I've taken the plunge and had a video created for my website. I'd held off for quite awhile. I'm not a fan of videos for a number of reasons: I don't like those that start as soon as you visit a site. I don't like how-to sites that only produce videos and not text instructions as well (I prefer to read ahead to what I want to know, rather than wait for that bit on the video). And so many I've seen are 'off-the-cuff' and not very professional at all (usually web cam). The cost seemed quite … [Read more...]
Website histories
Sometimes it's necessary (or worthwhile) to go and check the history of a domain to find out how long a business has been online, or in operation. It's hard to tell the age of a site because technology and our age require that information is regularly updated. And if you want to verify some facts, a good way to do it would be to verify the age of the site or the domain. Plus you can have a giggle about how awful some sites were many years ago. For example, if you were to check how long my … [Read more...]
Warning re ‘Tell a Friend’ script
If you are getting responses to emails you haven't sent or people querying the email you just sent, you may well have hackers accessing a script on your ecommerce site without your knowledge. I've recently experienced this problem and know another person who has also. The reason for this is the spammers/hackers have accessed the 'Tell a Friend' script on your commerce site. For my part I didn't even know that script had been installed so it came as a bit of a shock as I've always been against … [Read more...]
How do you grow your email list?
I periodically hear of people who want to buy a list for email purposes. Personally I believe people will do better if they grow their own list. They know where it comes from and that it is genuine. And for Virtual Assistants I feel it's important to grow their own lists. But I appreciate for some industries it doesn't work that way and they need to purchase existing lists. If you are planning to grow your own list then it's important to make it easy for people to subscribe via a blog or … [Read more...]
GoDaddy server down
I've been seeing messages at Facebook that people’s websites are down because GoDaddy’s server got hacked. There’s an article here about it. This is a worry, obviously, to anyone who has their sites hosted there. But then it doesn’t really matter where our sites are hosted, are they truly safe? For as long as the hackers don’t have their sights set on your host, your site will remain up. Something that is really important for anyone who owns a website is to make sure your site is backed up … [Read more...]
Desktop or laptop?
For a long time I was an advocate for the desktop, and only took my laptop to client meetings (very occasionally) or when my husband and I would go away on holidays. Not so I could do work, but so I could store photos that I take during our time away. Outside of work I'm a keen photographer. I was very conscious of the need to be ergonomically set up for good posture and health in my office, probably because I spend even more time there than I would have in a corporate office. But times are … [Read more...]
Speaking of working at home…
A couple of days ago I shared how much I love working at home and that I don't miss the traffic out there at all. However, there are days (very occasional) when working at home can prove to be a challenge. Today was one of them. We got a letter a week ago to say the power would be off between 8.30am and 3.30pm for one day and we needed to ensure that all electrical appliances were switched off and unplugged, especially computers. What was I going to do? I started to put out feelers to see … [Read more...]
eziStart Social Media
Some of you will be aware that I'm a member of a local BNI chapter as their Virtual Assistant representative. One of the members there, who is the resident website designer came up with a brilliant idea some months ago called eziStart. The idea is that a number of services is provided by a small select group of service providers to help people get set up and started in their businesses. These services include: web design, logo design, copy-writing for the website, video and social media. I'm … [Read more...]
Are you an Aussie VA that runs events?
Came across a great site this week, when helping a client organise an event he was promoting. He wanted to take bookings online and make it as painless as possible. He'd been told of a couple of sites by associates and I tried one of them out for him yesterday when sending out a broadcast email. Very easy to use and set up, you can customise the page after setting up the initial information. The site is called Trybooking.com and this morning I logged back in to see if he'd gotten any … [Read more...]