Marketing your site does not have to be confusing,  overwhelming, or a never-ending expense without positive results. 

Some marketing companies try to dazzle you with their knowledge of technology and use geeky jargon with concepts they cannot clearly explain.   They keep you in the dark and charge you for services you may not even need.  If you don’t understand what they’re doing for you, how can you monitor their effectiveness?

At Kinetics Web Pro, sure we’re nerds – however, we’re nerds who speak your language. 

We know business, the bottom line, and investment versus expense. 

Let us increase your bottom line and grow your investment. 

Technorati Tags: web marketing

I would just like to thank each and every one of you for your trust, your friendship and your business this past year here at Kinetics Web Pro.  This was a year of many changes for the business, not the least of which was that we sold our old domain and acquired Kinetics Web Pro less than a couple months ago.  

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and the happiest holiday season to you & yours.  May 2009 bring abundance in every area of your life.  :-) 

– John Flynn, founder of Kinetics Web Pro

Since you’re reading this, you probably have a website that you need to market.  Or you’re about to create a website and think if you build it, sales are sure to follow.

The sad fact is, if you simply build a website, not much will happen.  Most sites get little (if any) traffic, and consequently, make no money. I assure you that’s due to lack of knowledge, not economics. 

Internet sales are up and growing, and more people are online than ever. If YOU are not finding your customer online, your competitor IS.

You absolutely CAN leverage your website to add income to your business. We will be HAPPY to help you do that.

How we market your website depends on a number of factors, including your client, timeframe and objectives. 

Let’s talk about your specific needs, and how we might WORK together.  Simply click the contact link on this page.  See you soon. 

Technorati Tags: web marketing

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to extensively test the content management system Pligg.  If you’re looking for a “ratings” type of website — a website devoted exclusively to a ratings system — then Pligg might be for you.  Unfortunately, Pligg is still in a “beta” stage and not quite ready for prime time.  If you’re familiar with the WordPress or Joomla frameworks (for example), then you will probably be frustrated with Pligg.

WordPress has benefitted from a longer development cycle and a usage that is nearly ubiquitous among the blogging community.  And Pligg is less of a blog than a content management system.  With Pligg, you have the opportunity to plug in different modules to customize Pligg to your liking, and you also can incorporate different skins to alter the design of Pligg.  

There are but a few skins available for Pligg, and as with most content management systems, the “design” changes really have more to do with color and column width variables than true design options.  One thinks of the over 1500 public (free) themes available for WordPress, plus the dozens of premium and “developer” grade themes available… Not to mention monster themes like our personal favorite, Thesis, and, well, it’s a pale comparison.  Pardon our lack of diplomacy, but Pligg is the poor second cousin who arrived late for dinner, and has a lot of growing up to do.  No offense to the Pligg community, because I think some day Pligg will truly grow up to be someone.

With regard to a ratings type of website, you can get ratings plugins for WordPress that provide ratings on posts and stories.  And there are numerous examples of adapting the WordPress theme to a content management system, and those have their place as well as their pro’s and con’s…  However, if you truly need a content management system — something where you pull data from other sources and populate it into your website — that database-driven aspect of serving data might be (eventually) better served in Pligg.

This reviewer sees some promise with Pligg.  If you were to download Pligg to test drive, bear in mind that the installation is not difficult with an experienced web developer, but it is more cumbersome and multi-stepped than, say, a WordPress installation via Fantastico in cPanel.  If you can follow the detailed instructions and know how to change file permissions on your server, then you should have no problem.  One tip — READ THE README file.  It’s crucial to your well being as a Pligg installer. Lol 

One wonders why there are not more skins available for Pligg, as it seems fairly straightforward to customize.  It is (like WordPress) PHP-based, so it’s a system that’s open source and ready to be developed, and will likely be so once it catches on amongst developers and users.

Do I ever see Pligg becoming as widespread as WordPress?  Likely not.  The singular benefits of Pligg focus on a fairly narrow definition for website need.  Pligg is for that niche of web developer and website owner who strictly needs a ratings-based content management system.  At least from the time I spent taking it apart, that’s what I see in its present form.

Each technology and platform fills a purpose, and there is no dragon slayer out there that is the end-all be-all of web platforms.  One client might truly benefit from Pligg, another from WordPress, while a third might need a Flash website.  This is where consulting with a professional web developer can save you months of development time and thousands of dollars in wasted expense and lost revenue.  You owe it to yourself to find a developer who has a wide breadth of experience and can advise you on the best strategy to implement for your business — a developer like Kinetics Web Pro.  Woops, sorry for the shameless plug.  

I’ll continue to monitor Pligg’s development and report back on the improvements as they occur.  Bottom line: is Pligg the next best thing?  Uh… no.

Technorati Tags: CMS, Content Managment System, Joomla, Pligg, Web Design, Wordpress

We are proud to announce the premiere of Theo Cartoons, a Christian animation studio founded by Mike Joens, a former Dreamworks executive and his son Brandon Joens.  The animation and production values are fantastic and we encourage you to check it out — Theo, the Animated Theologian.

In this case, the client needed a quick release on the site for branding and marketing purposes, with a product launch coming in about 30-60 days; the site will undergo somewhat of a re-design at that time.

Here is the first video from the project –

Check back for more updates on this very interesting project.

Technorati Tags: ALT tag marketing, CSS design, Google, META tag marketing, mobile media, Search Engine Optimization, Video Marketing, website design, Wordpress blog, Wordpress Thesis theme, YouTube

My friends, here at Kinetics Web Pro, we’re all about creating results for your business.  The fact is, you can create success in whatever economic circumstances exist around you.  People might be more deliberate in their expenditures during tough times, but the bottom line is that they still need to live life; commerce still takes place.  The most relevant survive.

Here are three things you can do right now with your marketing to increase revenue for your business. I hope they help and you remember your good friend John at Kinetics Web Pro when you’re writing tha check at the Bentley dealership…

1) Send out a sales letter to your current customer list with a KILLER offer.  This works with whatever industry you’re in.

2) Contact your customers who have been dormant and haven’t purchased from you in a while.  Send an offer and find out why they went away; or better yet, make them an offer they can’t refuse.

3) Create an “endorsed” mailing from one of your mega-clients or a business that’s in a similar niche as yours.  In the case of the business, they mail to your business and you mail to theirs; you gain new leads and generate sales to a whole new group of clients.

These are traditionally off-line (direct mail) strategies, but with the proper care could be directed as an e-mail or social marketing campaign.

If you don’t have a mailing list, what are you waiting for? LOL  We will be happy to help you set up your mailing list in a way that protects your customers’ privacy, captures their interest and insures the deliverability of your e-mail.  Did you know that in some e-mail campaigns over 80% of the e-mail is never even delivered?!?  We have ways to monitor the effectiveness of the campaign to reach your targeted customer with an offer they find highly relevant.  Contact us for details.

Technorati Tags: Business, Direct Mail, E-mail marketing, Mailing List, Marketing, Offline Business, Online Business, Opt-in Mailing, Permission marketing, Recession

The announcement today that over a half million jobs were lost in the month of November is startling news, especially considering that since the start of the year 1.8 million Americans have lost their jobs.  The country has its highest unemployment rate since October 1993.  Unemployment has risen by .2 percent to 6.7 percent.  What this means for a business online?  If you don’t already have a comprehensive marketing campaign, then you need to get one NOW.

For most businesses, what you do not want is paid advertising.  Adwords are effective under extremely narrow circumstances.  Banner ads stopped working around the turn of the century.  Link exchanges are… pardon me while I stop laughing…

There are NUMEROUS ways you can market a business online using highly effective, proven strategies.  Kinetics Web Pro is expert at getting your site to the top of the search engines, and that’s a big part of any website’s monetary success.  We’re also expert at SEO content, a specific form of content designed to do well in the search engines AND add something of value to your site; if you’re still pumping out random words or repeating key phrases dozens of times on your pages, not only will your readers shun you, but Google will ban you.  Thank goodness for Google — don’t you just hate those sites that try those goofy “spammy” tactics?

Sometimes it’s in the worst of times that we find out what we’re made of, and that can be a very good thing.  Unfortunately, sometimes in the worst of times there are people who are out to prey on our weaknesses and sell us all types of things that really don’t serve our interests, but exploit our fears.

Kinetics Web Pro uses proven strategies that are time-tested and evergreen; they will work six months or two years from now, and keep on working.

If you pay attention to the news (and you should), you’re probably freaked out right about now.  Give yourself a minute to freak out, and then remember that the job of the news is to A) scare us (because it’s good for their ratings), and then inform us just enough to B) See A.

There IS a way out.  Sit down with us for five minutes and you’ll see we’re the real deal.  We’re here to help.  We’ll create an online investment that will help you grow your offline business.  And if you already have a website that has never made you money, we understand.  We hear that a lot.  It’s a lot better feeling knowing your little website is churning out hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in profit with very little effort on your part.  There will be a lot of people talking about unemployment today.  But let’s talk about you making some money — isn’t that a more pleasant conversation?  It’s certainly more productive.

Technorati Tags: Digital Marketing, E-Commerce, Economy, Marketing, Mobile Content, New Media, Online Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Unemployment, Video Marketing, YouTube

Yesterday, I had the privilege and opportunity to participate in the annual Santa Clarita Lock-Up to support the Muscular Dystrophy Association, a drive to raise funds to support children with MD.  The Signal newspaper was there to cover the event and yours truly got to experience “life behind bars”… Being a marketing and computer nerd, you can imagine that I’m not used to having my photo in the newspaper, but sure enough there it is!  If my “mug” can raise money to help children, I’m all for it.

And to the right… my mug shot, alongside my lovely cell mate, Christine.

My heartfelt gratitude goes out to the parents and children who were present, the MDA volunteers for your tireless support, and Outback Steakhouse for hosting the event, providing the food and to the servers and staff who donated their time.

If you’d like to see the full write-up in the Signal, here is the link: Local Execs Thrown in the Slammer – for good!

My sentence was to send two children with a neuromuscular disease to a week long summer camp put on my MDA.  They set my bail at $1600; it costs $800 to send one child to summer camp.  I had the chance to meet some great local kids that go to camp, pictured below from left to right Cameron and his mom Vicky, Jared with mom Kari, and Katy with her mom Lisa.

I was only released when I promised I would do my best to continue raising my bail.  Every donation counts; MDA never turns away any child from attending summer camp no matter the cost.

This year, MDA was able to raise enough money to send 18 kids to camp; they are very close to their goal of sending 25 kids…  I just created a new web page where you can donate directly to MDA — I know times are tough, but if you would click on the link below and give a donation to help these kids and their families, it would mean a lot to me…

Join Kinetics Web Pro in helping Children with MD

Thank you for your help and support!  Please contact me if you have any questions or if you want to hear tales from my time in jail.  Happy Holidays!

– MDA Jailbird John, from Kinetics Web Pro

Technorati Tags: Charity, Children & the Web, Community, Family & Social Media, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Santa Clarita Lock-Up, Social Media, Web 2.0