Have you  ever found yourself in this situation?

You are driving the car, your kids are being loud, or you’re in a noisy environment and your phone rings with an strange phone number. . . and you instantly freeze staring at your phone debating whether you should answer it and run the risk of a potential client or customer being turned off by the noise in the background, or let it go your your personal unprofessional voicemail and risk losing the sale. You don’t know.

If you have a virtual phone number, either a toll free number or a local number, that forwards to your cell phone or home phone, with caller ID you’ll know that it’s a business call coming through so you can get to a quiet place and take the call. Or, you can let the caller go to a professional voicemail recording for your business.

How helpful is a virtual phone number?

I have like 5 of them. That said, eVoice is now giving away 6 month free trials. I have honestly never seen an opportunity like this. I’ve seen free 14 day trials, and free 30 day trials, but free 6 month trials? Never.

If you think this might be a good tool for your business click the banner below to get the offer.

It happens to everyone that unrolls an effective online marketing campaign. First, there’s the thrill of new business leads magically appearing in your email box. Then, those leads get lost among your other email, then your mental Rolodex of leads maxes out, and finally all leads mix together and your lead management turns into and endless game of 52 Card Pickup.

Ah, you remember 52 Card Pickup. I remember the first time I was taught how to play that game. I was about 8 years old and I was invited to play a card card came. “What’s it called?” I asked enthusiastically. “It’s called 52 Card Pickup,” was the reply. “How do you play?” I asked. And down went the entire deck of cards all over the floor waiting for us to pick them up.

If you feel like you’re constantly playing 52 Card Pickup with your leads, you need a lead nurturing software to keep all your leads under control in a tight deck.

As soon as the cards, I mean leads, start hitting the floor there are usually two reactions: 1) generate more leads to replace those that you know are falling by the wayside or 2) tighten up the deck and get a follow up system for lead management.

The best solution is to tighten up the deck and manage or nurture your leads effectively.

So, what do I personally use to manage my leads? Well, I’ve tried all kinds of solutions that I won’t go into here and the best solutions I’ve found is a software called Act! It’s fantastic. You can track your leads from the source, through the sales process, and into production. It will even track the money your leads are converting into.

Is it intuitive? Yes. I don’t have time to read instruction manuals, and I use the software just fine.

Can you take it for a FREE Act! Test Drive to try it out? Absolutely.

Now, I don’t own Act! or anything. I bought the software to use for my business, it solved my problem, and I recommend you check it out. Here’s where you can get FREE Act! 2010 test drive, no strings attached. Great company!

Here’s what Linda emailed me today, “Hi Nate: Thanks so much for the referral to Vistaprint. We just received our first order and they’re exactly the same as we’ve been ordering from our prior supplier – but at almost 25% of the price. Wow, that’s 75% off!!! We do a full bleed, glossy business card and are so sold on Vista Print that we’re now excited about having them print other marketing materials. – Linda”

We’ll here’s the unreal deal like I said, a FREE one!

Why would Vistaprint give away free customized business cards? It must be a trick right?

Nope. There’s no trick. You don’t have to order anything else. Just get your free cards. Vistaprint knows their cards are so good that, when the give away a free stack of them to business owners like Linda at Aloha Kine, they are confident that the business owner is going to be a new client for life. Was it worth giving away a free stack of cards? Absolutely.

I found the banner below and put it in this blog post so you can get your free cards.

Give ‘em a shot, it’s free.
On a side note, I honestly don’t know how long this offer is going to last but if the banner is still down there, click it and jump on the offer before Vistaprint takes it down. . . here it is ↓↓↓↓

For those of you who have been attending my workshops on a regular basis, you know that I often recommend a specific company by the name of GoDaddy for registering hosting and domains. Well, things have changed for me and I have new hosting and domain favorites,  and what are they?

For domains, I recommend NameCheap.

For hosting, I recommend HostGator.

Now, I’ve played with both in the past but over the last 2 weeks I’ve experienced the quick power of both. Why the switch you ask?

Well, don’t get me wrong, GoDaddy is a good company. In my opinion, their customer service for the newbie is unsurpassed. However, here’s what put me over the edge and has me converted to NameCheap and Hostgator:

As some of you may know, my wife has a stand up paddle lessons school. Well, every month we organize a big cleanup where we invite anyone who wants to come, to paddle up the river and gather as much trash as we can from the riverbank and bushes, then bring it back down the river and throw it all away.

The event has been growing in popularity, and yesterday in the local paper, an article was printed announcing the next cleanup, which is this Saturday. The problem was, the article directed people to go to www.anahulucleanup.com for more information. I DIDN’T EVEN OWN THE DOMAIN NAME YET!

A few weeks ago, I registered some domain names with NameCheap and used Hostgator for the hosting, and I had a website live in about 10 minutes from domain registration to uploading the site. I was definitely impressed. Well, in a rush I decided to register the domain with NameCheap, then use my GoDaddy account for hosting. The domain registration and configuration went off without a hitch. Then, I went to GoDaddy to link the domain name to the hosting account hoping it would all come together quickly.

I submitted the request to GoDaddy, and quickly whipped up a crude website just to get something online. Everything was ready to launch and I was still waiting on GoDaddy! I waited at least an hour for it all to go through, and it never happened.

Fed up with waiting,  I canceled the request with GoDaddy, went into my HostGator account to add the domain to my hosting account, and shazzam! The site was live in about 2 minutes! Perfect. And, I was converted.

What does that all mean? If you don’t have the patience to wait on your domain or hosting account changes, like me, I recommend NameCheap to register your domains, and Hostgator for hosting. It’s quick, easy, and changes seem to happen instantly.

Hey, if you’re planning a product launch, you don’t want to be waiting on your hosting account or domain registrar make your site live. You need it now! You don’t have time to wait on www.GoDaddy.com to update all the necessary settings for your website.  Go with my new recommendations and you may save yourself a headache. Now I know why GoDaddy has to have good customer service.

On a side note, I also don’t agree with GoDaddy’s marketing plan and would have started moving my business elsewhere for just that. I found my new favorites just in time!

Are you committed to coming out on top? What will make the difference for your business in 2010? The economy? Wrong! A bail-out bill? No! The FED printing more money? No! The answer is YOU!

In this workshop, web designer and online marketing specialist, Nate Burgoyne is going to blast through the fluff with a “double-barreled marketing shotgun” and show you what really works!

More info and pre-workshop download at http://www.nateburgoyne.com/double-barreled .

Register Online at http://bit.ly/doublebarreled

Register by Phone at 526-1001

Space is Limited. First come, first serve.

Workshop is at the Hawaii Women’s Business Center in Honolulu. http://www.hwbc.org

Got pre-workshop questions, email Nate at nate@nateburgoyne.com or connect through LinkedIn. You are also welcome to comment on this thread.

Nate Burgoyne ( http://www.nateburgoyne.com ) is a web designer and online marketing specialist. He is president of Integrity Online Marketing (http://www.integrityonlinemarketing.com)

eCover Created by eCover Generator

Hey gang! If you’ve been wondering how to make ebook covers, this is the blog post you’ve been waiting for. There’s a piece of software I’ve been using over the years that creates covers for my eBooks, digital audio files, and special reports. So, I thought I’d share it with you. It’s the same software I used to create the eCover to my audio book, “The Truth About Online Marketing: Confronting the Biggest Mistake” that you see to the left there.

This software creates eCovers for reports, books, software, and CDs. You upload the pictures or create them using the software, then you simply choose the size, angle, and shadow of the images. The software does the rest and “presto” you’ve got slick covers to your ebooks!

You don’t have to be a design genius to use it. The software was developed so that anyone can use it right away. After you get the software, you simply download the file, double click it to install it, and it’s ready to do the hard work for you.

What does this mean for your business? Well, first of all you don’t have to pay a graphic designer big bucks to make 3D images of your ebooks. And, secondly, now you can give a professional look to all the information you’re selling or giving away to your website visitors. The software is called eCover Generator. Enjoy!

In the past years, John’s pest control business leads were generated mostly through door knocking, yellow page ads, etc. . . Lead generation was extremely labor intensive and actually expensive. In fact, it was costing him about $100 per lead to knock doors.

Well, things have changed. No too long ago, John updated his website and got it search engine optimized. Now he’s on the front page of Google for search terms like “honolulu pest control” and “oahu pest control”.

Now, he gets leads automatically coming to his email box without knocking one single door and business has never been better.

He was telling me how businesses don’t see the picture of what a quality search engine optimized website can do for  a company. Now, I didn’t build his website, but I did look through the html code for it, and it looks like he’s doing things right.

And the great thing is, once the website is online, most internet marketing is free. No more yellow page ads, no more ads in the newspaper, no more flyers and door knocking, and no more cold calling. It’s an automatic lead generating machine that, if done right, can easily return your investment 10 fold.

I couldn’t let the blog post go without a plug and a nice link back to his website. Right now he’s #4 in Google for “Honolulu Pest Control” and I know he’s going for #1 so here’s a sweet link for you: Honolulu Pest Control.

If you are a business owner or entrepreneur and you’re ready to upgrade your website or take your business online let me know, and I’ll make sure you get a killer discount from my Honolulu web design company Integrity Online Marketing.

I work directly with my Inner Circle clients personally to give them the tools and knowledge they need to excel their specific industries. My clients are most important and I refuse to spread myself thin. When my Inner Circle coaching slots are full, registration closes only to open again when a client’s business is totally on cruise control and a slot is made available for someone new.

NEW! All of my Inner Circle Members are permitted to record 2 personal coaching calls per month. What can they do with them? They can keep them for personal reference and/or sell them and keep 100% of the profit for themselves.

To learn more about my Inner Circle coaching program go to: www.nateburgoyne.com/consulting

A few months ago, I checked my credit with Equifax and boy was I surprised to see some things on my credit report. I was gong to check my score just once but now I check my credit report a few times every month. What will you find on there? Every credit line you’ve ever opened or that someone else has opened for you. All your credit lines and approximate balances, which accounts are open or closed, your credit score, and explanations of why things are scored as they are and who has reported to the credit bureau about you. It’s great and Equifax made their interface easy to navigate.

When I was looking for the right company to check my credit with, I went website to website looking for the one that I felt I could trust with my personal information. I ended up with Equifax. Their website is clean and professional. They have interactive elements with a virtual assistant and when you look at the homepage, the big red “Get Started” button tells you what to do.

I’m definitely impressed that they have a link to their Facebook page. Sometimes it takes big companies like this years and years to start something like a Facebook page.

What would I change about this website? Well, in my opinion, they’re killing themselves by not collecting names and email addresses. There’s no credit help newsletter to subscribe to. People are coming to their website and leaving without leaving any contact information. If they get a name and email collecting optin box on that homepage, I don’t doubt for a second that their sales will quickly multiply.

In a nutshell, this is what I use it for. With Xobni I can quickly search through my thousands of emails extremely fast to find conversations I’ve had with friends and clients. Also, when I read an email, the software automatically searches through Facebook and LinkedIn to find out if the name or email address matches any accounts on those sites. It makes sorting emails and connecting with people a breeze.

I believe it also can be used with regular Gmail and some other email providers.

You can download it at www.xobni.com. Enjoy!