The Isolated Entrepreneur

First class stamps will be 42 cents (17 cents for each additional ounce), Postcards 27 cents, and Media Mail $2.23 for the first pound (35 cents each additional pound). 

If you have Forever Stamps, you will not need to add the penny for the increase

When clients ask me which mailing list provider to use, my response is instantaneous - AWeber.  Here is a service that continuously improves its features.

It’s latest is full control of how your RSS feed broadcasts to your subscribers.  If you haven’t done it yet, providing an e-mail digest to visitors of your blog is a great tool for increasing readership.

In the last couple of weeks, AWeber has given more control to its clients.  You decide when you want your e-mail digest should be broadcasted.  For example, you can setup your e-mail RSS feed to publish at 8 AM on Mondays and Thursdays.

Yesterday, they announced that they have integrated RSS broadcasts with Feedburner so you can track both your RSS subscribers as well as e-mail digest subscribers.

I stumbled across a new contact manager/CRM application over the weekend called Plan Plus Online by Franklin Covey. Think of it as the famous Covey organizer (including the weekly planning tools) online.

The Covey product has two editions basic (replaces your organizer) and a sales edition which incorporates the sales process. You can create a virtual organization by purchasing multiple user licenses and sharing information.

For Covey advocates, it looks like a great alternative to ther CRMs such as Salesforce.com and Act! However, the system is somewhat buggy and still immature. The system is stable enough to purchase and use; however, you may have to wait for bug fixes and new features.

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A new web-based CRM application has been launched by the makers of Appointments Plus called the Virtual Assistant Manager.

I tried the application and found that it was a very convenient tool for virtual assistants to communicate with their clients.  As this is the first edition, I expect that it will continue to blossom.

• It is secure (uses SSL) and the company has a good backup policy for the application.
• The price structure is based on the number of virtual assistants.  You can give all your clients access and add unlimited number of activities -> something that makes most other applications such as Basecamp limiting for this profession.
• You can track your billable hours right in the application.
• You can setup repeat activities and setup a project with multiple tasks.
• Clients can submit requests, view tasks/projects, and run time billed reports.

Some current limitations are:

• A task must have a due date.  If you don’t select one, one is assigned when you save.
• The look-and-feel is still a bit choppy and you cannot customize it or move things around.
• No email integration.  It sends out going email notifications, but you cannot receive emails within the system.

Is Virtual Assistant Manager ready to be used?  Yes, the basic functionality is there, but there are current limitations which may be limiting depending on how your company is setup.

Just a friendly reminder.

Tomorrow is the deadline for 4th quarter 2007 estimated taxes. Envelopes must be postmarked January 15, 2008 or you can pay them online or over the phone through the free EFTPS system.

For more information, see the IRS Self Employment Tax webpage and make sure you check the deadlines for your estimated state income and unemployment taxes - if you have them.

It’s the first of the year.  It is time to update the copyrights on your blogs and other dynamic websites.

You have a photograph you want to put on your website or blog, however, the file is too big and you need to shrink the photograph to fit on your page.  How can you get this accomplished without spending hundreds of dollars on sophisticated software such as Adobe Photoshop?

Try GIMP, a free, open source photo editing program (go here for the Window Installer).  This software has more features than Kodak’s EasyShare program or Google’s Picasa.

You can change the ppi (pixels per inch) and scale the image.  Click on Scale Image under the Image menu to find these features.

HINT.  The standard is to use 72 ppis for website images and 300 ppi for printed material.

[Reprint from Christopher Knight’s Ezine Tips]

Recently Email Service Provider (ESP) MailerMailer released an email metrics report on the first half of this year. To save you some time from reading all 28 pages of this report, I’m going to give you the quick highlights:

• Mondays, Tuesdays and Weekends are best days to send.
• Wednesdays and Friday’s are the days your email is least likely to be read.
• Tuesday mailings typically get the highest click rates.
• Shorter Subject Lines (less than 35 characters) significantly outperform longer subject lines (greater than 35 characters) by both open rate and click through rate (CTR.)
• Subject line personalization is the single best place to add personalization if you want to improve open rate and CTR.
• Shoot for having either 5-10 links or over 20 links for best performance. Try to avoid having 6-19 links within your emails.
• Text messages show a very slight advantage in CTR over HTML, but the percentage is negligible

Read the full Ezine-Tips article: http://EmailUniverse.com/ezine-tips/?id=1367

Today there will be a live video seminar at 2 PM EST about how to get your email into the Inbox and not into the spam folder.   The seminar is free.  Click here to register.

For information about upcoming seminars, click here.

Forbes magazine has a great article out about incompetent assistants.  Whether you work with a virtual or in-office assistant, it is important to hire one that makes you look good and relieves you of your workload - not adds to it.