It’s proven: Excellent customer support brings loyalty to a product.

If you have your own product, you’ll likely need a support ticket system (also known as a help desk system) so that both your customer and you are able to communicate and track a particular issue or request — and have the support item addressed in a professional manner.

With some of these systems, you can also organize frequently-asked-questions about your service or product into a self-serving knowledge base.

The good news is that you need not spend money getting a web-based support ticket system.

Here are just some of the free PHP help desk solutions available:

1. eTicket
2. Help Desk Software
3. HESK
4. Maian Support
5. osTicket + osFAQ
6. phpTickets
7. Trellis Desk

Note that some of these free solutions come with limitations (e.g. limited number of agents/users, branding display requirement, etc) but for most vendors, I reckon the limitations would not be a problem.

Feel free to share your favorite free PHP help desk software in the comments section below.

No related posts.

There is no doubt that the use of videos in Internet marketing is getting popular. Just take a look at some of the squeeze pages and sales pages today. Chances are that there’s a video in it! More specifically, you’ll be watching a Flash video (FLV) or an MP4 video.

How does one get a Flash video played on a web page?

Answer: An embeddable Flash video player.

Are there free Flash video players that I can use on my web page?

Answer: Yes!

Can I use a free player for commercial purposes?

Answer: Not all free Flash video players can be used for commercial purposes.

With that, here’s a list of free Flash video players which can be used commercially.

1. f4Player
   License: LGPL
2. Flayr
   License: Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported
3. Flowplayer
   License: GPL 3.0
   The catch: Flowplayer logo/branding visible
4. FLV Player
   License: BSD
5. FLVplayer
   License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
   The catch: FLVplayer.com logo/branding visible
6. GS Player
   License: BSD
7. Jaris FLV Player
   License: GPL and LGPL
8. MC Media Player
   License: Free
   The catch: Link-back to website required
9. Open Video Player (OVP)
   License: Open source
10. OS FLV
    License: GPL 3.0

If you know of a free embeddable Flash video player (that can be use for commercial purposes) not listed above, feel free to leave your suggestion as a comment below.

No related posts.

The nice thing about internet marketing is that the barrier to entry (in investment dollars) is as low as you want.

Below, I list some of the best desktop and online tools which don’t cost a dime.

If you have anything to add, just leave me a comment!

Free Desktop Software

1. Adobe Reader – PDF reader; a must-have tool to read most of the e-books out there
2. CamStudio – Screencasting; create video demos of your product
3. FileZilla – FTP client; to upload files to your hosting server
4. Firefox – Web browser
5. FreeMind – Mind-mapping software; great for brainstorming
6. GIMP – Photo and image editor; analogous to Adobe Photoshop
7. Inkscape – Vector graphics editor; analogous to Adobe Illustrator
8. Jing – Screen capture and screen casting
9. Kompozer – HTML editor; analogous to Microsoft Frontpage
10. Mozy – Automatic online backups
11. OpenOffice – Productivity suite; analogous to Microsoft Office
12. Open Workbench – Project management; set deadlines for your project milestones
13. Paint.NET – Photo and image editor; analogous to Adobe Photoshop
14. Pdf995 (free version) – PDF printer; print to PDF from any application
15. SpeechPlayer Free Edition – Text-to-speech tool – for listening to all those e-books (a shameless plug!)
16. TweetDeck – Desktop Twitter application
17. Windows Live Movie Maker – Video editor; latest version allows you to upload directly to YouTube
18. Windows Live Writer – Blogging application; supports posting to a WordPress website

Free Online Services

1. 3D Package – 3D cover creator
2. Are My Sites Up – Website monitoring
3. Backlink Watch – Backlinks checker tool
4. Blogger.com – Blog service which supports AdSense ads
5. BrowserShots – Cross platform browser test
6. ClickTale – Visitor movement tracker; improve your conversions by analyzing visitor mouse movements
7. Cool Text – Logo and graphics generator
8. Copyscape – Search for copies of your page on the web
9. Feng-GUI – Visual attention heatmap
10. Free Tell A Friend – Tell-a-friend service
11. Google Alerts – Email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic
12. Google Analytics – Traffic monitoring and analytics
13. Google Insights for Search – Provides insights into the search terms people have been entering into the Google search engine
14. Google Keyword Tool – Keyword research
15. Google Trends – Compare trends for different search terms in Google
16. Google Webmaster Tool – Provides detailed reports on crawling and indexing of your websites
17. Google Website Optimizer – Website testing and optimization tool
18. OnlyWire – Automated content and bookmark distribution tool
19. Ping.fm – Update all your social networks at once
20. Ping-O-Matic – Blog ping service; ping multiple search engines at once
21. PRChecker.info – Google PageRank checker
22. Quantcast – Media measurement service
23. StatCounter – Traffic monitoring with real-time analytics
24. stock.xchng – Free stock photos
25. SurveyMonkey.com – Create and publish custom surveys
26. TubeMogul – Video distribution service; upload to multiple video streaming service
27. Twitter – Micro-blogging service
28. Scribd – Social publishing
29. SlideShare – Social publishing
30. Quarkbase – Get comprehensive website information
31. Web 2.0 Badges – Web 2.0 badge generator
32. You Get Signal – Domain tools
33. YouTube – Video streaming service

Free Self-hosted Software

1. Infinite Responder – Autoresponder
2. Joomla! – Content management system; great for portals
3. OSTicket – Help desk software
4. phpBB – Forum package
5. WordPress – Blogging engine / CMS of sorts

Related posts:

1. Internet Marketing Videos Galore at YouTube
2. Tools to View PageRank of Links on a Web Page
3. Internet Marketing Store Unveiled

It’s been a while since I last blogged here. No, I did not go on a long summer vacation.  In my part of the world, there’s no summer anyway.

So, what was I up to?  I was caught up in several projects (non-Internet marketing related).  However, I recently decided to revive one of my Internet marketing projects which have been put on hold.

The Project

The project involves the development of a 3D cover creator software tool.  I believe the tool would be in demand by e-book authors, software authors, owners of membership products, etc.

The inspiration for this product did not come about recently.  In fact, I blogged about the planned product almost two years ago.  However, other priorities came into play then, and I had no choice but to put the project on hold indefinitely.  Anyway, that was then…

The Progress So Far…

Well, I’m happy with the progress so far.  I just need to keep up with the momentum even though I’m just spending residual free time on the project.  At this point, I’m already able to produce beautiful 3D renderings of box shots using the tool — complete with realistic shadow modeling and reflection.

What Do You Like to See?

Whilst I’m aware there is already a handful of similar products out there, I hope to throw in a few unique features.

If you have one feature that you’d like to see in a 3D cover creator which you’ve not seen elsewhere, do tell me about it.  In return, I’ll put you in my priority notification list and you may buy the product at a very special price when the product is released.

If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate, you’re also welcome to join my priority notification list.

[UPDATE: I've put this project on hold (yet again!) to focus on my main projects.]

Related posts:

1. What Do You Want to See in an eBook Cover Maker?
2. Best of Free Internet Marketing Tools
3. Free Internet Marketing Training Videos at Marketing-Videos.com

Do you know the Google PageRank (PR) of the links on your web page?

There are several ways you can find out the link PRs:

• Enter each link URL in a PR checking service, or
• Open each link and see the PR in Google Toolbar, or
• Use the Website PR Overlay tool by SEO Bench or Visual PageRank tool by iWebTool

With the Website PR Overlay or Visual PageRank tool, all you need to do is enter the URL of a web page and you will see the PageRank values graphically overlayed on top of all the links found on the web page.

Visual PageRank tool provides additional visual cues to identify external links and links with rel=”nofollow”. Neat!

Related posts:

1. Dedicated IP PageRank Advantage Myth Busted!
2. A Way to Get Quality Backlinks and High PageRank
3. Redirect Affiliate Links to Increase Click-Through Rate

How much should you be paying or charging per month for a text link ad on your website?

Here’s a list of link price calculators that you might want to try out:

• Text Link Ads Link Worth Calculator – Factors in Alexa traffic ranking, link popularity, site theme (see Ken Cheung’s post for comparison chart), links sold, single or site-wide placement, location on page
• SEO Tools – Link Price Calculator – Factors in backlinks, page rank, website traffic, etc.
• LinkVendor.com Link Value Calculator
  

I tested the calculators against my PR6 2-year-old+ tech site and the quoted dollar per month figures are surprisingly close. You should then be able to get a good indication of the market value of your text link by using the calculators.

If you’re looking to buy or sell text link ads, check out Text-Link-Ads.com.

Related posts:

1. The Potential in Text Link Ads
2. Tools to View PageRank of Links on a Web Page
3. Here’s a Money Tip!

I came across Barry Schwartz’s post saying that the recently released Firefox 2.0 is currently not supported by Google AdSense Firefox Referrals program.

Google AdSense program pays $1 per download of Firefox plus Google Toolbar from a referral. At this time, the referrals program only covers Firefox 1.5. [Update: Google has retired its referrals program in August 2008.]

Here’s a reply presumably from AdSense Support to a DigitalPoint Forums member’s query:

Thanks for writing in about the Firefox plus Google Toolbar referral button. We currently offer Firefox 1.5 in our referral download. We can’t yet say if or when we will offer Firefox 2.0, but I’m happy to pass along your comments to our engineering and product teams.

I noticed some web publishers are now contemplating whether to display the download Firefox/Google Toolbar button since it does not lead the users to download the latest Firefox release.

Comments anyone?

Related posts:

1. New Google Apps Referrals
2. New Pricing Structure for AdSense and AdWords Referrals
3. Earn Referral Fees for Amazon Unbox

Google has added a few new features in to its webmaster tools.

The new features include:

1) Googlebot activity report

It shows you the following:

• Number of pages Googlebot has crawled your site per day
• Number of kilobytes of data Googlebot has downloaded per day
• Average time it took for Googlebot to download pages.

Here’s a sample Googlebot report of one of my sites (figures blurred out):

2) Crawl rate control

Choose Googlebot’s crawl speed: Slower, Normal, or Faster.

Note that the “Faster” option is only available if Google finds that the crawl rate is a factor of your site’s crawl.

3) Enhanced image search

You can associate images in your site with labels (much like tagging) to improve indexing and search quality of those images.

4) Number of URLs found in Sitemaps

Find out the number of URLs that Google found in each Sitemap you have submitted.

How would these new features help you as a search-engine savvy internet marketer? I think it’ll help you detect undesirable crawling patterns that may indirectly hurt the search-engine visibility of your site.  At least when there’s a problem, you can now better formulate remedial steps.

Links:

• Learn more about Googlebot’s crawl of your site and more!
• Googlebot activity reports
• Google Sitemap Generator plugin for WordPress

Related posts:

1. Google Now Indexes URLs Containing “&id=” Parameter
2. Create a Google Custom Search Engine and Connect to AdSense
3. Google Wants Feedback on How to Improve Measuring AdSense Success using Google Analytics

Are you publishing and/or marketing an eBook or software package? You’ll want a professional book cover or box design to go with it. Wait! That’s not all, you’ll need to have a realistic virtual 3-D look to top it off.

Is there more that you’re looking for such that current eBook cover software do not cater? If so, tell me what you’d like to see by sending your inputs to me here.

To get the ball rolling, here are four things I’d like to see in my own product:

• Grandma-friendly.
• No dependence on Adobe Photoshop. Heck, how many people can afford it.
• Should allow you to create professional quality cover art designs without the need for engaging external services.
• Contains “smarts” that will give suggestions on cover designs that will boost sales. That’s what an internet marketer wants, right?

Yes, you’ve guessed it; I’m planning to create a ebook/software cover maker. I’ll be honest, it may not materialize. I do not want to pressure myself as I want this project to be an enjoyable experience. Thus far, the rendering engine is near complete and the results are promising. I’m afraid it will run only on the Windows platform.

In return for your inputs, allow me to include you in my priority notification list. Should I decide to sell the product, perhaps I can work something out for you. If you are an affiliate marketer, do let me know what you want to see in the product too.

In the meantime, if you’re here looking for a good eBook cover design software or service today, check out the following products:

• CoverSoftware.com (software)
• KillerCovers.com (service)
• eCoverDesign.com (service)

Related posts:

1. My First Internet Marketing Tool in the Works