering the deal. So based on this information, I think it’s reasonable to assume that a 50% redemption rate is attainable within three months. Keep in mind, however, that for customers that don’t redeem their voucher before the expiration date, Gap will honor the coupon at its sale price ($25) for a period of time required by each state’s gift certificate laws. At that point, Gap will provide the customer with a $25 Gap gift card that apparently doesn’t have expiration date and it isn’t susceptible to non-usage fees.
• Additional sales percentage – Our rubric for determining the additional sales generated beyond the value of a Groupon voucher is a restaurant that offered two sandwiches for the price of one ($9). The owner of that restaurant reported that about 40% of redeemers bought an extra item (i.e. snack or beverage). While an apparel store and a restaurant differ quite a bit, customers behavior doesn’t. Therefore adopting the 40% additional sales percentage for the Gap deal seems appropriate.
• Average price per additional sale – This is probably the toughest estimate to make because we don’t have an appropriate comparison to draw from. If we knew Gap’s average sale amount we could simply deduct that from the value of the voucher. Without that, we can assume that the buyer will spend an additional amount that rivals the price of the voucher ($25) or its value ($50).
• Repeat customer percentage – Will all of the people that redeem this deal offering come back again a month later? No. Data we’ve looked at tells us that about 20% of those that redeem a voucher will return again.
• Average repeat customer sale amount – This is another difficult value to come up with since we don’t have any appropriate previous findings to base this estimate. Picking a random value doesn’t make any sense either so that’s why I’ve decided to chose the value of the coupon ($50).
• Customer visitation rate – How many times per month does the average customer visit Gap? We don’t know this information either but since most Groupon users are female, we can assume it’s going to be higher than males. We’re choosing the value of one visit per month for this estimate but we’re not going to apply it for the entire year.

Gap ROI Calculation Results
Plugging our assumptions and estimates into the Groupon ROI calculator yielded one very shocking finding above all others:

• Gap stands to lose about $8 million – Despite generating over $5.5 million in voucher sales, Gap may lose up to $8 million beyond that. Our estimate is quite conservative as it also includes another round of purchases from the newly acquired customers. Based on our calculations, in order for Gap to break even on this deal, they must convince those newly acquired customers to return at least four more times this year ($8,010,000/$2,892,500) and spend the same amount ($50). That is unless Gap can somehow 1) increase the frequency of visits per month for new repeat customers, 2) increase the total number of visits per year for repeat customers, 3) decrease the voucher redemption rate, 4) elevate the average additional sale amount (beyond the voucher’s value) per visit, 5) attain a higher repeat customer percentage for voucher redeemers, or 6) achieve a higher additional sales percentage.

Of course many people will disagree with my assumptions and estimates but in my defense I would say that these are very conservative calculations. If you don’t agree with them, you’re free to plug your own estimates into the Gap ROI calculator embedded below and chug away. If you find any errors in the spreadsheet, please bring them to my attention so I can adjust it accordingly.

More Daily Deal Info
For additional information about social buying models, the group buying business, or more on how Groupon works, you may want to take a look at these articles regarding group buying. If you’re a entrepreneur that wants to utilize this promotional tool for your company, see our business owner tips for daily deal websites like Groupon. Oh, and if you were one of the lucky 445,000 that bought the Gap deal voucher but you decide that you can’t use it, you can always resell it on a coupon marketplace.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Groupon Earns $5 Million On First Nationwide Daily Deal, Gap May Have Lost $8 Million

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Daily deal sites like Groupon can be a small business owner’s greatest tools for generating sales. However, daily deal websites can also cause more harm than good if the business owner doesn’t do his/her homework upfront. Most daily deal business models take about 50% of all coupon sales leaving the business owner with only 25% of the original price amount for the product or service. That’s because most deals sold there offer 50% off the original price. As you can see, it can be quite costly for any entrepreneur to utilize a deal distribution service. What’s more, if you’re not prepared for the large influx of calls for appointments and new customers, your company’s reputation could severely be damaged through poor online ratings and reviews placed on sites like Yelp, InsiderPages, and MerchantCircle. Fortunately, there are several things you can do as a business owner to minimize your costs as well as ensure the best customer experience when using these daily deal services to promote your establishment.

Do NOT offer huge deal packages – It can be tempting for first-time Groupon clients to offer expensive deal packages that attract a lot of attention. Many assume that more expensive deal packages will earn them more money but actually they’re much more costly (see the daily deals calculator). As we know from our previous discussion, business costs for daily deal promotions increase in a linear fashion with every step increase in voucher price. What does that mean? Well, in short, it means that selling a $200 deal ($400 worth of services for $200) versus a $20 deal ($40 worth of services for $20) is going to cost you a heck of a lot more money. Remember, you’re only making about 25% of what you’d normally earn which means that you’re losing 75% with every sale too. The customer acquisition costs make this comparison more clear. Let’s say one of those buyers that purchased your deal becomes a repeat customer. If he/she bought the $200 deal voucher (value is $400 at 50% off), that means it cost you $300 (0.75 x $400) to acquire that new customer. However, had you sold the $20 (0.75 x $40) voucher instead you could have acquired that same customer for only $10!

Choose a reputable daily deals site – Before you settle on a group buying site, make sure you check out their history. Some collective buying websites are registered with the Better Business Bureau but many are not. If this is the case, try contacting a few business owners that have used their services before so you can get a first-hand opinion. Most daily deal websites will have a “recent deals” section where you can find past deals and the businesses that offered them. If they don’t have very many recent deals listed, the past deals didn’t bring many sales, or if it’s a niche daily deals site that doesn’t cater to your business category, you probably want to choose another site for your promotional offering. A quick Google search regarding each daily deal website that you’re considering should return several online user reviews and insight information about the providers services as well.

Identify the gift certificate laws in your state – Keep in mind that deal vouchers usually expire in about one year but they can still be redeemed for their original price (not value) for up to five years. This varies according to your state’s gift certificate laws and the deal site’s policies. Take some time to inquire about these details with the deal promoter beforehand so these details don’t come back to bite you later. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to check the coupon marketplaces from time to time to see if people are reselling the deal vouchers they bought. Many buyers will try to resell their vouchers a few months before the expiration date is reached if they decide not to redeem them after all. Knowing this is important if you plan to use group buying services to promote your business again in the future.

Highlight your deal and set redemption limits – Now that you’ve decided on a group buying site to promote a deal offering for your business, you’ll need to outline the fine print and the deal’s highlights. The fine print refers to the restrictions of the deal which include things like how many coupons can be redeemed per visit, per person, or per table if you’re a restaurant owner. Other things to consider for the fine print are when the voucher can’t be redeemed. For instance, you may want to restrict people from coming in during holidays, private events, and during seasonal or high traffic times. Make sure you also note that an appointment scheduling is required beforehand if that applies to your business. You also don’t forget to mention whether tax or gratuity is included with the deal, if the voucher can be used in combination with any other offers, or if there’s a minimum order amount required to use the deal. As for the deal highlights, make sure you clearly state the best parts of the deal offering and your business. This might include the great location of your business, the type of food or drinks your restaurant is known for, professional quality staff, multiple locations, any awards your business has won, and any other desirable or unique aspects that showcase what your business has to offer in addition to a great discount.

Limit the number of deals that can be sold – To prevent from overselling and thereby exceeding the volume of new customers that you can adequately handle, you must limit the total number of sales your deal permits. Some businesses that haven’t set a maximum sales limit when their deal was featured on Groupon saw their company’s Yelp rating plummet from a 4 or 5 to a mere 2 star rating in less than 24 hours. Setting sales limits is needed to ensure that you can handle the wave of new appointments and clients you’ll be pressed to accommodate. Remember, the deal offering isn’t about making money; it’s about acquiring repeat customers.

Consider hiring temporary workers – It’s always a good idea to hire a few more employees to handle the massive amount of appointments and work that will need to be completed once your deal promotion launches. As soon as it begins, interested consumers will be calling to ask you questions, trying to schedule their appointment, and wanting to find out other details regarding your deal. If you don’t have some extra hands around to help you carry the additional workload you’ll quickly become overwhelmed and your business’s reputation will suffer.

Man your deal’s comments section – On the day of your business’s deal offering, take a few hours to visit the page where your deal is being featured so you can answer any questions the buyers pose in the comments section. Doing so ensures that buyers are aware of all the restrictions and you don’t spend countless calls answering the same question over and over again. Some customers may prefer to contact you through your business’s Twitter and Facebook pages so checking those communication channels regularly is a must. Keep in mind that your interaction with potential customers is just as important as the deal itself. It represents a great opportunity for you to connect with would-be patrons and represent your brand. You need to demonstrate a charming attitude to win them over and show them that customer service is a top priority for your company.

Follow-up with excellent customer service – Okay, so you offered a low-price voucher, did your homework, and you successfully sold out of the all the deals, now what? If you’re primary concern is to get new customers in the door and convert them into long-term patrons, you need to finish with excellent customer service to ensure they come back. This is probably the most important aspect of deal offerings and, unfortunately, it’s where most businesses fall short. Once unprepared owners realize how much they’re losing in potential profits, they tend to pay less attention to the quality of service that people receive when they redeem their vouchers. This is a huge mistake because there’s absolutely no chance of getting that customer to return once they’ve been treated poorly. Moreover, the damage done by that customer’s negative comments about your business to his/her friends or on Yelp and Facebook will be much more costly to your business.

Track the success of your deal – Collect data about your customers and the sales they generate for you for future reference. By taking these measurements you’ll be able to accurately determine the impact your deal offering made and if you should consider doing it again in the future. It’s important to know things like how many deals were sold, how many coupons were redeemed, the average receipt total for people that used the voucher, if they bought additional products or services during their visit, if they became a repeat customer, etc. You might even want to offer them something extra for filling out a short survey while you have them there like another discount, a free drink, or a dessert. A survey presents a great opportunity to obtain their email address and send them a confirmation request to sign-up for your customer newsletter. This is particularly important for you to do because daily deal sites don’t share buyer email addresses with merchants and a consumer newsletter that features discounts and other specials is one of the most powerful tools available for increasing customer loyalty and rewarding long-term clients.

Learn more about how daily deals work – For more information about group buying and how sites like Groupon work, see our daily deal tips guide that contains additional info and frequently asked questions for small business owners. If you’re looking for a list of social buying sites to serve your deal offering check out this article to compare daily deal sites against one another. Finally, here’s some extra reference articles regarding the daily deals topic.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Small Business Owner Success Tips For Using Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

• Can Groupon Compete With Local Publishers, Alternative Group Buying Business Models?
• Best Social Group Buying Sites For Daily Deals And Deep Discounts
• Group Buying (aka Socal Buying, Collective Buying, Daily Deals)
• Group Buying: When Is It Not Cost Effective For Business Owners?
• Twitter’s Earlybird Discount Codes Fail To Offer Killer Group Buying Deals
• Top 10 Best B2B Group Buying Sites For Business Based Daily Deals
• Top 10 Reasons Businesses Shouldn’t Use Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon To Advertise Locally
• Top 10 Reasons For Using Groupon, Daily Deal Sites To Advertise Your Business

A WordPress directory plugin or a WordPress directory theme can help you either integrate a simple link directory for WordPress or create a stand alone niche business directory website, respectively. Whether you’d like to establish a professional directory service using a premium WordPress directory theme, or you just want to add a free directory plugin for WordPress to merely feature your favorite links, there are several WP plugins and themes that can help. The free directory plugins for WordPress offer many features but many are plagued with infrequently updates and a lack of support. In contrast, both commercial WP directory themes and premium WordPress directory plugins are usually well supported and they offer frequent updates. Below we’ve compiled a review list of some of the best WordPress directory plugins and the top WordPress directory themes that are now available for free or paid use. If you’re in need of other great tools for your WP website, see our comprehensive list of premium WordPress plugins.

WordPress Directory Themes

DirectoryPress – A premium WordPress directory theme that turns your plain WP blog into a professional directory website. Once installed you can immediately begin creating website listings yourself or you can allow visitors to submit their own listings. In addition to running ads, you can monetize your directory site by charge users a fee when they submit their website listing. DirectoryPress is a complete turnkey solution chocked full of easy-to-use features that enable you to quickly launch your own niche directory website. A few highlighted features include multiple payment gateways (PayPal, 2Checkout, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, etc.), Google Maps, Google AdSense, Google Analytics, CSV importing, expiration dates for listings, over 20 different directory templates, the ability to sell memberships packages to customers, support for multiple languages, a star ratings system, and much more.

LinkPress Nova – Inspired by AllTop, the theme designers at Zidalgo have really outdone themselves with the creation of this premium WordPress directory theme. It essentially adds a modern spin on the old link directories of the past and incorporates a bunch of slick design elements. Features include a ratings system for posts and directory listings, an image gallery, threaded comments, and automatically generated thumbnail images.

City Guide – Created by WooThemes, this premium WordPress directory theme is more of an off-site directory for targeting location based businesses. The City Guide local directory theme for WordPress offers an elegant design and some really cool features like the ability to geo-tag posts with locations. Other notable features include custom fields to add extra information about a location, built-in SEO options, Google Maps, multiple theme styles, and custom widgets.

WordPress Directory Plugins

WPDirectoryPro – This is a traditional version of an online business directory website plugin with the ability to double as a link directory or classified ads website. The WPDirectoryPro premium WordPress directory plugin offers a classic look combined with thoughtful features like visitor feedback and the ability to rate each listing. Each directory listing also has it’s own dedicated details page that provides additional information like category of the listing, keywords, date of creation, Google PageRank, and the owner’s contact info. With support for multiple payment gateways, the WPDirectoryPro plugin offers another opportunity for you to monetize your WordPress blog.

Business Directory – A free directory plugin that lets you add a business link registry to any page in your current WP blog. This might be a great way for you to offer free listings to your readers or members if you run a WordPress membership site. Each listing includes a short summary and a website title and link. Users simply fill out the submission form to be included in the business directory, select a category, and add related keywords. Submitted listings are held for moderation by the administrator where they can be edited or deleted. Once a listing is approved, it’s added to the AJAX enabled directory list. As listings accumulate they are paged and can easily be searched by any visitor.

Article Directory – This free WordPress plugin lets you transform your WP blog into an article directory where visitors can join to become authors and submit articles to your site. The plugin works in combination with the free Articles Directory theme and the Role Manager plugin. Features include the ability to create article categories and subcategories, author profile pages with listed articles, stats that report the total number of published articles and authors listed on your site.

WP Directory List – Another free WordPress directory plugin that lets visitors submit sites to a featured portfolio of links. Submitted listings display a screenshot thumbnail of each website, a link to the site, and a short description. Features include click stats for each link, link categories, widgets, and captcha to prevent automated link submissions.

Open Links Directory – A free WordPress directory plugin that you can use to transform your WP blog into a free online link directory. Visitors can add their websites using the submission form, assign categories and subcategories, add a description, and give their link a title. The plugin offers the ability to search the directory, send listings to friends, add listings to your browser’s bookmarks, and display the PageRank for each directory listing.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best Free, Premium WordPress Directory Plugins, Themes For Your Blog

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Reducing The Urgency To Buy Now
Groupon instills a sense of urgency and exclusivity into its product to ensure a killer, time-sensitive deal that sells out within a single day or two. The flash sales aspect of a deal is paramount for getting buyers to refer others to Groupon and ensure that the minimum number of sales are achieved to activate a given deal. Expanding the time frame to purchase any deal reduces the incentive to share it and negatively impacts its perceived value. Simply put, if a specific deal voucher that you want can be purchased up to a year after the actual deal offering ends on Groupon, why should you buy it now? By increasing the window of opportunity to purchase any deal, group coupon resellers and deal voucher marketplaces could negatively impact Groupon sales.

Potential For Voucher Fraud
As more Groupon resellers emerge, the number of fraudulent voucher sales will inevitably increase without a regulatory mechanism in place to ensure the authenticity of deal coupons. This should be another serious concern for Groupon as fraud can also dilute the perception of a trusted brand. If the incident of voucher fraud increases enough through these deal marketplaces, it could influence the initial coupon buyer’s decision. That is, the reseller market provides buyers with an easy option to recoop their funds in case they decide not to use their deal. Hence, if Groupon’s are being counterfeited and sold in deal marketplaces to a high degree, buyers may simply choose to purchase from LivingSocial or another group buying site competitor to ensure they can easily resell their vouchers.

Higher Coupon Redemption Rates
Buying and reselling Groupons will most likely drive the coupon redemption rates much, much higher and result in greater expenses for the merchant. Currently Groupon takes 50% of all voucher sales it attains for merchants leaving them with only 25% of what they’d normally charge for their service (see group buying business model). Merchants that use Groupon are just barely able to break even (see Groupon calculator) for a deal offering because of the current voucher redemption rates. If the secondary market causes coupon redemption rates to climb in the face of an already staggeringly high 50% commission fee, merchants may be forced to choose a less expensive alternative to Groupon. If that occurs, Groupon will have no other choice than to lower the fees it charges to clients, unless they 1) change the terms of their service to prevent the reselling of their coupons, 2) they enforce a per coupon service fee for all sites that partake in the reselling of Groupons, or 3) they enforce option #1 and create their own exclusive secondary marketplace for users to buy and sell their Groupons.

More Savings Per Deal
Some deal coupon marketplaces require that sellers cannot list their voucher for more than its original price. Others coupon reseller sites do not require this allowing the buyer to actually earn money by reselling their coupons. So unless the group buying site limits the number of vouchers each person can buy, one could corner the market so to speak for an exclusive deal and then resell the vouchers at a profit elsewhere. This may not have that great of an effect on the group buying site itself but it could manifest more problems for the merchant who has to redeem them. In contrast, the alternative of offering deals at lower prices through the resellers market could definitely impact Groupon sales. Buyers may be more inclined to pass on a deal if they think they can obtain even greater savings by purchasing at a coupon marketplace later.

Potential For Subscriber Loss
Email lists are the life’s blood of the daily deal site business model. Email marketing offers much higher click through rates and conversions than social marketing channels like Twitter and Facebook and it’s probably the most important asset for Groupon. The possibility exists that the coupon marketplaces could become the focal point for the consumer rather than the group buying sites if all the buyer is concerned about is obtaining a better price for each deal. Thus, consumers might choose to opt-out of subscribing to Groupon and opt-in for the coupon marketplace. One point of hesitation for doing such a thing is the possibility of being defrauded when purchasing second hand deals. However, this may not be a real concern for marketplaces buyers on sites like Lifesta where coupon authenticity is guaranteed and full refunds are provided.

Final Thoughts
In summary, the effect reselling deal coupons could damage the group buying market by 1) diminishing the time-sensitive nature of a deal, 2) decreasing the buyers incentive to buy now and refer their friends, 3) providing a venue for which fraud could be perpetrated and therefore negatively impact a brand, 4) changing the focal point to the coupon marketplaces and losing valued email subscribers, 5) offering deals a lower prices, and 6) driving costs for merchants higher through elevated voucher redemption rates. For these reasons it would be in Groupon’s best interest to either work with the coupon marketplaces to verify the authenticity of its vouchers that are resold, take a stand against them, or launch their own secondary coupon marketplace. Regardless of which strategy Groupon adopts to address the issue, their actions will have wide reaching effects on the deal voucher market.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

How Group Coupon Reseller Sites, Daily Deal Marketplaces Could Hurt Groupon

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Groupon Reseller Sites
DealsGoRound – A sort of classified ads site where people can buy and sell group coupons. Users can create deal listings for vouchers they want to sell or they may place wanted ads for deals they’re interested in. DealsGoRound doesn’t interfere with the transaction or exchange of goods between the buyer and seller nor do they charge a fee for placing ads on their group buying marketplace. Listings expire after 30 days and all deals sold on DGR must not exceed the original purchase price. If your deal listing expires without a successful sale, you can repost your group coupon.

CoupRecoup – A free online deals marketplace that connects buyers with sellers of local coupons from popular group buying sites like Groupon. Sellers are able to create free listing for their voucher and buyers can contact them directly to inquire about the deal. Deal listings do not expire until the expiration date of the deal itself is reached. Just like DealsGoRound, CoupRecoup does not assist with the transaction or the exchange of the deal vouchers. It is up to both parties involved to take the necessary precautions to minimize their risk of becoming a victim of fraud.

Craigslist – Groupon vouchers and coupons for other group buying sites can easily be found on Craigslist as well. A quick search for “groupon” will return between 10 and 30 listings for supposedly unused vouchers in large U.S. cities like New York and Chicago. Unfortunately, you’ll have to sift through an awful lot of spammy postings that are there too. The potential for fraud on Craigslist feels a bit higher because of this and you may just be better off using a dedicated group coupon reseller site instead.

Lifesta – This group coupon reselling site takes a more hands-on approach to the deal coupon marketplace in an attempt to offer an easier and more secure option for group coupon sellers and buyers. Sellers must fill out a form on Lifesta that includes relevant information about the deal they want to sell (i.e. original URL of deal, merchant’s location, deal category, price, value, expiration date, and terms/limitations of the deal) and upload a scanned image of the voucher(s). Coupon sellers may set the price of the second hand deal voucher to whatever they want and the listing does not expire until the voucher’s expiration date is reached. Buyers pay Lifesta directly in order to download the voucher and Lifesta passes the funds to the seller immediately after the purchase minus their cut ($0.99 + 8% of the voucher’s sale price).

Lifesta utilizes Amazon Payments exclusively to process all transactions so you don’t have to worry about sharing your credit card credentials or bank account information. They also offer a money back guarantee for all vouchers such that if you purchase a deal and find out within 60 days that it’s a fake or it’s already been redeemed, they’ll send you a refund. According to Lifesta’s current policy, you may be required to request a refund from the seller prior to contacting Lifesta however. Their refund policy doesn’t clearly state whether or not it’s a full refund or if the buyer is only reimbursed for the price of the voucher minus Lifesta’s service fee ($0.99 + 8% of the voucher’s sale price). If indeed Lifesta doesn’t refund you the service fee amount, and an average voucher costs $20, you’d only be out approximately $2.60. That’s actually not too bad considering the alternative of no such guarantee and losing the full $22.60. Hence, it would seem that Lifesta has a considerable advantage over the other group coupon marketplace competitors listed here.

Update: As indicated by Eran Davidov’s comments below, the buyer receives the full amount of the refund and Lifesta will be revising their policy to reflect that.

Dealigee – Another daily deal reseller to enter the group buying market. Dealigee takes a slightly different approach by integrating Facebook into their website via their own Facebook application. User don’t have to fill out any registration forms either, they simply login using their Facebook account. In order to create a deal listing, the user must validate their PayPal account to verify they are indeed who they say they are. This provides an extra layer of protection for deal coupon buyers. Dealigee allows sellers to list their deal coupon for free (no listing fees assessed) with a “buy now” price or they may permit potential buyers to submit eBay-like bids through a “make an offer” purchase option. All deal listings expire after 30 days but sellers can easily re-list them again if the voucher doesn’t sell. Payment for the voucher is completed through PayPal and it is delivered directly to the seller. Dealigee doesn’t interfere with the exchange of funds or the delivery of the voucher.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Group Coupon Reseller Sites, Daily Deal Marketplaces For Buying, Selling Your Groupons

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Free and premium WordPress newsletter plugins are a WP site owner’s most powerful tool for growing a mailing list or email subscription. Subscribers of newsletters want to keep up to date with what your business or site is doing and email newsletters are still the best way to communicate that information with your readers and customers. From a business perspective email subscription lists are preferred over Facebook and Twitter followers because click-through rates (CTR) are much greater and this medium offers more flexibility in some aspects. Recently there’s been a surge of new premium WP newsletter plugins that have been developed to improve subscriber rates in a more effective and elegant manner. Below we’ve created a review list of the best WordPress newsletter plugins currently available. If you’d like to learn about other professional tools for your WP site, take a peek at our premium WordPress plugin directory.

Premium WordPress Newsletter Plugins

Subscribers Magnet – A premium WordPress newsletter subscription plugin that makes it easy to create subscription optin forms and place them strategically throughout your WP blog. You can add forms to your sidebar, within posts or pages, or in your comments section. The real power of this WordPress subscription plugin is that it can automatically import the user’s name and email into the forms so that all the visitor has to do is click the subscribe button. Other additional features include double optin capabilities, popin forms, and a custom footer bar signup form. Some of these forms can also be limited to show only a certain amount of times per user.

Newsletter Booster – This is another premium WordPress newsletter plugin that attempts to assist you in gathering more subscribers. Once it’s installed and activated on your WP site, it adds a subscription check box to your login page and comments section. Thus, when a new visitor logs in or tries to comment all he/she has to do is check that signup box to subscribe to your newsletter. There’s even a settings panel that allows you to format the text and the look and feel of the optin check box.

WordPress Newsletter Plugin – Tribulant’s premium WP newsletter plugin is much more than a simple subscription plugin designed to help you increase your subscriber rate. It’s a full blown email marketing tool that lets you create and send newsletters directly from your WordPress site. This can be especially desirable since email marketing services can become quite expensive depending on how many emails you send and the number of subscribers you have in your mailing list. Saving you money isn’t the only benefit of this premium newsletter plugin. The plethora of features that it offers includes subscriber statistics, free or paid subscription plans, email scheduling, PayPal integration, the ability to create multiple mailing lists, newsletter templates, email queue, automatic and manual import and export of subscribers via CSV, add custom fields to forms, sidebar newsletter widgets, send HTML newsletters, subscriber management panel, mailing list stats, embeddable optin forms that can be placed anywhere on your WP site, email history, add attachments to emails, Gmail SMTP capabilities, compatible with WordPress MU, email tracking, POP and IMAP bounce handling, unlimited subscribers and contacts, ability to display banner ads to subscribers, AJAX integration, SMTP authentication, send post as a newsletter, off-site subscription forms, and bounce email management functionality.

Standout Comments – A premium WordPress subscription plugin that adds extra optin subscription sign-up functionality to your WP blog. Check box forms are added to your comments section so you can easily capture a commenter’s email address if he or she wishes to subscribe to your newsletter. Other features include sharing buttons, banner ad placements, tweetback tracking, and an administration panel to easily change the plugin’s settings.

Free WordPress Newsletter Plugins

MailPress – A free newsletter plugin that comes with a ton of awesome features that’s available for download at the WordPress repository. MailPress was initially created so that admins could customize the look of all emails sent by your WordPress blog. Since its inception however it has grown to offer several other features and extra add-on functionality. Admins can not only customize WP emails but create full newsletters, custom email notifications for new posts, comment subscriptions, HTML or plain text emails, email themes/templates, double optin forms, regular signup forms, autoresponders, and multiple mailing lists. The plugin add-ons permit handling of bounced emails, importing emails, user roles and capabilities, phpmail, sendmail, email tracking, image and video uploads, and the ability to batch send emails. It’s truly one of the most ambitiously developed free newsletter plugins that’s currently available. The only downside of this plugin is that you have to manually update it to prevent losing any customizations you’ve made to MailPress.

Newsletter – A popular free WordPress subscription plugin that enhances your ability to collect newsletter subscribers. The Newsletter plugin offers single or double opt-in subscription options plus the ability to totally customize what the user sees when he/she subscribes or unsubscribes. A text editor is included to permit the admin to create custom newsletters that can be personalized with each subscribers name.

MailChimp List Subscribe Form – Another free WordPress subscription plugin to help you get your newsletter subscription signup form up and running. This is really just a simple WP subscription plugin that makes newsletter form creation for MailChimp’s email marketing service easier in WordPress. In practically no time you’ll be able to create your newsletter subscription form for MailChimp and add it to your WP sidebar via a widget. It’s not chocked full of extra features but it does get the job done. Why MailChimp you ask? Well, for one reason, they offer free services for mailing lists with less than 500 subscribers or 3000 emails which makes them perfect for newsletter virgins. More benefits include competitive pricing, lots of features, an intuitive user interface, the ability to fully customize your newsletter with ease.

ALO EasyMail Newsletter – If you’d like to avoid the email marketing services, this free WordPress newsletter plugin allows the WP admin to create custom HTML newsletters to send to registered users, subscribers, and other email addresses. The ALO EasyMail Newsletter plugin uses automatic batch sending via WP cron to send out small batches of emails at preset time intervals. This helps to avoid email delivery failure that occurs when large numbers of emails are sent out all at once. Additional features of this WP newsletter plugin include opt-in forms, subscriber imports, mailing list management, assignment of roles and management capabilities for newsletters, newsletter reports, autoresponders, and support for multiple languages.

This is a post from ToMuse: Wonderings of a Web Consumer

Best Free, Premium WordPress Newsletter Subscription Plugins For Your WP Blog

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