II.  Web Site Tips and Techniques

Add the ability for Internet Explorer users to bookmark your web page as one of their Favorites

The code below only works for Microsoft Internet Explorer users but can be a valuable tool to help visitors of your site remember where they found you so they can return easily. Insert the code into your web site's html code and you're all done. It's a piece of cake.

<SPAN style='color:red;cursor:hand;'
    onClick='window.external.AddFavorite(location.href, document.title);'>
  <FONT face="Arial, Helvetica" size="2">
    Internet Explorer Users: Click here to add this
       page to your list of favorites
  </FONT>
</SPAN>

Take a look at this capability at the bottom of my web page to see how it works. You must have Microsoft Internet

III. Product/Service Review

The Best Web Site Planner by Tom Ranseen

I've always been a manager that tries to be specific about what I'm trying to accomplish and in so doing have always developed specific strategy plans, employee performance plans, and measurements to help me evaluate whether or not we were accomplishing the desired objectives.

I met Tom Ranseen through a mutual friend about eight months ago and have shared ideas back and forth with him during that time. His company, No Spin Marketing provides a monthly newsletter that I've found to be insightful, often full of humor, and definitely a candid approach to what Tom thinks. Having somewhat of a void in the marketing department myself, his insight is needed.

Tom has helped me think through a few marketing initiative ideas that I have found to be helpful and plan to use now that I have completed the content of my first two major projects.

Tom released his first marketing tool this month titled The Best Web Site Planner. It is the first tool I've seen that provides a quantifiable approach that identifies how effective your web site is and what your web site needs from a marketing perspective. It also values each item so that when you finish working through the tool you not only have a marketing value measurement for your web site, you can also see exactly where you should focus to improve it. Tom includes instructions with the tool and sells it from his web site for $19.99 in Adobe PDF ebook format.

This is not a simple two or three-page tool; it is very comprehensive with over 200 elements to measure different aspects of your web site.

I have used the tool to evaluate one of my own web sites and developed an overhaul plan from what I learned. The tool offers quick marketing insight from a seasoned marketing pro to help you improve your web site's marketing appeal to potential customers and visitors.

IV.  Business Entrepreneur Thoughts

Publish Your Knowledge to generate a secondary income

I discovered the idea of writing and publishing the IT Manager Development Series almost by accident. I had long thought about writing a book and selling it over the Internet but the topic was always going to be a subject on golf, a game that I have loved all of my life and at one time was pretty good at. After I left my corporate CIO role in 2000 to start my own IT management training and consulting business, it struck me that what I should write about was what I knew the most about - managing IT organizations. Helping companies and mentoring individual managers achieve more through technology also seemed very rewarding.

Writing ten books right off the bat was aggressive to say the least, but now that they are complete it is very gratifying. After finishing the tenth and last book of the series in March it dawned on me that consultants in general do not normally take full advantage of sharing their knowledge with others. In my management life, I've touched a thousand people or so; in the Internet world I have started touching many thousands of people.

I know that when I was the CIO or IT Manager of a company, I would have paid for practical material that gave me or my junior managers a road map with insight on how to manage an IT organization successfully. More than that, my company would have gladly paid for material that helps improve performance. The point is that most of us have experience and knowledge that is needed by others that do not have it and would consider it valuable material to have. My experience in just the last year has validated this perspective many times.

Because of the success I've had with my content, I decided to write a series of four articles for the IT Consultant Community of TechRepublic to share the steps I took to publish and sell my information through the Internet. Three of the articles have been published and can be accessed through the links below. The fourth article on Marketing is yet to be published. I also developed a simple guide that provides an overview of the articles titled the "4 x 4" Road Map to Selling Publications on the Internet.

I wrote this series because I believe it can help other consultants, and IT Managers for that matter, generate secondary incomes. More importantly, the information they have is truly valuable and most us will pay for it when it helps us learn something quicker or to implement a new technique faster that leads to positive results. With the Internet, I'm reaching thousands of people and so can you.

The articles and the Road Map can be retrieved by clicking on the title below.

        I.    Repurpose your knowledge to create a second revenue stream

       II.    Developing an Internet infrastructure for online sales

       III.    Six steps to publishing your own material

       The "4 x 4" Road Map to Selling Publications on the Internet  (a free download in M/S WORD format)

If you are interested in providing information to help others and that generates additional income, I think you will find the free information valuable in offering a short cut by observing what I did to achieve this objective for my company.

Mike Sisco is the CEO of MDE Enterprises, an IT management training and consulting company. If you are interested in more of Mike's management insight, take a look at his IT Manager Development Series.