Colin Klinkert Dot Com

Last week I had the chance to be interviewed by internet business coach and trainer James Holmes for his Internet Business Blueprint podcast. This podcast is dedicated to internet marketers and home business owners in network marketing, affiliate marketing and direct selling so there’s a good chance you’re in the target audience!

The call went very well and I’m glad to be able to share the podcast with you today. James and I discussed several topics including viral marketing and my products ViralUrl, ViralHosts and ViralNetworks, which is about to be relaunched. James is an early user of ViralUrl and I was really glad to have his feedback live.

Listen to the podcast to learn more on my path to internet marketing, what makes viral marketing so appealing and of course how to get the most out of ViralUrl. My business partner Frank Bauer was also on the call so make sure you listen to it now or add it to your favorites to listen to it at a later time.

Click to play or
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The introduction is about 5 minutes long so feel free to go past the 5th minute if you don’t have much time. I strongly recommend you visit James’ website Ask James Holmes for lots of great blog posts on internet marketing and his radio blog James Holmes Radio for more podcasts. If you’d like to learn more on ViralUrl and ViralHosts, feel free to watch the MLM Lead System Pro Webinar Video I posted a few months ago.

This week I’m proud to release the revamped version of my help desk! I indeed just got it redesigned to make it look nicer and most importantly improve usability. Check it out now: Reply2Colin.com. I hope you like it! Thankfully this new design should help you get in touch with my team and myself more easily. It is now a little easier to find more information on my products and select the appropriate category before submitting a ticket.

As a reminder, you may contact my team for ViralHosts general and technical support, ViralNetworks general and technical support and iBlog.at general and technical support. If you have questions about my own blog (to report bugs and errors, to advertise on it, etc.) or want to send me a joint venture offer, feel free to do so! My team or myself will respond to you as soon as possible.

When submitting a ticket, make sure you select the appropriate category so your ticket doesn’t get lost and we can respond to you as quickly as possible. The knowledge base and trouble shooter are pretty empty at the time I write this blog post but will be filled with lots of useful information very soon. Thanks for your patience!

For ViralUrl support and ViralFollowers support, please submit a ticket to my business partner Frank Bauer’s help desk at Reply2Frank.com. Thanks for your understanding.

New Design for Reply2Colin.com

Feel free to comment this blog post. I’d love to hear what you think of this new design!

A few days ago Google officially announced the launch of Google Buzz, a social integration and messaging tool. Google Buzz is Google’s latest attempt to jump into the social networking wave. They already have Orkut and OpenSocial but let’s be honest… who really use them? If you use Gmail, you must know about this new social app already. Google Buzz is a mix of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare and Yelp.

With Google Buzz, you can share whatever you feel like, including links, photos and videos. It has a few others cool features such as an auto-following function, a public and private sharing function and the inbox integration. Because Google Buzz is integrated into Gmail, it quickly got a great exposure and a lot of internet users started to use it as soon as it was released. According to analysts, 9 million posts were published on Google Buzz within the 56 hours of its release! Wow!

Google Buzz integrates several platforms including Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger and Twitter. No doubt Google is trying to catch up on social networking and microblogging platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The feedback I read on the web is pretty good so far, and I enjoy using this app myself. I had the feeling it was just another social app… but I quickly started to change my mind. The fact Google Buzz is integrated into Gmail really helps!

To use Google Buzz, you must have Gmail account. No big deal considering it’s one of the best web-based email platforms! Check out the Google Buzz website for more information. It’s pretty simple to use. Right below the link to your inbox, you will see a link to Google Buzz. Click it, start following people and you’re pretty much set up! You can then start posting messages. You can link your Twitter account to your feed so every time you publish a tweet, it will automatically show up on your feed.

If you want to check out my feed, please visit my Google Profile: Colin Klinkert. If you want to have a Google Profile as well, read this blog post: How to set up a Google Profile. Note that Google changed quite a few things to the initial version of Google Buzz as several users complained about privacy issues.

A few months ago I published a blog post about Google Wave. Well… if Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is definitely the present! Note that Google Buzz is also available on mobiles. If you want to learn more on this new app, watch this video:

A few weeks ago I was searching for a great affiliate WordPress theme for future squeeze pages and sites of mine. I just couldn’t find anything I really liked until I found a great theme called Squeeze Theme. As you can imagine, this theme was developed to help internet marketers and alike easily set up squeeze pages, sites and even blogs with WordPress.

Squeeze Theme was specifically designed to grab visitors’ attention and make them opt in, which is of course a must in our industry. As they say, if you aren’t squeezing the email addresses out our your visitors, you’re missing out on new customers… and profits! I couldn’t agree more. Your site may receive lots of traffic but if it doesn’t convert well (if visitors don’t opt in) all your traffic generation efforts are pretty useless…

Now you may think that this is just sales text after all… but if you test drive the actual theme and take a close look at how it is built, you will certainly understand why I picked this one and not another. This theme is considered as being one of the best converting themes in the industry, and when you remember how popular WordPress is… this is quite a fact!

This very professional looking theme is also very easy to customize. I’m not surprised Frank Kern and John Reese themselves recommend it too! It has an easy-to-use interface to customize your online presence almost as much as you want. The best part is that you don’t need to know anything about coding. If you already have a site or blog, you may simply want to use this theme for a single page of your site. Well, that’s possible!

Squeeze Theme design

As you can see the design is pretty neat, and you can of course change the appearance. You can for example change the colors, add your own background as well as widgets, ads, etc. Added to the regular WordPress features… it simply has it all! There is not much else you really need to start making money online!

Squeeze Theme interface

Another great advantage is the resource center. The members area is indeed full of videos, tutorials, etc. on how to set up your squeeze page, site or blog and most importantly make the most out of it. It also has a support forum, which is great if you’re a beginner as you will be able to find help very easily. They even offer a 12-week training course to learn how to set up an affiliate site and build a list.

To be honest with you, I really regret I only found out about this theme recently… This is certainly the best WordPress theme I have ever used. Period. And with all the support that comes with it, even total beginners can have a professional looking squeeze page, site or blog in no time! The most important aspect is actually the fact that the theme was designed to convert visits into opt ins. That’s truly priceless.

The people who developed Squeeze Theme also developed another theme called Affiliate Theme. While you can use Squeeze Theme for almost any type of make money online page, site or blog, Affiliate Theme is more specifically targeted at affiliate marketers. Both themes are available on Squeeze Theme’s site.

If you aren’t really familiar with WordPress, I suggest you to sign up to ViralHosts and take the one-time offer, so you can install WordPress in just a few clicks (with Fantastico De Luxe). For more information, check out why ViralHosts web hosting is so good for internet marketers!

Are you one of those struggling to find a good domain name? If you are, don’t worry too much… you aren’t alone. I already had several of my customers asking me how to find a good domain name for their site, blog or squeeze page. According to them, most good ones are already taken… which is partly true. Finding a good domain name for your site or whatever the type of online presence you’re planning to have isn’t easy. However, don’t just hurry to register a domain name but rather take the time to think about what you really need or want.

Some will say that a domain name isn’t that important… Well, a good domain name can definitely help your site rank better in search engines but most importantly it can grab your visitors’ attention and stay in their mind. A great domain name can even become one of your greatest assets! Don’t be too over excited though. A great domain name can help you rank better in search engines for example but isn’t necessarily a guarantee of success…

How your domain name should be:

- Short
- Memorable
- Easy to spell
- Easy to type
- Descriptive…

Easy to say but difficult to do… By descriptive I mean including keywords (as in viralmarketingmanuscript.com even though this domain name is a little too long), because they can help you rank better in search engines. You should avoid dashes and numbers as much as you can. Web users are now overloaded with information, so it MUST be memorable. Unless you target a specific geographic area, choose a common domain name extension such as .com, .net or .org.

Study the competition, ask around you and maybe use domain name suggestion tools like Domains Bots, Domain Tools or Dot-o-Mator. Once you have an idea of what you need or want, check the availability on a domain name registrar like GoDaddy or NameCheap. You will need to perform a search to check if the domain name you want, with the extension you want, is available or not. Feel free to perform as many searches as you want as they will help you find alternatives.

If you really struggle in choosing a domain name for your online presence, it’s still time to do a brainstorming. Most good domain names are already  taken, that’s right… but with some creativity you can find a great one that will perfectly match your needs. Try to think outside the box but always remember the characteristics of a good domain name.

You can purchase your domain name from a large range of websites but I tend to purchase mine from well established companies like GoDaddy and NameCheap. They are large companies that aren’t going out of business anytime soon… which is definitely a plus. Both GoDaddy and NameCheap provide good support. Now if you need web hosting as well, make sure you check out what makes ViralHosts web hosting so good!