iXLd Business

Mobile (TXT MSG) Marketing Information

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:13:00 GMT

Looking for more information about Mobile / Text Message Marketing?

Join our Mobile Marketing Club to learn more about using TXT MSGS in your marketing mix.

Meetup Organizers Presentation Request

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:47:00 GMT

Who we are:

A small, Vancouver based, group of developers that design hosted small business solutions.

What we do:

Our product enables clients to launch business class websites in minutes.

Our platform combines common business requirements like blogs, shopping carts, mass mail and testimonial management into a quick to deploy solution that can be rapidly configured to serve the needs of most small business owners.

What we want:

We would like to present our solution to business analysts, web designers, social media consultants and IT professionals through hands on presentations at local meetups and other relevant meetings.

What's in it for your members:

Learn about a new solution
Cloud based, managed services are a popular discussion topic
Most importantly, they can make money from it.

We have a generous resellers program that pays a 40% recurring commissions for the life of the client.

What's in it for you:

Passive Income.

For each solution that is sold through members of your group, you the group owner could make as much as 10% per month, per client, for the life of those clients.

How to proceed:

If you'd like to book a presentation, please contact us with the date and time of the next meetup that you would like us to present at.

Learn more:

If you would like to learn more about our solution, view a short video and install a free trial here:

XLsell.com/trial

Free Web Traffic Course

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:52:50 GMT

Free Traffic Course

Would you like some free tips on how to get more traffic to your website?

I will send you 5 emails with some very helpful tips, 1 every other day, so that you don't get overwhelmed.

I won't send you a ton of other crap and you can click the link at the bottom of any of these emails and be removed from my list instantly.

Don't worry... It's great info and you'll get real value from it, give it a try, it's just "1 more email" for you to read :)

Our Resellers Opportunity

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:15:00 GMT

We make web based small business solutions.
Our platform comes in 2 models

Retail - set up to sell products in a traditional "retailer" way
Social - Designed as a community where anyone can start a blog, setup a profile, engage in forums ...

The Retail suite is called XLsell.com
The Social suite is called TribeXL.com

About Our Sales Process
We use the social suite to create neighbourhood / community websites that are free for people to use.

They are positioned as a way to promote your business on the web with free profiles, blogs, product display and coupons. They give us an opportunity to build "rapport" with the business by giving them something that everyone else is trying to charge them for.

It also gives us the opportunity to sell them further services after that relationship has developed a bit, and when the timing is right for them.

The social suite includes affiliate tracking, so a business that YOU / An Affiliate enters into the livein sites, is tracked as being "that persons" lead

If / When they business buys advertising, ebooks, a new website etc.. from us, we give a commission of up to 50% (varies by type) to the person that referred the business.

You can see my profile on the commercial drive site as an example of the profiles that we give away.

LiveOnTheDrive.com/go/realestatemarketing

The ultimate goal for us is to sell them our web platform for their business which generates between $20 and $100 per month in recurring revenues, 40% of which we pay to you for as long as they are a client.

You can see the commission break down here: XLsell.com/affiliates

You can download our rate sheet which outlines the costs of our two primary web solutions.

For someone that is good at chatting and being friendly with small business owners, there is a very real opportunity to quickly build a strong recurring revenue stream.

Every small business should be on the web, while many are, most of them have static "brochure" websites that don't have a blog, a way to build a mailing list or a way to sell products.

They are all things they know they need, and our suite can install a fully functional website for them in minutes that go well beyond traditional web sites.

You don't need to be a web expert, that's our job.

You just need to generate leads and we'll do the rest of the work for you.

Learn more by joining our list.

I welcome your questions and feedback.

Riel Roussopoulos

CEO

iXLd Media Inc

604-288-5600 ext 2002

XLsell | New Small Business Suite

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:55:00 GMT

This is really an evolution of our SoldWith suite, but as part of releasing a new version, we decided to rebrand it as well to match our XL branding.

So here it is, the new XLsell.com suite

Emergence of Inbound Marketing

tasia@strataxl.com (Tasia Balding) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:18:00 GMT

Hubspot report explains why cost per lead acquisition significantly lower for Inbound Marketing than traditional Outbound Marketing techniques.

In their February 2010 report, Hubspot, an internet marketing group based in Cambridge Massachussets, published "The State of Inbound Marketing". The report seeks to explain how and why marketers are shifting to a more Inbound approach.

Why you say? Why move away from traditional "interruption" or outbound techniques? One main reason HubSpot focus' on is cost, as the cost per lead of traditional outbound campaigns is higher than inbound marketing campaigns. They also touch briefly, on the concept of buyer behavior, and how we've learned to "tune-out" traditional interuption marketing, through do not call lists, TIVO/PVR, spam filters etc.

To me the behavior of buyers is the more interesting aspect, and I belive large companies are really out of touch with how purchasing decisions are being made today.

What is it? HubSpot's primary examples of inbound marketing are the increased usage of free reports and information via social media, blogs etc. This "free" information helps inform buyers and gives them the power of information. Playing again to the behavior of today's buyer, they don't want to feel like they are being fed a line, consumers want all info and will make a decision from there.

The bottom line: Using engagement principles and tools of social media, businesses can greatly reduce their cost per lead.

Small and large companies alike will benefit from reading this report.

Click here to download

Community Website Platform | TribeXL

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:22:00 GMT

TribeXL is our community platform and is ready to serve your community management needs.

You could be running a softball team, a publishing company or just want to provide a resource to your city or neighborhood.

TribeXL gives you a way to engage the public while making money from premium placement, advertising services and built in products and affiliate referrals.

Want to run your own community?

Install a free 60 day trial site now or contact us to learn more.

XL-MEN | Web Superheros

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:56:00 GMT

As many of you know, we've been slowly working on a new branding campaign for iXLd.

The theme is around "WEB SUPERHEROES" and we've created superhero persona's for each of our team.

This is the latest artwork that has been created, we formerly did single shots that we could use on our team profiles in the about section of the website.

I'm curious about one thing. We've had some internal debate about using the term "XL-MEN"

I want to do it mainly because it's a play on the X-MEN

However, as we do have some Females on our team, and clients that are female, it has been raised that we may want to consider a less gender specific term like "XL-TEAM".

Not really decided either way, I question whether it would be a deal breaker for an ardent feminist client, or potential staff person in the future.

Is it too specifically male to say XL-MEN, or have we passed a point where its' necessary to be politically correct (particularly when we're prancing around in spandex pants) about such things?

I'm curious what you think, let me know.

Nokia Presents Ovi to Vancouver Developers

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:01:00 GMT

I spent the morning listening to a pitch by Nokia about their new OVI platform.

Some stuff I liked, other stuff I didn't, learn more inside.

Free Social Media Marketing Plan

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:45:00 GMT

Social media (aka web 2.0) marketing is providing huge returns for companies that are properly harnessing the channel.

If you're in the process of building your social media marketing plan, download our free report which helps you streamline a strategy that is right for you.

Get more traffic with an autoresponder

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:05:00 GMT

Check out my latest "traffic in traffic" post about driving traffic to your site using auto responders.

10 Free Web Traffic Tips

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:14:00 GMT

Learn 10 free web traffic tips that will drive more traffic to your website.

Automating your Sales Calls

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:13:00 GMT

I can hear you now.... "You Must Be Kidding, those annoying voice spam calls?".

This is different however.

This video (as much as it's a total rip off of the common craft videos) outlines the idea nicely.

Your agents only connect with people that answer the phone, not with answering machines .. leave the machines to talk to the machines, your agents can be connected only to actual human callers instead of waisting time leaving inconsistent messages.

Imagine putting this to work for your non profit organization, dialing for fundraisers for political parties or the annual soccer league championship dinner?

I am actively looking for corporate sponsors for us to write the API connection so XLsuite can talk to their system directly, but for now, the small amount of manual manipulation required to upload an excel sheet with the data is a small price to pay for this sort of functionality.

iXLd Media Overview

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:50:00 GMT

This is an overview of what we do and how we work with our clients.

Use the arrow keys to flip through the presentation.

If you'd like a quote on migrating to our current platform, please don't hesitate to fill out our free quote form

Business Is Moving To The Cloud

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:29:00 GMT

Nothing new to us, we've been running on Amazon's Cloud for over a year.

Some clients are more aware than others that their entire business is hosted in the cloud, the ones that do are thrilled.

(the ones that don't ... really don't care, as long as it's working)

I've long been a proponent of migrating IT out of your business unless your core aptitude is IT.

Having an IT department to run your webserver out of your office is just plain silly these days, and the argument that it's a security concern is more and more difficult to maintain, since the typical IIS server running on NT is much more hackable than any of our cloud instances ever will be.

That said, it's nice to see main stream business publications starting to talk about the benefits of migrating more of your business processes to the cloud.

See what ECommerce News had to say on the matter

This is the quote that stood out for me

" Because they share a proven development platform and leverage significant economies of scale, applications in the cloud can be built for 20 percent of traditional e-commerce costs. Cloud-based e-commerce also eliminates the need for costly CRM and e-commerce integration projects following mergers and acquisitions. "

How much to get your site to the top of Google

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:15:00 GMT

Getting your site to the top of Google is the best way to improve your deal flow, how much should you expect to pay?

Learn more inside.

FTC is cracking down on Internet Marketing

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:03:00 GMT

As many of you probably know, the FTC is beefing up it's online rules and enforcement, particularly with respect to affiliate marketing and sponsored content.

Clear disclosure is the rule here from now on. Fake review sites and bogus testimonials won't cut it anymore.

If you're making a commission from something you're referring then you have to disclose that fact.

Catch all "Results not typical" disclaimers at the bottom of a squeeze page are not going to cut it anymore, you'll have to give typical results and let people know realistically what they can expect to make from using your program.

It'll be interesting to see how some of the guru types adjust to the new landscape.

There is more information on the FTC website for those of you that want to dig deeper.

I also found the video section really good, the "nice lady" from the FTC does a very good job of humanizing the process for you.

You can see the rest of the "nice lady" videos on the FTC's site.

Basically, my take is that if you're up front about your compensation and you can prove the testimonials you're showing on your site are from real people that were not paid or otherwise encouraged to leave it (samples or free products given for example) you should be fine.

As with all things in business, be up front and disclose your relationships and you won't later find yourself in hot water.

(** I'm not a lawyer, don't listen to anything I say, It's just my opinion, I'm not responsible if you follow my advice and get sued** (oh ya, and results are not typical ;) )

Shipping Charges Cause Shopping Cart Abandonment

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Why do people abandon purchases in shopping carts?

A recent study by paypal shows that 46% of US shoppers site high shipping charges as the number 1 reason for shopping cart abandonment.

Source Article

Take a cue from leading online retailers like Zappo's and offer free shipping, free returns, built into the price of your product, instead of keeping it artificially low and subsidizing it in the "handling" part of shipping and handling.

Give your customers less reason to abandon your cart and you'll see increases in your conversion rates.

Other things to watch for are lengthy forms (you don't need their address to send them a pdf, you both know it, don't ask for more info than you need at the point of sale, get that later in the engagement process).

What other tips do you have to keep more clients through the buying process?

Leave us a comment below.

How to grow your web footprint

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:48:00 GMT

First lets deal with what a web footprint is.

Your profile on the web, usually it starts with a company directory profile, maybe a flickr account, or a facebook profile.

A couple of ebay auctions, maybe a craigslist post or two?

From there, some people might start their own website to promote themselves or a product or service further.

Now, suddenly those people have a need to generate consistent traffic to their website.

The size of your web footprint is directly proportional to the amount of traffic you generate to your site.

Each place that you create a profile and a link back to your site from, increases your web footprint.

Each of those "foot steps" increases your chance of being found on the web by someone that is interested in your offer.

Perfect Platform for Business Incubators and Angel Funds.

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:24:00 GMT

Why the XLsuite platform is a perfect fit for business incubators and Angel funds.

The goal of an incubator (be it federal or private) is to help a nascent businesses get off the ground quickly and start making money.

Our platform can deploy fully functional ecommerce engines that are capable of running a new business in hours, not months.

Additionally, our suites can be configured with specific marketing campaigns, contact lists, and site content to customize the installation for specific business verticals.

We can provide a very cost effective alternative to traditional web design, customer relationship management and marketing software, by bundling these services into a single subscription platform that covers all things related to marketing and technology for a start up business in an affordable monthly package.

We invite VC's, Angel Investors and Business Incubators to install one of our suites and see how quickly a business framework can be put in place.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss using the XLsuite platform to help you dramatically shorten your portfolio's time to market online.

You can see how fast a new suite installs:

You can see a tour of our dashboard here:

Install your own suite!

*Site name error: already taken or name too long

*Email error: check you email and write it again

Facebook vs Twitter Traffic Stats

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:34:00 GMT

Don't get me wrong, I'd hate to be a negatwit (or whatever you'd call someone dumping on twitter).

Seriously though, I thought this rating from Alexa was very interesting.

When you compare the difference between Myspace, Twitter and Facebook, you can see that the new darling of social media still has a long way to go before becoming a serious threat to the main man.

As such, I'd suggest having a look at ramping up your Facebook marketing.

We're selling a good ebook on it over here:

Facebook Marketing Ebook

Internet Marketing For Brick And Mortar Businesses

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:24:00 GMT

This is a document that I wrote up for a local business because I thought that she represented a state that many businesses are in when it comes to the web.

Using your website as a brochure is a less than effective use of the web and in this report I show how you can not only leverage web 2.0 technologies to enhance your business (usually with no cost to you) as well as how to add relevant information products to your product mix that lets you expand your product line to include digital products with your existing services.

Social Media Recipe for Any Business

Publish at Scribd or explore others: How-to-Guides & Manu marketing web marketing

Creating A Free Report Using Article Sites

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:22:00 GMT

Making a good free report is step one to getting people to sign up for your mailing list, or to seed social networks with to get people to come back to your site.

While it's always preferable to create your own content for these things, it's not necessary.

Here I'll show you how to use a free article site to create a free report.

Here is the report I created :

Using articles from this search on ezinearticles.com

The Joys Of Client Relations

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:05:00 GMT

Ah the vendor client relationship. So nicely played out here, why is it that while funny, it has a very authentic ring to it.

As I spend more (non billable) time battling over $36 on our latest bill to a client, someone shared this with me.

Graphic Advertising On Craigslist Made Easy

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:09:00 GMT

Here is a short video that outlines how we create advertising tools for clients to make it simple for them to advertise on CraigsList and other sites that allow embedding HTML on them.

Task List Now In Google Mail

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:05:00 GMT

I have to say I was pretty thrilled when this little baby came to my attention.

I've always been surprised that Google Apps didn't have a TO DO list.

All that is changed now.

Please see my screencast on how to turn on the task list in Google Apps

Now some day if they would add a timer to those tasks, I'll be a happy camper.

Why You Should Register More Domain Names

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:48:00 GMT

I always tell my clients to register not just the .com but the full gambit of .net / .org / .info / .biz / .ca for the name their doing business as.

It sucks when someone else comes along and grabs the other extension from you, depending on what they want to do, they can impersonate you, trade on your name or just hold it hostage and sell it back to you when you finally give in.

Here's an example:

PLR Product Creation Secrets

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:51:04 GMT

Click to Play

http://ixld.com/blogs/training/2008/11/23/PLR-Product-Creation/2132

This is a series of videos that I did on how to create PLR products and sell them on the internet.

The Future of Google; The Future of Search

jennifer@ixld.com (Jennifer Shieh) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:26:00 GMT

Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Search Product and User Experience, was interviewed by Charlie Rose last night. Fascinating!

File Manager Uses

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:35:00 GMT

This video gives you an overview of how the file manager works, and shows you how to add a link to a file in a mass mail.

The Run Around Can Be A Drag

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:26:00 GMT

Ever feel like you're running around chasing an elusive dream?

I thought this was a good example of what life is like sometimes.

Everyday, chasing the leash around the toilet bowl... .Ah life

Viral Video Tool

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

This looks like a pretty cool tool, I can see lots of uses for it.

Affiliate Video BranderSort of along the same lines as what Overlay.TV is doing, but with more of an affiliate marketing twist to it.

Make money online with your own community site

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:09:00 GMT

Using a community focused website and a business directory is a good way to build your reputation as "the expert" in your community.

This video is targeted at realtors using our software to build their business, but the principals apply to any business.

Create a community site about your industry, invite all the players in your industry to post a profile in your directory, they can blog on your site, add feeds and do things to stand out in the community.

Amazon Launches Blog Widgets

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:45:00 GMT

Yet another way to add content to your site while making money selling Amazon stuff.

Sales Automation With Voice Calling

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:51:00 GMT

So I'm investigating ways to leverage call automation in the sales process.

Found a few interesting companies that let you automate calling to lists of prospects.

Robotalker seemed interesting and had some good viral tools, including this free robo call widget that you could send calls to

Yammer is a Private Twitter for your company

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:52:00 GMT

There's no end of people telling us how great twitter is. It is, but it's also pretty public, which works great for marketing purposes and building a following.. BUT if you're wanting something similar for INTERNAL communication twitter falls a little short.

I'm just trying out this program now, but I see lots of potential right away for it's use, pretty simple it has all the benefits of Twitter (and several that twitter doesn't have) but it can be kept private to people within your company email circle.

Project managers can use it to keep tabs on what people are working on and be able to interject in a timely manner
Various departments can see what other departments are working on (marketing knows when new features are being finished, instead of the proverbial ... " I didn't know it could do that " )

Check it out it's called Yammer

They have a good video about how to use it here

Blogging Traffic | Give Ye Shall Receive

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:10:00 GMT

Blogging traffic is a give and take relationship.

Sometimes one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog is by visiting other people's blogs.

Visit their blog, read one of their entries (or read a few of them). Chances are good that you'll find things you have in common.

When you do find something interesting, leave a comment so they know you were there, as will future readers of theirs.

Some good sites to look for blogs on are LiveJournal.com, Wordpress.com and Blogger.com

These sites will generally let you search based on interests or topics, search for things you are interested in (and also blog about) and you'll find people who will also be interested in what you have to say, (as will their visitors).

Are you interested in horseback riding You can see what other bloggers are interested in horseback riding as well.

When you are commenting on someone’s post, you want to make sure that you don’t leave generic comment. If you like the post, say something about what you read in the post, not just "nice post" or something equally spammy.

After you have commented on the person’s post, then you can say something like, ‘I really like horseback riding too. I had a similar experience to yours.’ and then use it to link back to your blog.

But be sure that you sound sincere when you are commenting, and don’t make them feel like you’re just fishing for traffic or links back to your site.

If someone thinks that you are using their blog to get more traffic to yours, they won’t visit your site, they'll probably delete your comment and your efforts will be wasted.

Happy Blogging

Site Flipping | Virtual Real Estate

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:34:00 GMT

I've long thought of domain names as real estate. In fact when I first started buying domain names, I would explain it to people in terms of the Klondike days, relating it to the concept of going out into the bush and "staking your claim".

Later, as I focused more on Real Estate Marketing it was uncanny to me the similarity between flipping houses and flipping domains.

The concept has since grown in popularity, and now one of the more common internet marketing trends is in Site Flipping.

Site Point has a good article on Site Flipping and is one of the more popular websites that has a market place where you can find and flip websites.

Ebay is another place to look for website deals, generally they have sites that designers and coders have created by installing a simple script and done the initial leg work for you of setting up an advertising / content driven site. (An amazon affiliate site, mixed with some google ads and maybe some other affiliate programs).

You then drive some traffic to it, maybe make some additions to the content and look of the site and turn around and sell it for a multiplier of it's revenue, either to another developer, or ideally an end user in that business already.

I saw this article in the New York Times featuring some brothers that focus on this type of site flipping business, I figure if the New York Times is talking about it, it's a market who's time has come.

If you haven't already seen it, you can look at our portfolio of domains here: http://ixld.com/portfolio/domains/2008/7/14/domain-name-portfolio/193

One of the key drivers to my creation of XLsuite was to be able to build a tool that would make it possible to rapidly deploy sites for my domain name portfolio. If you would like to get into this business with someone who has the technical team to implement rapidly on this, please don't hesitate to contact us to talk about our Joint Venture opportunities.

6 ways to get more qualified traffic to your site

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:49:00 GMT

New free report that I've done, showing you 6 good traffic tactics for getting more qualified traffic to your site

Traffic Secrets | 6 ways to drive targeted traffic | Free Report

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Marketing Business marketing web

Google Extends Adsense to All Domain Owners

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:50:00 GMT

This is one of those decisions that you really have to wonder about.

While they punish so called "MFA" sites (Made for adsense) and duplicate content on sites, how does it make sense to now offer a google solution for monetizing names without any real content on the site.

Even if you later tie it into many of your mashup API's and your mini site builder, aren't you really just making a way for people to regurgitate content onto the web in an effort to grab google rankings and profit from adsense by driving traffic through your portals?

So why is it that when others do it, they get their adsense accounts taken away, or the page quality scores reduced so that ads pay less on them?

Will a google approved MFA site convert better and at a higher value than one from another provider?

I think this is another example of Google behaving exactly oposite from the way they're telling others to behave.

As any parent will tell you, "Do as I say, not as I do" is not a workable strategy, it just propetuates the behaviour.

I seriously question this move by google, I think they are not adhering to their "Do no evil" code of conduct here
in the end they'll punish current parking companies, perpetuate adsense arbitrage and add a whole pile of search engine spam to the internet.

Wow... Pot? Kettle? ... someone should review this decision in a big way.

See their official release here:
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/12/extending-adsense-for-domains-to-all.html

Viral Tool to Replicate your business model

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:42:00 GMT

Making it as easy as possible for others to expand your business is the definition of a viral business model.

Taking it beyond just giving them a post card or folder of promo material that they can put their name on means that you'll be able to more rapidly expand your business.

We've successfully done this with several businesses and have carefully designed XLsuite to be ideally situated to replicate not just the look of a website, but the whole business process from email copy through to news posts, assets (like the postcard) and even branded videos and PDF's ready to empower your reseller with the most tools possible to make it easy for them to replicate your success.

Please watch this video where I outline 2 of the businesses that we've done this with.

Small Business Website Flyers

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:13:00 GMT

As part of our strategy to grow the network of web developers that are using our system, we obviously need to start generating more traffic to our websites and leads for our pipeline.

We created this marketing campaign postcard (and business card size) so that we could start to entice clients and give this to sales agents to grow their down line with.

Please feel free to give me feedback on the campaign (although it's already off to the printers so, I hope you like it).

This is the front

and the back

Using Testimonials

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:22:00 GMT

Debatable if this belongs in the training section, or in XLsuite's blog itself, but I thought I'd put it in business building since at the end of the day, that's what testimonials are used for is business building.

Social proof is one of the most important factors in sales, nobody cares what the vendor has to say, it's what other people say about the vendor that is important. it's one of the foundational tenants of web 2.0 in the end.

See the video below as I review a well known speakers website and show you his use of testimonials and why they're important.

Now see how we build the functionality into XLsuite to make it easy to request, manage and display testimonials as part of your business process.

How to make your own XLsuite and sell it

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:25:00 GMT

Make money by creating your own XLsuite and selling it.

What makes your suite so SWEET?

How cool can you make your suite, or how much information can you pre load into the site for your clients.

From products in the product catalog, to articles in the content management system, you can do more than just make a visual template...

You can make a whole suite and sell it through our online store. Making money off the front end, and residuals on the hosted suite.

Build it, promote it, flip it...

Make your own suite now

First you install a copy of one of the existing suites (we recommend the TribeXL suite)

Then you modify it and "trick it out". Make it your suite, with your flavour and your information.

Set a price, choose what you're going to upload and publish your suite.

That's it... you're ready to sell your suite whether it's to our clients, your clients or other suite owners clients... you're making money from every sale, every month.

Try it now...

Set up your own suite on XLsuite

Our Proposed Revenue Model

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:34:00 GMT

Looking to build a business quickly? We've opted for an affiliate referral model over spending our money on the traditional advertising route.

Here are the details of how we see breaking down the revenue model with our hosting service and partner sales and designers.

Revenue Share Model

This is an outline of how we give our sales agents the incentive to go out and sell websites for us while also creating an incentive for designers to keep adding more templates (or "Suites" as we like to call them) to our template option.

Obviously, those that are designers that also sell to their own customers, stand the most to gain, as they would be able to capitalize on both revenue streams (sales and design) while widening their sales reach beyond their own client list."

Click here to see this diagram full screen

Simultaneously we offer incentives to graphic designers to contribute templates to the template engine as their designs will be used by multiple store in multiple cities, thereby encouraging them to contribute better and better templates.

We're hoping to create competition amongst the designers and stimulate more submissions as a result.

Bait Sites : Live In Sites

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:59:00 GMT

This is a good video that outlines the history of our first series of "live in" websites that were used to drive traffic for our client Rick Stonehouse.

Connected Life Party

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:41:00 GMT

Media2o, the makers of Connected life had a party and we were there.

We're very pleased for our good friends down at M20 as they launch their company in true style.

You can see here that a good time was had by all.

Now with more XMLRPC enabled bloging

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:07:01 GMT

Self-Riel
Originally uploaded by DJ_Riel

Woo Hoo...

I'm publishing this picture from flicker, to our XLsuite blogging engine through our newest addition to XLsuite, support for the XMLRPC metaweblogAPI.

This is the same API that is used to publish to wordpress blogs and blogger accounts.

In the end, this will mean that many applications that were previously not compatible with our system, will now be able to publish to an XLsuite blog.

I for one know several apps that I'm going to go set this up with, but of course I had to make flickr my first stop.

XLsuite - Now with MetaweblogAPI

WooHoo

Fall Website Tune Up Special Offer

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:24:00 GMT

If your website was a car, you'd want to put some oil in it at this time of year, and make sure you've got all weather tires on it for the coming season.

Bring us in for a
SEASONAL WEBSITE TUNE UP.

We'll take her for a spin, listen for clunking sounds, and give you some suggestions on how you could get your website purring like a new Ferrari.

Our 12 point inspection includes:

Keyword Review
Back Link Check
Page Rank Check
Sales Funnel Test
Copy Writing Review
Onsite Optimization Suggestions
Offsite Optimization Suggestions
New Revenue Discovery
New Media Fuel Injection
Social Media Strategy Session
Analytics Observations and Insights
Personalized Traffic Strategies for your website

We'll take a walk through your website and record everything that we see and do, to give you a first person perspective on what we think can be done to push your baby into high gear.

You will get:

Thorough screencast review video of your website.
Separate screencast video walkthrough of your analytics or web stats
List of actionable items you can do to improve your current results including.
Traffic Building strategies
Link Building Strategies
Social Media Strategies
Monitization Ideas

---------------------------------------
This is a combination of our Website Review service - $297
and our Discovery and Strategy Sessions for which we regularly charge $497
Total value on the package is $794.00
----------------------------------------

Take Action quickly

If you're first to act, you'll get it for just $97 - sold out
For the next 5 clients it will cost just: $197 - sold out
For the next 5 clients that act: $297
For the LAST 10 clients: $497

Last?
Yes, you read it right...

we put a lot of energy and time into these reviews so we are limiting this offer to the first 21 people that take action.

BONUS:
We'll also give you a copy of our latest social media reports
Dominate Local Google Search ($27 value)
Squidoo Marketing 101 ($47 value)

......... $97 GONE!

......... $197 GONE!

Sequoia's Take on Market Conditions

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Being in a product R&D focused business, I'm always looking for the next jump up the financial food chain.

It's looking like now is not a good time to be out there trying to raise money from investors.

Here is a slide show that the VC giant Sequoia Capital put out about the current climat for business and investment.

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

New Shopping Cart Features

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We've added the ability to create an "embed" code out of a product in your product catalog.

As exampled below, you can create a link out of an image, that takes you into your product catalog.

You can use this code, not only within your XLsuite site, but also on external sites, so it's a great way to add a purchase button to your myspace page, a flickr comment, your facebook wall... or other places you can put content.

Make a review and link back to a buy page. Fun stuff.

Rescue Time - How Productive Are You?

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I don't always feel like I am, but it would seem that I'm actually relatively productive (which is nice to see).

At the risk of exposing myself to the public here, this is a widget from my "rescue time" chart.

It shows how I spend my time.

I thought it was a good way to keep an eye on the clock and analyze where I could be more productive. You should check it out

Mock Up's are Sweeter with a Little Balsamiq

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

As you know I'm always looking for ways to make my life easier, my work faster and my communications better.

If you do a lot of "idea jamming" then this tool is for you. This is a really cool mockup tool that lets you quickly mock up the interface for your website or web app.

The really cool part is that it also will export XML code so the coders can get working on it right away.

I'm sure this will speed up our development cycle. In fact it has already landed me a client who was on the fence and after sending him the mockup he said "lets do it".

Check out the web demo or hell... just throw your money at the guy and get this thing, it's so worth the $79!

Get it here: Best mock up tool on the planet

(yes I did that for his google ranking ... I bet if I also post this up on A/R I can get him to the top of google for this keyword phrase)

Thanks Peldi, you rock!

TopRanked Sites

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This is an interesting business model where you turn the sales role into a business opportunity and change the way you think of the marketing side of things. http://ixld.com/likes/eor

Video Site Passive Income

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:11:57 GMT

We all want tons of passive income right? Isn't that the goal?

Well, this is a little experiment in how well our site will do as a video site generator.

I take the template that we have for a video site in XLsuite

I then edit the links and set up the titles etc... and record the whole thing as a jing screencast

At the end of the process, I have a fully functioning video site about Web Traffic Tips - called TrafficInTraffic.com

Let me know if you're interested in hearing the jing screencasts and I'll either set the up here, or make a little bonus product out of it. Leave your comments below to get access to it either way.

Advanced Web Strategy

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:58:09 GMT

This is an outtake from a current Foresters article that I'd recommend you read:

" Up Selling: “Of course I’ll buy it, I helped design it!”
Every product gets replaced, it’s the law of innovation. As customers are now part of the design process of a product, they’re more likely to purchase the product. Done correctly this could reduce marketing and advertising costs as well as excess inventory. "

Always nice when a big organization like Forresters validates your business model for you.

As I'm learning more and more, the real value of our platform will be in how easily you can engage with your audience, create a community around your company or product and get the feedback and interaction that you want with your customers.

Please read the article here:

Web Strategy (Advanced): Applying a Social Computing Strategy to the entire Product Lifecycle

Make Money Mind Set

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:29:11 GMT

How to make more money and reach your goals of financial freedom. Isn't that what we all want?

Affiliate Marketing with XLsuite

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:29:36 GMT

Someone asked me about creating a blog for a professional golfer. While of course we were interested, it really brought up for me the whole argument of having a purpose to your blog.

In this case, he was mainly concerned with building his name recognition. That's fine, but if you can also make some revenue off the site at the same time, then what the hell.

Adding some information marketing strategies would be an easy thing, especially in an area like Golf where there are so many affiliate deals, both for golf equipment and for information products.

I put together a few screencasts into a playlist that I thought would ouline some of the ways that we could use XLsuite to create affiliate sites for things like membership, coaching and referral marketing sites.

My Feedback on NextMedia Fest 08

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:42:00 GMT

Did a video blog post on the way out of Banff about what my thoughts were on the NeXTmedia festival.

What does iXLd Do?

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:49:03 GMT

I thought I'd get a video up for you to get to know us a little bit.

It was such a nice day today, I thought I'd go out in the back and shoot some video intro's for the new website.

Green Tech Explainined

riel@ixld.com (Riel Roussopoulos) — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:46:45 GMT

Thanks to my client Eric Lee for this little tidbit. It's a very good breakdown on what clean tech is.