Set up a free account on MailChimp. Use their drag and drop visual editor. Click the "HTML" tab and copy the code. Paste it into Interspire. Remove any MailChimp-specific code.

Why do you need to know about the pricing of your competition in the first place? If you're offering great value, people will buy from you even if you're charging 5 times more. If you want to offer the lowest price possible to get more clients, then ask yourself how little can you actually charge. And put that price. Spending the time to identify the price of your competitors is a waste of time. In 99% of the cases.

I've been in ecommerce for over a decade and have co-founded and helped start companies collectively driving over $10MM in ecommerce sales. I've consulted for Fortune 500 ecommerce stores. Here's my advice if you're just getting started without a big budget. Note: Some of this is copied from my answer to a similar question. #1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. If you decide to source by purchasing product in bulk, find a fulfillment company to store and fulfill (ship) your orders. Amazon does this - http://services.amazon.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm - but they might decide to crush you like a bug if you're successful (http://bit.ly/1q2V7DX). Other fulfillment companies for e-commerce include http://www.shipwire.com/ and http://www.webgistix.com/ #3) LAUNCH YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. If you're not hard up for money, just build a custom store from the start. If you can't do that, save up some money and then go for it. Focus on increasing conversion rate - for every 100 visitors, get 1 to buy. Then 2. Then 4. Then 8 (8%). #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.

I tried Basecamp, Jira, Unfuddle, Trello and PivotalTracker before for different projects which were developed with agile approach. All of them worked fine to me and I needed some time to setup my framework and processes there. I think it would be worth checking Trello or PivotalTracker which I personally like more than Basecamp because of better agile oriented structure.

You can do this by using a server backend such as Parse. They have a free SDK. There are other similar options and I believe apple is rolling out the same thing in iOS 8 with CloudKit.

Everybody has an invention. The question is this....Is there a demand for your invention. My experience with the invention idea companies is that they are out to make money for themselves and will submit your ideas to companies and sites that you can to without spending 10 grand. If it is a great invention there will be a great demand. Start with google adwords to find out if there is real interest in the product. Don't stop taking massive action. Best of Luck, Michael T. Irvin michaelirvin.net My books are available exclusively through Amazon Books. Check out my book "Copywriting Blackbook of Secrets" Copywriting, Startups, Internet Entrepreneur, Online Marketing, Making Money

#1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. #3) START YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.

I am currently the CTO of a vibrant online marketplace. As prior responders said, we started with demand. Once we had people who wanted to pay for our services, it was easier to find suppliers to fulfill the demand. In addition, we started with a narrow focus, and then expanded. We are a local service marketplace, so that meant starting with one geography, then expanding to a second, and a third. After we had figured out the formula in three geographies, understood the dynamics of the business thoroughly, then we expanded nationwide. As we roll out new features and services, we repeat this same pattern again and again: start in one geography, figure out the feature functionality/business dynamics/etc. then expand. Coming back to the demand point for a moment, in every business, marketplace or not, demand is the hard problem. The fact that you're an online marketplace is irrelevant. So, to be a successful business, say focused on finding repeatable, scalable and affordable ways to generate demand and you'll be on the right path.

The first matter for you to conclude is to agree the terms of a shareholder agreement between the two founders. This shareholders agreement should govern the management of all significant governance matters. Without this you will subject to the constitution documents of the company and local company company law. This is a standard type of agreement that any decent corporate lawyer will be able to advise you on. As the voting shares are held equally, then no major changes will be able to be made without both founders agreeing to the changes. The non-voting shares (assuming all other terms are the same) will have equal rights to financial returns (dividends and liquidation rights), but will not be able to participate in voting issues. In simple terms, you will have an equal say in the running of the company with your co-founder, but will receive 25% of the returns, while they receive 75%.

Greater risk = greater equity. How likely is this to fail or just break even? If you aren't receiving salary yet are among 4-6 non-founders with equivalent sweat investment, all of whom are lower on the totem pole than the two founders, figure out: 1) Taking into account all likely outcomes, what is the most likely outcome in terms of exit? (ex: $10MM.) Keep in mind that 90%+ of all tech startups fail (Allmand Law study), and of those that succeed 88% of M&A deals are under $100MM. Startups that exit at $1B+ are so rare they are called "unicorns"... so don't count on that, no matter how exciting it feels right now. 2) Figure out what 1% equity would give you in terms of payout for the most likely exit. For example, a $10MM exit would give you $100k for every 1% you own. 3) Decide what the chance is that the startup will fail / go bankrupt / get stuck at a $1MM business with no exit in sight. (According to Allman Law's study, 10% stay in business - and far fewer than that actually exit). 4) Multiply the % chance of success by the likely outcome if successful. Now each 1% of equity is worth $10k. You could get lucky and have it be worth millions, or it could be worth nothing. (With the hypothetical numbers I'm giving here, including the odds, you are working for $10k per 1% equity received if the most likely exit is $10MM and the % chance of failure is 90%.) 5) Come up with a vesting path. Commit to one year, get X equity at the end. If you were salaried, the path would be more like 4 years, but since it's free you deserve instant equity as long as you follow through for a reasonable period of time. 6) Assuming you get agreement in writing from the founders, what amount of $ would you take in exchange for 12 months of free work? Now multiply that by 2 to factor in the fact that the payout would be far down the road, and that there is risk. 7) What percentage share of equity would you need in order to equal that payout on exit? 8) Multiply that number by 2-3x to account for likely dilution over time. 9) If the founders aren't willing to give you that much equity in writing, then it's time to move on! If they are, then decide whether you're willing to take the risk in exchange for potentially big rewards (and of course, potentially empty pockets). It's a fascinating topic with a lot of speculation involved, so if you want to discuss in depth, set up a call with me on Clarity. Hope that helps!

Twitter is actually a great prospecting tool, and these are people you should absolutely be engaging with as a brand. The key is to engage without coming off as spammy. Instead of "Buy our product now to solve your issue", try something friendly like, "Hey XYZ! We'd love to help you [solve problem]. Let us know how we can help!" or "We'd be happy to put you in touch with one of our experts on this topic. Let us know if you'd be interested in chatting." In other words, as long as you're focused on providing value over pitching your products, your responses won't come off as spammy, and you'll not only be able to get more qualified prospects from Twitter, but you'll also grow a stronger and more lovable brand presence.

After having many live demos go awry, I attempt to avoid live demos as much as possible. That being said, a few thoughts, in no particular order. I prefer to rely on screenshots and animation which can typically illustrate my product as well, if not better than an actual demo. Screenshots and animation allow me to craft a narrative that focuses on the products key value proposition. A live demo often results in an audience member asking a question, then diving deep down into some sort of non-critical feature. A demo based on screenshots with animation will allow you to stay focused on our key narratives and primary value proposition. If you must give a live demo, you could use a wireless hotspot instead of relying on somebody else's network. Another option would be to run the demo on a remote machine, and show it using a screen sharing tool (such as join.me, WebEx, etc.), so that you're only relying on the firewall to allow HTTP traffic. (Though, that might have a lot of latency.)

Hi, if you need to uncover new interests, you might find Facebook Graph Search useful (you need to have your Facebook language set as English US before anything else). Start typing this phrase into your Facebook search bar: "Pages liked by people who like XYZ" - this will open a list of the most common pages of people that also like XYZ. You can get even more granular: - Pages liked by people who live in United States and who like NBA - Pages liked by people who live in United States and who like NBA and Houston Rockets - Interests liked by people who live in United States and who like Basketball As you said, trying out lookalikes based on your custom audience, website custom audiences, or conversion pixels could be another way. Also, one additional way to bring your CPA down would be to remarket to everyone who have already visited your website by using Perfect Audience or Facebook website custom audiences. Finally, you should have some strategies implemented for overcoming ad fatigue. Instead of running a campaign continuously for a very long time, use the newly added scheduling feature to spread it out: have it active for 1-2 days, then add 2-3 days off. Also, upload numerous different visuals for the same campaign and set up ad rotation, so that every 2-3 days a different ad is shown to the audience. I hope this will help you improve your campaigns, and if you wanted to discuss it further, feel free to let me know! Cheers, Adomas

My family is in the hotel business. I can tell that we would have absolutely no interest in doing this. We make sure out employees look after our property and provide great customer service. We do not have down time for them. We run a tight ship. The liability and other headaches that come with what you propose is incredible. The only thing we would consider doing is using one of our banquet facility rooms as a senior day-care center from 9am to 2pm Mon-Friday because a company would be paying us for the space and food. Everything else is on them.

So this model has been attempted before in various formats. As a direct comparison, 3-4 years back there was a company called WidgetBox. They were a startup. Successful in getting funding. Raised at least $8 million. Their changed up their model a few times but their most successful one was nearly identical to what you described. They went directly to various advertisers on a CPA basis and then guaranteed publishers a set CPM based on the agreed CPA with the merchants. Got as high as doing 500 million impressions a month. But they didn't appropriately account for fraud, had to back out on payouts, ended up nearly folding. They were able to pivot and be absorbed into Flite. A less direct comparison of your scenario is very common. Many affiliates these days operate what is considered a sub-network (against the rules of most larger affiliate networks) or a super-affiliate program. Examples are the dozens of loyalty affiliates out there like Upromise who also have their own affiliates (as well as members tracked on sub-ids) underneath them. Being the advertiser's "sole" affiliate is partially where I don't see the model you describe work. Unless your advertisers are completely unfamiliar with the digital space they are unlikely to only work with one company as their sole affiliates. Advertisers like to scale. It's why they work with networks. What ever you decide, Post Affiliate Pro does not have a robust enough of a platform for you to launch with. Beyond that the software's ability to help detect fraud is suspect. HasOffers (know called Tune) is a way better choice. Also recommend looking at Performance Horizon Group. Either way, highly recommend rethinking the "exclusivity" or "sole" component of your model and asking yourself why an advertiser would just go with you?

Find someone in that industry and give them a path to partnership. If you want DIY training for online marketing, you can try MarketMotive (nationwide business marketing) or CompeteLeap (local business marketing) or Lynda (random assortments of tech training). If you want to discuss your business specifics, let's chat on Clarity - send me a message about the type of business you're in so I can let you know if I can help or not.

I am an entrepreneur without a single degree or certification to my name. I'm certainly not anti-education (in fact, I've taught some university classes), but higher education wasn't the path I chose. My question for you is: what type of learner are you? I learn best when I'm self-directed, studying things that fascinate me, and able to either apply or teach what I'm learning (in fact, I think teaching is one of the best ways to learn). So, I've taken ownership of my "education", and I am constantly learning. I read books and articles, listen to podcasts and other audio programs, attend conferences and events, and seek mentors and peer-learning environments. It has worked well for me, but not everyone is built that way. Some people learn better when the education is structured for them, or when they have schedules, deadlines, and feedback (i.e. grades) on their learning. Even for structured learning, college / university is not the only option. There are incubator / accelerator programs, entrepreneur boot camps, mentoring groups such as SCORE - some of it depends on where you are located, or whether you're willing to travel. The bottom line is that education is not optional (especially for an entrepreneur), but there are several ways to get an education. You need to figure out what kind of learner you are to determine what path (or combination of paths) you should take.

Not enough information. Tactics depend on various factors: (1) the venue, since auction formats differ greatly across domain market places; (2) which of various auction types at a given website you're looking at; (3) listing settings decided by the seller such as "buy now" options or a minimum reserve; (4) the seller's past habits with regard to promoting, altering, or even -- unfortunately -- rigging auctions; (5) Quality of the domain itself relative to the price. Without knowing the details, no general answer that applies to all situations can be given.

I have worked with lots of healthcare internet startups. Please be more clear on your question. Best of Luck, Michael T. Irvin michaelirvin.net My books are available exclusively through Amazon Books. Check out my book "Copywriting Blackbook of Secrets" Copywriting, Startups, Internet Entrepreneur, Online Marketing, Making Money Best Of Luck, Copywriting, Startups, Internet Entrepreneur, Online Marketing, Making Money

I think there are two very different things you want. One is test our application on a great number of devices and Android version combinations. This is to make sure your app runs smoothly on all the environments you need. The other is a way to collect usage data, core dumps and physicians feedback. The first thing can be accomplished with a device farm and automated tests. Xamarin Test Cloud ( http://xamarin.com/test-cloud ) allows you to to automated testing on about 600 devices. There are other providers but this is the one that I would use and trust the provider. The second thing can be accomplished using many tools, even the ones you already use, e.g., trello or slack, for feedbacks. I have seen many companies go for beta releases on Google Play linked with private Google+ groups for beta testers. For crash dumps and usage monitoring you can use Twitter Clashalytics ( http://try.crashlytics.com/ ) or other tools like: * http://www.mobtest.com/ * http://ubertesters.com/ * http://hockeyapp.net/ * http://www.centercode.com/

Since the 'follow' link was so abused by spammers for ranking purposes, Google has really increased pressure on sites that have excessive 'follow' links. The 'nofollow' is still a great marketing tool. You should still be commenting, sharing your links, and getting your name/brand out there for the human element. You just wont see the same boast from a 'follow' link, like the good old days. Google does track traffic and how long visitors stay on your site, so, even a visitor who comes to your domain from a 'nofollow' link, but stays awhile, interacts with your content, etc can prove to be valuable. Folks used to use guest blogging and blog commenting strictly to build incoming links to their sites. This has been the lightning rod for much of the 'nofollow' discussion. The point of guest blogging and commenting should not be for building inbound links, but to build inbound traffic.

I like the way you framed this question. Staying calm, always leads to better decisions being made. The best way to maintain a "calm" state is to do your best to look at your business from a completely detached view. Having a talk with myself or anyone else well-reviewed on Clarity can bring needed perspective, but some people can achieve the same analysis on their own. Questions you should be asking yourself: 1) What evidence do I have that I'm building something others need? Was I expecting to have more evidence than I currently have? If so, do I trust that I know how I can obtain this evidence within the next 30 days? 2) Do I have credible options to fund what remains to be completed to get real customers (not my friends or associates) to use the product and give feedback? 3) Are others working on this project with me willing to make the necessary sacrifices (deferring payment) to get us to the point where we can test with real customers/ If you're not scoring at least 2/3 with confidence, you should reach out to me or someone else on Clarity.

Hi there.I have have about 2 years experience in afiliate-commision-based business but have considerable experience in e-commerce and epayment solutions. This is a very creative concept and believe it has real value. Since your business model border around afiliates COMMISSION then I like to believe also that when you successfully sign up as an afiliate, you receive a unique ID and URL for your afiliate membership. Trying to achieve this 'solution' of concierge-type checkout might not be the right way. Why? Because you want your customers to have a seemless order fulfilment experience. I do not think it makes a good customer experience for your customer to enter his/her credit card details twice along a payment fulfilment journey. Your concern as an afiliate should be the afiliate-merchant recognizing the purchase fulfilment referral SOURCE - which is your unique afiliate ID. So, you have the customer click on your website link for checkout , while he/she is redirected to the main merchant's website for payment fulfilment AND your ID parsed during that transaction to your afiliaite-merchant for proper reconciliation purposes. After all, you referred the customer and your entitlement is your COMMISSION. Another reason why providing a separate 'Checkout' experience might not work is because you do not have control over the PAYMENT PROCESSOR agreement or partnership with your upstream merchant. The solution you might explore should be: 1. Consult with each afiliate-merchant and discuss on an AUTOMATED method whereby during the checkout REDIRECT process towards the afiliate-merchant CHECKOUT PAGE, your ID will be captured from the URL so that your commission is remitted appropriately in line with your UNIQUE AGREEMENT with each afiliate merchant. 2. You might need to discuss with each of your afiliate-merchant around API(application programming interface) design to help you achieve item 1 solution.

Hey Great question. We use Skype services. It allows you to purchase a local number (in Florida for example.) Then using the Skype app on your iPhone you can call out. (saving your iPhone cell plan.) People accepting your calls will see the business number rather than your iPhones own number. Hope this helps