ToMuse.com

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

Kevin Eklund — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:12:13 +0000

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.

Copyright © 2010 ToMuse.com All Rights Reserved
This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it makes the page you are viewing an infringement of the copyright. Please contact Kevin so we can take the required actions immediately. For more information see our Copyright Notice
hj945590hjjrtjg940t090990jh40o

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

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

Twitter’s Earlybird Discount Codes Fail To Offer Killer Group Buying Deals

Kevin Eklund — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:30:56 +0000

We previously speculated about how Twitter deals might be promoted through the @Earlybird account using a group buying model. However, as it turned out, Twitter is merely partnering with group buying sites like Groupon and Gilt to deliver time-sensitive discounts on products with limited quantities. Unfortunately, Twitter’s initial promotions weren’t exactly killer deals. The first one was a buy one, get one free movie ticket for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the other deal offering was for a 32-inch Vizio HDTV at Target. Depending on how much you may have disliked the movie, the TV is the worst deal out of the two since it could have been purchased at Sam’s Club for $1.99 less ($349.99 at Target, $348.00 at Sam’s). The most recent deal promotion was a 30% off discount code for Moxsie, an online store that sells men’s and women’s clothing and jewelry created by independent designers. Testing the promotional code (EARLYBIRD) revealed that it only applied to a special selection of about 100 women’s products. Given that RetailMeNot has a 25% off coupon code (DAILYCANDY) that works on nearly ALL Moxsie products, regardless of gender, this isn’t what I’d call a killer deal either.

How Successful Have Twitter’s Earlybird Deals Been?
It would be very interesting and quite useful to know how many sales are generated per deal that’s promoted through Twitter’s Earlybird. According to TweetReach, the terms “moxsie 30% off” reached 158,589 people via 50 tweets. We didn’t purchase the entire report but TweetReach indicated there were an additional 66 tweets not included in the analysis. At 3252.48 impressions per tweet (162,624 impressions/50 tweets) our calculations indicate that those additional 66 tweets helped achieve a grand total of 116 tweets and 377,288 impressions. Based on a 3% CTR rate for tweets and a 1% purchase rate of those CTRs, Earlybird helped Moxsie attain at least 113 buys by now. With 100 products included in the Moxie deal at an average price of $87.66 each, that’s $9905.58 in gross sales (113 sales x $87.66/product). Twitter’s cut for its promotional services is unknown but a 10% commission agreement would yield them $990.56. Groupon in comparison charges the merchant 50% of all sales that it generates but those are primarily for deals involving services (i.e. spas, restaurants, entertainment) and not products. Profit margins for product resellers are usually much less versus service providers. Thus, it’s probably unrealistic to assume that Twitter would be able to negotiate a 50% share of the gross sales for any product it promotes.

Earlybird Follower Rate Down, Projections Recalculated
Twitter’s @Earlybird following rate has slowed quite a bit recently according to TwitterCounter. In the past week it has been averaging about 3,000 to 4,000 new followers per day. This is down from the initial 10,000 followers per day that it was averaging in its initial first few days of launching. It’s hard to say whether this diminished growth rate is a product of less media coverage or lackluster deals, but it seems reasonable to assume that a deal’s value should positively correlate with the acquisition of new followers. Currently, @Earlybird has a little over 82,000 followers and with a follower acquisition rate of ~3,500 per day that milestone of 1 million followers won’t be reached for 262 more days. On the brighter side, if we assume Twitter can earn relatively the same amount per deal offering, one million followers would earn Twitter about $12,080 per deal (1,000,00/82,000 x $990.56) or about $4,409,200 per year ($12,080 x 365 days/year). This would mean that an Earlybird follower is worth a little more than $0.01 per day or $4.41 per year. Those aren’t exactly horrible stats but they could definitely be a lot better if Twitter was able to offer more enticing deals.

Is This The Best You Can Do Earlybird?
If all Twitter does is promote products that are on sale, what’s to keep everyone from creating their own Earlybird-like account? As cited above, it’s not that difficult to find better deals than what Earlybird’s been promoting lately. Of course, the affiliate generated revenue that a competitor could earn would be much less than an exclusive promotional contract that Twitter could negotiate but does that really matter? People want to see meaty deals they can sink their teeth into and they don’t necessarily care whose promoting them. Twitter should reconsider its approach and use its influence to leverage the kinds of deals that just aren’t possible through non-group buying websites. Otherwise, Earlybird isn’t much more than a glorified feed of mediocre discounts that can be pulled from any old coupon code site.

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

Twitter’s Earlybird Discount Codes Fail To Offer Killer Group Buying Deals

Best Free, Premium WordPress Affiliate Plugins Reviewed And Compared

Kevin Eklund — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:55:27 +0000

Both free and premium WordPress affiliate plugins allow WP site administrators to protect their affiliate links from manual and automatic link hijacking. Affiliate plugins for WordPress also provide other advantages like shorter, cleaner links and an easier way to organize and manage internal and outbound links. Most of the free and premium WP affiliate plugins include highly desirable features like the ability to track who’s clicking on your links (click tracking), how many clicks each link gets (click statistics), grouping links, and site-wide auto-linking of keywords. In the review list below, we’ve gathered up some of the best free and premium WordPress affiliate plugins available. Embedded in this is a comparison chart to help you find a WP affiliate plugin that meets your needs. If you’d like to discover other great WP tools, check out our premium WordPress plugin directory.

Compare WordPress Affiliate Plugins

Premium WordPress Affiliate Plugins
Pretty Link Pro – A premium WordPress affiliate plugin that lets you turn your affiliate links into “pretty links” (e.g. example.com/pretty instead of affiliatelink.com/aff=123456). Pretty Link Pro’s WordPress affiliate plugin comes chock full of linking features to help you easily organize and manage your affiliate links. Features like URL shortening, link cloaking, click tracking, click statistics, link campaigns, keyword autolinking, limiting the number of keyword links per page/post id, nofollow, and the ability to open links in a new window are all high desired for affiliates. PLP offers additional unique link features and functionality that aren’t found in any other competing WP affiliate plugin such as the ability to import/export links, auto posting your newly published article to Twitter, a Twitter conversations panel, social media sharing buttons, and a website toolbar. Purchasing this premium WordPress plugin will set you back $37 for a single site license and $97 to install in on an unlimited number of WP sites. Customer support for this WP affiliate plugin is served through email and a community forum.

Ninja Affiliate – Another terrific premium WordPress affiliate plugin that make that enables you to create links and manage them with ease. The Ninja Affiliate plugin license permits you to install it on all your own sites for the price of $97. They offer a no risk money back guarantee such that if you’re not completely satisfied they’ll provide a refund provided you submit the request within 30 days of the purchase date. Support for Ninja Affiliate customers is provided by email and their member forums. The plugin itself contains many common WP affiliate plugin feature like link stats, autolinking, and custom styling for links. However, it offere some other cool features like the ability to hide links in the browser’s status bar, grouping links, and creating subgroups for a set of links. The MBP Ninja Affiliate premium WordPress plugin comes with free lifetime updates.

WP Affiliate Pro – Key features that separate this premium WP affiliate plugin from the pack is it ability to automatically rotate links. It’s also one of the few WP affiliate plugins that offers the ability to hide the destination URL in the status bar of certain browsers too. The WP Affiliate Pro plugin is priced at $97 for unlimited site installations and free lifetime updates. Should you decide for any reason that you don’t like the plugin, you can attain a full refund within 56 days of purchasing it. Support for this WordPress affiliate plugin is handled via live chat and email.

Eclipse Link Cloaker – ELC is one of the most innovative premium WordPress affiliate plugins available. It not only allows you to shorten and track clicks along with gathering statistical data from your links but it also provides multiple ways to hide the a destination URL. Furthermore, it can keep track of product conversions, integrate with Google Analytics, and exclude autolinking on a per post/page id basis. Another standout feature is the exception/inclusion list that permits the WP admin to omit or include links manually or automatically using a special tag element or by simply adding the hostname to the appropriate list. The Eclipse Link Cloaker WordPress affiliate plugin is available for purchase for only $57. That license enables you to install it on an unlimited number of WordPress websites that you personally own. Customers also receive free lifetime updates, technical support via email, and a 60-day money back guarantee.

WP Link Engine – Another premium WordPress affiliate plugin that is driving innovation in the area of link management. WP Link Engine is the only premium WP plugin that allows the admin to set the expiration dates for links and specify destination URLs based on the referrer, the visitor’s IP address, or the hostname. Additional unique features of this WP plugin include the ability to set link destinations according the the visitor’s geographical location (geotargeting) and assigning multiple URLs to load for a single link that’s clicked (i.e. a destination URL, a popup, etc.). The WP Link Engine plugin can be purchase for $79 and it allows you to install it in as many WP sites as you want as long as you own them all. WPLE plugin owners are given free lifetime updates and customer support via email and live chat. A 30-day no questions asked money back guarantee is provided as well.

Instant WordPress Link – A premium WordPress affiliate plugin that allows you to shorten URLs, gather click stats, change the style formatting of any links, hide links in the status bar, and create site-wide autolinks for specific keywords. Unique features to the Instant WordPress Link plugin include in-text ads and the ability to create Clickbank and PayDotCom links automatically. The IWL premium WordPress plugin can be purchased for only $47 and it includes free lifetime updates, a 30-day refund policy, and forum support for all customers.

WP Affiliate Link Manager – This premium WP affiliate plugin was created by Tips & Tricks HQ, a well known premium WordPress plugin development company that’s built such commercial plugins as WP eStore, WP eMember, and the WordPress Affiliate Platform Plugin. Their affiliate link manager plugin includes such features as keyword auto-linking for pages and posts, autolinking limitations for the number of keywords per post and page, URL shortening, counting clicks, conversion tracking, custom link styling, and much more. The plugin sells for only $27 and you can install it on all the WordPress websites that you own.

Free WordPress Affiliate Plugins
Pretty Link – This is the free version of the Pretty Links Pro affiliate plugin for WordPress. It doesn’t offer as many great features as the premium version but it gets the job done if you just need a basic, free WordPress affiliate plugin to simply create affiliate links and manage them. Like the professional version of this WP plugin, you can shorten links using your own domain name instead of using URL shortening services such as Bit.ly or TinyURL. However, in order to gain access to the autolinking feature, replace linked keywords easily throughout your entire WP blog, and automatically post those shortened affiliate links to your Twitter account, you’ll need to purchase the Pretty Links Pro premium WordPress affiliate plugin listed above.

Link Cloaking Plugin – This is the free version of the Eclipse Link Cloaker plugin that’s listed above. It doesn’t contain all the bells and whistles that the premium version does but it covers most of the linking features. If you upgrade to its premium WP plugin counterpart, you’ll also get features such as the ability cloak links in the your comments and sidebar, multiple cloaking strategies, better organization and management of links, free automatic updates, click tracking, Google Analytics integration, conversion tracking and much more.

123Linkit Affiliate Marketing Tool – This free WordPress affiliate plugin connects your WP blog to your 123Linkit account to help you easily and automatically monetize keywords within your entire WordPress site. 123Linkit essentially acts as the middleman between you and all the affiliate networks preventing you from signing up for all the different affiliate programs. They also do the leg work of creating nofollow affiliate links with custom stats and reporting so you can track the performance of each link. In return for their services, 123Linkit takes a 30% cut of all the sales commissions that are generated with your account.

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

Best Free, Premium WordPress Affiliate Plugins Reviewed And Compared

Best Social Lending Sites For Getting Peer To Peer Loans

Kevin Eklund — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:54:00 +0000

Social lending sites, also known as peer to peer lending websites, serve as social network-based lending marketplaces where anyone can become a borrower or a lender. Generally, the social lending website applies a small service fee that constitutes a couple of percentage points of the total loan amount. Borrowers are able to secure loans at lower interest rates compared to traditional banks because lenders compete to actively bid down the interest rate their willing to earn through funding a given loan. In return, the lender obtains a nice return on investment (ROI) that scales with the amount risk associated with a specific loan. Most loans are funded by hundreds to thousands of lenders whom contribute less than $100 each.

Social lending sites can be particularly helpful for high-risk borrowers that are unable to secure loans from traditional banking institutions. P2P lending sites are also commonly used to consolidate debt from high interest credit cards. Lenders can earn more money by funding high-risk loans but the risk of default is much greater as well. Lenders can reduce their risk by lending smaller amounts, funding multiple loans, and by reviewing a borrower’s lending profile carefully. The borrower’s personal information is kept completely private and the lenders can only view the potential borrower’s credit profile report that displays such things like credit score, past delinquencies, the number of public records on the borrower’s credit report, any revolving credit balance, the total number of credit lines, his/her initial credit line date, home ownership, employment status, debt-to-income ratio, stated income, and occupation.

Prosper – Launched in 2005, Prosper is the leading social lending site in the U.S. with over over 970,000 members and $200,000,000 in funded loans. All the loans funded on Prosper are unsecured 3-year personal loans. Borrowers can pay back their loans early with no penalty fees but he/she must have a minimum credit score of 640 before they can create a loan listing. During the loan listing creation process, the borrower assigns the maximum interest rate he/she wants to pay and provides relevant information regarding the need for the loan and his/her ability to pay it off. Once the loan listing is completed, Prosper lenders can submit a minimum funding amount of $25 or more towards it. Lenders on Prosper can search and select loans to invest in based on various loan categories, Prosper loan ratings, and credit data collected from the borrowers. Besides choosing loans individually, lenders can select from Prosper’s Automated Plans that vary based on the average amount of default risk and bid yield or they can create their own custom plans that automatically fund loans which meet specified criteria. In addition, lenders can buy and sell loan notes through Prosper’s Trading Platform that’s operated by Folio Investing. Prosper.com rates loan risk by assigning a grade to each loan listing that ranges from AA (lowest risk) to HR (highest risk). AA-rated loans generate an estimated return of 7.39% while high-risk loans with a grade of E average an estimated return of 16.93%.

Lending Club – This social lending site was launched in 2006 and it has helped fund over $132 million in loans since its inception. Lending Club’s approach to social lending is much more conservative as it pre-screens and rejects over 90% of all borrower applicants. Lending Club members can apply for home improvement loans, business loans, car loans, special event loans, green loans, loans to pay off credit cards, debt consolidation loans, and other personal loans. Once a borrower is accepted, Lending Club provides several loan options that he/she can select from and the loan is listed until it’s fully funded. All loans are unsecured, non-FDIC insured 3 or 5-year personal loans that are funded by multiple interested lenders that contribute a minimum of $25 or more. Borrowers can get loans up to $25,000 with current interest rates ranging from 6.39% (A1) to 25.07% (G5), depending on the assigned listing grade for the loan. Lending Club charges the borrower an origination fee between 2.25% (A) and 4.50% (G) and passes the rest of the earnings on to the lender. Lenders can also buy or sell lending notes through Lending Club’s Note Trading Platform operated by FOLIOfn.

Virgin Money – A social lending website that acts as an intermediary between a borrower and a lender. For example, let’s say your friend asks to borrow a large sum of money from you and you want to help but you also want something on paper to help ensure that he pays you back. That’s where Virgin Money comes in. They provide the paperwork, legal documentation, and payment handling services for a $99 fee and the borrower and lender collectively decide what the loan amount, interest rate, and payment schedule will be. Virgin Money also offers helpful tools, tips, and payment calculators to assist both parties in making important decisions related to the loan.

Kiva – A non-profit social micro-lending website whose goal is to help alleviate poverty throughout the world by enabling aspiring entrepreneurs secure funding for their small businesses. It primarily operates outside the United States partnering with other microfinance entities that identify, screen, and gather information about an prospective entrepreneurial lender. From there, volunteers create and translate loan listings and post them to Kiva. Lenders can search and select the loans and either fund them completely or partially with a minimum amount of $25. Since its creation in 2005, Kiva has helped fund over $147 million in total loans across 200 countries. An average micro-loan that’s funded through Kiva is only $387.23.

GreenNote – A niche social lending site that focuses on helping students find funding for school. A student in need of school loans is able to create a unique profile on GreenNote and invite lenders to fund their educational loans. The interest rates of these loans are competitive with the federal Stafford loans and once the loan fully funded, the money is sent directly to the school to ensure that it’s only used for educational expenses. Terms of the GreenNote loans are similar to other common student loans where the individual must begin repaying their debt within six months of leaving withdrawing from school or graduating. Students can borrow as little as one thousand dollars or as much as $50k minus GreenNote’s servicing fee of 2% of the total loan amount.

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

Best Social Lending Sites For Getting Peer To Peer Loans

Twitter Adopts Local Daily Deals, Group Buying Business Model

Kevin Eklund — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:28:46 +0000

Twitter appears to have just adopted either a daily deals, flash sales, or group buying business model. They recently announced a newly created Twitter account called @Earlybird that will be used to promote “time-sensitive and sometimes supply-sensitive” products and services. These Woot-like daily deals will be created through a partnership with merchants to make huge savings available to followers of Twitter’s @Earlybird account. Twitter plans to offer both local deals and category based discount offers (e.g. fashion, music). “We’re starting with US-wide offers but will explore location-based deals in the future.”

Twitter’s Deal Model
With Twitter’s announcement to offer location-based deals, it suggests they plan to employ a group buying business model or something akin to a local flash sales model. Unless their selling vouchers directly on Twitter, however, they’ll have to forward product purchases to the merchant’s website. Assuming that most merchants aren’t going have the infrastructure or software requirements to process time-sensitive group buying deals in which quantities are limited, one may conclude that Twitter will most likely be accepting payments on behalf of all merchants. Doing so ensures that Twitter gets paid upfront, the number of purchases do not exceed the available quantity, and that sales are no longer possible once the deal expires. If Twitter follows the Groupon-like business model and takes the traditional 50% share of each sale it generates for merchants, it stands to accumulate a windfall of profits. Aside from a handful of Twitter employees, the exact amount of revenue cannot be known. However, we should be able to formulate a decent estimate to outline the potential profitability of Twitter’s new income source using tools like our group buying calculator.

Twitter Deals Income Estimates, Growth Potential
Service based deal offerings for things like restaurants and spas are more profitable versus product deals because products can’t be discounted quite as much. An average Twitter account’s click-through rate (CTR) is 1% to 3% depending on how many followers you have and how well your followers are targeted. In the case of @Earlybird, it seems reasonable to assume that only those interested in hearing about deals will follow. Hence, it is logical to believe that Twitter will attain at least a 3% CTR. Clearly not all people that click-through will complete a purchase and realistically that statistic may be even lower than 1%. Even so, given the rate @Earlybird is accumulating followers, a mere one percent purchase rate for all click-throughs could result in a very large number of sales. Actually, these are very conservative estimates and it’s highly probable that rate of purchase and CTR will be much greater. Based on our conservative estimates, when @Earlybird reaches 100,000 followers they should secure at least 30 sales (0.03 x 0.01 x 100,000) per deal promotion. Scaling this to 1,000,000 followers means that @Earlybird will obtain at least ~300 purchases per deal offering.

A typical deal promotion for a given merchant’s services generates around $10-$20 for every voucher sale that’s achieved by the group buying site. For products, its reasonable to assume that Twitter could earn at least 5-10% of the item’s sale price. Taken altogether our estimates suggest that Twitter would make $4,500 per daily deal for every 1 million followers (300 sales x $15 revenue/sale) or roughly $0.0045/follower ($4,500/1,000,000 followers). At just 1 million followers, Twitter would therefore earn $1,642,500 per year from one @Earlybird account. Targeting their deal offerings to major cities throughout the U.S. (e.g. @EarlybirdChicago) and creating category based Twitter accounts (e.g. @EarlybirdTech) will allow them to achieve hundreds of millions of followers and a very impressive amount of revenue. Upon submitting their announcement on July 6th, Twitter’s @Earlybird account had ~800 total followers. In just two days, however, it had amassed another 20,000. At a constant growth rate of 10,000 new followers per day, @Earlybird should reach 1 million followers in about 3 months. If Twitter’s marketing engine kicks into high gear, as we assume it will, this milestone will be reached much sooner.

Marketing Twitter Deals
Another important question to consider in Twitter’s new monetization model is how they intend to grow their presence in the group buying deals market. Most group coupon sites incentivize the sharing of deals by requiring a minimum number of commitments to purchase before the deal is guaranteed for everyone. They further sweeten the incentive to share deals via promises of referral commissions, free coupons, virtual currency, or reward points. A Twitter affiliate program that reimburses publishers through commissions seems doubtful considering that it may contribute to the already overwhelming problem of Twitter spam. A more attractive option may be the creation and reimbursement of a Twitter virtual currency or a reward points system of reimbursement. These options are more desirable to providers anyway since they enhance publisher loyalty and reduce costs (i.e. virtual currency transactions don’t incur processing fees).

Are Twitter Deals A Serious Threat To Groupon?
Are Groupon’s days numbered now that Twitter has entered the collective buying market? Could we be looking at the proverbial Groupon killer here? In short, no. While the Facebook Groupon killer app remains a theoretical possibility, the Twitter deals model sounds like a different kind of animal. Groupon will more than likely remain the dominant force in online daily deals for several reasons. First, Groupon’s use of email marketing to deliver daily deals provides some advantages over deal offerings that are served through Twitter alone. For example, the effective lifetime of a shared deal on Twitter is much shorter than one shared via email. As new tweets are delivered they push older Twitter messages down the user’s page and bury them within a just few hours. In contrast, unread emails remain clearly visible to the account holder after several days. Perhaps that’s why email marketing CTRs are usually much higher (~5-20%) compared to Twitter CTRs (~1-3%). Second, the absolute number of people that use email dwarfs the quantity of individuals that use Twitter regularly. Third, Groupon already has a well established brand and one hell of a lead on Twitter. Regardless, there’s plenty of room in this market for hundreds to possibly even a thousand group buying sites. Heck, even social gaming giant Zynga is offering group buying deals to its users now. Despite the growing competition, there still remains a plethora of untapped smaller cities throughout the U.S. that Groupon and the other major players haven’t covered yet. What’s more, potential customers are willing to subscribe to just about any email newsletter or Twitter account that promises them incredibly amazing deals and huge savings on great products and services. Of course there will always be a tipping point where the number of competitors could dilute the market but until subscribers become indifferent to receiving 50% off coupons, the group buying business isn’t going away any time soon.

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

Twitter Adopts Local Daily Deals, Group Buying Business Model

Best Free Online Personal Finance Management Software

Kevin Eklund — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 06:05:33 +0000

Free online personal finance management software and money management websites offer terrific financial planning tools that help you effortlessly create budgets to save money, monitor your transactions across multiple banking and credit card accounts, as well as assist you in achieving your financial goals. Many of these online financial software services also provide expert financial advice and notify you of excellent savings on various financial products that outperform the ones your currently using. In the review list below we’ve identified some of the best online personal finance software sites.

Mint – Arguably the best free online personal finance service available. Mint allows you to anonymously register bank accounts, savings accounts, credit card accounts, and investment accounts so you can automatically import and securely monitor your all your transactions on one location. Mint has done an exceptional job of stocking their financial application with tons of excellent financial tools and features for its users. Such things include personal budgeting tools, custom text and email alerts, weekly spending reports sent directly to your inbox, financial goal creation and progress tracking, dynamic graphs, and mobile apps for iPhone and Android phones. Mint also helps you find ways to save money by notifying you of irregular spending, hidden fees, late fees, overdraft charges, and changes in credit card rates. Another effective tool for saving money is Mint’s recommendations feature which automatically identifies and suggests accounts for checking, savings, CDs, IRAs, brokerages, and credit cards that outperform the ones you’re currently using. Security is a top priority for Mint as it boasts bank-level data protection measures and oversight and monitoring by TRUSTe, VeriSign, Hackersafe, and RSA Security. Moreover, because all your accounts in Mint are completely anonymous and Mint is a read-only service, there’s virtually no way someone could gain control of your funds or move them between or out of your financial accounts.

Buxfer – A free online personal finance service that’s striving to become the web’s best personal finance application. Like Mint, they allow you to automatically download and import transactions from your financial accounts so you can easily and securely monitor your finances. However, they also make it easy to switch from popular financial management software by allowing you to import Quicken, Excel, and MS Money files. Other features include financial summaries for account balances, budgets, bill reminders, spending reports, group budgeting, IOUs, mobile alerts, a Facebook app, and mobile financial applications for iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones.

moneyStrands – A free online personal finance management service that doubles as your very own personal financial assistant. moneyStrands offers individuals the ability to import multiple financial accounts like credit cards, bank accounts, loans, and online savings accounts into a single easy-to-use personal finance manager. Accounts are synchronized in real-time so users can stay up-to-date with their spending habits, receive timely alert notifications, and quickly identify upcoming cash flow issues. Notable features include the ability to create a budget, expense tracking software, budget calculators, cash flow templates, financial spreadsheets, budget monitoring tools, debt management, budget planning, financial goals, financial reporting, and many other money management services. moneyStrands not only offers lots of different free online software and financial analysis tools to help you manage your money but it additionally employs other features to show you how to save money too. Users can anonymously compare their spending profile with other moneyStrands members to identify opportunities to reduce expenses. In addition, moneyStrands will notify you when it discovers great offers, deep discounts, and better interest rates that surpass what you’re getting from your current bank account, savings account, and credit card providers.

Rudder – An online personal finance software service and money management site that takes a bit of a different approach by putting the focus on your financial future. That is, Rudder provides free web-based money management tools that help prevent any unwanted surprises and late payments so you can avoid those hidden, extra fees or finance charges. With its bill reminders, balance notifications, email alerts, and email reports, users don’t have to login every day to track their financial activity, spending, budget goals, or financial planning progress. After setting up your account, Rudder will automatically import and categorize all your transactions. Each day you’ll receive a simple custom made financial status update of your Rudder account so you can easily assess your cash flow and project future income using embedded graphs and charts. Rudder additionally provides several ways to save money too. For instance, their deals feature notifies users of additional savings on competing bank accounts, personal online savings accounts that earn more interest, and credit card with lower APY interest rates or fees. Their savings planner feature also helps you save money by identifying trends and allowing you to set and track financial planning goals for things like an investment fund, upcoming vacations, or a down payment on a home.

Thrive – An online money management site that offers personal financial planning tools to help keep you on track to achieving financial goals. Thrive provides users with financial health scores that gauge their overall financial fitness and various categories of their finances and then suggests potential solutions to improving those scores. It also notes ways to increase your credit score, lower your debt-to-income ratio, and ways to save more money. Thrive’s financial planning and goal tracking features help members develop a winning strategy for buying a home and growing their retirement savings. Recommendations and deal notifications help users find additional ways to save money. These may include high interest savings accounts that offer a greater earnings potential or low interest credit cards with no annual fees. Like the other online personal money management services Thrive lets you connect your bank accounts, savings accounts, PayPal accounts, and credit cards to automatically import your financial data and categorize transactions. Once this is done you’ll be able to easily monitor and track your personal finances using their online financial software tools, savings graphs, budget reports, and other financial charts. One unique feature of Thrive is the Credit Compass which estimates your free credit score based on the data given and then suggests how you may improve your score. Their debt management wizard is great resource for determining which debts you should pay off first and calculating your monthly payment.

GreenSherpa – A personal money management website and free online personal finance software site that aggregates all your financial accounts into one location. Upon logging into the site, you’ll see a customizable dashboard that provides a quick summary of your cash flow, account balances, and other important financial indices. Green Sherpa will synchronize transactions across all your financial accounts so that all information is up-to-date and it reflects your current cash flow status. Their cash flow projection feature permits users to project cash flow at any future date via calculations based on your past spending habits and future expenditures. Financial goals can easily be set and tracked to monitor your progress towards achieving them and you can even invite your CPA, spouse, or financial planner to collaborate with you. Other Green Sherpa features include budgeting, financial planning, and expense tracking.

Mvelopes – An online money management service that’s based on the simple but effective envelope system of budgeting your finances. Users create budget categories portrayed as virtual envelopes and assign dedicated income or expense amounts to them. Mvelopes automatically imports transactions from all your registered financial accounts and categorizes them accordingly. Funds that are allocated toward virtual envelopes are then automatically adjusted as payments are made using the online bill pay feature. Users are able to easily identify how much they can spend each month with this system to prevent surpassing their financial budget goals. Mvelopes also provides financial planning tools and financial savings features to help you plan your financial future by reducing debt, credit card spending, and discretionary expenses.

HelloWallet – An online personal finance service that aims to provide users with expert advice and online financial planning tools they can use to reach their goals. Unlike other online financial service providers, HelloWallet doesn’t allow banks to promote or advertise their products on its site thereby eliminating any potential for biased product offerings. HelloWallet claims that product recommendations submitted to its users are based solely on the potential savings users can obtain and the security concerns associated with those suggested products. In concert with other competing online financial software providers, HelloWallet offers personal finance management tools to help its users plan for their financial future. Using their personal money manager, HellowWallet users can easily monitor their bank and credit card accounts in addition to tracking changes with their 401(k), their home’s estimated value, and the value of their car. Members can also set goals to save for college, buy a home, plan their retirement savings, and reduce their debt. Other features include individualized educational savings plans, family budgets, aggregated financial accounts, categorized spending reports, synchronized accounts, automated transaction imports, credit card rate monitoring, and alerts to notify you when your mortgage or auto loan rate increases.

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

Best Free Online Personal Finance Management Software

Best Online Services To Build A Website For Free

Kevin Eklund — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:36:57 +0000

Building a website can be very intimidating to someone that has little experience doing so. Website creation software has fortunately advanced quite a bit to help such individuals. Nowadays, making a website for free for your own personal use or for business purposes is much easier due to free online website creation services. To create a website, you can simply navigate to one of the popular free online website creation services and immediately begin building a website without the need of any programming skills whatsoever. Below we’ve identified some of the best free online do-it-yourself (DIY) website creation services that are currently available.

Compare Website Builders

Yola – A website creation service that offers both free and paid plans to help you get your site up and running. The free plan includes advertising and other limitations but upgrading to their basic service will only cost you around $4. Notable features include free subdomains, Google Maps, drag-and-drop editing, photo importing from Flickr and Smugmug, donation collection, embed YouTube videos, free website hosting, site templates, stock photographs, appointment scheduling, forms, polls, blogs, guestbooks, flash intros, shopping carts, visitor traffic stats, and more. Support is provided via frequently asked questions (FAQs), email, video tutorials, webinars, and forums.

Homestead – Building a website using Homestead is not free but they do offer a 30-day trial in case you change your mind. Their basic plan costs $4.99 per month and it includes your own domain. Customers can select from thousands of website templates, easily change text and colors, add a blog, accept payments via PayPal, upload photos and videos, create photo albums, customize menus, add chat rooms, embed polls, and create multiple forms. Other features include visitor traffic statistics, Google Maps integration and guest books. Customer support accessible via phone (7am-5pm PST) and by email.

Weebly – A free website creation service that also provides premium websites starting at only $4.99 per month. Users can easily customize their site via Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor, quickly change their site’s design using templates, and limit access to members only. Features include free hosting, embedding photos, videos, music, documents, photo galleries, blogging, Google AdSense integration, online scheduling, and embedded maps. Admins can also sell products using Weebly’s online storefront. Should customers encounter any technical problems, they can contact Weebly support by sending them an email.

Web – Allows you to build a free website with limited features or upgrade to one of their paid plans starting at $11.95/month. Web’s features include a free domain, unlimited email accounts, royalty-free stock images, unlimited storage, thousands of design layouts, forms, shopping cart, visitor stats, Google AdSense integration and much more. Technical support for Web users can be accessed by phone and email messages.

Intuit Websites – This company is best known for financial software but they also a free 30-day trial of their website creator service. Customer that decide to continue using Intuit Websites will have to pay a nominal fee of $4.99 per month. Users receive a custom domain and can integrate lots of different features like forms, polls, blogs, web chat, guestbooks, online stores, and visitor tracking. Webmasters can contact Intuit technical support by email only.

Yahoo! Websites – One of the oldest providers for helping people create websites. Yahoo’s free website creator software lets you build a website for free from scratch or choose from their many website templates. Yahoo will host your website on their servers for a monthly fee of $7.46. Customers can use their own domain, edit pages using Yahoo’s drag-and-drop editor, sell products, monitor website traffic, add photos and video, and create multiple email accounts. Customers can access support through FAQs and by calling Yahoo tech representatives.

GoDaddy – Know for their cheap domains, GoDaddy also provides an easy solution for building a website for free. These free websites include advertisements and the hosting is far from robust. Upgrading to their basic website plan will cost you a mere $4.99 per month and you’ll gain access to lot more features. Such features include stock images, calendars, form building, blogs, forums, guestbooks, online shopping carts, and website traffic analytics. Users can edit their websites via a drag-and-drop editor, color changes, altering backgrounds, adding a logo, and changing templates. If customers experience any issues they can contact GoDaddy’s support center via phone, live chat, or email. Answers to common troubleshooting questions can be found on the FAQ page or in the forums.

Network Solutions – Primarily a hosting company, Network Solutions has expanded to offer customers the ability to easily make a website for free. Their basic paid plan for creating a website will run you $4.99 per month and it will remove the ad placed on your free site. Paying customers get a custom domain, access to a stock image library, mailing lists, blogs, forms, polls, traffic statistics, and shopping carts. To get your website up and running right away you can use any of the design templates and then change the layout accordingly. The use of a WYSIWYG editor allows you to change font size, font color, and other text stylings easily. Customer support can be contacted via email and phone.

Webs – Allows you to make a free website using hundreds of their templates and Webs’ basic plan will only set you back $4.16 per month. Administrators can create private or public websites, add social networking features, build group sites, and invite and approve members. Additional features include blogs, forums, event scheduling, custom domains, email accounts, shopping carts, Google Checkout and PayPal payments, and a newsletter/mailing list. Support for customers is unfortunately offered only through member forums.

Wix – Allows you to make a flash website for free with limited features or you can purchase their basic plan for $4.08/month and unlock tons of other cool functions. Features include flash intros, forms, polling, guest books, web stores, traffic analytics, Google AdSense integration, photo and video uploads, multiple email accounts, and much more. Wix offers many professionally designed flash templates that can be easily modified to fit your website’s specific needs. If you run into problems, you can contact the Wix support team by sending them an email.

SiteCube – This provider doesn’t offer a free version of their website creator software but their least expensive plan is priced at only $4.75/month. It includes website features like traffic stats, forms, flash intro pages, online shopping carts for selling products, and stock images. Customers can further customize their websites by changing templates, adding photos and video footage, or changing the layout via a drag-and-drop editor. If you run into any problems you can contact SiteCube’s customer support via email, live chat, or telephone.

Jimdo – Lets you create a free website supported by ads or upgrade to their paid website creation service for around $5 per month. Purchasing a premium service plan gets you access to additional features like your own domain, email accounts, email forwarding, removal of ads, newsletters, adding a logo, more storage and bandwidth, more template designs and better support.

BuildYourSite – This website creation provider does not allow you to build a free website but they do give you a free domain with every purchase. Their basic service plan will cost you $9.95 per month and it includes features like an unlimited number of pages, thousands of design layouts, unlimited email accounts, lots of storage, web traffic stats, and free customer support. Troubleshooting technical issues can be handled by consulting their FAQs page or contacting them by email or phone.

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

Best Online Services To Build A Website For Free

How To Import, Publish Blog Posts To Facebook

Kevin Eklund — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:20:48 +0000

Automatically or manually publishing and importing a blog post to Facebook allows bloggers to tap into a massive social distribution channel. Facebook users can further assist in distributing your content by sharing articles and punching the “Like” button. Posting your blog articles to your site’s Facebook fan page or your personal Facebook profile represent two means by which your website can gain new subscribers. Below we’ve listed several ways you can manually or automatically publish to Facebook.

Import blog to Facebook Notes
This is one of the easiest ways to automatically import your blog to Facebook. All you have to do is login to your Facebook profie, copy your website’s RSS address, and plug the RSS URL into your profile’s Facebook Notes app. This will pull your site’s feed every day to automatically import your blog articles and store them as Facebook Notes. Keep in mind that Facebook Notes will import whatever your feed displays. Thus, if you’ve setup your site’s RSS to grab the entire contents of every article, and not just an article’s excerpt, Facebook Notes will display the whole article too. This is not a great idea if you’re a blogger because Google and other search engines can index these Notes and push search traffic to your Facebook profile instead of your website. Moreover, each Facebook Note title links to its own URL and your original post link is buried at the bottom where no one can easily find it.

Is this solution easy to implement? – Yes
Automatic import to Facebook? – Yes
Do title links point to website? – No
Is this solution dependable? – Yes
Does it offer traffic statistics? – No

Import blog post to Facebook via third party apps
Social sharing utilities like Ping.fm, Posterous, and NetworkedBlogs can allow customization and more control over how your content is distributed on Facebook. While this solution isn’t as simple to implement, adding such applications to your Facebook profile or fan page can give you access other desirable features. For instance, many of these applications allow you to track how many people visit your site via articles that are imported or shared on Facebook. Another added benefit is that, unlike the Facebook Notes solution, your imported article excerpt titles link to your website’s original article and not to Facebook. Because these imported article excerpts can only be found on a profile’s news feed or a fan page wall, and each excerpt does not have its own Facebook page, these excerpts are not indexed by search engines. Hence, you do not lose search traffic to Facebook with this particular solution.

Is this solution easy to implement? – No
Automatic import to Facebook? – Yes
Do title links point to website? – Yes
Is this solution dependable? – Yes
Does it offer traffic statistics? – Yes

Import blog post to Facebook via WordPress plugins
If you have a WordPress blog there are several WP plugins that you can add to post articles to Facebook automatically. For the most part, you’ll just need to upload and install the plugin and then insert your Facebook login credentials so the plugin can push the content to your Facebook profile or fan page. WordPress plugins like WordBook, Gigya Socialize, and FT-FacePress-II are some of the more popular Facebook posting plugins. One caveat of this solution is that it your dependent on the plugin developer to keep it updated regularly to ensure that it continues to work with your version of WP. Let’s also not forget the potential for plugin compatibility issues that may arise.

Is this solution easy to implement? – Yes
Automatic import to Facebook? – Yes
Do title links point to website? – Yes
Is this solution dependable? – Not always
Does it offer traffic statistics? – Sometimes

Import blog post to Facebook via RSS
There are a few RSS applications (i.e. Social RSS) on Facebook that you can use to automatically import your site’s RSS feed to your Facebook fan page or personal profile. These applications require little effort to setup and practically no time is needed to maintain them. All you have to do is add the RSS app to your Facebook page or profile and then paste your site’s RSS address into where it says to do so. As new articles are published on your website, your feed will update and the RSS app will post an excerpt on Facebook.

Import blog post to Facebook via newsletter
Some bloggers like to publish a weekly newsletter that contains a digest of that past week’s articles and other useful content. This solution may or may not link the titles of the promotion to your newsletter page. An email list is preferred for gaining followers versus Facebook, Twitter, or NetworkedBlogs because you have more control over it. That is, you don’t own Facebook fans and Twitter followers so if for some reason your account is purposefully or accidentally closed or deleted you lose all your subscribers. In contrast, an email list of subscribers can only fail if you allow it and email lists can be exported. Publishing daily newsletter articles to Facebook is not recommended as email marketing service charge you per campaign and therefore your costs will increase substantially. Another reason not to use a newsletter to post articles to Facebook is that your subscribers may take offense to a daily newsletter email and cancel their subscription.

Is this solution easy to implement? – Yes
Automatic import to Facebook? – No
Do title links point to website? – Yes
Is this solution dependable? – Yes
Does it offer traffic statistics? – Yes

Manually import blog post to Facebook
If you want total control over posting your website articles to your Facebook profile or fan page, you can manually add each article via a Facebook status update or a FB share button. To track how many clicks each posted article gets on Facebook, you can manually insert a shortened URL before you publish it on Facebook.

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

How To Import, Publish Blog Posts To Facebook

Best WordPress Forum Plugins For Your Blog

Kevin Eklund — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:33:42 +0000

WordPress forum plugins are designed to seamlessly integrate the features of a forum into WP blogs. Forums are great for building a sense of community and developing membership based websites. A well designed WordPress forum plugin effectively helps drive fresh new content to your site via its loyal members. The resultant user generated content can act as a powerful stimulus for obtaining organic search traffic. Currently there are several forum plugins for WordPress that can address the specific needs you may have for integrating a forum into your WP site. The review list we’ve compiled below outlines some of the best WordPress forum plugins available. Other related tools for your WP site can be found in our premium WordPress plugin directory.

Simple Press – This is the best WordPress forum plugin solution out there. It’s been around for several years, has a loyal following, and it’s well supported by its community. It offers tons of cool features and you can totally customize it to fit your needs. Simple:Press fully integrates with standard WordPress user profiles and logins as well as BuddyPress profiles. Other notable features include private messaging, post ratings, user rankings and badges, topic subscriptions, private and public forums, support for popular WordPress plugins, image and file upload tool, several skins and icon sets, and much more.

bbPress – This was once one of the best WP forum plugins available. It was a simple WP based forum that was easy to setup and customize. While it has the backing of Automattic, the development of this WP forum plugin has unfortunately deteriorated. The lack of support for this plugin means that if you run into any problems you’re going to be on you own. Until bbPress displays a clear plan for future development and a stronger community, it may be in your best interest to choose a different WordPress forum plugin.

phpBB Recent Topics – phpBB is one of the most popular open source software solutions for building a forum but it doesn’t hook into WordPress. If you prefer the phpBB software but you still want to integrate it with your WordPress blog, this plugin may just be what you’ve been looking for. The phpBB Recent Topics plugin allows you to easily display a list of the most recent topics from your phpBB forum directly on to your WP site via any post, page, or text widget. While this may not be the perfect solution to connect your phpBB forum to your WordPress blog, it does provide an effective way to promote your forum with your readers.

Wp2BB – This WP forum plugin represents another way to connect your phpBB forum to your WordPress site. Instead of bringing your forum to your blog, like the previous plugin does, Wp2BB automatically creates new topics in your phpBB forum every time you create a new article on your WP blog. Forum users can therefore easily enter the discussion of any blog post by simply clicking on the reply link located within the forum topic. There’s also a handy widget that can be used to display recent comments created by forum members.

WP Forum Server – A forum plugin for WordPress that delivers a complete forum system to your WP website. It has more of a grown-up forum feel to it compared to the other solutions which tend to look more like micro-forums when their implemented. The WP Forum Server conveniently connects with the WP users database to ensure that your blog users can access your forum without creating separate profiles. Additional features of this forum plugin include several translations, customization options, skins and some basic statistics for your forum.

Mingle Forum – This WP forum plugin allows you to install your own fully functional forum on WordPress. The Mingle Forum was developed by Cartpauj to provide a simple, easy to use, dependable forum for site owners. Features include categories, groups, user levels, private messages, forum search, the ability to assign moderators, sticky topics, hot topics, notifications, widgets, and support for multiple languages. The Mingle Forum plugin is compatible with many other Mingle plugins for WordPress (Mingle Avatars, Mingle Profiles, etc.).

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

Best WordPress Forum Plugins For Your Blog

Best Facebook City Game Applications

ToMuse Staff — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:14:15 +0000

Facebook city game applications are another genre targeted by Facebook developers. These sim-like social games are quite popular with Facebook users and online gaming aficionados. Whether it’s running your own hotel or expanding your virtual town, there’s a simulation game for just about everyone nowadays on Facebook. Compiled below is a review list of some of the best Facebook city games currently available. Like all Facebook games, these apps can be installed and uninstalled on your Facebook profile for free, so there’s no risk. If you’re not familiar with how to install these apps, review our Facebook Guide. If you’re interested in discovering other top free online games, see our list of the best Facebook games.

Hotel City – This is a fairly new city based game that was created by Playfish. The game revolves around your ability to create and manage your own hotel. Players must work to improve their hotels to attract new guests and earn more coins. Doing so will earn you experience points that help you level up in the game. Like other Facebook games you can decorate, hire friends, and buy various game items. If you want to find out additional information about this game, see the Hotel City guide.

Social City – Created by Playdom, Social City lets you customize and expand your virtual metropolis to accommodate its citizens and earn money. As you do this you’ll gather experience points to level-up and earn more revenue by collecting from buildings. As your city grows, you’ll need to make sure you citizens remain happy; otherwise, they’ll leave your town. To prevent this, you’ll want to add leisure buildings to your city. For more information about this game, see our Social City guide.

My Town – In this Facebook city game, you can develop your own town using buildings, homes, businesses, roads, trees, and other items in the game. Other objectives in the game include collecting coins from buildings to earn money and gathering experience points to reach new levels in the game. My Town is fairly easy to navigate, but the graphics aren’t as great as some of the other games in this list. If you’d like to learn more about this game, check out our My Town guide.

My City Life – This game is very similar to My Town. They are almost identical in some aspects. You will find that the graphics in this game appear to be a little better however. In My City Life, you must expand your city and collect from your buildings to earn coins. You can also send and receive gifts to your friends.

Youtopia – This game is a bit different than the other games in this list. One difference with this game is you can get a job to earn money. Getting a job is pretty easy and you can bring in a lot more coins by doing this. The graphics are awesome and you have a few more options for building your city than other games. Collecting different items from your buildings will earn you experience points and more money.

My City – A Facebook game that lets you choose the type of city you want to develop. You can begin with a town, a small city or a large metropolis to grow. Participants can compete according to the points they earn and top players are listed on the leaderboard. The game developers did a great job of incorporating interesting real life things into the game such as Red Cross workers and Nobel laureates.

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

Best Facebook City Game Applications

Group Buying A Success On Facebook With Zynga’s YoVille Deals

Kevin Eklund — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:46:12 +0000

Online group buying has taken the business world by storm with the number of group buying sites growing every day. Previously we discussed the possibility of Facebook entering the group buying business to create a Facebook versus Groupon scenario. Facebook has yet to adopt collective buying but its largest client, Zynga, has already implemented the group buying business model with great success. Zynga’s popular social game, YoVille, is now offering 50% off regularly priced game items for players that sign-up for the deal.

The YoVille group buying offer required that at least 100,000 people sign up for the discount within 48 hours or no one gets it. So far, over 300,000 have taken advantage of the YoVille group buying deal. While there’s no obligation to purchase the YoVille items, Zynga’s collective buying promotion is a clear success. Not only, did the deal offering create a new stream of revenue for Zynga but it has been an incredibly successful self-promotional tool. That is, it has generated over 25,000 Like’s on Facebook and it’s allowed Zynga to quickly grow its email list of YoVille gamers.

Group Buying To Dominate Facebook’s Social Games
Zynga will most likely begin rolling out group bargain discounts for all its games in the near future and its inevitable the other Facebook game developers like CrowdStar, Playdom, Playfish, and Electronic Arts will soon follow. This could be the shot in the arm that game creators need in lieu of Facebook’s past decision to push notifications to email. The previous system delivered messages to Facebook users through the notifications window on Facebook creating a sense of urgency to act. The newer email based notification system isn’t as helpful to game developers as most people are overwhelmed by the number of email messages they receive. Email notifications are easily overlooked, lost in the recipients’ inboxes, and their commonly marked as spam. Zynga’s group buying feature should help reduce many of these issues by creating a greater sense of value for its email notifications within the minds of subscribers.

Zynga’s Group Buying Platform
Zynga’s move to create and manage their own group buying platform is a wise strategy that will save them tons of cash. Generally, B2B collective buying sites take a 50% fee of all voucher sales that they generate for participating merchants. That’s on top of a typical 50% off discount which leaves the business owner earning only 25% of what they normally would. By running their own collective buying deals, Zynga will save the additional 25%. Moreover, since the creation virtual goods incurs minimal expenses, Zynga’s group buying costs should be much less than traditional collective bargain sales.

How Much Will Zynga Earn From YoVille Group Buying?
Using our group buying calculator, we can estimate the potential earnings that Zynga may obtain from its group bargaining experiment on YoVille. According to the promotion, players can buy 50% off YoCash items with YoCoins. The average price of the actual items displayed on the promotion page is 490 YoCoins. The cost for purchasing YoCoins varies depending on which package the buyer chooses. The average cost for the all YoCoin packages is $0.001592 per YoCoin ($215/135,000 YoCoins). If we assume that a group buyer purchases at least one item that’s offered, it will cost him/her roughly $0.78 ($0.001592 x 490 YoCoins). With 300,000 potential buyers already signed up for this daily deal, Zynga could to make over $234,111 ($0.78 x 300,000). Of course some players may have already earned the YoCoins and therefore won’t have to buy them. However, even if only 50% of those that participate purchase just one item, Zynga stands to earn an additional $117,056. That’s a considerable chunk of change given that their only offering the promotion for 48 hours. If you calculate it using our modest estimates above, Zynga’s earning exactly $2439 per hour extra by offering this group buying deal.

Total Revenue Zynga May Earn From Group Buying Deals
The additional earnings that Zynga will generate from a single collective buying deal is quite impressive let alone the potential additional earnings it may generate from all its games. What if Zynga offered one group buying promotion per game each month and each promotion attained similar results? Zynga developers are responsible for creating over thirty different social games that are available on Facebook. Many of them are the most popular games on the Facebook platform. If ten of Zynga’s most popular games offer a group buying deal every month, that amounts to $1,170,560 per month or $14,046,720 per year in additional revenue. With such an impressive additional revenue stream at its disposal, Zynga’s valuation should rise considerably.

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

Group Buying A Success On Facebook With Zynga’s YoVille Deals

Best Free, Premium WordPress FAQ Plugins For Your Blog

Kevin Eklund — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 01:17:41 +0000

WordPress FAQ plugins can be a very helpful tool for keeping track of frequently asked questions (FAQ) posed by your visitors. A well designed WP FAQs page should contain important information about your site and the services you offer that’s displayed in a simple question and answer format. A well maintained FAQ page should save you time by negating the need to answer the same questions over and over again via email. Depending on its features, a WordPress FAQ plugin may also be used to gather vital feedback from your website visitors. Thankfully, there are several different WP plugins that can help you easily manage frequently asked questions. In the list below we’ve identified some of the best WordPress FAQ plugins that are available. If you decide you need a more robust solution, you might check to see if there’s a premium WordPress plugin available.

Premium WordPress FAQ Plugins
WordPress FAQ Plugin – Tribulant’s premium WP FAQ plugin covers all the features you’ll find in most of the free WordPress FAQ plugins plus additional functionality that’s worth paying for. Features include notifications, FAQ search, question groups, an AJAX interface, user search form, automatic approval of questions, the ability to sort groups, captcha, user submitted FAQs, FAQ management, language translation, embedding FAQs in posts or pages, and much more. This premium WP FAQ plugin with cost you $19.99 for a single site license and $99.95 for the ability to install it in all the WordPress websites you own. The plugin comes with unlimited free support requests handled through a support ticketing system and free lifetime updates.

Free WordPress FAQ Plugins
FAQ-Tastic Lite – This is one of the best WordPress FAQ plugins ever developed. While the FAQ-Tastic Pro isn’t available any longer this version is free and it still offers lots of features. Such features include grouping questions, displaying questions and answers on different pages, the ability to automatically create FAQ pages, changing the order of questions, allowing visitors to submit their own FAQs, autoresponders for FAQ submissions by visitors, and FAQ ratings. While the plugin is more complex than the others, it is very well built and easy to use. To download the plugin you’ll have to register as a member using the link above.

FAQ Auto Responder – This clever FAQ plugin is unlike any of the other frequently asked plugins we’ve come across. When a commenter enters a string of words that you’ve identified as being associated with an FAQ, it prevents the posting of that comment by displaying your answer to the commonly asked question. It’s particularly helpful for plugin developers who receive support requests for common errors via the WordPress comment form. Integrating this plugin with a contact form would be another great way to address any FAQs submitted through email.

Simple FAQ – Just as the name implies the is the most straight forward simple WordPress FAQ plugin available. After installing the plugin, navigate to the Plugins section of your WP amdin panel and click on the FAQ listing. This opens the Simple FAQ settings panel where you can create, edit, and delete frequently asked questions. Once you’ve created a list of FAQs, all you have left to do is create a page in WordPress and paste [display_faq] into it.

WP DS FAQ – This is another simple WordPress FAQ plugin that allows the administrator to create, edit, and delete frequently asked questions. However, in addition, it allows you to create multiple FAQ lists and it offers the admin the ability to style the FAQs. After completing the installation of the plugin, the admin must open the WP DS FAQ settings page located under the main admin “Settings” for the WordPress site. There you may create multiple “FAQ books” which are essentially separate lists of FAQs. Once you’ve completed your FAQ, you need to create a WP page and paste the shortcode for the FAQ book you want to display.

iMasters WP FAQ – A WordPress FAQ plugin that’s a bit more complicated than the others listed above. It permits the administrator to add categories to FAQ entries for quick filtering of questions in the admin panel. The admin also has the ability to display FAQ questions through collapsing javascript such that answers aren’t viewable until the visitor clicks on the each question. Like the other WP FAQ plugins, you must paste a shortcode into a page to display the list of FAQ questions.

FAQ Builder – A very elaborate WordPress FAQ plugin that not only allows the admin to create frequently asked questions but it offers the ability for visitors to submit their own. Users can submit their questions much like a comment where the admin can moderate and answer the FAQs. Other notable features include FAQ categories, the ability to search FAQs, and a captcha form to prevent spamming of your FAQ submissions. Currently this plugin is still in beta and appears to have many bugs according the WP forums so make sure you backup your database before installing it.

FAQ You – A top WordPress FAQ plugin that’s very much like the FAQ Builder plugin in that it offers the ability search FAQs, add categories, and receive FAQ submissions from visitors but it’s more simplified. The admin can specify an email address to receive FAQ submission notifications once the FAQ is submitted by the visitor. Afterward the admin can approve and answer the question.

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

Best Free, Premium WordPress FAQ Plugins For Your Blog

Why Groupon Should Fear Facebook

Kevin Eklund — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:26:45 +0000

Groupon is one of the fastest growing collective buying sites in the U.S. thanks to its incredible popularity, a very lucrative business model, and several large rounds of funding. It has found great success with Facebook users who feverishly share its daily deal offerings with one another. Upon securing its latest round of funding Groupon’s valuation was estimated to be $1.2 billion and at the time Groupon was only available in ~40 cities throughout the United States. With the wind at its back and almost nothing to fear, Groupon’s future looks quite promising. Despite its momentum, Groupon could soon be facing an incredible threat if Facebook decides to expand its business-to-business services.

Facebook developers are notorious for taking features from other popular websites and quickly incorporating them into Facebook. For instance, when the friend activity stream was popularized by FriendFeed it was soon implemented into everyone’s Facebook profile. Later Facebook again lifted a feature from FriendFeed’s playbook by adding the “Like” button. Of course FriendFeed is now owned by Facebook which seems to negate this issue but it doesn’t dismiss the willingness of Facebook developers to adopt features/functions from other popular sites.

As Facebook expands Facebook Credits to make it the default payment system for all application developers, it’s poised to merge its virtual currency with other potential sources for generating revenue. One such lucrative venture is the group buying business model. Most business owners already maintain a presence on Facebook via their company’s own Facebook fan page so the potential to partner with local merchants wouldn’t be that difficult for Facebook. If Facebook was to create a group buying platform that could be accessed by adding a Facebook app to one’s fan page, it could easily loosen Groupon’s stranglehold on the group buying market.

Groupon traffic data from Compete indicates that back in January nearly half (44%) of all referring traffic originated from Facebook. Today it’s more like 21% but it remains clear that Facebook is the top resource for sharing Groupon deals. If group buying deals could be served directly from Facebook, the sharing of such daily deals would be greatly improved and, more importantly, so would the quantity of deal purchases. Add in the fees that Facebook could charge businesses to use its group buying application, plus the Facebook Credits charge required to purchase or transfer group buying deals, and it would quickly become Facebook’s primary source of revenue. Don’t think so? Well, except for the recent purchase of MyCityDeal, Groupon is available in less than 100 cities throughout the U.S. and it’s already valued at $1.2 billion. Considering that Facebook is available in a lot more countries than Groupon, that $1.2 billion valuation could be dwarfed by the potential revenue Facebook could generate from such a profitable B2B service.

Another important factor to consider in this Facebook versus Groupon scenario is the ability for Facebook to drive down the group buying costs involved for businesses to utilize Groupon’s services. That is, Groupon takes ~50% of all revenue that’s generated from voucher sales which severely elevates customer acquisition costs (see the group buying calculator). By simply reducing the fees that are charged to the merchant, Facebook could post a serious threat towards evolving as a Groupon killer. Lastly, if Facebook could find a way to give merchants long-term access to users that purchase their deal vouchers, it would gain a huge business advantage over Groupon. Business owners understand the importance of increasing their contact lists or subscriber numbers and their more likely to partner with businesses that help them do that. In contrast, Groupon does not provide any solution whatsoever for merchants to connect again (i.e. email addresses, etc.) with the group coupon buyers.

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

Why Groupon Should Fear Facebook

Best E-commerce Shopping Cart Applications For Selling On Facebook

Kevin Eklund — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:30:02 +0000

Facebook ecommerce apps and storefronts permit users to add custom shopping carts to their fan pages or profiles in order to directly sell on Facebook. Social networks like Facebook are no longer used for merely uploading photo albums, or checking the status updates of your friends. E-commerce has evolved with social networking platforms to form social commerce solutions that can embrace the real-time social Web. Facebook storefront applications offer lots of new opportunities for business owners that want to expand and promote their online stores. In the review list below we’ve identified some of the best Facebook ecommerce applications to help you sell on Facebook. If you’re not familiar with Facebook apps and you think you may need help installing or managing them, see the Facebook Guide for more information.

Payvment – A comprehensive e-commerce storefront solution that lets you create your own custom store to sell your products directly from Facebook. You can easily add new product listings, create categories, upload product images, add custom HTML, and more. Product listings can be edited and changed at any time and inventory is automatically tracked. One particularly cool feature about this Facebook storefront app is the synchronization of shopping cart with your own website. Another tantalizing feature included is the “fan pricing” which allows you to incentivize users to become fans or “Like” your Facebook page. As a reward for doing this, fans are given special discount rates on products.

BigCommerce SocialShop – This application allows BigCommerce users to sell on Facebook. BigCommerce is a popular online shopping cart software service provider that offers ecommerce solutions for both small businesses and large corporations. BigCommerce merchants must add a new tab to their fan page on Facebook where their products will be listed. Fans can view items, share them with friends, and purchase products directly from their Facebook storefront.

Social Store Builder – A Facebook e-commerce application created by Volusion that allows you to sell products on your Facebook page. In order to use the social commerce application you must be a Volusion customer that’s subscribed to their Gold plan or higher. Setup up is pretty simple it essentially involves installing the storefront application on your fan page and then importing product listings from your Volusion store.

Ecwid – A free Facebook shopping cart app that can be easily integrated into your own profile to sell on Facebook. The application utilizes the uses the Ecwid e-commerce software combined with AJAX and drag-n-drop functionality to deliver an easy to manage Facebook storefront. One of the major benefits of using this type of solution is that merchants can add their Ecwid store by simply copying and pasting the widget code into any number of websites or social networks. Furthermore, the business owner’s store can be managed from one single location.

My Etsy – A Facebook storefront application that lets you add a tab to your Facebook fan page or profile to display your own Etsy shop. For those that aren’t familiar with Etsy, it’s an online marketplace where merchants and consumers can buy and sell handmade items. After implementing the My Etsy Facebook application, visitors will be able to view your Etsy shop from the comfort of Facebook and share it with their friends.

Marketplace – A widely used app from Facebook for buying and selling just about anything you want through the social network. The idea of creating a socially-generated mall of sorts gives an open-ended use of Facebook for direct sales to network friends. Combining classifieds with social networking, Marketplace gives you bartering options with the people you already know and trust.

CafePress – For those selling items on CafePress, they can promote their items through their Facebook profiles using this app. CafePress will publish your items on your profile, giving access to all your friends on Facebook. CafePress will also include affiliate links to store items, for those participating in the CafePress Affiliate Program. In this way, you’re better able to leverage your Facebook social graph to sell items and get some kick back for promoting each other’s CafePress stores.

MyMerchStore – From Zazzle, the MyMerchStore is a way for you to post your products on your profile. Through the app, you can also share products that you like, and find other artists also selling their work. The search and discovery tools in this app foster artist promotion, with the included sharing mechanisms encouraging users to spread the word about products being sold through the Zazzle app.

PhotoZ – Another sellers Facebook app from Zazzle, PhotoZ lets you put photos in your Facebook albums to be turned into products you’re selling on Zazzle.com. This offers a different and less intrusive way of pushing products through a social networking site, while also involving a level of sentiment around the products themselves. Tagging others in a PhotoZ album can encourage Facebook friends to purchase an item through Zazzle in this way.

Eventbrite – Sure, Facebook is great for promoting an upcoming event. But it would be even easier to sell tickets if they could be purchased through a Facebook app. Enter Eventbrite. The event-planning service has a Facebook app that lets you post, promote and sell tickets for events. This is acheived through Facebook Connect, which gives you Facebook publishing options for events created on Eventbrite.

Bodega – A lot of people are making money on Facebook by selling virtual goods. You can do the same, without creating your own app. Bodega lets you buy and sell virtual goods items, and giving you real cash returns for your efforts. Giving consumers direct selling options within an online social environment, Bodega looks to take social casual gaming and virtual goods to the next level.

eBay Auctions – This eBay app for Facebook lets you post your eBay listings on your Facebook profile. In this way, you extend the network to which you’re marketing, dipping into a wider pool of potential customers. As with classifieds apps of a similar nature, the trust factor is one the app relies on to make an impact with a user’s social graph. With Facebook opening its profiles with its new privacy settings, an app such as eBay’s can have improved marketing potential through Facebook’s network, especially if added to a public Fan Page.

ShopIt – ShopIt has a Facebook app that allows you to create a store interface on your profile. Selling items in your ShopIt account, you can further promote them through Facebook. Similar to a classifieds app such as Marketplace, you can sell your own items through the ShopIt app. The idea is to leverage relationships with people you already know, increasing the trust factor and minimizing the time spent on researching sellers.

Music-My Store (from Nimbit) – Nimbit’s Music-My Store offers a seller’s interface that can be placed directly on your Facebook profile. Designed to sell music, the Nimbit app gives you an entire storefront for selling your music and music-related items. A perk of Nimbit’s music-selling app is that it can be placed on Facebook Fan Pages to increase visibility. If you maintain two separate Facebook profiles for personal and business use, this may be a good app for you.

Books on Campus – Facebook started out as a social network for college students. Where better to create a marketplace for buying and selling textbooks? The Books on Campus app takes the issue of buying and selling textbooks to the heart of the college world by placing its app on Facebook. When you’re connecting with fellow students online, look no further than this Facebook app to tap into a network of used textbooks.

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

Best E-commerce Shopping Cart Applications For Selling On Facebook

Best Facebook Animal Game Applications

ToMuse Staff — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:12:15 +0000

Facebook animal game apps seem to be one of the most popular game genres available on Facebook. The abundance of online animal games to play on Facebook makes finding a decent game for animal lovers a bit challenging. We’ve sorted through many of these games to come up with a list of some of the best Facebook animal games. These free online games can easily be added to your Facebook account and removed if you don’t like them. To learn more about how to change the settings on games, check out the Facebook Guide. For other types of popular games you may like, see the best Facebook games list.

Zoo World – A Facebook game created by RockYou! where your primary goals include buying animals, taking care of them, and earning money from visitors. As you progress in the game you’ll want to purchase drink stands, food stands, restrooms, and other items to place in your zoo. You’ll also be given the opportunity to breed your zoo animals. Be warned however, as this takes some considerable effort and you should only attempt this job if you have a lot of times on your hands. To learn more about Zoo World and how to play it, see our Zoo World guide.

Animal Ranch – An animal game that’s very similar to any farming game on Facebook, except that you’ll be planting animals in plots. In this game, you will need to purchase the animals you want to plant and plant them in each plot. Once they are grown, you can use the gathering tool to collect them. You’ll earn experience points by cleaning your animals, making sure their happy, and by helping out your friends.

Ranch Life – As you play this game you will need to purchase animals and nurture them toward adulthood. Your animals will start out as babies, grow up and eventually produce babies themselves. This game is a bit difficult for some people so you may need to put in some extra time in the beginning of the game just to get the hang of it.

Safari Life – In this animal game you’ll buy animals and place them in your safari where you must look after them to ensure their survival. The game has an environment-friendly aspect that encourages players to consider their safari as a life-based economy where man-made chemicals and pollutants damage the ecological system. Players can interact with their animals to make them smile, get upset, jump, and display other feelings or actions.

Happy Habitat – In this Facebook animal game, your objective is to purchase plants to attract animals. When the animals arrive you’ll need to feed them and complete other tasks to care for them. Players can breed animals and sell them to earn experience points to level up and coins to buy other stuff.

Animal Paradise – After adding this game you’ll need to purchase animals for your ranch and care for them. You must feed and water your animals and keep them healthy so they can reach maturity. Once they are fully grown, they’ll begin to produce valuable goods that you can collect.

Animal Swapping – This game’s purpose is defined by its name. That is, one of the main goals for Animal Swapping is to swap animals. Once you’ve gathered three animals in a row, you’ll receive experience points, the row will clear, and you can continue advancing in the game.

Spp! Ranch – This is one of the newer Facebook animal games contained in this list. As you play the game, you’ll need to purchase animals, care for them, and collect from them when they produce for you. You’ll collect experience points for completing tasks and earn money along the way.

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

Best Facebook Animal Game Applications

Calculated Cost Of Using Groupon, Group Buying Deals To Promote Your Business

Kevin Eklund — Sun, 30 May 2010 10:56:05 +0000

Group buying websites, also known as collective buying sites, like Groupon are attractive to local small business owners because they possess the group buying power to generate hundreds to tens of thousands of sales from new customers within a single day. They are able to do this by convincing their clients (local merchants) to offer incredible discounts that are greater than half-off the original price, incentivizing the sharing of group buying deals, using a countdown timer and limited quantities to create a sense of urgency for purchasing deals, and by permitting users to buy and exchange the deal vouchers as gifts. Local business owners also like using this form of promotion because they can accurately measure its effectiveness when customers redeem their vouchers. A typical response from several past Groupon clients suggests that most businesses merely break even but is this really true? In this article we will examine the expenses a local business owner may encounter by utilizing a site like Groupon.

Groupon Data And Assumptions
According to data provided by a sandwich shop owner from Chicago that used Groupon to promote his business, 56% of Groupon buyers redeemed their vouchers within four months, 40% of them bought additional beverages or snacks upon redeeming their voucher, and sales remained elevated by 20% several months later. Using this data we can make some calculations to estimate the expenses that a typical business owner may accumulate when using Groupon. Let’s consider the sandwich shop’s experience with Groupon again given the following assumptions:

We offer $20 of services for only $10
We achieve 500 voucher sales
65% of the vouchers are redeemed within the expiration date
40% of buyers that redeem the voucher purchase an additional beverage or snack at $3 each
20% of buyers that redeemed the voucher return at least one more time to spend the same amount of money

Groupon Deal Performance Estimates
First, discounting services by 50% means that the business owner automatically loses $5,000 (500[$20-$10]) and Groupon keeps 50% of the sales (500 x $10 x 0.5 = $2500). Out of the $5,000 (500 sales x $10/voucher) in revenue that’s generated from the sale of the vouchers, the business owner will only receive $2,500 ($5,000 – $2,500 = $2,500). If 65% of buyers redeem their voucher (325 people) and 40% of them buy an additional beverage or snack at $3 each (130 people) this amounts to $390 ($3 x 130). Now let’s consider that 20% of buyers that redeemed their voucher return at least one more time within the year to buy the same thing or spend the same amount as the voucher price they previously used. This would mean that the business acquired 65 return customers (325 x .20 = 65) that spent $20 each for a total of $1,300 (65 x $20 = $1,300). In the end, the business owner’s total earnings from the group buying deal reach $4,190 ($1,300 + $2,500 + $390) but his total net profits are -$5,810 (-$10,000 + $4,190). In order to make up for these losses, the owner would need those 65 returning customers to come back 9 more times ($5,810/65/[$20 x 50% profit margin]) and spend at least the same amount of money ($20). If those 65 customers don’t return 9 more times each, he is essentially losing $11.62 ($5,810/500) for every voucher that’s sold or $17.88 ($5,810/325) for each voucher that’s redeemed.

Groupon Customer Acquisition Cost And Limitations
Our findings above beg the question: could the business owner acquire the same number of new customers at less expense using other promotional means? Perhaps the merchant could have created his own 50%-off sale and promoted it via Facebook Ads instead? In this case, to outperform Groupon, the business owner would need to generate a sale of his 50%-off coupon for less than $11.62 assuming that all other results are similar. At $0.5 per click, that’s 232.4 ($11.62/$0.05) chances to make a sale or a minimum conversion rate goal of 0.43% (1/232.4 x 100) that must be achieved.

Groupon’s 50% service fee of all voucher sales means that the expense per voucher sale increases linearly as the price of the voucher increases. That means that higher voucher prices diminish the cost effectiveness for businesses to use group buying deal promotions. Using our example above, this business owner would accumulate a net loss that’s equal to 58.1% ($11.62/$20) of the value of each Groupon voucher that’s sold or 58.1% of the total voucher sales revenue. For instance, if you offer a 50%-off Groupon deal that generates 1000 voucher sales that are valued at $40 each, you would stand to lose $23,240 (1000 x $40 x 0.581). Of course, that’s assuming that your business, and its new customers, would behave exactly as the sandwich shop’s did for which we based the estimates. It’s unlikely however that all businesses that utilize Groupon for promotional needs experience similar results. It’s more believable that our estimation, and therefore the performance of Groupon deals, may vary depending on several important factors such as the type of business, its location, and the redeemable value of the Groupon voucher.

Groupon Cost Calculator
We’ve created a Groupon calculator and embedded it below to help you estimate the expenses of using the service to promote your own business. Simply enter your group buying business promotion values/estimates in the cells highlighted in yellow and the remaining estimates will automatically be calculated for you.

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

Calculated Cost Of Using Groupon, Group Buying Deals To Promote Your Business

Group Buying: When Is It Not Cost Effective For Business Owners?

Kevin Eklund — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:32:39 +0000

Groupon and other popular group buying sites are very effective at generating hundreds to tens of thousands of new sales for a business owner in just one day. Group buying websites are able attain such impressive sale numbers by partnering with merchants that discount a product or service by at least 50%-off the original retail price. Group coupon vouchers are sold directly from the group buying site which can later be redeemed at the merchant’s place of business. With Groupon taking a 50% cut of each voucher that’s sold, the total expense of attaining those sales from a merchant’s standpoint can be quite overwhelming. Depending on the price of the voucher, it may not be cost effective to use group buying sites like Groupon to generate sales.

Groupon Versus Promoting Your Own 50%-off Sale
Let’s consider the option for a business to run its own discount sale compared to using Groupon. As an example, let’s say you’re selling $20 worth of service for $10 and Groupon is able to generate 500 group coupon sales for you. Typically Groupon takes 50% of the voucher sales which would be $2,500. If you ran your own group buying event, you’d be able to keep that $2,500 and use it to promote the 50%-off sale instead. Twenty-five hundred dollars worth of online advertising can go a long way and if you can effectively incentivize the sharing of your own group buying deals, you can stretch your ad dollars even further. Remember, as a business owner you’d not only be gaining new sales but you’d be growing your customer contact list too. Thus, the chance of gaining a repeat sale is dramatically increased compared to using Groupon since it doesn’t share email addresses with merchants.

To make a more accurate comparison of running your own half-off sale versus using Groupon you’d need to know 1) how much an average customer’s contact information is worth for your business, and 2) the advertising costs required to generate one 50%-off sale. In the example above, you’re essentially paying Groupon, $5 for each sale ($2,500/500 sales). Could you attain one 50%-off sale for $5 worth of well-targeted ads on Facebook or Google? If we assume that Facebook charges you only $0.05 per click, that’s 100 chances per $5 you have to make a sale and gain that important new email contact. A 1% (1 sale/100 clicks) conversion rate doesn’t sound too difficult considering that you’re also offering a 50%-off coupon. Furthermore, as the price of any product or service your selling increases, so does the cost of using a group buying site to promote your business. In comparison, the potential for gaining the same number of new customers or more using advertising alone is increased as the price of the product or service you’re selling increases. That is, if you sell a 50%-off Groupon voucher for $20 instead of $10, you’re now losing twice as much revenue ($20/2 x 500 = $5,000 versus $2,500) that could have potentially been used to attain the same number of new customers at a lower cost using advertising alone. As you can see, at some point it becomes more costly to use Groupon than it is to promote the 50%-off sale yourself.

Below we’ve plotted the expense per sale as a function of Groupon voucher prices and the total expenses accumulated using Groupon versus voucher price. To calculate the total expenses for using Groupon, multiply the number of expected sales by one-half the voucher price (Groupon’s share is typically 50% of voucher price). For a more detailed estimate of the costs involved in using Groupon to promote your business, check out the group buying calculator.

As you can clearly see from the data above, a business owner’s costs rise dramatically as the price of the voucher increases. If the Groupon expense/sale is greater than the advertising expense/sale it’s not cost effective to utilize Groupon as a promotional tool for one’s business. And let’s not forget that Groupon doesn’t share the customer’s email address with the merchant which negates any potential repeat sales that could be gained through direct marketing efforts. This is one major flaw in the group buying business that seems to be consistent when you compare group buying websites against one another.

Groupon Versus Normal Customer Acquisition Costs
In order to make a well informed decision as to whether or not you should use Groupon, you need to know what it costs to acquire that new customer. This will differ greatly based on which industry your business is associated. Some industries have a very high repeat sales rate for customers whereas others have a very high customer turnover rate. These factors are also greatly impacted by the quality of the service you deliver to your customers as well. In general, the cost for acquiring new customers is usually several folds greater than the expenses to keep any customer. Acquisition cost should be something you know as a business owner but if you don’t you can always run an experiment to track this the next time you launch a marketing campaign. Another simple experiment to acquire this useful data would be to take a couple hundred dollars and use it towards online advertising via Facebook or Google. It would also be very interesting to know the conversion rate of a 50%-off sale campaign versus a regular campaign that’s ran on each advertising platform. Once you have those statistics you can accurately compare that data with the cost of using a group buying site to promote your small business.

Do Groupon Buyers Become Repeat Customers?
Another important metric to consider when making your decision is the potential for the customer to generate a single 50%-off voucher sale versus becoming a long-term repeat customer. Strengthening customer loyalty should be a top priority for every small business owner. Once you’ve spent the money to get new customers in the door, your highest priority should be to deliver the best possible services to ensure that they return. Unfortunately Groupon hasn’t reported the average return rate for Groupon buyers that redeem their vouchers. This data would be extremely helpful to know as it would clearly identify the point at which its not cost effective to utilize Groupon for your company’s promotional needs. The only way to discover this without Groupon reporting it would be to gather that data from Groupon’s past clients. Specifically, it would be beneficial for businesses that are considering Groupon to know the following averages:

1. The percentage of Groupon buyers that redeem their coupons before they expire

2. The percentage of customers who order more than the value of their Groupon voucher upon redeeming it

3. The typical sales amount (as a percentage of the voucher’s price) that exceeds the price of the Groupon voucher upon redeeming it

4. The percentage of Groupon buyers that were first-time customers of the business for which they redeemed the voucher

5. The percentage of customers that return a second time after previously redeeming the full value of their voucher

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

Group Buying: When Is It Not Cost Effective For Business Owners?

Can Groupon Compete With Local Publishers, Alternative Group Buying Business Models?

Kevin Eklund — Tue, 25 May 2010 06:54:47 +0000

New group buying sites are springing up every day to compete with the largest and most profitable group buying business known as Groupon. Groupon harnesses the collective buying power of its large user base to offer huge discounts on local services and products via their daily email delivered group buying deals. Groupon has a huge lead on most of the competitors but with nearly 100 group buying websites already launched, one has to wonder if Groupon can maintain its dominance indefinitely. As the group buying business model evolves, merchant-friendly add-on platforms may be born to serve the needs of local business owners and eliminate third-party group buying service providers. It’s also possible that an alternative collective buying solution may emerge to ensure that any revenue generated locally remains within the community. Regardless, given the high expenses and disadvantages to using services like Groupon, it may be in a merchant’s best interest to spend their hard earned money promoting their business elsewhere. We examine all of these possible outcomes herein and consider the costs incurred by promoting a business using popular collective buying sites like Groupon.

Groupon’s Weakness
Unfortunately for Groupon, group buying websites are relatively easy and inexpensive to create and maintain. All you need are some willing merchants that want to gain new customers, a email newsletter to notify readers of new daily deals, and a website for the customer to purchase the group coupon vouchers. It then becomes a simple matter of growing the subscriber list for your email newsletter to generate more sales for your clients. Incentives such as referral bonuses which are awarded for each new purchase encourages users to post the 50%-off deals elsewhere and share them with friends. The combined use of social media, killer deals, and incentivized traffic makes growing one’s newsletter subscriber list fairly easy.

With minimal barriers to entry, Groupon is dependent upon its brand and first-mover advantage to gain market share. Groupon is already present in most major U.S. cities and it just recently purchased MyCityDeals to become one of the largest group buying websites in Europe. Despite its staggering growth, there are numerous smaller markets throughout the U.S. and other countries that remain untapped which could easily be targeted by Groupon’s competitors. When you compare group buying sites versus Groupon, feature sets do not differ very much and competitors are quick to copy any new features that Groupon adds. It appears, however, that local publishers and media outlets such as newspapers, radio stations, television, community websites, local forums, city blogs, and other locally owned online organizations may have the upper hand against Groupon and its group buying competitors. That is, local publishers already possess the necessary subscribers that a group buying model requires should they decide to begin promoting local group buying deals independent of Groupon.

Does Groupon Hurt The Local Economy?
Groupon’s arrangement with merchants is pretty aggressive; it takes half of the voucher sales generated for each deal. With most deals offering 50% or more off the original price for a particular product or service, merchants are losing 75% of what they’d normally make for any given sale. The remaining 25% goes directly to Groupon which isn’t locally owned and that revenue doesn’t return to the local community. For example, if a business uses Groupon to promote a 50%-off sale offering $10 vouchers worth $20 in services, and 500 vouchers are sold, Groupon earns $2,500. That’s actually a low estimate for voucher sales which can be upwards of tens of thousands for major U.S. cities and we’re talking about just one deal out of a potential 365 (one deal per day) that’s offered each year by Groupon per city. Our assumptions of $2,500 in earnings per daily deal adds up to nearly $1 million dollars ($912,500) in revenue that’s removed from the local economy each year. That’s a huge amount of revenue considering the current U.S. economy and a near 10% unemployment rate. With that in mind, what’s to keep local merchants from boycotting Groupon given that it’s not a locally owned company? A boycott would most likely be ineffective but people seem to be more concerned than ever about keeping locally generated revenue within their own community. Moreover, merchants that are well aware of Groupon’s aggressive service fees may be more inclined to seek out other available options. Hence, could an alternative group buying model emerge to successfully addresses these concerns?

Groupon Versus Group Buying Platforms
An obvious alternative for local business owners that want to utilize the group buying model without incurring the high costs involved by using Groupon would be to integrate the group buying feature within their own website. This can be achieved by creating the merchant’s own group buying-like interface or utilizing a group buying platform that’s easily integrated within the business owner’s site. The cost of creating a group buying interface for one’s business may be too expensive for many small business owners and therefore a group buying platform might be the more attractive option. Indeed, group buying solutions like SyncFu have already emerged to address these specific needs for small business owners and it is logical to assume that we’ll see more of them in the future.

Groupon Versus A Local Merchant Cooperative
Perhaps an even greater threat to large group buying sites like Groupon is the non-profit group buying site that’s funded by local merchants interested in keeping more of the revenue within the local economy. A non-profit group buying cooperative business would not share the email addresses between merchants but it could be used collectively to promote local deals without incurring the huge expenses compared to a Groupon-like site. Perhaps the only costs for such a non-profit group buying site would be for the creation and maintenance of the website which could be shared between the local businesses that utilize it. Hence, instead of paying for advertising to promote your local company’s 50%-off sale, now you’d only need to pay a small listing fee or a reoccurring service fee to access the cooperative promotional tool.

Final Thoughts
In the future, it’s very likely we’ll see the profit margins for group buying sites shrink over time. Instead of charging merchants 50% of all voucher sales revenue, Groupon will be forced to lower their fees as the ever increasing list of group buying competitors continues to grow. As a result, group buying websites will have to reduce their own operating expenses and become more efficient in order to remain competitive in the market. Whether Groupon can effectively do this in light of their assumed large operating costs and the potential advantage local publishers seem to have is yet to be determined. One potentially greater threat to Groupon would be the entrance of Facebook into the collective buying market. If a Facebook versus Groupon scenario were to develop, it would be difficult for Groupon to remain competitive. The possibility also exists for Groupon to evolve such that it offers attractive alternative group buying solutions that counter the other group buying models and concerns about the impact on local economies outlined herein. Regardless, group buying will remain a win-win business model that should only improve over time for both local business owners and consumers.

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

Can Groupon Compete With Local Publishers, Alternative Group Buying Business Models?

Best Online Shopping Clubs For Huge Brand Name Discounts

Kevin Eklund — Fri, 21 May 2010 23:27:24 +0000

Private sales sites and members-only online shopping clubs are able to offer huge discounts on brand name products and services for a fraction of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. Most of these private online shopping clubs simply purchase excess inventory directly from the manufacturer and slightly raise the price of the merchandise to make a profit. To the manufacturer, these private shopping clubs are particularly desired because the exclusive nature of these sites do not negatively impact the brand’s image from a consumer’s standpoint. We’ve compiled a review list of some of the top online shopping clubs for attaining large savings on brand name products below. If you know of any others you’d like to submit to us for inclusion in this list, please let us know.

One Kings Lane – A private online shopping club that features brand name home products at huge discounted rates. After alerted of an invite-only sale via email, members can purchase items that are more than half off the manufacturers suggested retail price for a limited period of time.

Buy VIP – This European online shopping club offers its members exclusive deals on top fashion, sports, and lifestyle products. While not yet available in the United States, BuyVIP has displayed a strong growth with more than three and a half million members worldwide.

Gilt Groupe – A private online shopping club that provides short-term big discount offers on luxury items for it’s nearly two million members. Gilt members are able to take advantage of these private flash sales as well as huge discounts offered through Gilt’s group buying site known as Gilt City. The winning combination of a members-only shopping club with group buying benefits for local consumers makes Gilt one of the top online discount shopping sites.

Ideeli – This online shopping club gets its name by delivering the “ideal” shopping environment for its members. Ideeli features shopping events that last for only a few days or until products sell out. Their products are highly sought after items that are reduced by as much as 80% of the retail price.

Keynoir – A UK shopping club that’s akin to an exclusive members-only group buying site. Accepted members are emailed daily deals, called Keypasses, which offer huge savings on local services such as restaurants, bars, hotels, as spas. Deals don’t become available for all members unless a specified number of Keypasses are purchased.

Jetsetter – An invite-only online shopping club that features travel based sales. Members are notified about exclusive property deals which are offered on a first come, first served basis. Jetsetter’s selectivity ensures that only the best properties are included in their week long deal offerings.

HauteLook – Features top fashion, lifestyle, beauty, and home products at discounted prices of over 50% off for men, women, and kids. Members receive new shopping deal alerts every day from HauteLook’s extensive list of brand name partners. Membership to HauteLook is free and it’s open for everyone that wants to join.

Vente-Privee – A European online shopping club that delivers designer brand products at discounted rates of up to 70% off retail prices for its members. Vente-privee’s exclusive savings offers include products from a wide range of categories such as fashion, sports, electronics, and wine. Members are alerted via email two days prior to the initial deal and sales usually last about three days.

Rue La La – An invite-only online shopping club where members can get great deals on top brand items. Rue La La membership is free and invitations are encouraged through $10 incentives awarded to members for each new invitee’s initial order.

Voyage Prive – Another members-only discount travel site that offers exclusive travel deals. Members are able to gain access to travel based sales that reduce retail prices by up to 60%. New travel deals are offered every day at a first come, first served basis and each sale is available for five days.

Beyond The Rack – A private sample sale site that offers deep discounts on designer brand products. Items are reduced by over 50% and offered for only a few days. There’s usually about eight new sales events held each day on this members-only online shopping site.

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

Best Online Shopping Clubs For Huge Brand Name Discounts

Ultimate Strategy Guide For Playing Hotel City

Kevin Eklund — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:12:40 +0000

Hotel City is a Facebook application game that was created by Playfish. This Hotel City strategy guide, includes such information as how to play Hotel City, how to win lots of money, and helpful Hotel City tips to help you win in the game. We plan to update the Hotel City guide as game features are introduced by Playfish. If you have some great tips or important Hotel City strategy hints that you’d like to share, please let us know and we will incorporate them the next time the guide is updated.

Hotel City Beginners

Getting started with Hotel City – To get started with the Hotel City game, you will need to give your hotel a name. To do this, click the box where it says Hotel Name. That box will then light up and you can type your new name in the box. Click the check mark to change the name of the hotel and save it when you’re finished. You’ll be given 50,000 coins in the beginning to use towards start building your hotel. On level one, you will only have one room to choose from, but you will quickly level up and unlock more of them.

Adding hotel rooms – To add rooms to your hotel click the hammer icon at the bottom of your screen. This will open a menu on the right side of your screen. Click the second tab from the top to see the rooms. To build a room, you must grab the room with your mouse and drag it to your hotel. You can place it on the right side of your hotel or the top of your hotel. When you are finished adding rooms, click the check mark at the bottom and your new rooms will be saved.

Adding other hotel rooms – There are also other rooms you can add to your hotel. These rooms are found under the tabs in the build menu. Some of these rooms include storage, gym, and bar. Simply click the tabs and then place your mouse over the rooms to see what they are. To add one of the rooms, drag it to where you want it.

Starting a shift – Once you have your hotel finished, you can begin your work shift. When you start a shift, you will start earning money. To start a shift, click the red start shift button at the bottom of your game. A box will open that will allow you to choose the shift you want to start. You can select a 2-hour shift, 6-hour shift, and so on. Simply choose the shift you want and it will begin. It will cost you some money to start a shift but you’ll be able to quickly earn it back.

How long until your shift ends – To find out how soon your work shift ends, see the timer at the bottom of your screen on the left side of the toolbar. There you’ll find out how soon you’ll need to return to the game to begin another shift.

Expanding your hotel – As you move up the various Hotel City levels, you can expand your hotel. At the bottom of your screen, click on the house icon and the expansion box will open. In this box, there will be an upgrade available. To complete an expansion, click the expansion in the box. Most of them will be locked and if you haven’t reached a high enough level, all of them will be locked.

Hiring friends to work – To hire your friends to work for you, click a room with the red temp sign. A box will then open and ask you to post a job opening. Click the Share button and then click the Publish button in the next box to publish it. If your friends accept, they will get a bonus. You can go through each room and hire a friend to work in each room that needs staff. If your friends accept the job, they will appear in your hotel.

Viewing your staff – At the bottom of your screen, there should be a smiley face with a red hat. If you click on that icon, a box will open listing the staff that’s working for you.

Cleaning hotel rooms – If you see a lot of dust in a room, you’ll need to clean it. Simply click the room and all the dust will be removed.

Cockroaches in hotel rooms – Occasionally cockroaches will appear at your hotel if you have it closed for too long. To get rid of them, click on the room in which they appear, select the shopping cart that pops up, and you’ll see the cost of getting rid of the bugs. Normally you’ll have to pay about 300 Hotel City coins to exterminate the buys but it may become more expensive the higher up your Hotel City levels you attain.

Decorating your rooms – When it comes to decorating your rooms, you can change things like wallpaper, beds, floors, chairs, tables, lights, and pictures on the wall. To open your decorating box, click the chair at the bottom of your screen. When the box opens on the right, click through the tabs to see the different items you can use to decorate. To add something to the room, click on it and drag it to the room you want it to appear. When you’re finished decorating, click the check mark at the bottom of the box.

Rearrange rooms – In addition to decorating, it’s also possible to rearrange your Hotel City rooms. To do this, click on the build icon at the bottom of your screen, grab the rooms in question, and drag them to where you want them to be. Once you’re finished rearranging the rooms, click the check mark to save it and exit out of the build mode.

Rearranging decorations – If you want to rearrange your decorations, you can do that as well. All you have to do is click the Decorate icon in your bottom toolbar. Once the decoration box opens, simply drag the items into your room to move the decorations where you want them to appear. After you’ve finished, click the check mark at the bottom of the box to save it.

Changing the wallpaper – If you want to change the wallpaper in your rooms, click the Decorate icon and then the Wallpaper tab. After you’ve found the wallpaper you like, click on it and drag it to the room you want it to be applied.

Saving your Hotel City game – Before exiting your game, it’s a good idea to save it so you don’t lose all your hard work. On the left side of your screen, you’ll see the brown disk icon that you’ll need to click to save the game.

Changing the name of your hotel – If you would like to change the name of your hotel, click the name under the star rating and add the name you want.

Zooming in / out – To make your field of view larger or smaller, you can zoom in or zoom out of the game. On the left side of your screen, you’ll find the two buttons to zoom in and zoom out.

Full screen view – If you’d like to play the Hotel City game in full screen mode, you’ll need to click the wrench icon on the left side of your screen. This will expand a toolbar and black icons will appear in that toolbar. Click on the last icon and you will enter full screen mode. To exit the full screen mode, press the ESC button on your keyboard.

How To Play Hotel City

How to earn Hotel City money – You will find that there are quite a few ways to earn money in Hotel City. Most of the ways to earn coins in Hotel City are fairly easy. Below you will find a list of ways to help you build up your stack of Hotel City coins so you can buy more rooms and decorations.

Visiting friends – You can visit your friends daily to collect money bags from them. Each bag will give you approximately 400 Hotel City coins. These bags become available nearly every 24 hours.
First-time visitors – When you visit your friends for the very first time, you will receive even more Hotel city coins. This is usually on the order of about 1,000 coins.
Guest pay – Every time you have a guest check out of your hotel, you’ll earn money from those guests. The amount of Hotel City money that you’ll earn will differ based on several factors.
Sign on bonus – If you see that someone is hiring employees, you can accept the job and get a bonus for signing on.
Tips – When you are hired to work at someone’s hotel, you will earn tips from the guests. How much you earn will differ depending on your Hotel City level.
Clicking on guests – Sometimes when you click on your guests in their hotel rooms they’ll give you a tip.
Starting shifts – As long as a shift is in session you’ll earn money from it.

Making more Hotel City money – You can make even more Hotel City money by building up your hotel. The more rooms you have, the more paying guests that can stay there. The happier your guests are, the longer they will hang around. Thus, in the beginning of the Hotel City game, you should focus on adding more rooms to your hotel. This includes functional rooms and commercial rooms. Once your hotel has enough rooms, begin decorating it to improve the interior design.

Hotel star rating – Your hotel’s star rating can be found at the top of your screen. The higher your Hotel City rating, the more guests you’ll receive. To get a higher Hotel City star rating, you’ll need to improve your hotel by adding nice decorations, lots of rooms, and making sure it’s well maintained.

Earning tips from guests – You can earn tips from the different guests who stay in your rooms by clicking on them. Not every guest will give you tips, but some will and it’s an easy way of earning extra Hotel City coins.

Earning Hotel City experience points – You will need to earn Hotel Points in Hotel City in order to level up in the game. These points will be rewarded when you purchase things and people visit your hotel. Every Hotel City level you reach you’ll unlock something new.

Points to level up in Hotel City – You can quickly find out how many experience points you need to get to the next Hotel City level by placing your mouse on the level bar. There a window will open and it will display the exact number of points you need.

Visiting your friends – To visit your friends, select the friend you want to visit at the bottom of your screen. When you get to your friends hotel, you’ll see a bag of money waiting for you. Simply click that bag and you’ll receive the money. Once you have collected your money, you can visit another friend and collect more. Continue doing this until you have visited all of your Hotel City friends.

Inviting Hotel City friends – The more Hotel City friends you have, the more Hotel City money you can earn. You can invite your friends that are on your friend’s list. To do this, click the Invite Tab at the top of your screen and select the friends you want to add. If your friends accept, they will appear in the friends bar at the bottom of your screen.

Waving guests – People walking by your hotel waving is an indication that they would like a room. If you click on those people and drag them to your lobby you’ll get a bonus.

Clock above clerk’s head – If you see that there is a clock above the clerk’s head, that means the shift has ended and you need to restart it. To restart it, click on the Start Shift button at the bottom of the screen.

Temp staff – If you see the Temp Staff bar above visitors heads, that means they are temporarily working there. if you’d like, you can click on the temp staff and hire your friends to work in their positions.

Sending Hotel City friends gifts – If you want to send your Hotel City friends gifts, click the Gift Box on the left side of your screen and then click on the gift you want to send. You’ll then need to select the friends you want to send it to.

Accepting gifts for your hotel – To accept gifts, you’ll need to visit the requests page of Facebook. If there are any gifts present, you’ll need to click the Accept button before you can use the gifts.

PlayFish cash – To obtain PlayFish cash you’ll need to purchase it or fill out surveys to earn free cash. To do so, click the blue bar under the cash bar at the top of your screen. This will open a window and you’ll be able to see your options for buying PlayFish cash.

Buying Hotel City coins – If you find that you need more Hotel City coins you can either buy more or trade it in for Playfish cash. To see your options, click the Add Coins bar under the money. When the window pops up, you’ll be able to see your options for getting more Hotel City coins.

Room timer – In each room, there’s a timer that indicates how much longer your guests have before they leave. You can mouse over a room and the information will be displayed as well.

Number of rooms – The number of rooms you can have in Hotel City will depend on the size of the hotel you have. You can click the Build icon and you will see two numbers at the bottom of your screen. The first number will tell you how many rooms you currently have and the second number will tell you how many you can have in total. You are allowed more rooms when you do expansions so you should expand your hotel when you have the money to do so. Remember the more rooms you have, the more paying guest you’ll receive, and the more money you will make.

A faster Hotel City game – If you find the Hotel City game to be loading slow in your web browser, you can reduce the quality level to speed it up. On the left side of your screen, click the Wrench icon and select the first icon in that toolbar to reduce the quality.

Hotel City Strategy

Keep working – Make sure your staff continues to work around the clock so you don’t miss out on an potential guests that may want to stay at your hotel. Check your timer located in the bottom left of the screen and return to start the new shift as soon as the the current one ends.

Raise your star rating – Improve the look and feel of your hotel rooms by purchasing furniture and decor items. Decorating your hotel will increase your star rating and as a result your nightly room rate will increase. Hence, you’ll make more money!

Sell old Hotel City items – Selling previously purchased Hotel City items that you don’t need or want any longer is a great way to earn a little extra Hotel City cash. So the next time you upgrade your hotel consider replacing items (i.e. beds, etc.) with better ones and then selling the old item.

Poke sleeping guests – If you poke sleeping guests, sometimes they’ll give you some money. This doesn’t always occur but it’s both fun and free.

Hire permanent staff – It’s cost effective to hire permanent staff member than using temporary workers. So consider posting a request for friends to work at your hotel. As you increase the number of friends working for you, the lower the cost of wages will be.

Buy lots of Hotel City rooms – You should buy as many rooms as you can to bring in more people and more money.

Keep your rooms clean – Make sure you keep your rooms clean of dust and bugs. Otherwise your customers leave and you will lose money.

Gifting to Hotel City friends – Sending your friends gifts in Hotel City encourages them to do the same for you.

Visit Hotel City friends – Visiting your Hotel City friends will earn you coins and experience points. It’s especially important to do this early in the game when you need all the money and points you can get to level up.

Don’t share too often – While you’re playing the Hotel City game you’ll be asked to share accomplishments with your Facebook friends. Try no to do this too much or people may unfriend you. You can actually prevent the game from posting on your behalf by changing your profile settings. To learn more about this see the Facebook Guide.

Help other Hotel City players – If you see a fellow Hotel City friend posting in your news feed asking for help, you should assist them. The next time you need help they’ll be more inclined to return the favor.

Pass on the surveys and offers – When you fill out the offers for getting free cash for the game they’ll ask you for your credit card or phone number. Some of these companies have been known to apply charges to your credit card of phone bill if you don’t unsubscribe to the service. So make sure you read the fine print for each offer you fill out.

Quick browsing – Changing your web browser can often alleviate any slow game loading issues. Opera or Google Chrome are two very fast web browsers you may consider using.

Create informative invitations – Inviting people to become your friend and therefore join you in Hotel City is important for succeeding in the game. But it’s also important to include the reason why you’re inviting the person in the first place. Hence, adding a short message like “Hotel City” or “Hotel City add” tells the invitee exactly why you’re wanting to become their friend and you’ll be more successful obtaining the add.

Become a fan of Hotel City – Search Facebook to find the various Hotel City fan pages and groups to add more Hotel City friends. While you’re there you can post your profile link so they can add you too.

Share your tips – We’ll be updating this Hotel City guide to include any new Hotel City tips. If you have any of your own, send them to us and we’ll add them here.

Share this Hotel City guide <=== Share our Hotel City guide with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. This helps us get the word out and sharing it with your friends is a great way to teach them how to play Hotel City. Moreover, our Hotel City guide encourages your friends to help you succeed in the game.

Play other games – If you’re looking for some other terrific Facebook games to play, see our top ten list of the best Facebook games available. These games vary in genre and you’re sure to find another one that’s worth your while.

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

Ultimate Strategy Guide For Playing Hotel City

ToMuse.com

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

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Twitter’s Earlybird Discount Codes Fail To Offer Killer Group Buying Deals

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Free, Premium WordPress Affiliate Plugins Reviewed And Compared

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Social Lending Sites For Getting Peer To Peer Loans

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Twitter Adopts Local Daily Deals, Group Buying Business Model

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Free Online Personal Finance Management Software

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Online Services To Build A Website For Free

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

How To Import, Publish Blog Posts To Facebook

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best WordPress Forum Plugins For Your Blog

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Facebook City Game Applications

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Group Buying A Success On Facebook With Zynga’s YoVille Deals

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Free, Premium WordPress FAQ Plugins For Your Blog

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Why Groupon Should Fear Facebook

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best E-commerce Shopping Cart Applications For Selling On Facebook

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Facebook Animal Game Applications

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Calculated Cost Of Using Groupon, Group Buying Deals To Promote Your Business

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Group Buying: When Is It Not Cost Effective For Business Owners?

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Can Groupon Compete With Local Publishers, Alternative Group Buying Business Models?

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Best Online Shopping Clubs For Huge Brand Name Discounts

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In:

Ultimate Strategy Guide For Playing Hotel City

Related Articles You Are Probably Interested In: