Hooray! Our Small Business Podcast Directory  is #1 in Google for “small business podcasts”! What a great accomplishment. That’s a highly sought after search term and a very tough spot to get to.

How did we get here? Patience and Persistance. Yep, the good ol’ double P.

Calling all Podcasters and Bloggers - we would love it if you submitted your business podcast or blog to our podcast directory. Whether it’s a podcast or blog directed toward businesses, or it’s a podcast or blog created by a business - We Welcome You!

Any podcasts submitted automatically get added to our Network Feed. What does that mean? You become part of the Small Business Podcast Directory RSS Feed — a feed that has already been established on iTunes and other podcast directories. Double your exposure, my friend…double your exposure. Gotta luv RSS syndication!

This also provides our advertisers with a high rate of exposure, so if you’re looking for a place to “hang your hat” in banner ad placement, be sure to check us out.

Some of our banner ad rates are as follows:

• Header ads 190 x 150 - animated gifs allowed (only 2 spots) - as low as $50 a month
• Sidebar ads 130 x 150 - animated gifs allowed (non-rotating) - as low as $25 a month

Check out our #1 spot in Google below!

If you have any questions, please contact me directly at support[at]virtualassist[dot]net

Andrea

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC

www.virtualassist.net

Think you can’t afford custom development for your SharePoint environment? Think again!

I met with a local gentleman last week whose company, BPFast LLC, does SharePoint Development. Their tagline is: The Fastest Way to Business Process Automation. It’s the perfect description of what they’re all about. Providing targeted SharePoint solutions in a shorter amount of time than you would expect, AND for a lower cost than you would expect. What a great combination!

What they do (excerpt taken from their website): We specialize in applying out-of-the-box features of Microsoft Office 2007 and SharePoint to meet your goals. This approach helps reduce the cost of creating your solutions. We quickly build business solutions by configuring SharePoint and Office.

What I really like about them and what makes them stand out from the crowd is that they focus on smaller development projects that REALLY utilize the integration between the Office 2007 products and SharePoint to bring Reporting, Workflow, Electronic Forms, etc. to the table for a fraction of what you would normally expect to pay for a SharePoint development project.  Perfect for small to medium sized businesses where their development budgets are tighter than a large or Fortune 500 company. 

To see an example of what combining a Microsoft Office application and SharePoint can offer, check out a whitepaper they wrote called Access 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Integration

Check them out at www.bpfast.com.  Don’t be fooled by the fact they they focus on smaller development projects. One of the owners, Cliff, is a SharePoint architect with 20 years of consulting experience. Their dedication to helping small businesses is quite admirable.

They could take you or your client’s SharePoint usage to the next level and make it an even more powerful tool than it already is.

I’ll be posting an interview and demo at my podcast site (once I record them), so be sure you’re subscribed there as well.

Andrea Kalli

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC

www.virtualassist.net

Check out our E-Learning Center for affordable, on-demand video tutorials on Outlook and SharePoint.

Do you have a business PayPal account? What about an Aweber account?

Many companies do.

If you have digital products to sell, did you know you can combine features in PayPal and in Aweber to provide an automated delivery system for purchases? No? Well you can.

The Aweber site offers a How-To article on this very topic at http://www.aweber.com/blog/articles-tips/paypal-autoresponder-and-follow-up-integration.htm

What I like about this system is that it allows businesses to start selling their products without requiring the extra monthly expense of the all-purpose, all-inclusive shopping cart systems available. If, as a company, you’ve already got PayPal and Aweber then you don’t need anything else. Of course it’s not the absolute most secure system, but it’ll do for many a business.

PayPal allows you to create Buy Now buttons for your website that you’ll tie into the unique Aweber email address to a list. That action automatically adds the buyer to the appropriate Aweber list. Aweber sends out a confirmation email to them that they’ll need to respond to before it sends out the email with the product link and other information.

The beautiful thing is, it’s automatic once you set it up. People buy your products from your website and you don’t have to do anything manual. Well, you’ll need to log into your PayPal account and collect your money.

You’re going to need to password protect the downloadable files. I zip my files with WinZip Pro and use the built-in encryption feature. When you set up the Aweber email you’ll include a link to the download, the password to open it, and maybe some simple instructions for those that don’t know what to do with a zipped file.

Hey, and don’t forget to use this opportunity to up-sell them on your other products or services. You can include this information in the automated emails right along with the download links to what they’ve just purchased.

What can you use this for?

• EBook sales and delivery
• Educational course delivery, text and/or audio – delivered over several automated emails
• Audio products that you sell – original music and/or spoken word
• Most anything else that can be in a digital format.

What are the limitations? Well, there’s the simple fact that you can only have 8 email addresses in your PayPal account. You’ll use a unique email address from your Aweber list per product. That limits you right there.

It’s basic, but easy…and that’s a good start.

Andrea

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC

www.virtualassist.net

Is your business in overwhelm?

Are you puzzled over how to make your business more successful?

The Alliance of Virtual Professionals is the key to unlocking your business puzzle.

Experienced Virtual Professionals

The Alliance of Virtual Professionals (AOVPs) understands how to work with small businesses and busy professionals. Our alliance consists of hand-picked, highly skilled, experienced members that work as a team to guarantee your satisfaction. We specialize in working together to ensure that your projects receive the best creative, technical, and professional services available online.

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Podcasting

Transcription

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From Overwhelm to Success

Let us unlock your business puzzle and take you from overwhelm to success! Our goal is to help your business become productive, visible and profitable. We’re dedicated to making sure your business grows because, we don’t look good unless you look good.

If you haven’t already heard the news, Google released Google Apps Premier Edition today. Read the article below from Collaboration Loop to find out more… 

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Google today introduced Google Apps Premier Edition, a new version of Google’s hosted services for communication and collaboration. Google Apps Premier Edition is available for $50 per user account per year, and includes phone support, additional storage, and a new set of administration and business integration capabilities. Google Apps includes Gmail webmail services, Google Calendar shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging and voice-over-IP, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page on a specific domain. Google also today announced that all editions of Google Apps now include Google Docs & Spreadsheets. In addition, Google Apps now supports Gmail for mobile on BlackBerry handheld devices.

Features unique to Google Apps Premier Edition include:

• 10 GBs of storage per user
• APIs for business integration: data migration, user provisioning, single sign-on, and mail gateways.
• 99.9 % uptime service level agreements for high availability of Gmail, with Google monitoring and crediting customers if service levels are not met.
• 24×7 support for critical issues including extended business hours telephone support for administrators.
• Advertising is turned off by default, but businesses can choose to include Google’s relevant target-based ads if desired.

In addition to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Start Page, all editions of Google Apps now include:

• Google Docs & Spreadsheets lets teams collaborate on documents and spreadsheets without the need to email documents back and forth. Multiple employees can securely work on a document at the same time.
• All revisions are recorded for editing, and administrative controls allow organizations to define limits on document sharing.
• Gmail for mobile devices on BlackBerry is no different from regular Gmail.  Features include search, conversation view and synchronization with desktop version.
• Application-level control allows administrators to adapt services to business policies, such as sharing of calendars or documents outside of the company.

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