Productivity 2.0

Some peo­ple have asked what Web 2.0 tools do I use. Now, that ques­tion is two-​​sided. One is, what tools do I use with my copy? And the answer is, “not many.” I do use a few, and I’m test­ing a lot more, too.

Other than video and graph­ics, such as using YouTube​.com and Flickr​.com, which are the most pop­u­lar but not really impor­tant when you have your own ded­i­cated server like I do, there are some tools to allow my web­sites to be a lit­tle more interactive.

(If you remem­ber from my report, The Death of The Saleslet­ter,” I talk about the rise in “sam­pli­fi­ca­tion.” If there are any tools that I would pre­fer, other than video and audio, they would cer­tainly be those that helped to give my read­ers more proof, and to make their buy­ing expe­ri­ences eas­ier and more secure.)

I will blog about those once I get more sta­tis­tics to share with you.

But the sec­ond part of that ques­tion is, when it comes to run­ning my busi­ness, there are a few Web 2.0 tools and ser­vices that have helped my life quite tremen­dously. Here’s a list of some of them.

(This is only a par­tial list. And if you’re a copy­writer or a ser­vice provider, you’ll appre­ci­ate these, too.)

1. Mint 2.0

Mint is a Web 2.0, “wid­getized” sta­tis­tics plat­form. It offers every­thing you need, from refer­rers, pageviews, searches to graphs. Now, I do use other stats pro­grams, like Google Ana­lyt­ics (in fact, I use about 6 of them in all). But the sta­tis­tics are limiting.

For instance, most of them pro­vide a daily list of the top 10 or 100 refer­rals. Prob­lem is, I get over 6,000 to 10,000 unique vis­i­tors a day. So nat­u­rally, this is insufficient.

What I like about Mint is that it’s not only ver­sa­tile and unlim­ited, but also you can even sub­scribe to your stats, in real time, via a pri­vate RSS feed.

Plus, you can add var­i­ous “plug-​​and-​​play” wid­get pan­els of your choice for added sta­tis­tics — these plu­g­ins are called “pep­pers,” includ­ing mon­i­tor res­o­lu­tions, browsers, plat­forms, etc. For exam­ple, I use Feed​burner​.com as my feed tracker. But Mint also has a pep­per called “Bird Feeder,” which does the same thing.

(The more ver­sa­tile a pro­gram is, the less I need all these stat­stics pro­grams run­ning con­cur­rently. Sim­pli­fy­ing also helps to lighten the load on the server, too. This is why I love Mint so much.)

2. WikiPedia​.org

As you prob­a­bly already know, WikiPedia stands for “wiki ency­clo­pe­dia.” (And the word “Wiki” means user-​​based, where con­tri­bi­tions are sub­mit­ted and edited by users.)

In spite of all the con­tro­versy of late with Microsoft pay­ing users to sub­mit con­tent, WikiPedia is still one of the most insight­ful and com­pre­hen­sive research tools I use when I write copy.

From def­i­n­i­tions and fac­toids, to arti­cles and demo­graphic data, WikiPedia serves a lot of infor­ma­tion that arms any copy­writer with pow­er­ful infor­ma­tion they can use to give their copy some kick.

Plus, the inter­link­ing of cer­tain key­words within the arti­cles makes it easy to find infor­ma­tion related to the topic, and gather addi­tional infor­ma­tion that might pro­vide you with a lot of angles and hooks — espe­cially when writer’s block hits you between the eyes.

3. Wufoo

This one is cool. It’s a Web 2.0 online form build­ing, host­ing, track­ing and report­ing tool. It’s form man­age­ment made easy, “on the fly.” In fact, I’m using it right now with my copy­writ­ing quote requests at Copy​writ​ingCrew​.com.

(I was forced to do so, actu­ally, since form spam­mers were killing the sys­tem. And I’ve tried sev­eral self-​​hosted scripts, which were all even­tu­ally hacked or spammed. But Wufoo seems to be work­ing out well.)

Cre­at­ing a form is extremely flex­i­ble, and you can add copy, form ele­ments and even form prop­er­ties (like “thank you” results, which open up on the same page once sub­mit­ted, along with con­fir­ma­tion emails sent to the sub­mit­ter, too). You can even change col­ors, CSS, graph­ics and backgrounds.

But the best part is, it also has secu­rity fea­tures as well as online report­ing of your forms. That way, I, and my staff, can eas­ily track, respond to and man­age all my form sub­mis­sions in one sin­gle location.

4. Pic­nik

Pic­nik is new, and it’s neat. It’s not a photo stor­age sys­tem like Flickr (although it can also work with Flickr, or any other online photo album and stor­age sys­tem). It’s really an online photo “fixer.”

From tweak­ing expo­sure and remov­ing red eyes, to crop­ping and rotat­ing the photo, you can fix your pho­tos online in a snap. You can even use their “auto-​​fix” fea­ture to make them per­fect in just one click.

I use Pho­to­Shop, so I don’t need it much. But when I’m on the road with my lap­top, this ser­vice makes it easy for me to mod­ify pho­tos and graph­ics on the fly. It can even store pho­tos, cre­ate slideshows and email your results.

It also offers some spe­cial effects (although lim­ited, but more are promised to be added soon accord­ing to their web­site), such as adding shad­ows, black and white, frames, etc.

5. Base­Camp

This one is my favorite. I man­age all my copy­writ­ing projects — and even other projects, includ­ing per­sonal and business-​​related ones — with this one cen­tral col­lab­o­ra­tion and project man­age­ment interface.

I cre­ate to-​​do lists, assign mile­stones, upload files, use the white­board (such as for post­ing rough copy drafts for review), chat with key per­son­nel or clients, and dis­cuss spe­cific items with an email list of peo­ple involved in the project.

I also use it for per­sonal to-​​do lists as well as for launch­ing new busi­nesses. This is not only a great tool to man­age projects, but it allows me to stay on top of my staff and free­lancers, as well as give my clients the abil­ity to know what’s going on at any time, too.

The best part is, when I out­source any part of a project, such as research, edit­ing, proof­read­ing, for­mat­ting and so forth, I can allow free­lancers access to spe­cific items and accom­plish projects in far less time.

Base­Camp tracks timesheets, too. This way, I know how much time some­one spent on a par­tic­u­lar task. How­ever, Base­Camp does miss out on some­thing. It lacks the abil­ity to invoice clients.

(For now, I use BillMy​Clients​.com. How­ever, if you’re a copy­writer “on the side” or any kind of ser­vice provider part-​​time, and you want an all-​​in-​​one solu­tion, includ­ing invoic­ing, there’s also Side​Job​Track​.com.)

Nev­er­the­less, if you want a com­pre­hen­sive list of Web 2.0 tools out there, you can also check out the Web 2.0 Awards, which offers a pretty hefty list of the most pop­u­lar ones cur­rently available.

Finally, in my report “The Death of The Saleslet­ter,” some peo­ple have emailed me ask­ing me what are the names of the tools I use, which I list on pages 17 and 18.

(This is specif­i­cally when I men­tion the “ping fac­tor,” where I talk about some of the tools run­ning on my own com­puter, which “ping” for my attention.)

Let me list some of them here:

Track­ing And Statistics

The stats pack­ages I run are var­ied. Some are included on this web page. Some of them are pro­pri­etary and cus­tomized for my busi­ness. But for split-​​testing and mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing, I use Mul­ti­track Gen­er­a­tor.

RSS Feeds

For my RSS feeds, I use Feed­De­mon by News­ga­tor. Instead of using my email client or an online ser­vice like Google Reader, I use Feed­De­mon because the num­ber of feeds in my OPML file are so numer­ous (I’m sub­scribed to about 400 feeds), it makes nav­i­gat­ing and read­ing them too unwieldy.

Instant Mes­sen­g­ing

For instant mes­sen­g­ing, I use an all-​​in-​​one tool called “Tril­lian.” I do so for var­i­ous rea­sons: it’s bet­ter (for com­puter per­for­mance sake) to have one appli­ca­tion run­ning than to have 5 or 6. For exam­ple, Tril­lian can run AIM, ICQ, MSN, IRC, Jab­ber (Google Talk), all within a sin­gle application.

Click­Bank Reporting

For all my Click­Bank report­ing and affil­i­ate man­age­ment, I use CB Accoun­tant. This tool is pretty use­ful, because I can poll and query my Click­Bank sales in ways not pos­si­ble with ClickBank’s own report­ing feature.

AdSense Report­ing

I keep track of all my Google AdSense results (from pageviews to rev­enues) with Met­al­Grass’ AdSenseLog. It sits in your sys­tem tray and noti­fies you at spec­i­fied inter­vals of your ads’ performance.

(The ben­e­fit, for me, is that when I make any changes to my AdSense ads, I know almost instantly how well they’re doing.)

Pay­Pal Reporting

Pay­Pal Mon­i­tor sits in your sys­tem tray as well, and noti­fies you when­ever your account has a new trans­ac­tion. Like CB Accoun­tant and AdSense Log, the beauty of this tool is that you can check to see your account sta­tus at any time, with­out hav­ing to log in their web­sites to view your results.

HelpDesk Soft­ware

There are quite a few helpdesk soft­ware out there. (You’ve prob­a­bly heard of Kayako, for instance.) But the one I and my assis­tants use is Cer­berus.

For exam­ple, you can see it in action here: Michel Fortin’s Sup­port Web­site. All emails, con­tacts, mes­sages, sup­port tick­ets and web­site mon­i­tor­ing are done through this pow­er­ful tool.

Granted, my wife owns a very spe­cial cus­tomized ver­sion of the soft­ware, since she uses it with thou­sands of clients. (Call it a fringe ben­e­fit!) But let me tell you, hav­ing this tool alone to con­trol your inbox has been an absolute godsend.

OK, hope­fully this cov­ers everything.

The bot­tom line is, Web 2.0 or not, and aside from using tools on your web­site to “sam­plify” your offer to improve your sales, there are many tools that can sim­plify your life and dras­ti­cally improve your productivity.

The above are some of mine. I hope some of them become use­ful to you, too. Whether you choose those tools or not, remem­ber that any tool that can help you focus on mon­ey­mak­ing activ­i­ties — or what my friend John Carl­ton calls “Oper­a­tion Mon­ey­suck” — is bet­ter than try­ing to do every­thing yourself.

Believe me, I learned that les­son the hard way.

About the Author

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