-
-
Search
-
Categories
-
Archives
-
Suggested Sites
-
Admin
Looking for a Subcontractor for HTML Ezines and Blog Postings
I am looking for a sub (or two) to take over some of my clients’ HTML newsletters & WordPress blog postings. All content is provided – NO WRITING NECESSARY.
You must be able to comfortably work with HTML. Nothing “fancy,” but basic knowledge is a MUST. CLEAN HTML templates are provided as a starting point for my clients’ ezines. Someone with Dreamweaver, CoffeeCup or the like is preferred. If you can code using a plain text editor, that’s fine – just no visual editors – I’ve had too many nightmare issues with the code when people have used visual editors.
Currently, my clients are using either iContact or 1SC for their ezines. Knowledge of sending ezines via these mediums is a plus, but not necessary. (I can show you how to set up the ezines & send tests and I would do the final launch.)
I’m spending about 7-10 hours per month on blog posting & ezines and I would prefer to sub these tasks out.
Please reply via email only to rfp@qualityva.com with your subcontract rates for this type of work as well as your usual turn-around time once content has been provided. Be prepared to provide samples of ezines you’ve done in the past if requested. Do not send samples with your original response.
The subject line for your response should be:
HTML RFP – First Name Last Name (or your company name)
Please be sure to put YOUR first and last name or your company name in the subject line.
Responses that have not provided a subcontract rate, turnaround time or proper subject line will not be considered.
Response deadline: August 4, 2010
1ShoppingCart Hit by Dreaded DoS Attack
Many of you may know that 1ShoppingCart (and it’s many “white label” versions) was down for most of yesterday afternoon. When I logged into a client’s 1ShoppingCart account today, the following message from 1ShoppingCart popped up.
(1ShoppingCart has many “white label” versions/”private resellers” such as KickstartCart, Cartville, 1AutomationWiz, PracticePaySolutions, and others – anything that starts with “https://www.mcssl.com/” in the URL when you log in.)
Yesterday, July 14th 2010, we encountered a service interruption from approximately 3:18PM EDT until 7:20PM EDT.
We apologize for yesterday’s service interruption. We understand that it is our responsibility to ensure best-in-class service availability. We take this responsibility very seriously and therefore want to share with you the facts. It is important to note that throughout this outage, your data remained entirely safe and secure.
Yesterday’s service interruption was caused by a denial of service attack, which was aimed towards our systems. A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all. As you may know, every major provider is attacked every single day, and on occasion perpetrators achieve some or all of their goals. Even some of the biggest websites on the Internet are not immune to these types of attacks.
Our monitoring systems alerted us of a potential issue at 3:18PM EDT and immediately our Engineering teams began work to defend against this attack. We are confident that this outage, while it may have seemed lengthy, was mitigated as quickly as possible. During the entire time, our Client Services team was posting constant updates to our Twitter account in an attempt to keep you informed on our progress. We appreciated your support and understanding while we worked to get you back online.
The nature of these attacks are constantly evolving and each attack is different. We will continue to invest in our systems and continue to work endlessly to regain your confidence in our system and make 1ShoppingCart the most reliable and stable shopping cart solution available. We commit to you, our customers, that there is nothing more important to us than ensuring 1ShoppingCart is there when you need it.
If you would like to discuss this in more detail, please call 1-888-792-1961.
Testing a feed – ignore
Just testing something. Ignore. 
Thanks.
How Many Times Are You Going To Follow Me?
There is something rather comical going on in my Twitter account. I began following a particular last year because they were a client of a friend of mine. I never really paid a whole lot of attention to their status updates because after a while the updates started to not be relevant to what she’s doing (or claims to be doing) in her business venture – absolutely NOTHING personal being tweeted, nothing about what’s going on with the business, a few re-tweets here and there and very little interaction. The Facebook pages for this person aren’t any better.
Anyway, I must admit I haven’t given my Twitter follower list a whole lot of attention this past year, so I’m still “technically” following this person’s Twitter account. Several months ago I started getting notifications that this person was following me – a couple of times a month. It was kind of funny at first and became somewhat of a private joke between me and a couple of other VAs who knew what was going on (the same thing was happening to them – from the same Twitter account). Then the notices started coming closer together. This past week I’ve gotten a notice that this person is following me on Twitter EVERY DAY.
So, what’s the moral of this story? Auto-follows bite. I’ll admit that I did do the “auto-follow” thing for a few weeks but I quickly discovered I was following a lot of people who did a whole lot of tweeting about a whole lot of crap. So I promptly turned off my auto-following.
Do you have any funny Twitter follow stories?
42 Blog Post Ideas You Can Outright Steal
During my weekend “catch-up reading” I ran across this excellent resource to help get the hamster wheel turning for blog post ideas. And, since it’s been over a month since I updated my own blog, I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity & share it with you all!
42 Blog Post Ideas You Can Outright Steal
Happy Blogging!
Podcast Marketing Success Strategies
While podcasting has been around for about seven years, there has been a stigma that podcasts are only viewed by Internet Marketers and technology people. Well, that might have been true initially, but times have changed! One of the greatest catalysts for the rapid growth of business podcasting in 2010 has been the iPhone. Waves of people have purchased new smartphones over the last 12 months and are readily downloading podcasts more than ever before! In fact, 70% of all podcast downloads comes from the iPhone, if you can believe that.
Podcasting is a highly portable and easy-to-implement communication tool for businesses to effectively build brand, connect with a target audience and increase their customer and client base.
Of course, business owners often lack the time and skills to effectively set up, produce and promote their podcasts. It is for this reason that VAClassroom has created this innovative and timely mini-course.
Registration is now officially open for the PODCAST MARKETING SUCCESS STRATEGIES Mini-Course.
The two-week mini-course officially gets underway on Monday, April 5, 2010, and is priced at a very reasonable rate ($147) for the first run of the program.
Please visit this direct link to the VAclassroom Podcast Marketing Success Strategies Mini-Course (click the name) to learn more about the course.
And, as always, if starting a podcast is something you’re interested in, but don’t want to mess with the “behind the scenes” part of podcasting, schedule a consultation with me so we can discuss how I can help take that off your plate!
Reading Clients’ Minds
Sometimes I might as well be having the following conversation with a client when it comes to their projects.
Client – I need you to find someone to build me a fence.
Me – Where?
Client – Out around my property.
Me – Do you have a lot layout/dimensions of where you want the fence?
Client – Um, I’m not sure exactly where I want it yet.
Me – OK, moving on…What’s the fence for?
Client – Why does it matter?
Me – Um, well, is it going to be a decorative one, a tall one to keep stuff out, for livestock, chickens, kids, etc.?
Client – Oh, I just want something around the perimeter to define my property.
Me – OK, so, chain link/hurricane fencing, barbed wire, chicken wire, picket, privacy, split rail, stone, brick…???
Yeah, that conversation could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Seriously, clients and potential clients, KNOW what you want when you ask your VA to do something for you – and SHARE that information with him/her. Don’t give just half the information. If you KNOW you’re going to want a 4″ natural stone fence, pass that information on. It’s very costly for YOU (and frustrating to us) when we have to drag it out of you and end up on a snipe hunt!
Services for QuickBooks 2007 to be Discontinued
After May 31, 2010 many of the services for QuickBooks 2007 will be discontinued by Intuit. Affected services for QuickBooks 2007 will be: Assisted Payroll, Basic Payroll, Enhanced Payroll, Standard Payroll, Employee Organizer, Merchant Service, Billing Solution (formerly QuickBooks Online Billing), QuickBooks Email, Bill Pay, Online Banking, Credit Card Download, Technical Support Plans and Services. If you are using any of these services and want to continue, you will need to upgrade.
HTML Editor on a Budget
If you do minor editing of your clients’ web pages, html ezines/newsletters or like to tweak the coding in wordpress blog posts & pages but are on a budget, you may only be able to drool over Dreamweaver. Many people don’t know there are options out there other than hand coding in Notepad. Have you seen any of the products from Coffee Cup? I’ve used some of their products and have found them to be easy to work in and far less complicated than Dreamweaver. And best of all, they have a load of free stuff! And, what you do buy from them is much less expensive than their “name brand” competitors! For instance, as of the writing of this post, their HTML editor software is $49. For those of you who don’t even want to mess with code, they have a Visual Site Designer for $49 also. Of course, this isn’t going to turn you into a stellar web designer, but it can certainly make things a little easier for those of us who are not web designers!
Off-Site Backup Solution for QuickBooks
I was researching something earlier and ran across an interesting idea for backing up your QuickBooks file.
Set your QuickBooks to automatically backup every time you close it (make sure you’re using the data verification!!) and set it to save in your DropBox folder!
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, as I use DropBox and LOVE it! The free version comes with 2 MB of storage space, but honestly, I’m not anywhere even close to that right now (only using about 6% of my space).
