The art of the email: Long emails are better for business

Written on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | Bootstrapping Resources, Bootstrapping Tips | 6 Comments

So many people have talked recently about how to keep emails to a minimum and ’stop the distractions’ that emails give you. But they are wrong. Yes, for some people, they LIVE in their inbox, but if you’re running a business, a short 5 line email response will NOT work and will not cut it most of the time. Bootstrapping your business is all about finding inexpensive ways to grow your business with little to no cost, so why is email overlooked all of the time? It’s free; It’s quick (especially if you can type a lot of words per minute) and it gives you a personal connection with your clients and customers.

Below you will find two real life examples of emails that were recently sent to me while I was searching for some potential employees for a business venture I am starting. After looking them over, we’ll discuss why the longer, more in detail email is better and in the long run, faster for business. I also am going to link you to an add-on for firefox that will help keep things long, but speedy at the same time.

Email One: The short version

My name is **** and I have created many websites over the past 2 years. My portfolio can be seen here www.********.com I hope to be chosen for the job. Thank you.

Email Two: The extended version

Hello Mike,

My name is ***** and I have recently come across your Blog Design and would like to talk to you about becoming a part of your coding team.

My portfolio of work can be found at www.*******.com I have been designing websites for almost 10 years and make sure the websites you hire me for are up to web standards and usability. This means that your website will function and display properly on various web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and others. All of my coding is valid xhtml/css tableless.

I would love to discuss this in more detail with you and work with you on any projects you have lined up. If possible, could you let me know of a time that I can call to discuss this in more detail with you, or if it would be ok to send a copy of my resume and business card directly to you?

Any questions you might have, feel free to let me know. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you,
******

Now there are a lot of you who might be looking at this and going “why would I sit and write up the long email when all I am doing is sending a quick note to someone about a potential job when it’s not a guarantee that I’ll even get the job?” Trust me, I’ve been there before and thought the exact same way. But look at it from a business standpoint. Who would you rather hand your money over to in this situation? The short email does not tell me much about the persons skills or what they can provide me with and also seems very hit & run. Alternately, if you look at the longer email, the candidate makes sure to explain why they would be the right person for the job, they give me an in depth detail of what they’ve done and what they can provide me with as well as make me feel comfortable by telling me that any questions I have, they’d love to answer them. Again I ask you; who would get your money in this situation?

Your answer is the same as any business or potential client you contact. They want to feel comfortable, they want to know that you understand their needs and know what you are doing and they want to make sure you’re not there just to rip them off.

With many bloggers and large names in the blogging industry recently pointing out how to keep emails short, I was sucked in at first too. Not anymore. Here are two reasons why longer emails are better, and overall quicker then a short email.

1. More personal - keeps your potential client or the person hiring you comfortable with you and helps them to not look at you as a ‘quick, fly by night’ company. If you write a small 100 word email to a potential client, it keeps you distant and feeling unattached to the person behind the other side of the screen.
2. Overall Faster - In the long run when dealing with clients, if you’re writing a 1,000 word email instead of a 100 word email, the odds are in your favor of answering most, if not ALL of the client’s questions in the one email. If you’re writing the quick 100 email, then this brings forth 5-10 extra questions from the client and thus keeps you in your inbox, keeps a large amount of separate emails attached to the one specific job that you have to sift through, and keeps the resolution period farther away due to 5-10 emails needing to be sent back and forth. I’ve made it a point to write longer, more detailed emails to my clients recently and the payback has been tremendous. The work process goes so much quicker because I answer all of their questions right up front and left only a small amount left to be discussed.

Here is an add-on that I use with the Firefox browser that will definitely speed up your writing time when talking to potential clients.

Signature - This add-on gives you the option to create pre-written bodies of text that you right click and select the name of the message you’re sending. I have three that I currently use. 1 for responses to potential clients that I find on job boards, 1 that I use when I write to bloggers and one that I write to various other companies. I leave little sections that have “PERSONAL NOTES ABOUT THE JOB HERE” inside the email that I edit, but for those repetitive tasks like writing out what experience you have, what your prices are for jobs, what websites you own, ect. this tool comes in handy. What used to take me 15-20 minutes to type up (5 or six times a day!) now only takes me 10-15 minutes TOTAL throughout the day to write.

 

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Top 5 Blog Design Companies

Written on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 | Bootstrapping Resources | 3 Comments

In todays market, a blog can set you apart from your competition in terms of your reach to specific demographics, so its no wonder why there are many blog design companies coming up on our radars. I believe this is a valuable Bootstrapping Resource so I wanted to make sure I shared my top five blog design companies with you.

Blog Theme Machine

We may be a bit impartial to Blog Theme Machine because this is the company that designed this blog, but there are real reasons behind why we like Blog Theme Machine. Not only are their blog designs great and high quality, their prices are very competitive compared to other designers on the market. This is our #1 choice for anyone looking to have their blog taken to the next level. Feel free to check out their portfolio and see why we recommend them as our number one choice.

Garry Conn

We’ve recently had the opportunity to discuss some blogging tips and resources with Garry and feel that he is a genuine blogger who loves to design. When we asked Garry to write up a small blurb for this article, his reply was this: “My name is Garry Conn. I help and teach people how to make money online with a blog. There is a lot to learn in this line of business. First impressions are important. Does your blog look professional? It is optimized for not only search engines but also users? Visit www.GarryConn.com to learn more.”

Unique Blog Designs

Viewed by many as the heavy-hitters in the blog design realm, Unique Blog Designs stepped onto the scene making big waves when they redesigned two of the webs top “make money online” blogs: John Chow and Shoemoney. Since then, they have grown their business to huge standings. We give major kudos to the entire UBD team because they’ve done something revolutionary on the internet and chose a niche that was wide open and ran with it. Plus, their designs are great!

Brian Gardner

Brian Gardner of Brian Gardner Media is the sole reason (in our opinions) behind the latest craze in wordpress Blog Designs: “Premium Themes”. What Brian has done with his Revolution Theme was definitely a changing point in how people design their blogs. If you’re looking for a magazine style wordpress theme, Revolution is the top notch deal when it comes to Premium Themes. Brian also designs custom wordpress themes if you’d like something custom

Adii “wordpress Rockstar”

When you think of a Rockstar, you think of a flashy, in your face type of person. Adii is a wordpress Rockstar but is a more laid back version of what you perceive a rockstar to be. With a great skill-set and design ability, Adii is responsible for some of the webs best blog themes to date. Working with companies like Unique Blog Designs and various others, there’s no reason Adii is a wordpress rockstar. Check out his personal blog which documents his journey to becoming a full time freelance designer and showcases some of his work.

Did we miss you?

If you are a blog design company or freelancer and would like to be featured in an upcoming list of Blog Designers, please feel free to contact us and let us know about yourself.

 

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30 local resources you can’t live without

Written on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 | Bootstrapping Resources | 5 Comments

Everyone is pushing “how to make money online” these days and people tend to forget exactly how much advertising and resources there are OFFLINE. Below is a list of 30 local resources that we believe every bootstrapper should know about and utilize on a daily basis. I’ve also written out a little bit about what you can use these resources for. This article was published before on the site, but only had the list and nothing else so I decided to bring it to the front with a little more information for you. I hope you enjoy it!

1. Garage Sales - A lot of times, you’ll find great office furniture or old computer parts for dirt cheap. Also, you might find shelving units or office bins that you can use for storage of folders, books, ect.
2. Flea Market - Everyone at a flea market is trying to make money, so the prices are generally really low. If not, haggle with the salesperson to try and get a better deal. I’ve picked up cameras, keyboards, a mouse (for the computer, not a real one. haha) and other various office supplies for way lower amounts then the local office supply stores.
3. Going out of business Sales - OH MAN! You can get high end office supplies, computer and virtually anything else business related at these things. You’ll regret not going to these if theres one in your area.
4. Pawn Shops - Sometimes you’ll catch some great equipment that’s like brand new but someone needed the cash at the time and let it go cheap. I’ve seen everything from video games to snow mobiles at pawn shops.
5. Chamber of Commerce - Connecting and networking with other local businesses is a great thing and you can find great contacts right here.
6. Library - free internet and free book rentals. Why wouldn’t you like this place? Rent a book and study for school or learn something new about your business. You can even rent a scary book or romantic novel to get your mind off work for a while. Whatever you do here, it’s all free, so help yourself!
7. City Hall - Similar to Chamber of Commerce. Read above at #5.
8. Craig’s List local resources - Find someone in your area to work for a great price, or find jobs yourself. Great for the service industry. You can also find great deals on all sorts of things people are selling and you run less risk shopping here since it’s local and you can meet the person, unlike ebay.
9. Yellow Pages - Anything you need right at your fingertips. I’ve generated a few design jobs just from picking out a random target market and calling every number in the book for that particular industry.
10. Coffee Shops with Wi-Fi connection - Internet get shut off at home or are you needing to meet with a client to show off your design you created for them? Coffee shops offer free internet for your computer, so why not use it?
11. Estate Sales - Finding anything from home furniture to rare jewelry and paintings comes easy when you deal with estate sales. Everything is priced to sell, so you get great deals.
12. Small/Medium businesses - Networking with other small businesses (as stated in #5) is great for your business. Work out a service/product trade and feed each other cross-sells. You won’t regret the 1-2 minutes it takes to call a company and talk with them.
13. College Campuses - This is the perfect spot to find someone who is eager to learn more in their trade and will work for next to nothing. We all know that when you’re bootstrapping your business, you don’t have a million dollars for a kick-butt sales team or a programmer for your website, so hiring at a college campus is ideal for saving cash while getting someone who WANTS the job.
14. High School/Middle Schools - The same as above applies here, but also for market research. If you’re designing a clothing company, who better then a teenager to tell you if it’s cool or not. Are you building the next myspace? This would be the place to go and promote, pass out flyers, ect.
15. Churches - Sponsor a bake sale or some other event and give some of the proceds to the church or a charity the church likes. Most churches will let you promote anything or network with other people there and are generally friendly.
16. Homeless Shelters - A homeless shelter? Yes, a homeless shelter. Think about how many people are in this shelter with sales experience or some type of labor work like construction and have no means of generating money. Don’t you think you’d get an eager worker? I think so too.
17. Unemployment Offices - The same goes as above. Hang out in the parking lot and talk to people as they walk up, or leave your business cards and flyers inside the unemployment office. Talk to a worker there and find out if they can give your information directly to those who are interested in your industry. It never hurts to ask.
18. Music Stores - Place your business cards inbetween cd’s, leave flyers on the counter, or see if the owner of the store would let you ’sponsor’ their store for a day by running an ad for your business over their PA system ever 10-20 minutes.
19. Clothing Stores - The same as #18 but here, you can target an upscale clothing store and promote your products or business because the people in these stores tend to spend a lot more money than a teenager at a music store.
20. The Mall - I’ve seen musicians walk up to random people in the mall and ask if they’d take a minute to listen to their music and end up making cd sales. I’ve also went into the mall to talk to the local business owners in the mall and find out if they have a website, and if not, if they’d like one. Trade your service for gift cards or for cash. I’ve made more money getting gift cards from the owners then cash though because with the gift card option, I bumped my price up a bit. It works.
21. Business Conferences - Networking. plain and simple. Network with other business owners and try to find those who could benefit from your product/service and network hardest with them. You’ll be amazed at home many sales you can get here.
22. High-End Hotels - Rich people spend money. Point blank. Get business cards or flyers and put them in the swimming pool area, inside the hot tub, on the counter at the front desk; anything to get your name out in front of these people.
23. Newspapers - Ads are fairly cheap and could wind up getting you noticed by the right editorial writer for the paper and you could wind up as their next featured article. Local news loves local businesses, especially if your local area is suffering with a lack of jobs.
24. Local Radio - The same with the above. Get your ads on the radio in your targeted market and you’ll generate a bit of buzz, especially if you mention you’re a LOCAL OWNED company. I’m telling you, people eat this up and your boostraps will thank you for it.
25. Television News - Does your local news have a segment where they feature local businesses? Yes? Great; now get featured. No? Tell them they should, and why they should. Again, LOCAL OWNED businesses is the hot thing with the economy going to hell in a handbasket and noone being able to find good jobs. People love the local business owners.
26. Thrift Stores - I know a guy who has his whole office setup elegantly, and got it all from a thrift store over time. Sand down that old desk or bookcase, scrub the desk lap, or find a nice radio to listen to music on and you can turn your office into a great place to be, for barely anything at all.
27. Laundry Mat - Does your target market involve single moms? Try promoting your business at the laundry mat with flyers or business cards. You could even offer to pay for someones laundry to be cleaned once a week, and then just hand them your card and leave. This will definitely get the person talking and that’s great for business.
28. Restaurants - Pick a random table that has people from your target market at it and tell the waiter/waitress that you’d like to pay for their bill and ask that all they do is give them your business card. Even offer to give the cashier a tip (the persons bill is $40.00, so hand them a $50.00 bill and tell them to keep the change). Viral marketing or word-of-mouth, whatever you want to call it, is GREAT for business.
29. Dollar Store - Pens, pencils, receipt books, folders, ect. All of these things can be picked up from the dollar store. You can even feed your need for sweets and other foods at the dollar store. I pick up Mountain Dew, Little Debbie snack cakes, Doritos and other food from the dollar store all the time. As you know from a previous article, I love my sweets.
30. Sporting Events - All these people in one area and you DON’T see the good in it? Get out there, mingle with people, offer someone a free beer, place your business cards in the bathrooms; whatever you can think of, get it done. There are tons of people here to promote and connect with.

Have a story about how you’ve used one of these resources for the good of your business? Leave a comment and let everyone know about it.

Can you think of more local resources?

 

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5 free online promotion resources

Written on Monday, October 29th, 2007 | Bootstrapping Resources | 1 Comment

Today we begin the weekly journey on bootstrapping blog where we create a specific post topic for each day of the week. Today’s topic is in the Bootstrapping Resources category, so we decided to post an article about 10 free online promotional tips. Each of these tips will highlight a resource you can use online to promote yourself, your business or your product absolutely free.  We’re not writing them in order of importance, so please do not think that #1 is the best solution. I’d suggest trying them all. I mean, they are free and every little bit helps.

1. Message Boards - Finding a few message boards with a good amount of traffic can be great a great promotional resource. Adding your website links into the signature will leave a link in every post you make, and if you make quality posts on the message board, you are guaranteed to have people clicking your websites because they like what you said.
2. Bookmarking Sites - This is pertaining to websites like Digg, StumbleUpon and other websites similar to these. The power of having your website hit the front page of digg or get stumbled numerous times is priceless when trying to promote your new website. Link bait (we’ll talk about this more later on) is a powerful way of getting your website to the front page of Digg. This will instantly get you thousands of visitors and could even have a snowball effect with the visitors talking about you to their friends and website visitors.
3. Directories - Now, we haven’t really tried much with directory submissions but they are being used daily by thousands of businesses and websites so we’re positive that this method will work. It helps you out with back links to your website which will help you rank in the search engines better. Google loves to show websites with tons of back links, so this method is positive to help you out.
4. Your Own Blog - Creating a website for your business is the first step to showcasing why people should buy your product or hire you. The next step, in our opinion, is setting up a blog on your website. Now, you can set the blog up on your website in a sub directory (ie: yourwebsite.com/blog/) or you can create a totally unique .com website for your blog and have links to your company on it. The choice is yours. Obviously, this is another method similar to the message board method because when people read your blog and realize that you know your field, then you are considered an expert and people will want to buy your product / hire you.
5. Blog Comments - Every blog you leave a comment on allows you to put your name and website in so you have a link to your website with the comment. This is a useful tool because not only does the owner of the website you are commenting on see your comment, but the other viewers will see it as well. If your blog comment has some useful information in it, you are sure to get visitors from this and also gain some respect from other website/business owners in your field.

Tomorrow, we’ve got a great article together for some awesome bootstrapping tips.

As always, remember to subscribe to our rss feed and leave a comment to open up a discussion. Thanks.

 

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30 local resources you can’t live without

Written on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 | Bootstrapping Resources | 1 Comment

1. Garage Sales
2. Flea Market
3. Going out of business Sales
4. Pawn Shops
5. Chamber of Commerce
6. Library
7. City Hall
8. Craig’s List local resources
9. Yellow Pages
10. Coffee Shops with Wi-Fi connection
11. Estate Sales
12. Small/Medium businesses
13. College Campuses
14. High School/Middle Schools
15. Churches
16. Homeless Shelters
17. Unemployment Offices
18. Music Stores
19. Clothing Stores
20. The Mall
21. Business Conferences
22. High-End Hotels
23. Newspapers
24. Local Radio
25. Television News
26. Thrift Stores
27. Laundry Mat
28. Restaurants
29. Dollar Store
30. Sporting Events

 

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