But need not worry.  If you are not in need of new features, which I think majority would not be, you can still continue to use GR as before. You can see if you wish to use new features and then you might want to upgrade.

All the old customers can use Get Response as before without any obligation to upgrade.

Here is the comparison of features with and without upgradation.

If you have less than 500 customers, you would not feel the price difference. It stays the same.

But you would feel the pinch if  your list has more subscribers.

However, with new features you can convert more of your subscribers or prune them, making your email marketing effective.

Yes! A lot of people are crying foul again. but let us be clear, prices are going to stay.

It is better to come to terms with reality.

There id a good news for new customers who wish to use autoresponders. They can try Getresponse for free fo runlimited time as long as they have 10 customers.

Good for evaluation. Isn’t it.

Getresponse 6 has finally launched. With this Getrponse has brought out a lot of new features and of course a new price range.

First the features

Email Templates

You can pick the perfect HTML template that suits your  audience.There are more than 300 available.

You can also choose from many available web capture forms. you can also add the contacts from your iphone.

Split Testing

Test a campaign first before it goes out to your readers.! You can create  create up to 5 messages, with different personalization techniques, subjects, and styles. GetResponse will test each version for you, then automatically select and send the best!
Video Email Marketing

GetResponse Multimedia Studio lets you record and store up to 100MB of audio and video files, right from your account. Deliver high-impact customer testimonials, product demos, and event videos.

Note: this feature requires optional subscription to GetResponse Multimedia Studio.

Personalized Opt-in/Opt-out Pages

You can personalize your opt-in/opt-out messages and welcome new customers with a “thank you” note.

Unlimited Email Messages & Follow Ups

Create and send as many campaigns, newsletters and broadcasts as you want  and you can automate your follow-up messages like welcome notes and birthday greetings and to drip marketing campaigns. Yyou can also assign a unique domain name to your campaign

Online Surveys

With GetResponse Surveys, you can plug into customer trends, opinions and preferences…and it won’t cost you a dime extra.

Blog and Twitter Integration

With single click integration your audience can get instant updates on blog posts, campaigns, offers, and more automatically! Similarly, you can integrate your Twitter account. All you need to do is to type your Twitter login and password right after you create your message and GetResponse does the rest! you can make it easy for Tweeters to connect to your website and latest campaigns, blogs and newsletters.

Capture Contacts

You can automatically import new customers into your database from online forms, contests, and surveys. GetResponse will even parse information from online transaction applications like PayPal. That is pretty cool.

Unlimited Segmentation/Targeting

You can now segment your list with just a few clicks to deliver targeted messages based on demographics, location, buying history, and more.

Email Analytics

You can track every open, click, unsubscribe, and purchase and thenrReview your stats by product, date, domain and customer. You can monitor and compare which messages are opened the most and which links produce the most sign ups and sales, so every campaign is better than the last!

Get up-to-the-minute graphs and long-range reports on the revenue results of all your campaigns.

See exactly where your high-value prospects are coming from, so you can maximize the profitability of your best referral sites.

There are many more including deliverability and support.

With all these features Getresponse ha come near to Aweber who had announced similar changes last year.

The Price

the price has gone up as I suggested earlier. Here is the shot of their price list.

Yes! it has introduced slabbed prices and once you cross 500 subscribers, it seems expensive. It is up to you about deciding whether to buy.

But one good thing is that GetResponse offers is free trial account where you can have a fully functional account up to 10  subscibers.

You can then choose yourself whether it is suitable for your needs or not.

With free trial account, getresponse gets ahead of Aweber which does not offer any.

I will update on the functionality of the features soon.

In today’s world everyone is occupied.  From the moment you get off your bed the mind starts racing with “what to do things”. we try to accompalish more and more in any given day.

But most of the works we do is either based on our habits or we do it reflexely. Often we are srtruggling to keep up the schedule.  we do not want to spend a minute sitting idle.

We work like machines day in day out. We cut on our sleep, we cut on our relaxation , we cut on our time spent with families and we cut on our entertainment.

In order to accompalish more, we squeeze in every available moment.

And we hardly are able to do more than repeated daily chores.

Why? Because we always have so many lined up.

One of the key factors fro growth is thinking ahead. For that we need to think.

Now let us see.

Thinking requires you to put everything aside and ponder with calm unstressed mind.

For many of us it apears to be a wastage of time.

No. It is not. In fact thinking is the nutrition that would enhance your capability to produce. Thinking would help to gauze where you are wasting your efforts and where you are reaping a harvest and how to change wasted efforts into effective ones.

Thinking only would give you new direction to take your business further.

Take out time to think , at least half an hour.

In the initial stages, it would be difficult to find what to think. But still tak out a problem and dwell over.  unplug yourself from the rush that your mind is used to.

Spend some time with your mind and learn to grow.

With internet around thes hopes and passions have been multiplied manifold in all terms. Not only we have more an more people venturing into a world they would never have thought otherwise but also the eagerness to achieve it soon has also increase.

But a business requires time to grow and it requires vision to grow.

In my early days on the internet, I used to get disturbed by the phrase that one should know what to achieve!

I did not know anything.

No body told me that as a novice it is very difficult to think because one does not possess enough knowledge to have  vision.  All I did was a daily set of chores keeping my business running as it was.

I used to manage my business part time. I still do it after hospital work is over. But many would want to do this full time.

In either case, just doing daily chosres do not lift your business further.

Your business needs one ingredient, the gear that would catapult your business on path of growth.

Now let us be clear here. Whatever business model you follow, you need to have daily tasks that you would complete. Even that would require learning. Only then you can know what to do.

This would put your business into motion. But to expand it further you need also to chart a path for your business which you need to plan.

Only then you would be able to steer.

Path charting is not just the task list spread over a period of time. It is in fact a vision for your business which would still divide into chores, but the level and type of chores would change with the path.

If you are still doing the things that you were doing 6 months back, you need to add a few more to push your business further.

Last thing!

The vision does not sprung on its own. It is a product of knowledge, experience, expectations and courage.  Al the factors are interdependent on each other.

You can work hard on knowledge  and experience. Take time out of daily dance and read about your business. gain knowledge and turn it into experience.

Other factors would mature along

Squidoo Changes Policy

I have not used Squidoo for my promotions. You can not do everything in 24 hours even if you do not sleep.

But I have always liked the idea running behind Squidoo. Let us not go into semantics and taxonomy here but the idea of creating an expert page with dedicated content was quite unique.

But down the line, the system got quite exploited and the pages became repititive, spamy or stale because of cheap promotions that people were doing.

But Squidoo has woken up.

Coming 15th July, it is invoking major policy changes that would annihilate many lenspages as they term them.

But you need not worry if you follow general etiquette of good content writing. If you have been honestly building your lenses, there is nothing to be alarmed about.

In fact the Squidoo policy page says

99% of you won’t even notice any difference.If you’re making great, unique, useful, content-filled lenses, I’m betting you won’t have any trouble with these policies.

And if you have crossed the border, you are being given time to rectify the wrongs.

What is Squidoo against

• Spam
• X-Rated or Porn
• Junk topics
• Overly promotional lenses
• Plagiarism

If you want to check out in deail, here is the link to updates on Squidoo Policy.

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-policy-update#module33118392

By looking at the things they are frowning at, it seems that they are trying to make Squidoo better and weeding out.

Good for them and good for good lensmasters.

And good for the web.

Do Not Get Distracted

I learnt it hard way.

Spreading your business looks a very attractive option. You have a website which is running well and bringing good money. You have made efforts to grow it furthre but somehow the growth is not what you expected.

Somehow you hit upon a business idea. the idea can be anything from starting a blog to establishing a membership site. It seems like a golden opportunity and you think you can squeeze some time. Enthralled, you do your research and decide to stick with your decision.

You register a domain name and start making things happen while maintaining your previous business tasks.

Then something happens.

Because you are eager to grow your second business, you start paying more attention to your new venture [It is natural. isn't it!]

Before you know, your previous business starts gettintg neglected.

Any website takes time to bring in money. Your new venture would also pass through same hases of building before it brings money.

And it may actually cause a fall in revenue.

Initial investment and marketing efforts plus your time that is not bringing back anything creates a huge cost at the expense of profitable business.

Therefore,  do not spread yourself thin. Instead focus on your current business to yield greater rewards.

I started many ventures at the same time aftr seing success of  Home For Profits. I squeezed my time from every available source and fueled my energies into all of them.

Two months later I  eliminated majority which were not proving fruitful.

I was still left with three of them. Because the website model needed content generation, I was still working full time to meet the targets.

Home For Profits started getting neglected.

You can see my May and June posts. I have hardly written.

I have closed all of the new ventures. Instead I would concentrate on presnt ones.

I do not think it is a good idea to venture into altogether different niche on your own. if you have tie and resources it is far better to expand the reach of present website.

Only time when it is good to start a new project is when the project compliments your present one and the audience overlaps. Or you have expanded your man power according to the need of fresh venture.

Starting a new website is very attractive but maintaining it is not.

Stay! Do not jump.

But technology has its own side effects. Most of the stuff produced for reading is hardly worth a look. Most of these epublications or ebooks as they are better known are produced with an idea of getting people’s emails and people’s dollars.

There are very few who put a serious effort in their writing.

I have spent many dollars on some products trhat promised to treach me but did not. Your wallet is not for alms guys.

Let us be clear. People research these days. they are aware that you need to build your business in their mind. they might have temporary outburst to buy siome quick rich scheme but that too would make them wiser .

People are looking for information. They are looking for trustworthy and sincere information that is not built solely on profit intention.

And what they get is same rehashed info again and again, getting frustated and sceptical as a result.

Internet marketing is worst hit in this sphere and trust is lowest here.

before they look at offer people start thinking what if the guy is making a fool?

They are not at fault. They have been burnt in the past.

I must say that if you can can do slight work called search, most of the information would be available for free. Few experts might have secrets but majority of the info that you are looking for is avaialble without any cost and if you are not on who runs after secrets, it is definitely worth searching.

I had expected it long back after Aweber announced addition of new features.There preview has mentioned following features in the new Getresponse. I find them quite exciting.

But is that all going to cost us more?

I suspect but first the features

Email Campaigns

Getreponse users would be able to use from over 300 Designer HTML Templates to create visually stunning campaigns for every audience and industry.

What’s more, with GetResponse Split Testing, you can try out multiple versions ? GetResponse will automatically select and send the best.

Marvelous!

Video Emails

this can be done by linking  your multimedia content to emails, newsletters, blogs and Twitter.  I expected more information but I understand they want to keep us guessing.

Email Analytics

This was the major change that Aweber had brought and scored over Getresponse in the past. Now Getresponse too would offer its users to capture, track and report on your digital email and domain information. This would allow you to constantly improve your messages and methods.

You would be able to identify which emails are opened the most and which subjects, messages and links generate the most sign ups and sales.

Online Surveys

This is new. we can use GetResponse Survey feature to stay on top of trends and tastes, create accurate profiles, improve our  products, and stay ahead of the competition!

Survey feature allows unlimited  content to be asked and give option of  design, details and format selection.

Price

They have not metnioned it yet but I strongly suspect that they would follow Aweber’s slab rate policy. Aweber introduced slab rates depending on numbe rof subscribers you have. I expect getreponse to follw the same pattern.

What does this mean.

This means Getresponse is goibg to get costlier. If you had been postponing your plan to join Getresponse, it is the time before they flash price increase because most likely existing users or who join before 6th July would not be affected by the new price.

You can join Getresponse here

*The article contains affilate links

But it is sweet one and can be done from your admin interface.

Get the whole story here.

If you have enjoyed plugin installer in 2.7 then you are going to love Theme installer function of 2.8.

Caution: back up before you upgrade.

Basic element of Web 2.0 is interaction and exchange of information. Though it could have simply been termed as advanced forms of previous web technologies but developers chose to coin a new and catchy name.

So it became accepted as new version of Web.

Here are few things that Web 2.0 has provided us.

Blogs

Blog is a term that is derived from the blending of the two words ‘web’ and ‘log’….Blog. Early in the history of the World Wide Web people could build personal web pages. It is true that not many people did build personal webpages but it was, nonetheless, possible.

Still, these personal webpages were static websites. The owner of the website could post information about himself or his interests but others could only read the information that the owner of the website posted.

He could keep an online journal that he could allow others to read but it was ‘read only’.

Then blogging software was developed. In contrast to read only, blogging software allowed users to post comments.  It was a huge advancement.

Initial blog platforms were pretty simple but today they have become like content management sytems.

Today blogging is very big business.

But it is not all that Web 2.0 has given us.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is more or less a by-product of blogging but it is based on the same basic technology.

Social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, allow their users to upload their own favorite site bookmarks so that everybody else in the world can see and use those bookmarks.

When a user uploads his favorite site bookmarks into his online account, a backlink is created to that site. When enough people click on the link, the site that has been book marked gets indexed and gains a rank by search engines.

It is a form of user driven advertisements and it is far more successful than any kind of paid-for advertising can ever be.

There are a great many social bookmarking sites and they have

Wiki

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.

In short Wiki technology allows editing of material posted on a website by the poster or by others.

The best example of Wiki technology is action on the Internet is Wikipedia.

RSS Feed: The acronym RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is yet another Web 2.0 feature that allows the web to be driven by people. Those who use RSS content use reader or aggregator technology. Users subscribe to these feeds.

The reader or aggregator then checks the user’s website and when the site has new content, it is picked up and sent to the user. That is a rather simplified explanation but that is basically how it works.

A client based reader or aggregator is a stand-alone program that is attached to an existing program such as a web browser or an email reader.

A web-based reader or aggregator makes the user’s feeds available on any computer with web access.

Podcasts

A podcast is a series of digital media files, usually either digital audio or video, that is made available for download via web syndication. As broadband internet connect connections and wireless networks become more and more common throughout the entire world, the podcast or webcast is gaining in popularity.

While people do still read, they are better at looking and listening to information thanks to television, hence, the advent of podcasts or webcasts.

You can find and tune into podcasts or webcasts on almost any subject imaginable today.

Well, of course, there will be. Web 2.0 is fluid and it is every changing. New technology will be developed and as it is developed people will use it.

And, you might ask, just who will benefit the most from Web 2.0? It will be those who embrace the new technologies as they become available and it will be us…all of us.

The internet no longer belongs to the few and the privileged. Web 2.0 is responsible for this.

Most astounding thing about Web 2.0 technologies is that they are free. So everybody can afford to run a site without much know how.R