Today we released the fancy new version of our web conferencing platform, Voxwire Gold, to resellers. This means our customers can now sell Voxwire Gold under their own brand with up to a 50% mark-up in price (read: 50% profit). Voxwire Gold is ENTIRELY brandable, from the platform itself to the instruction manual, training videos and a pre-made website offer page. This is a complete business-in-a-box for the reseller who wants a ready-made SaaS solution to start making profits immediately.

What is So Great about Voxwire Gold?

Voxwire Gold is an impressive piece of work–from it’s flash-based architecture (cross-browser, no downloads) to it’s high-definition video, file sharing, remote desktop control, recording, and seamless integration of documents, presentations and video. Show attendees a streaming video while providing your own simultaneous voice-over. Hold a training webinar to train new employees without having to travel. Teach a class, provide technical support, hold a board meeting, and do it all remotely. Brick-and-mortar establishments charge thousands of dollars for the use of their conference rooms and meeting facilities. Offer that to your customers for $49/month. The value of Voxwire Gold is undeniable for an easy sell, every time.

Web conferencing is a 1.3 billion dollar industry for a reason: it increases efficiency while saving businesses money. This makes it an easy sell for resellers with a huge potential for profit.

A word from our President and CEO Adam Wills:

“We are excited to be able to offer our reseller clients a product in such high demand that can be branded and packaged so easily. We’ve put together a complete package with all the tools a reseller will need to bring this innovative, green-friendly communication platform to market. This is a true ‘turnkey’ product that allows our resellers to start making sales from day one.”

Adam’s right–this product epitomizes our mission here at TurnKey Internet. The entire sales arc can be accomplished in minutes. You can be signed up with your own product and your own branded website immediately. You can make your first sale right away. And there is absolutely no start-up cost, which means there is no risk. Voxwire Gold Reseller Edition comes with a WHMCS billing system plugin, so you can start keeping immaculate customer transaction records automatically. It also comes with a private label control panel for managing clients’ accounts.

The Benefits of Private Branding

This is your business with your name. Just as many large companies resell web hosting under their own company name, you can resell web conferencing under yours. Set up a viable, profitable business with no overhead and creatively brand it with your own company name, logo and brand identity. The company is completely in your hands. You decide who you want to sell to. You decide on your own target demographic. Sell Voxwire Gold to colleagues, friends on a forum you frequent, or to businesses right in your own community. Wherever you see a need for web conferencing, YOU supply the product and YOU make the profit.

Offer a Free Trial

We have lowered the profit barrier even further by providing our resellers with the opportunity to offer their clients 7-day free trials of Voxwire Gold. The service starts at just $20/month for resellers. With a suggested retail value of $49/month, you can more than double your money with each sale. You have complete freedom to raise or lower your prices as you see fit.

Learn more or SIGN UP TODAY!

Congratulations! You made it through 2010, a tough year for business. Our mission is to help businesses grow, and that has been harder over the past few years than ever before, as more and more people are out of work, and the sluggish economy keeps them from bouncing back. But there are still people out there doing well, and they are doing well because they are innovators and because they run their businesses smart. When economic times are tough, making the most of what you have becomes vitally important.
That is why we spent 2010 developing new tools for our clients so they can better serve theirs.

So far in 2011, we have seen the continued growth of our software-as-a-service products. These products are affordable, ready-to-use business growth tools that many of our clients have quickly and seamlessly incorporated into their day-to-day business operations. While there are many companies out there that offer a single business solution, we provide all of these tools in one place. It is our belief that our clients prefer to get everything they need at once–hosting, newsletter, backups, mail, conferencing, and more–for one low monthly price. Not only is this convenient, it streamlines business operations and saves considerable time and money. Each of our business solutions is a top-notch product that can compete and win in it’s niche. Together, our products provide a comprehensive tool box for the business entrepreneur.

We continue to believe in the ingenuity and perseverance of small business owners—the life blood of our economy. As a business serving small businesses, we are always interested to hear about the unique challenges facing you as you continue to grow in 2011. The more we know about you, the better able we will be to develop new products and services tailored to what you need most.

We look forward to helping you grow your business in 2011.

Learn more about our business bundle: http://www.turnkeyinternet.net/bundle/

While you might think longer domain names are never the way to go, you might be surprised by some of the benefits. A more descriptive domain better represents your site content, and can be a great boost to SEO. It can also be more memorable, more readily available and less of a risk of copyright infringement. Before I go too much further, I should mention that it is always a good idea for your domain name to be the same as the name of your site. This is true both because it will be more memorable and because it won’t dilute your brand with multiple titles.


SEO Benefits

In a longer domain name you have the opportunity to pick two or three keywords that represent your company, your products or your services. Short might be nice for ease of typing, but it’s nearly impossible to find a short domain name today that will have anything to do with your company content-wise. If you’re willing to brand yourself with something nonsensical for the sake of brevity, great; but if you want your brand to reflect your company, longer just makes sense. In a world where search terms define traffic, naming your company with industry-related search terms is smart business. However, there are a couple of points to look out for.

• Make sure the domain name you choose is easy to spell. If it isn’t, then buy up all the misspellings of your domain and point them to your page. But really, it’s best to avoid hard-to-spell domains for the sake of clarity. Also, your site ranking is associated with your domain name so if you have multiple spelling variants, it could be lowering your numbers.
• Make sure your domain name is easy to pronounce. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: word of mouth is just as important today as it was 50 years ago. If your customers can’t pronounce the name of your website, they’re less likely to talk about it. I don’t have any scientific studies to support this claim, but I think it’s pretty solid common sense.

Easy to Remember

Sometimes a phrase can be easier to remember than a short made up word. It’s all about context and description. If your site name and domain are specific, descriptive and relevant they will also be memorable. Why not go all the way and make your domain name a complete sentence? As language-based creatures, sentences that mean something, stick. Think about how easy it is to remember song lyrics. Associate your title sentence with your site content and you will have the advantage of contextual memory coupled with all of the other advantages discussed above. Slam dunk.

Yeah yeah, I know, everyone EVERWHERE is obsessed with Twitter, and for good reason. Twitter is fun, it’s easy to connect to tons of people and it’s SO hot right now. But, with the good comes the advertising. Along with being everyone’s favorite social media plaything, Twitter is also paving the way for the next generation in spamming. And, as the account holders with the most followers get wooed by the green, good people get jacked.

Help! My Tech Heroes Are Selling Out!

Every time I login to our TurnKey Internet Twitter account, I see another good tech person selling out. I know: who am I to talk? After all, I’m logging in to my COMPANY Twitter account, to SELL something. I shouldn’t really be splitting hairs here. But there is a big difference between a company account and a personal account; between a company network and a network of friends. Or there should be. There REALLY should be. Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, the line between personal and professional is woefully blurry. Drunk pirate anyone? While this might be good news for companies taking advantage of individual’s social popularity to market their products, it’s not so good for individuals taking advantage of their FRIENDS for monetary gain.

Companies are no dummies

Twitter offers an unprecedented forum for the bite-sized advertisement and tech gurus with thousands of followers offer an irresistible demographic. But I don’t follow those tech gurus to be advertised to, and I suspect you don’t either. I want my free information and I want it now! Which leads me to my next point…

Everyone’s In IT for the Money

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the problem is more systemic. We have all gotten so used to this fancy-free exchange of information. We subscribe to feeds and streams left and right and consume them without a thought for the poor sap behind the tweets, endlessly and thanklessly churning out tech tips for our enjoyment. Surely tech gurus need to eat! If only we could all keep our professional lives and our private lives separate, but with this all-access-all-the-time technology… it’s a fat chance, sister.

So what’s the upshot? The conclusion I keep coming to is that free access puts the onus on the individual. It’s up to each of us to decide what we are going to share and where we are going to share it. Each of us has to weigh our friendships against our desire to monetize. We also have to remember that our input is valuable, as diluted as we might feel by the seemingly endless input of others. And, I think, we have to start valuing quality input more highly, and by that I mean, we have to start being willing to pay for it. If we aren’t, we have no right to complain about our tech expert buddy spamming our twitter feed with advertisements. The fact remains: if we value what he has to say, we’ll tolerate his spam. Probably. If enough of us stop following him, perhaps he’ll think twice about what he’s doing. Perhaps he will offer a monthly subscription to an ad-free version of his feed. Now THAT is something I’d pay for.

Starting a new business can be a long and complicated process. One of the most important first steps (and one that often gets set aside for later) is creating a recognizable brand that suits your business goals. Your brand should reflect your industry but should also set you apart as unique. It should be memorable, easy to say and spell and should appeal specifically to your demographic. Lastly, your brand should be available as a domain name.

Brainstorm: What are You Looking For in a Company Brand?

Because of how hard it is to get a simple domain name these days, your best bet is to attack the problem from the opposite side. Figure out how you want to present your company to the world. Are you fun and web 2.0 like Google or Mozy, or are you more traditional and neutral like Dell Computers or Verizon? Try to think from the perspective of your demographic. If your clients are teenagers, look at the successful businesses in that market. What are their names like? Take your time doing this research. The brand you choose will help shape your company, and once you start marketing, you won’t want to make any changes that could disrupt traffic or confuse consumers. Point is, if your business is successful (which it will be, obviously) you’ll be living with this brand for a long time. The energy you put into naming your company will pay off every single time you see the name in the paper or on your letter head, every time you say it on the phone. This is your business! You need to be proud of its name.

Start Searching for Domain Names

Once you have a solid sense of the scope of your business, start trying out domain names. Sure, many of your early choices will likely be taken, but you might be surprised. There are still many domains out there and if you know what you’re looking for, chances are good you’ll find one pretty fast. Aim for short and simple and remember your goals and demographic. Don’t settle for something too soon. Once you have a list of names you like, show them to friends. Ask people in your target demographic what they think: if the name is memorable and interesting, and if it would attract them to the company.

If you can see the name in lights, up on a billboard or behind home base, you’ve done your job.

While Cyber Monday has come and gone, all the studies show that the shopping season is far from over. In fact, we’re being told now that consumers will most likely continue to increase their spending through the end of the month. If you’re an online retailer, you will probably be seeing a steady increase in traffic to your website. As a former online retailer myself, I remember my greatest fear around this time of year: website slowdown, or worse! Today, as consumers expect faster and faster shopping experiences, this is an even scarier prospect. When the tiniest glitch during selection or check-out can send customers surfing, making sure your website is running at top speed is just smart business.

Take this snowy day (if you’re in the right half of the country) to have a look at your stats and, if they’re in the red, upgrade your service to handle the extra load. If you don’t have stats to look at, get in touch with your hosting provider and ask if your current plan could handle double the traffic it has now. If not: upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Doubling your capacity might be overkill, but you only have do it once a year. Besides, the potential lost sales from a slow-down will more than pay for the upgrade.

If you don’t upgrade and your site goes down, I won’t say “I told you so” because I’m not that kind of girl… But I’ll be thinking it!

Anneke Rudegeair
Marketing Director