A few days ago over lunch I held an impromptu mastermind session over at our new internet business community Lunchtime Mastermind. After a few minutes of research I landed on Chatroll – one of my new favorite tools. Chatroll allowed me to create a chat room (with tons of great options) and embed it in my website in about 5 minutes – for free.

Why would you want this? You could use it for many things – from covering live events to live Q&A. In our instance we want a way to easily have mastermind sessions with our members.

Chatroll Features:

• Easily embed in any website (including a great WordPress Plugin)
• Customize color and size to match the look and feel of your site
• Moderate with 1-click delete, custom profanity filters and IP block
• Manage read, write and moderate permissions with fine-grained access controls
• And Tons More

One feature we are integrating into our mastermind group now is single sign on. Using this our members will be able to log in to our mastermind chat sessions using their WordPress membership account. Sometimes technology makes it easy

Do you have questions about Chatroll? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

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There was a great post from Search Engine Land last week called “It’s A Fatal Mistake To Copy Successful Web Sites“…

Someone asked, “Why don’t we all just copy Amazon.com?” I replied, “Never, ever copy what Amazon does.” The audience responded with surprise, thinking I was not a fan of Amazon.

Not true. The reason you don’t want to copy a successful site like Amazon is that their website requirements are not likely to be the same as your site requirements. Their users may have different characteristics than your site visitors. Their customers’ needs may be completely different. You don’t have the user, traffic analysis and usability testing data they’ve collected over the years that they use as a base for their user interface, information architecture and content delivery.

Now this goes in the exact opposite direction when we said “You Should Copy Amazon.com E-Commerce Design“.

However – I think we are both right. In the context Kim speaks about in her argument why you should not copy is the varying degree of requirements. Obviously Amazon has a unique audience that demands specific requirements that Amazon has thoughtfully researched and implemented over the last ten years. We don’t recommend that you try (why would you?) to copy Amazon’s information architecture or to layout your site in the same exact fashion.

But when it comes down to function, usability, and conversion – why not copy them? They’ve been doing research for the last 10 years on e-commerce usability and conversion optimization. Most small businesses running e-commerce don’t have an analytics research staff – let alone the data to even begin. So why not copy the color of their buttons, or their “Add To Cart” text, or even their shopping cart layout.

One of the taglines we have at 48Web is – “We’ve done the research so you don’t have to“…

In the case of Amazon – they’ve done the research so why not copy them?

Let us know what you think in the comments or jump into the forums!

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Here is how we integrated Google Buzz with WordPress on this site…

1. Go To Plugins -> Add New

2. Search For Google Buzz

We chose to use the Google Buzz WordPress Plugin WP Google-buzz

3. Update Settings

Under Settings -> WP Google-buzz you can setup where you wan the button to display, among other things…

Here’s what it looks like when you are done…

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We are rapidly posting content over on the digest about Google Buzz. Don’t worry – a full analysis on how Buzz will affect your business is on the way!

Check out these posts from the digest…

• Google Buzz For Local Marketing
• Google Buzz For Business
• Google Buzz Video

Some great analysis from the web…

• Introducing Buzz
• Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter
• Google Buzz: Google Takes On Twitter, Facebook, Even Foursquare
• Google’s Newest Mission: Organizing The Social Experience

Learn more about Google Buzz on our new topic page!

What do you think about Google Buzz so far? Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forum!

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Every business needs a hub online… Here are four essential pieces in building that hub.

1. You need a good domain

2. You need something you can update easily

3. You need a way to build a list

4. You need to collect data

Click To Enlarge

What’s in your hub? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

Want to learn more about building a hub online?

Check out our guide to “Getting IT Right”

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Any business – no matter the type – can use the web to make and take money…

Here are some tools you can use to do so…

Processing

• Dwolla
• PayPal
• 1ShoppingCart
• Authorize.Net

Finances

• Bank of America
• Less Accounting
• Freshbooks
• Mint

Shopping Cart

• 1ShoppingCart
• E-Junkie
• PayPal

E-Commerce

• Magento
• WordPress E-Commerce
• PayPal

What tools do you use to make and take money online? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

Learn more about making money online in Getting “IT” Right…

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Today I stumbled on the widget creation tool in Hootsuite that allows you to create an embeddable widget on your website or blog.

Here is how it works.. Just click the embed button on any column

Then click “Grab Code” and paste it in your sidebar or website!

It’s pretty easy – got any questions? Leave a comment or jump into the forums!

P.S. Hootsuite was Doug’s tool of the week on our internet business podcast

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1. E-Commerce

Selling products using a shopping cart…

Tools: WordPress E-Commerce Plugin

Example: RiptApparel.com

Sells custom made graphic tees using WordPress and a shopping cart.

2. Membership

Selling monthly, recurring access to a site for consulting, content, coaching, news, etc…

Tools: WishListMember

Example: OperationRedState.com

Sells a membership program to help candidates run for office online.

3. Sell Digital Products

Sell courses, e-books, consulitng, reports, music, video, etc using WordPress

Tools: 1ShoppingCart, E-Junkie, or PayPal

Example: WebStrategyWorkshop.com

Sells digital courses to help you run your business online

4. Advertising

Sell advertising on your blog or site

Tools: Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Text-Link-Ads

Example: ShoeMoney.com

Sells advertising inventory on his WordPress Blog

5. Affiliate

Sell other people’s products online and make commission

Tools: Google Affiliate Network

Example: ChrisBrogan.com

Earns commission by selling other people’s products

How do you make money with WordPress? Do you have any questions on setting up one of these models? Leave us a comment or jump into the forums!

Bonus: There are more than five ways to make money with WordPress in the graphic

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Today we installed the Meebo Bar WordPress Plugin on this site.

If you look at the screenshot below you’ll see it adds a “bar” along the bottom with several social and sharing functions…

Hovering the “Share Page” button on the bar allows visitors to your site to quickly share the page…

We also setup the ability for visitors to ask us questions when they are on the site. If you are reading something and have a question about it – just ask us! We’ll try to get back to you right away.

We also added the RSS, Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon buttons using the easy configuration tool provided by Meebo. The RSS button pulls the latest from our RSS feed. The Twitter button pulls our latest tweets. The Facebook Button shows off our fan page widget. And the StumbleUpon button lets you share it to the SU network.

If you have any questions about the Meebo bar and integrating it into your website, jump into our forums or leave us a comment here.

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Google says comment spam may hurt your search engine rankings and offers this advice to avoid spam on your WordPress site…

• Disallow anonymous posting.
• Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
• Turn on comment moderation.
• Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.
• Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
• Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.

They also offer some other great advice which we often say here… Most times having a great content strategy is the best SEO technique…

FACT: Having original and useful content and making your site search engine friendly is the best strategy for better ranking. With an appealing site, you’ll be recognized by the web community as a reliable source and links to your site will build naturally.

via Google – Hard facts about comment spam

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