New GrowMap Logo
Creating a consistent brand across all of your interactions both online and off is critical to your success. The primary method for doing this is the use of a distinctive logo design. Your logo creates an immediate image - that all important first impression - responsible for how someone feels about your brand. Done well, your logo makes your business instantly recognizable wherever it appears.
Logo styles vary greatly depending on the niche you operate in and the size of your business. There is a distinct difference between the types of logos used by Major Corporations and businesses that interact with them and logos that will appeal to marketers, creative types and in specific niches. This difference is the first of many reasons for the wide range of prices charged by logo designers.
Do you need a $50 logo or a $1000+ logo design package? Read on to find out.
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Tagged as:
Logo Design
Favicons are those tiny images (16×16) shown in your browser tabs:
Favicons visible in FireFox Browser
In the screen capture above you can see our new Favicon followed by one for Adam Singer’s blog The Future Buzz and Andy Beard’s blog AndyBeard.eu. Favicons can be created from almost any image file type (.jpg .gif .png .bmp) and are saved as the .ico file type. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
favicons
Although I have been answering all comments here I have decided that I will stop answering short comments that do not require replies. I doubt anyone would object but wanted to let my regular readers know of this change.
I will still answer all questions and reply to all substantial comments for as long as that remains possible.
There are few places a business owner or blogger can find such extensive experience and thoroughly researched proven strategies for growing their business AND get a personal reply and answers to any questions they may have. Can I ask a favor of you? Would you please share this blog with any business, bloggers, or affiliate marketers who could benefit? Thank you.
Tagged as:
blogging best practices
Merchant Circle is more expansive than many of the other options for listing your business in Local Search. Listings can include coupons, add photos, other Merchant Circle users can add reviews of your business, and you can create blog posts within your Merchant Circle account. If you have your own blog you could use posts in your Merchant Circle blog to drive traffic to different posts in your own.
It is not always obvious what features at Merchant Circle are free and which incur additional charges so do read the fine print. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Merchant Circle
Although you can not search infoUSA directly, it is one of the most important listings a business can obtain. Established businesses that buy yellow page advertising or are listed in business directories will probably already be listed. It does not hurt to submit your listing to be sure they have current, accurate data. Their system will display a link to your current data, if any, and you can expand or correct it using this process.
The infoUSA database powers 85% of online directories including:
They also sell the infoUSA database products directly to businesses and for incorporation into computer programs and online services. Simply go to Add or Change Your infoUSA Business Listing and follow the process. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
infoUSA
This post is part of a series on how to add your business to free Local Listing Directory sites. This step-by-step process is the shortest path to getting listed at Yelp.
DO NOT start by logging into an existing personal Yelp account or at Yelp.com. You need to go to Biz.Yelp.com for Business Owners and to request Business Listings.
While there is some controversy over Yelp about Yelp Reviews, they do have a major amount of traffic (23 to 25 million unique visitors per month according to Compete) and if you only want to add one business it is one of the easier Local Search Directories you can get your business listed in.
NOTE: There are two separate log-ins for Yelp: One is a Business Owner login and the other is your individual Yelp account login. If you create an account for one it does NOT work to log-in to the other. It helps to think of them as two separate sites and ensure you are in the one applicable to what you wish to do. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
yelp
The first challenge anyone who wants to freelance or work for themselves will run into is the difficulty of juggling marketing themselves with focusing on what they do. Many sell one job, set to work on it, and then don’t seek another job until they’re done. This results in periods of feast or famine and excessive stress between jobs.
While you could split your time between marketing and working, a better solution is to collaborate with others who can refer work to you. Once you get sufficient clients and build a substantial portfolio you will stay busy all the time. The other advantage of having someone else recommend you is that they can offer their honest opinion and reasons for recommending you.
The best recommendations come from [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
freelance,
freelancer
I’ve been meaning to do a post on how important having dependable high-speed Internet access is for bloggers and anyone else who works online. I will eventually do a post on how various types of broadband Internet access compare and which is most suitable. This can’t wait though. Some may have noticed me complaining on Twitter about being unable to work or noted my post frequency has varied greatly lately. The reason is HughesNet is simply horrendous.
After collecting over a dozen case numbers which they never use for anything and escalating my issue to their Executive Customer Care they finally patched me through to Level 3 support again. Level 3 and Customer Care both told me that:
- We aren’t supposed to EVER open more than one tab at a time
- They never claimed their service would work for filling out forms on the Internet on sites like Yahoo Local or Google Maps
- That even if I couldn’t use the Internet there was absolutely nothing wrong - I should just “wait a few hours and try again”
At that point I knew that they were never going to admit what they were probably doing (using the ability to limit bandwidth - they hold patents on ways to do that - see graph below) and I was never going to have reliable Internet access from them. I hope if you’re reading this you have not signed a contract as there are complaints from people who paid their ridiculous early termination fees and were still being hounded by collectors for HughesNet. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
hughesnet
