AU Interactive Blog

Honest Verizon FiOS Review and Deals – Updated Monthly

2013-02-05T07:06:43Z

After a couple of months of seeing Verizon FiOS trucks in our area, it looks like my building has just been wired for Verizon FiOS… an boy am I excited.

For the past 2 years, we’ve been stuck with Time Warner Cable and their old copper technology. While the internet has been fast, we’ve had (what seems to be) weekly problems with our connection dropping or getting slow.

We just got FiOS installed last Tuesday and so far our speeds are faster than advertised and the TV looks crystal clear. It’s not Google Fiber, but hey we are in New York City — not Kansas. ;)

Current Verizon FiOS Deals:

If you live in an area where you can get FiOS you should check it out because they are offering some pretty good deals:

Verizon FiOS Double Play » $79.99/mo + $100 gift card.

This package is great if you use your cell phone as your primary phone and want super fast internet and amazing digital TV.

Includes FiOS Internet 15/5 Mbps – Amazing for Skype, Netflix, and Hulu.
Includes FiOS TV Prime HD – 210+ Channels with over 55+ in HD quality. Huge on demand library of 40,000 plus titles.
Includes $100 Visa prepaid card with annual contracts.

Setup Your Verizon FiOS Double Play here. ->

Verizon FiOS Triple Play » $94.99/mo + $250 gift card.

This package is a great deal if you still have a home phone line and want super fast internet and crystal clear TV.

Includes FiOS Quantum Internet 50/25 Mbps – Amazing for Skype, Netflix, and Hulu.
Includes FiOS TV Prime HD – 210+ Channels with over 55+ in HD quality. Huge on demand library of 40,000 plus titles.
Includes FiOS Home Phone – Unlimited nationwide calling and low cost calling to other countries.
Includes $250 Visa prepaid card with annual contracts.

Setup Your Verizon FiOS Triple Play here. ->

Here is Why I Love Verizon FiOS (and wrote this review)

If Verizon FiOS is available in your area and you are using Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cablevision, or U-Verse — then you are missing out.

So far all of my friends that have come over for movie night here in NYC have noticed the huge difference in quality on Netflix, no longer does the movie have long buffering times and random pixelation.

I’ve also noticed a huge difference when playing Xbox live, I’m not experiencing nearly as much lag and as a result I’m getting higher scores on Madden and Modern Warfare.

As far as the TV quality, it is outstanding. I really only watch HBO and a few other channels, so I love having access the huge on demand library for the past shows I’ve missed.

All in all, FiOS has been outstanding, my only complaint is that it too so long to get installed in my building.

After, my first experience with FiOS in 2009 and now that I have FiOS again in my apartment, I am once again a believer that once you go to fiber optic, you’ll never go back.

Updated: After a few user emails, here is the link to check if you can get FiOS in your area. Just enter your address and apartment number and their system will look you up.

As a general rule (from what I can find), FiOS is offered in these major cities on the East Coast and the areas around them:

Buffalo
New York
Pittsburgh
Plano
Providence
Sarasota
Syracuse
Tampa
Virginia Beach
Washington D.C.

Last Updated: May, 2013 — Added new deals and link to availability and latest cities.

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Thesis Review: An Honor Roll Worthy WordPress Theme

2013-02-06T23:47:22Z

When it comes to WordPress themes, Thesis is at the top of nearly every list and for a pair of very good reasons too: great looks and ease of use. That is not to say that other themes do not look great or are harder to use, but Thesis looks really slick and professional in its default setup. In fact, it would be fair to say that there is clear evidence that a great deal of time and thought went into the default appearance as well as the user interface. This combination is ideal for people who just want to manage their blog(s) and post content without worrying whether first impressions are driving visitors away for good. In fact, save for one small flaw, it would be fair to say that Thesis is almost the WordPress theme equivalent of the Mac OS: it is decidedly easy on the eyes, looks great without trying to, and just works.

Download the Latest Version of Thesis »

The one aspect of dealing with Thesis that is sub-par for a pay-for WordPress theme is that one has to manually download it and install it via FTP. FTP is an aging standard and can be unreliable at times, but that is not the main complaint here. The main complaint is this: WordPress comes with an integrated theme finder, but Thesis is nowhere to be found. This is not the only top notch theme that is not available via the WordPress theme finder, and there may be reasons for this omission. Perhaps all the themes in the WordPress theme finder are free, but why can’t a demo version with limited features or an outdated public-license version be available? It would certainly make installation so much easier and more user friendly, which are two of Thesis’s strong points. While this might seem like a minor annoyance, especially to countless tech savants of the world, it could be a roadblock for bloggers who are not overly tech-oriented. While it is easy to suggest that such bloggers may have a way to go before they are ready for the world of blogging, the beauty of the Internet is that it should give everyone a voice. True, WordPress looks decent by default, but Thesis is almost drool-worthy out of the box, and not being able to install such an intuitive and user friendly theme without getting into FTP is a tiny bit of a let down in some ways.

Installation the FTP Way

On the subject of installation, the fact is that not everyone will be daunted by what amounts to a somewhat standard routine for a premium WordPress theme. Here is a list of what anyone will need to have handy before attempting to install Thesis:

An up-to-date version of WordPress
A Good FTP program
Your FTP account information (user name, password, host, and possibly port)
A copy of the Thesis theme unzipped on a local or network drive
A few minutes depending one’s broadband connection
WordPress login credentials for the site or sites to be updated

FTP Upload

After ensuring that the site is backed up, and WordPress is up to date, it is time to begin. Start by logging into the FTP/SFTP account and locate the wp-content/themes folder. The Thesis folder needs to be uploaded in its entirety here, so that in the end there will be a wp-content/themes/thesis folder. The actual name of the folder does not matter, it could be called wp-content/themes/mytheme and WordPress will still be able to use it.

Thesis Options Menu Bar

To install any theme in WordPress, simply click on the appearance menu and any FTP-installed theme should be available. In this case, the Thesis theme is ready to install by simply clicking on the ‘activate’ link. Once installed, there are a few things worth taking note of, including the site(s) affected by the upgrade as well as the new menu items.

Get a Towel Before Looking At The Updated Site(s), It’s For The Drool

If there was one thing that could be taken away from the stock appearance of Thesis, it would probably be just how great it looks. There are always ways to tweak and modify any WordPress theme at the code level, and Thesis certainly is no exception, but it does look genuinely amazing right out of the box. This same quality look extends to menus that look as if Apple’s crowd of software artists/engineers thought of and executed them. There are numerous Thesis tutorials that can make features that seem advanced look like child’s play in no time. This is not only a product of great tutorials, but also the genius of a well designed theme that empowers so many people to make truly amazing websites.

Thesis Menu Options

The menus are broken down into Thesis Options, Design Options, and Custom File Editor menus. Each menu is well laid out with expandable/collapsible sub-menus that are well organized and thematic. Unlike some other notable themes, these menus are small and bite sized which makes them ideal for novices and pros looking for quick answers. Surprisingly, there is a lot to tweak in these menus as well as an incredible amount of helpful advice contained within each sub-menu. While it is great to see the work that Chris Pearson, the mind behind Thesis, in this particular regard, his talent for UI/settings is so desperately needed by hundreds of companies around the world that it seems like some sort of crime that he limit himself to helping bloggers. Anyone who has ever wrestled with a poorly designed settings menu or preference pane will probably be delighted by how easy to use, change, and understand Thesis is.

Even without tweaking, Thesis looks great. Better yet, simple cosmetic and internal changes are really easy to make. This is absolutely ideal for bloggers that cannot be bothered with learning all the nuts and bolts of a WordPress theme, but simply want to start blogging. With no tech degree needed to make a site like amazing, this might very well be the best theme available from the perspective of a novice, but it also has a lot to offer gear-heads that want to tweak code to their own satisfaction. If you are looking for outstanding hosting for Thesis, we recommend WP Engine.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that Thesis is a great skin for those who want to start a great looking blog but do not want to spend endless hours trying to learn CSS, html, PHP, or any other nearly arcane art. Looks are, of course, subjective, and thus something that looks great today may look dated in a few years. With frequent updates, it would seem likely that an investment in Thesis would be sound from an aesthetic standpoint, but tastes do change. Thesis also has a lot to offer coders, and is very well remarked. Other than that fact that Thesis is not free, there is absolutely no reason not to give Thesis two thumbs up.

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How to Turn Traffic and Trust Into Sales – Review

2011-11-16T00:46:45Z

If you want to learn basketball from a basketball great, you give Michael Jordan a call. If you want to get the inside scoop on football from a football legend, you hit up John Elway. If you want to learn about affiliate marketing from a super-star of the industry, you listen to the words and advice of Nick Reese. It is what myself, and many other people in the industry have been doing for a while, and now it is something that everyone has a chance to do.

Nick is a twenty-something year old affiliate marketing prodigy, who has been involved in the industry since his college days. Since graduating he has propelled himself into the affiliate marketing spotlight and now makes his living solely online. Countless big name Internet gurus kept coming to Nick for advice, so he decided, what better way to share my knowledge, then to put my ideas down on paper, errrr, on PDF file. From this idea was born “How to Turn Traffic and Trust Into Sales.”

The name says it all. “How to Turn Traffic and Trust Into Sales” is an eBook aimed at taking an inside look at what it takes to become successful in the affiliate marketing industry. Gone are the days where the richest online entrepreneurs are running countless Google adsense pages with no name or face attached to them. Gone are the days of spam as a successful marketing ploy. Now online action from buyers requires trust and accountability from the business behind the sale. With the countless online outlets for almost every type of product, it is up to the owner to set their brand apart from the rest.

As is stressed over and over in the book, this is NOT a get rich quick solution, and there is NO overnight success involved. This eBook guides you through the process of setting up a strong foundation for an eventual online business and brand. Nick takes you through the process of identifying a potential niche, building your brand within that niche, and capitalizing on your traffic and your brand in such great detail, that even the most experienced affiliate marketers will learn something from this book. I’d even go as far to bet that Nick may have learned something himself or found trends in his work as he put all of his techniques and ideas down in print!

Don’t get me wrong though, this eBook goes far beyond a “how to” guide for setting up your online brand. I think this line from the book can sum up the value of it better than anything I could write;

“This book has one overarching goal: To teach you how to be an ideal affiliate
candidate for companies with established affiliate programs and position
yourself to profit when you become an affiliate.”

Not only is it important that the companies with affiliate programs view you as a valuable asset, the people visiting your site have to value your opinion! If you are missing either one of these two pieces then your affiliate marketing project is already off to a doomed start.

In this book Nick talks about building your microbrand, generating traffic, developing content, and gaining trust. More importantly though than all of these subjects, is Nicks ability to take the reader by the hand and guide them through the process of building their reputation, their brand, and their websites. This blueprint is a great start to your online success, but Nick goes a step further and includes a “Planning Guide”, which will take you through the entire process, step by step, asking you questions you may not have considered. The answers to these questions may be the difference between a huge success, or and big failure. Finally, the book is filled with a large list of resources and an inside look at the different types of affiliate programs. Some might say this area of the book alone is worth the price of the entire book!

I know this eBook sounds almost too good to be true, but head on over to TrafficandTrust.com and read the reviews from countless affiliate marketers (many of whom are EXTREMELY successful) who’ve all had the same reaction as I have. The affiliate marketing world will be the first to admit, Nick hit the nail right on the head with “Traffic and Trust.”

There are no affiliate links in this article.

This is a guest post by Matt Hope from BackpackingWorldwide.com

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CrowdSPRING Review: Making Art Affordable via Globalization

2013-02-06T23:48:54Z

CrowdSPRING advertises itself as a one-stop-shop for virtually every kind of graphic design and/or content need that clients might need. The question become: can crowdSPRING deliver, or is it simply another overhyped company? To answer that question a fairly as possible, it would help to take a look at how crowdSPRING works from the perspective of a client.

How CrowdSPRING Works

Clients log in to crowdSPRING and create a new project that includes a budget, a deadline, and a description. This is fundamentally different than the traditional method of requesting bids and accepting the lowest bid as the maximum amount that a project can cost is known before hand, and that is one of the strongest appeals of the service from a top-level perspective. Once a project is created, it is available for the artistic community at large to see. If artists want to get involved with the project, they will submit a bid and their work for review.

It is also possible to browse artists, their profiles and even their portfolios if one is very specific about who they want to do the work. In most cases though, the general idea is to get as many bids and offers as possible. With over 50,000 registered contributors hailing from all over the world, that should not be a problem. In fact, crowdSPRING proudly reports that the average project receives well over 100 submissions. This does bring up a small problem: can all of these artists be true digital artists.

Redefining the Digital Artwork Market

The contention that many make with crowdSPRING is that not all of its participants are ‘properly’ trained digital artists, and that customers might be receiving and accepting bids that are not entirely in their best interest. The problem is that art is a very subjective thing, and while there are certain aspects of art that have been carefully studied and distilled into marketing and other subjects, the fact is that art is still art. Does going to a school make one an artist? Probably not. Is it possible to be an artist without going to school? Some say yes, some say no. Would a human resource representative be able to make a hiring decision based on a portfolio with any more artistic insight than a manager or owner using crowdSPRING? Doubtful.

In short, the complaints of this nature are very hard to substantiate and may be the result of angry individuals who spent a large part of their lives and a good deal of money learning the tools of their trade. This is no minor undertaking either, but globalization has already irreversibly changed so many career fields that it is hard to feel sorry for those artists who invested so much and expected so much only to see services like crowdSPRING essentially change the game.

Here’s Why CrowdSPRING is the Best Choice

An old expression says that there are many ways to move forward yet only one way to stand still, but another expression argues that in the realm of business there are only the quick and the dead. This leaves standing still an untenable option; businesses need art. If there were three paths that could be taken in regards to digital art, they would be labeled: crowdSPRING, find/hire an artist, and the hard way. The hard way involves a lot of money and time spent buying and learning the latest softwate packages and hoping that a spark of latent artistic talent is transferable to the digital medium. Obviously this route is not cost effective and the opportunity costs could be incalculable. Alternative, one could hire an artist full time, part time, or on spec, but that might be expensive and is far more limiting than being able to pick and choose from dozens of submissions. This leaves crowdSPRING, which really does not seem to have any drawbacks.

Being able to set deadlines, maximum budgets, and then browse from (typically) over a hundred results is obviously better than the two forward-moving alternatives, and all of those alternatives beat living in a world without art. You simply cannot go wrong with signing up and posting a few projects, and crowdSPRING handles EVERYTHING right down to non-disclosure agreements, intellectual property protection, reviews, feedback, and even has a strong community-drive set of forums.

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DNS Made Easy Review: Keep Your Web Presence Alive Regardless of Traffic

2010-07-19T23:57:41Z

DNS Made Easy has plenty to offer, which certainly makes reviewing them a difficult task. Depending upon on what one is doing, DNS Made Easy can be used in different ways. Most of DNS Made Easy’s offerings can be broken down into one of two categories, which makes categorizing these services a lot easier.

DNS Made Easy Obvious Does DNS

There are three primary DNS-related services available from DNS Made Easy: Primary, secondary, and failover. Primary DNS serving is the main focus of DNS Made Easy, and the company has a legendary reputation that is absolutely second to none. Complete control is offered to change DNS records at a fraction of the price that the competition charges. Propagation is near-instantaneous, which means that domains can be added, changed, or removed at an instant’s notice. No more waiting 48 hours!

The firm boasts a historic average of 100% uptime over the last 3 straight years, which is great for anyone looking for rock-solid stability. This legendary stability is even available under tremendous loads, and that is something that other vendors cannot promise. This same legendary reliability is the reason why Time Warner, AOL, Verio and may others use DNS Made Easy for their primary DNS needs. It probably does not hurt that DNS made easy has an incredible multi-redundancy system in place that simultaneously protects against hardware failure and reduces latency.

Secondary DNS functionality is available for those that know what they are doing, as is failover management. Failover is a great way to keep multiple sites up and running and allow one to take over whenever a hardware or software glitch afflicts one particular server. This can make upgrading or troubleshooting particularly easy, and it can also mean that downtime is not really downtime, it just becomes time to re-route traffic.

DNS Made Easy also offers an anycast technology that lets customers route to their nearest server. There are countless creative uses for this such as localized sites hosted semi-locally or completely locally, or just being able to control which sub-domain visitors are routed to. There are countless other applications for anycasting, and more are created all the time.

DNS Made Easy Also Does Mail

There are also several mail offerings on tap for DNS Made Easy customers, including: backup mail services, SMTP authentication, mail forwarding, and the traditional POP3/IMAP hosting options. With e-mails being so vital to modern business, having a company with a rock solid reliability history in one’s corner is highly desirable. One of the most innovative features offered by DNS Made Easy is a method of circumventing ISP regulations that typically block port 25, which is used by SMTP servers to authenticate e-mails.

Another great e-mail feature that works well with this is the ability to use DNS Made Easy’s e-mail backup system that keeps offsite copies of e-mails just in case a hardware failure strikes at an inopportune moment. Of course, there rarely is a great time for a hardware failure, so this is almost always a very valuable service.

Support Unlike Any Other

Every see those commercials or movies where powerful executives from fortune 500 companies get special support treatment in some way? Well, just about every customer gets that treatment from DNS Made Easy’s friendly and incredibly intelligent support staff. Our test calls were answered promptly and our questions were promptly answered. We did not really have a problem to fix, but that is probably the best thing one could say about a support center: they never need to call it.

Pricing

With so many services to consider, it is very difficult to speak on the prices of DNS Made Easy’s services. After all, they compete with many different kinds of companies, but their primary focus is on DNS services. That being said, managed DNS solutions start at $14.95 per month. For that, one gets 3 managed domains with up to 120 records and a maximum monthly volume of 1 million queries. Failover protection is available for an additional fee, but this particular service does some with some of the higher-tier plans, such as the Business Membership class plan that sells for $59.95 per month. The Business Membership plan comes with the ability to manage 25 domains, 1000 records, and a monthly query volume of up to 10 million, plus 3 systems monitoring the records for extra reliability.

Most of the competition either charges more, delivers less, or some combination of these traits. Those looking for unparalleled reliability for their DNS and/or e-mail needs simply must look into the services offered by DNS Made Easy.

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Gravity Forms Review: Amazing Forms Made Simple

2010-07-20T00:00:40Z

Gravity Forms offers WordPress users the promise of easy to use form creation, but does it actually deliver? This is what we will be investigating in our first look at Gravity Forms, but we also decided to devise a few tests that would see what Gravity Forms was made of. After all, some plug-ins work really well with WordPress, but that does not mean that do they play nicely with other skins and plug-ins.

Pleasant Surprises

After installing Gravity Forms, which itself was as simple as installing any other WordPress plug-in, we were immediately greeted with a new menu on our dashboard: Gravity Forms. Clicking on this let us know that we did not yet have any forms, and so we were directed to create forms. Later, once we had built a handful of test forms, we were given the option of managing these forms directly from this menu.

Setting up our first form was a mixed experience, but a decidedly positive one. The only thing that was not to our liking was probably more of a WordPress problem than anything else, but a WYSIWYG editor really should show one’s theme off. Instead, our test forms simply floated on a dull-gray background that was nowhere near as impressive as some of the skins we were using to torture Gravity Forms with. Our theory was the Gravity Forms would look great on a standard WordPress install but a few skins would trip it up visually. This was not the case, but it certainly proved to be an interesting exercise as we got to see our forms mingle with a bunch of different skins.

Flexibility Forms!

Setting up forms in Gravity Forms couldn’t be simpler. Forms start with a basic title, description, and then can be added to with everything from off the shelf buttons, fields, boxes, menus, and virtually anything else that one could possibly want. Most of these items are already pre-named, such as name fields, and that reduces the amount of time and effort involved with creating forms. Additionally, form items can be conditional. For example, a text input box might be inactive unless one answers a question with ‘other’ in which case it would be valuable to know the specific answer, such as how they heard about a product or site.

Forms can be scheduled to go live at specific times, just like posts, and go dark at certain times or once certain criteria have been met. For example, perhaps a promotional item would be available only to the first 1000 people to fill out a form, and after that the form needs to be removed or made inactive. Gravity Forms can handle this, and it is clear that people who really know their forms spent a great deal of time brainstorming possible uses for forms before they made Gravity Forms.

Where Does the Data Go?

Some forms end up being e-mailed, and Gravity Forms can handle that, but that is the least of the Gravity Forms can do. The ability to integrated with other plug-ins has lead to a great number of ways to use the data generated from Gravity Forms. Some third party plug-ins, such as the MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and FreshBooks add-ons only work with the Gravity Forms Developer Support License. At $199, the Developer Support License is not inexpensive, but it can be used on unlimited sites and comes with priority support.

The Two Other Packages

There are two other Gravity Form licenses available: the Single Site Support License for $39, and the Multi-Site Support License differs from the Single Site Support License only in that it offers support for up to 5 sites. This is certainly cost effective, but the add-ons are easily worth the extra $100. There is even a free on-site demo that lets visitors give Gravity Forms a test drive, but it too is not entirely feature complete due to the limitations of the demo-technology involved. Still, it should give a reasonable approximation of what one can expect when using Gravity Forms.

The Verdict

The ability to quickly create and manage forms from an intuitive WordPress interface makes Gravity Forms an absolute must-have plug-in for anyone who can use forms. Anyone engaged in online marketing or preparing for future marketing campaigns can use forms, so that more or less means that nearly everyone using WordPress can probably benefit from Gravity Forms.

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BoostCTR Review: Boost Advertising Efficacy or Your Money Back!

2010-07-20T00:10:09Z

Do what you do best. It is classic advice, and in business parlance it is often referred to as sticking to the core competency of a business. What is one to do if their core competency does not include advertising/copywriting skills? The answer is that they need to outsource, at least temporarily. Some copywriting skills can be learned, but some skills are particularly difficult to master. For example, writing three line advertisements/calls to action that are even shorter than the notoriously minuscule offerings found in newspapers for generations. For this, BoostCTR might be the place to turn to for outsourcing because this is BoostCTR’s core competency.

The One Potential Flaw

Well, it would be more accurate to say that writing three lines of effective copy is not necessarily BoostCTR’s core competency, but the core competency of their writers. Those writers are freelancers, and that means that they are transitory by nature; if the economy is down, then it is very likely that BoostCTR will have an ample stable of very capable writers. If the economy is up, then there might be fewer and/or less talented writers that will be less willing to compete for bargain basement assignments. It is certainly not fair to hold a single company responsible for the economy, but it is worth pointing out that there may be very strong links between the two in this case. Perhaps the net effect is very little, but it would be nice to have professional writers on salary to offset this potential risk.

How Does BoostCTR Work?

The big question most people have when first hearing about BoostCTR is simple: how does the service work? The answer is a little more complex than the question itself, but it is still relatively easy to follow: BoostCTR requires access to one’s AdWords login credentials in order to access existing ad groups which will be used to generate contests. These contests are not dissimilar to a sort of copywriting fight club (we don’t talk about copywriting fight club) in which the initial text(s) taken from AdWords will be given the position as the reigning champion. As better texts are created and tested in a real world environment, the champion will (almost always) be dethroned by a contender. How long can that contender hang on to the crown? That all depends on the quality and that is one of the best aspects of BoostCTR: the ability to reject texts and try them in the wild ensures effective copy, meaning that there is almost no risk factor.

Keeping Writers On-Board

Cash prizes can also be added to further entice writers to provide excellent copy. As previously mentioned, this might be necessary in certain situations that may be predicated primarily upon the economy.

Impressive Value

The only risk associated with BoostCTR is that of the payment system, and it truly is not that risky. In fact, it would be safe to say that it is really only an opportunity cost, and one that is well spent. Here is how it works: every advertisement group sent in for an upgrade is subject to a toll of 1 credit. These credits can be purchased in lots of one, three, five, and ten. The price per advertisement group revision depends on how many credits are purchased at any one time, with more purchased at one time being a better idea for those with a frugal mindset. The price per ad group for a single credit purchase is $75, while the cost per ad group on a 10 credit purchase is only $50. Given that the advertisements are already field-proven, even a fee of over $100 would seem quite reasonable.

Agencies Get Something Too

Agencies looking to outsource their highly-specialized three-line copy are in luck too! BoostCTR has exactly what they need, and that can be good for a number of reasons. Agencies can certainly increase their bottom line substantially by only receiving quality work for a fair price. The same is certainly true for webmasters and business operators as well; sticking to what one does best is a great way to make money, but that only works if it is possible to find others who will do what they do best at a reasonable price. BoostCTR offers top-notch talent at prices that seem very reasonable.

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Raven SEO Tools Review: More SEO Blackbird Than Black Sheep

2010-07-20T00:18:48Z

Raven SEO tools claims to have a suite of powerful tools designed to help effectively manage, market, research, report, and even create content for blogs. Raven SEO is far from alone in this field (or these fields depending on how one chooses to view such tools), which might cause those looking for a new or different approach to wonder if the dark bird has what it takes. As with any set of tools, that all really depends on what one is looking for. The good news is that Raven’s bevy of tools and options allows them to compete in several different areas, but that is both a blessing and a curse in some cases.

One Size Fits All?

If there was one thing that was potentially troubling us before we got our hands on Raven, it was that tools that try to do too much often prove to be deficient in several key areas. Luckily, we Raven SEO is backed by a team of very talented developers, engineers, artists, SEO specialists, and other employees. The result is that Raven SEO feels more like someone took a number of top-notch standalone tools, taught them to play nicely together, and managed to create a unified and professional looking user interface to tie them all together. In short, this black bird is anything but a black sheep.

Keywords, Competitors, and Events…Oh My!

Keyword research is one of the cornerstones of developing content, and part of keyword research is knowing that other players in the industry are doing. There are some keyword research tools that only handle keyword research without handling even the basics of competitor and/or event tracking. These tools, while potentially excellent at what they do, lack key features that Raven SEO brings to the table.

A real world example of how the highly integrated tools offered by Raven SEO would probably be best illustrated by considering what an affiliate marketer trying to extol the virtues of a generic widget might face in the course of a campaign. All good campaigns will have a research phase, but knowing which keywords work today does not necessarily mean that those same keywords and phrases will work well tomorrow. Furthermore, it might be instructive to see which keywords are being used by the competition. After all, a change in market conditions or a single news story could influence search patterns as can a great number of competitors joining the field but offering poor content.

The last few examples are all events, but there are other events that can be tracked as well. Virtually any event can be easily entered into the timeline tracking system, and that allows for easy tracking of exposure and/or rankings. While the tools do not allow for the automated establishment of events based on tracking of news or industry events based on RSS feeds or other sources, the ability to manually enter such information is still possible.

Manage This, That, and the Other Thing

What is all of that research, tracking, and information worth without a way to act on it? This is where Raven SEO really shines and in our opinion, becomes far more than an SEO tool. In fact, we would go so far as to say that Raven SEO is more of a Raven SEO plus due to the fact that it integrates other features that just about anyone who has been undertaking keyword research and/or market analysis will want to do.

Searching and Socialization, and Reports for Everything

One of the nicest tools included with the suite is the ability to move right from research to making connections. The integrated search tool allows for one to easily look at the competition for other purposes as well, especially those relating to socialization. After all, sometimes the best way to promote a site is engage in a little friendly link sharing, guest-posting, or otherwise plugging into the social pipeline. In integrated contact manager and link manager helps content managers keep on top of what everyone is doing and manage their responsibilities. A blog-, persona-, and content-manager are also integrated into the package, each one is worthy of a review of their own.

It is also worth noting that a great number of reports and reporting options are available, including white labeling. Analytics, campaign report, agency and in-house marketing, and more are all readily available, attractive, and easily modified. The white labeled reports are very suave and professional, unlike some competitors we could mention.

Pricing

Raven SEO comes in three primary forms, but it is possible to modify some aspects of each plan for an additional fee. The BASIC plan offers a single user the ability to manage up to three websites (additional site cost $5 each) for $19. The PRO plan costs $99 for two users, but adds unlimited website support, white labeling and a sub-domain at raventools.com, as well as increases the number of reports and links that can be stored in the link manager. There is an AGENCY plan costs $249 for up to eight users, but radically increases the number of keywords, links, and reports that can be conducted. Finding the right plan is made simple with the custom plan finder offered by Raven SEO, and there is even a free trial to test.

The Verdict

A free trial, a list of tools so long that one could write a whole series of books on them, and a user interface that makes using those tools effectively a cinch, it is hard not to recommend Raven SEO. For reviews of it’s competitors check out our SEOMoz Review and Scribe SEO Review.

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Pear Analytics Review: Improve Ranking With Useful Advice

2010-07-20T00:22:53Z

Pear Analytics offers website owners concerned about their ranking some interesting feedback based on a search engine’s point of view. Does Pear Analytics actually work, or is this just another example of a great idea in theory but quite different in reality? It might be a bit of both depending on how one uses it, but if one is willing to keep their mind engaged and not just blindly follow advice then there is a very good chance that Pear Analytics can help one’s site(s) rank much higher than they currently do.

The Importance of Good Decision Making

Almost all SEO analysis tools on the market have a single potential flaw, but that flaw depends greatly on how much one just wants to remove themselves the decision making process. After all, it can be extremely tempting to just listen blindly to advice and not think too much about it, especially when the source clearly knows as much about SEO as Pear Analytics does. At the end of the day, most of Pear Analytics advice is very solid, but the human factor should never be removed as ultimately content and sites are going to be viewed by human beings as well as search engines.

What Pear Analytics Offers

Pear Analytics has a lot to offer so long as one remembers that they are in control and need to think about the solutions and suggestions and not implement them blindly and unquestioningly. Pear Analytics looks at pages one by one through the eyes of both customers and search engines and determines what is working well, what needs work, and what is just horribly wrong and should be addressed immediately. On top that Pear Analytics offers helpful suggestions and pointers to help guide one on the road to fixing the problem(s) with their site.

From the Eyes of Search Engine

Search engines use complex algorithms to evaluate web pages, and those algorithms constantly change. Pear Analytics has a team of experts that keep track of these changes and offer realistic feedback on what can be changed as well as what cannot be changed, such as the age of the site. Often a small omission or field that was not properly filled out will result in a substantially reduced rating, which in turn means that fewer visitors will even see the page(s) in question.

Another factor that Pear Analytics helps to keep track of is that of the competition who compete within the same keyword-space. Knowing what the competition is doing can help one either compete head-on or learn which niches are not quite so competitive. Either way, it does pay to know what is going on from a search engine’s perspective, especially as it relates to the competition for clicks.

From the Eyes of a Person

Some metrics are a little more important to those who do click, such as the organization of the site or how long it takes to load. Pear Analytics actually does an impressive job of measuring these sorts of statistics and providing feedback. For example, if a host is too slow then Pear Analytics might suggest a new host, upgrading plans, or reworking the site. If the site lacks other things that viewers might want to see, Pear Analytics will be sure to comment on it.

Feedback

Feedback comes in many forms with Pear Analytics, and progress is always easy to chart. Most feedback is done in a simplified thumbs up or down method, which is usually augmented by useful advice. Advice with a twist of humor can take the edge off of finding out just how complex SEO can truly be, and it is nice to see that Pear Analytics is not just another tool designed by engineers and gear heads.

Pricing

There are four pricing plans available for Pear Analytics, each with its own monthly fee. The Micro Site plan is the least expensive, but only allows for tracking on 5 pages, 1 competitor and up to 50 keywords for $9 per month. $27 per month nets one an upgrade to the Small Site package that offers tracking on up to 25 pages, 2 competitors, and up to 250 keywords. The Medium Site plan offers tracking on up to 75 pages, 500 keywords, and 4 competitors while the high-end Large Site plan is $129 and allows for tracking of unlimited competitors, 1000 keywords and tracking on up to 150 pages. A monthly report is available for each plan, with additional reports available for an additional fee that varies based on the quantity ordered and the plan.

Is Pear Analytics Worth The Money?

The fact is that people tend to visit the top sites provided to them by a search engine, and if your site is not on that list then you need to figure out why. Pear Analytics even offers a free test of their service to see what your site might be missing at no risk. If you are not getting the traction that you think your content deserves, then you should certainly give Pear Analytics a try.

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Backpack Review: Keeping a Group Organized Was Never This Easy

2010-07-20T00:25:04Z

Backpack markets itself as a one-stop organization solution for businesses and groups of all kinds, but how does it measure up to those claims? Furthermore, how does Backpack justify the fact that it charges for its services when other companies offer a good deal of what Backpack has for free, even if they are simply in bits and pieces? These are good questions that we are seeking to answer in our review of Backpack.

What Backpack Offers: Overview

Backpack can be thought of sort of as a custom cloud service that lets users quickly create, modify, and share pages that are packed with (hopefully) useful information. This service is augmented by built-in tools that groups and organizations might find handy when it comes to keeping everything together, such as group calendars, to-do lists, reminders/ticklers, files of all kinds, message boards, and notes. The fact that all of these things can be seamlessly and quickly integrated into a web page makes Backpack incredibly impressive from many different perspectives.

While Backpack probably won’t be winning any awards from an aesthetics standpoint, it is imminently useful. Do not mistake this as an indictment on Backpack’s visuals, but rather consider it to be a non-too-subtle implication that Backpack’s looks are far more functional than they are visually appealing. That can be great, especially if users are easily distracted…and let’s face it, we’ve all been at a point sometime when we would much rather let our minds drift than do our work. At least once…maybe twice…and that could be an argument for a minimalist design. On the other hand, it would be hard to be offended by the design of Backpack’s pages, so there may not be much of a downside to Backpack’s UI from a productivity standpoint.

To Share or Not to Share

When new pages are created, it is possible to share them immediately with others in one’s group. This allows everyone to see what is going on, and that can be important from a productivity standpoint. For example, instead of logging in to three or four different sites to create ticklers, calendar events, to-do items, and notes, it can all be done in far less time using Backpack. The same is also true when it comes to sending e-mails whenever something happens as Backpack can handle that too. The total time savings can be very substantial, and that lets people get back to doing what they do instead of wasting their time wrestling with different tools.

There may also be times when some files or pages should not be available to everyone. This is something that Backpack handles intuitively with a simple interface that permits one to restrict who can access a page and/or edit the page. Life can be a lot simpler with a tool like this, and it certainly helps that the user interface is very clean.

The Power of the Cloud

Another major appeal of Backpack is that it is a true cloud app. This means that all of the data is stored online, and is accessible from anywhere in the world. This is not something that can be said of all cloud-based solutions, some of which may require alternate DNS and/or VPN services when traveling abroad. This is especially true of those planning to explore exotic locations in Asia and the Middle East, where certain services and IP ranges may be blocked. While there is no guarantee that Backpack will be available without a DNS and/or VPN solution, at least one does not have to remember which service(s) have to be activated in order to access certain kinds of data. This also brings up one of the best arguments for Backpack: one username and password for virtually all of one’s account information.

Why Backpack is Worthwhile

This is where it literally pays to discuss the core problem: nearly everything that Backpack has to offer can be found online elsewhere for less money or even for free. Does that mean that Backpack is not worth investing in? Absolutely not. The ability to create functional pages in a snap is almost impossible to argue with, and the ability to decide who can see/change what is also important. The updates are a nice touch as are the reminders, but all of these features come at a price that can be measured in dollars and cents. The price can easily be offset by increased productivity and lowered stress levels, both of which can be worth a lot. Who says that tranquility cannot be purchased?

The Price to be Paid for Organization

Nothing of any value is for free, and Backpack is no exception to this universal truth. There are four plans, starting with the $24/month Basic plan and ending with the $149 per month Max plan. Each of the four plans has a different number of users, storage capabilities, and pages, but even the Basic plan offers an ample 4 GB, 1000 pages, and 6 users. It is also worth noting that there is a 30-day trial that can allows organizations to give Backpack an honest evaluation of their own. With nothing to lose but more hours of productivity, the question is: why haven’t you checked out Backpack yet?

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