Carbonite Online Storage Review

Back in April, I got an email from my FTP software people offering a free 30 day trial of Carbonite Online Storage. I signed up and when 30 days was up, my backup still wasn’t complete but I signed up anyway. I had worked during the backup and hadn’t noticed any drag at all of either my system or my online experience.

On May 8th, I signed up for 2 years of Carbonite service. On May 22, I entered my office, turned on my computer and was greeted with the dreaded blue screen of death. My hard drive was dead.

I packed up the beast and dropped it off at my local computer repair shop. (C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida but the link provided to their website now loads some spammy site trying to get you to run an online virus check. UGH!)

Mark (my favorite tech at C&W Computers) went to work diagnosing the problem and I went home to a business that was now officially “on hold” until I could access my files.

But I had Carbonite! YEAH! I also had purchased an Alienware computer to serve as a business backup, so I installed my software onto the beastly monstrosity. Once the software was installed, then I tried to transfer my Carbonite backup to the new PC.

The process of transferring the subscription was fraught with problems. The password I set didn’t work… so I tried to retrieve my password using their system. They sent the password recovery email, but it included a code that wasn’t needed on the password recovery page… and didn’t send the code that was required.

So, finally, I pick up the phone and call. I am greeted with a message that tells me

a) I am the first caller in line and

b) for another $20 a month, I can get my calls answered immediately.

I then spend the next TWENTY MINUTES on hold listening to beg notices to upgrade to VIP customer status.

In the end, I did get through, I did get my password reset and I did backup the files to my other PC. However, I still have a really bad taste in my mouth over the whole VIP customer service deal.

A little more than 2 weeks earlier, I had paid a fee to use their service for 2 years. I had tried to use their “hands free” password reset option. I picked up the phone as a last resort… only to find I was being asked to pay MORE for customer service.

Carbonite, you should have offered me the priority service information BEFORE I purchased. Heck, better yet, why not include PRIORITY SERVICE for ALL of your customers!!!

Carbonite did a great job of backing up my files. Carbonite DOES NOT back up your software though. It doesn’t back up your email either. However, it did restore the backup of my data files to my new pc over the course of a week.

In all fairness, the guys at C&W were impressed by the amount of data I have on my PC… which is why they set me up with an external hard drive AND Symtantec Backup Exec. It’s backing up EVERYTHING I need, not just the data files.

It cost $500 to have the guys at C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida replace my hard drive and set up the new backup option. Carbonite cost less than $90 for two years of service. However, in the end I’m happier with C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida than I am Carbonite…why? Because C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida included VIP customer service in EVERY sale!

Good Quality Customer Service

As business owners, providing good quality customer service should be a top priority.

One thing about Web 2.0… when your customers don’t experience good quality customer service, they can usually find someone who is blogging about either the product or service you provide OR about rotten customer service experiences. Even if your upset customer isn’t a blogger, he or she can surely comment on a few hundred blogs easily enough, including the ones maintained by your local media outlets.

Catherine Lawson shares 4 Amazingly Stupid Ways To Lose Customers and can’t help but sharing the business that inspired her to write the list.

Steven Bradley over at VanSEODesign writes in his post Practicing Good Customer Service Is The Best Way To Market It

It’s hard to find a business nowadays that doesn’t claim to provide excellent service, but how many really do?

You can claim all you want that you care about your customers, but unless you really do those claims are worthless.

Marketing it as good won’t change the fact that the service is awful. And when your customers talk about it they going to tell others about their bad experience.

I’ve been battling customer service demons left and right lately. The most recent was last Thursday. It began when my home phone rang and I answered it. On the other end of the line was a college recruiter who wanted to speak to my soon to be a senior in high school son about playing football (on scholarship) for their university. Unfortunately, the next six phone calls in the next few hours were not college scouts but rather telemarketers. Three of those phone calls were from Cooking Light Magazine.

I had subscribed to Cooking Light Magazine to help support the organization that runs the football kicking combines in which my son competes. Because I had subscribed in that manner, they had my phone number. What a horrible, AWFUL mistake.

This is the SECOND time Cooking Light Magazine has unleashed their demon dialer upon me. Last month, my phone began to ring incessantly. Hanging up or ignoring the calls seemed to be interpreted as a sign to “call more often”. After two days of this, I answered the phone and ran the gauntlet. I listened patiently and pushed buttons to indicate I wouldn’t be renewing my subscription which expired 6 months from that time. Now, it’s happening again!

I was enraged. I went to the Cooking Light Magazine website to get a number for customer service. THERE ISN’T ONE LISTED! I dug out the last issue and after much searching, found the phone number in 2 point arial font on the last page of the magazine. I called and was subjected to yet another push button automated guantlet.

As I struggle through this, I have the subscription services page up for Cooking Light Magazine. There I see that their “sister” publications are:

–Coastal Living - for people who love the coast
–Health - America’s best source for women
–Southern Living - the best of the South
–Southern Accents - fine interiors & gardens

DARN! I like ALL of those magazines and right now, I’ll be da@ned if I will EVER buy or subscribe to ANY of them.

When I finally reach a human, she’s begins by asking me if I’d like to share my email address with them.

“HELL NO! ” was my enthusiastic response. “I’m sorry that you have my phone number! Why in the WORLD would I give you my email address as well?”

She’s confused by my anger. She doesn’t understand why I don’t want to get five or more automated calls a day for weeks on end. When I ask for my number to be removed, I’m told it will take 90 days.

So, for the next 3 months, I can expect to experience times where I can either have my phone ring off the hook or I can spend 15 minutes to listen to pre-recorded spiels trying to get me to renew my subscription to a magazine.

My name is on the roles… they think I’m a customer. But I’m not. I’ll never purchase their magazine again because of the treatment at the hands of their customer service department. Instead of a customer, they’ve created an enemy. Just as the businesses Catherine writes about in her post about losing customers have created enemies as well.

Writing this post reminded me of when Patrick wrote about a customer service disaster with Ingram-Micro: Unfriendly to Small Business?

Think those rant style blog posts don’t stick in readers’ heads? Think again!

In Patrick’s case, he got a prompt apology from Justin Crotty, VP of North American Operations.

Nobody’s perfect. Good quality customer service is often a goal rather than a reality. However, in the case of Ingram Micro, they are actively managing their “brand” and standing behind their stated desire to provide good quality customer service. Justin illustrated how sometimes a customer service disaster can actually demonstrate your dedication to providing good quality customer service! I know I was impressed to see Justin’s prompt reply to Patrick’s post.

Joan Elias was the owner of the ad agency that gave me my break. She used to say, ” A satisfied customer will tell 3 people. A dissatisfied customer will tell 12.” Recent research puts that figure at closer to 16… and that’s without factoring in the power of Web 2.0.

There’s a lot of talk about “branding”… well branding is nothing more than a customer’s experience with your company, pure and simple!

Spotting Marketing Crooks and Liars

My clients are the best people on the planet! They are honest, trustworthy and loyal which are traits which make spotting marketing crooks and liars difficult.

See, people who are honest tend to view the world through that lens… the lens of honesty and integrity. Even the most “web savvy” are not immune to getting hooked by marketing crooks and liars. (Read the Itty Biz post 7 Home Business Lessons From StomperNet for an in depth explanation from a web savvy business owner who got “caught up” in the game.)

I OFTEN tell my clients that part of the “service” they pay for when they sign up with me is that they don’t have to get “burned” because I’m already heavily scarred from the 3rd degree burns I’ve suffered over the past 12+ years on the web.

After reading the post above, I got a message in my inbox the other day from a client who is toying with the idea of buying a “program” which will teach her the “secrets” to Google Adsense.  She sent me an email that goes like this:

My partner and I were just talking about the possibility of putting Google Adsense on our websites as guaranteed income. Just something we are thinking about. An example of this is on: [blog address that I'm not going to justify with a link]

This guy said that he has a guaranteed income of $15,000 thanks to Google Adsense.

Our question is-can this be done on the type of websites that we have? We are just wondering…

Thanks Kathy!!!

My reply:

Of COURSE you can add Google Adsense code to begin displaying ads on your blogs.

The way you make money with Google Adsense is when people come to your website and click on the ads displayed a.k.a… leave your site to go to another site.

The secret to making money with Google Adsense is traffic… lots and lots of traffic. It also helps to have really CRAPPY content because that way, visitors won’t find what they’re looking for on your site and will click on one of the ads displayed to find a site that does have the information they seek.

So I go to the site she sent me and there’s this guy who has his own typepad blog which is not “domain mapped”. The blog has an alexa ranking in the 1.2 million range. Adspy tells me he has 2 Google Adsense ads, both are running on this blog and he has them positioned in the navigation bar at the bottom. As anyone who makes money with Google Adsense will tell you… put your ads at the bottom of the page… that’s where the REAL money is made with Adsense. (Tongue is planted so firmly in cheek it hurts with that statement!)

However, because my dear, sweet, lovely clients would never lie to get clients, they assume that this guy is also a straight shooter as well.

Google Adsense can be a GREAT way to make money with very little effort from your blog, but it’s a numbers game pure and simple. From my experience with Google Adsense ads, I average about $1 for every 1000 visitors. Since the client who sent me that email gets about 2500 visitors to her blog every month, she can expect to make about $2.50 a month from displaying Google Adsense ads on her blog. Needless to say, that is far short of the promised $15,000 promised by this wannabe marketing guru!

In direct contrast to the idiot I refused to link to who promised guaranteed income of $15K, I’d like to introduce you to Courtney Tuttle. In his post, Smart Farmers Don’t Plant One Seed at a Time (and Neither Do Smart Internet Marketers)

As we’ve taught you more and more about sniping I’ve had a recurring fear for our readers. The fear is that you’ll do a little “case study” of your own, with one site, and after a few months you’ll get that number 1 spot on Google. It will be a big victory, because you’ll feel like you cracked the Google code, you’ve made it, arrived, etc…but then the site won’t make much. Maybe $3 to $5 per day.

Personally I think a $5 per day site is something to be excited about when it’s part of a portfolio of ten similar sites. But if you invest 6 months into getting that one site ranked, and then another month or two watching it get to $5 per day, you’re going to be mad.

Court’s the best… that other guy my client found is the worst.   Learning to tell the difference sometimes means getting burned but if you’ve got a blog, you can at least share your experience with others.  (Thanks Naomi!)

Web Promotion Advice

Sometimes, when you’re trying to promote your website (be it a blog or a traditional website) it can feel like you’re in a tiny row boat being tossed about on a roaring sea. It’s easy to feel lost in the sea that is the internet. Website promotion via the web is a “natural” but to really stir things up, create a website promotion strategy that includes OFF LINE promotion tactics.

Website Promotion Advice

Web Promotion Tool #1: Off line or hard copy newsletters

Darren Rowse of Problogger.net recommends allowing offline publications to print your content. In Darren’s case, he gave permission for a newsletter to translate and reprint an article he had written. As a result, he got 50 new sign ups for his photography website.

Web Promotion Tool #2: The Postal Service

ScribeFire suggests using snail mail as a website promotion tactic in the post Offline Blog Promotion Techniques:

Go Postal - this morning I got to my PO Box to find that inside it was a rather large parcel. Inside was two things - a book and a T-shirt. I didn’t know the name of the person who sent them to me but on the accompanying business card and note was the name and URL of a blog which I will check out later today.

A popular blog gets hundreds, sometimes thousands, of emails each day. Most of the time it’s people seeking the opportunity to be showcased on the popular blog. Its a great website promotion strategy to partner with a popular blog to promote your own website, however you need a way to stand out from the crowd. Taking the time to send a card via snail mail can be the difference between making contact and getting marked as spam. Including a T-shirt, a book or another promotional piece in the mailing is even better!

Web Promotion Tool #3: Traditional Media

Way back in the late 1990’s, if you listened to AM radio, you would have heard ads for the largest bookstore in the universe. These wacky radio ads featured such silliness as trying to rent warehouse space on Mars because no where on earth was big enough to house all the books offered for sale by this emerging online bookseller. You’ll probably recognize the name of the online merchant that ran those ads: Amazon.com.

Traditional media has been slammed of late because it’s a “spray and pray” approach to marketing. In most cases you’re reaching tens of thousands of people who are NOT prospective customers. However, if you can create a compelling and captivating message, you’ll find that traditional media can be even very effective at driving traffic to your website.

When people find your site via a radio, television, newspaper or magazine ad, this is known as a DIRECT REQUEST. According to the WWW Observer, this is what is known as Low Bounce Rate Traffic and is exactly the type of traffic you should be striving to create.

Web Promotion Tool #4: Social Networking Media

BlogGrrl in her post A Very Long List of Ways to Get Blog Traffic lists 13 different social networking sites plus another 36 tips on ways you can introduce your website to new people.

Web Promotion Tool #5: Commenting on Blogs

This one usually makes my skin crawl when I read someone who advises people that they don’t need a blog, they can just comment on other people’s blogs and get all the benefits of blogging without the time and expense of maintaining your own blog.

Commenting on blogs is NOT a substitute for having your own blog, but it can be a great way to promote your website.  The key here is to find the right blogs to comment on.  Rather than go over that, University Kid has a post on the subject Make Money Online By Blog Commenting.

When making a comment, make sure you give it the care and consideration you would take if that information were appearing on your website.  A blog comment can act like a banner ad for your website so watch what you post!

These 5 Web Promotion Tools are just a few website promotion tactics.  What ones have you used to promote your website?

Domain Names, Keywords and Blogging

Recently, I took a look at the log files for a blogging client. To be honest, I expected the worst. She had only posted 15 blog posts to her blog over the past three months. Not only was she not posting regularly, but none of the posts were tagged nor were they created with her ideal keywords in mind. I braced for the worst.

Imagine my surprise when things weren’t dismal on the traffic front at all. When she then reported how many newsletter subscribers, I was floored. She was getting a 25% sign up rate for her newsletter via her blog with VERY little blogging effort.

When I began looking at the keywords that people were using to find her blog, well it was then that I saw the key to her success. Her domain name and blog name both contained a vital keyword, essential to her business model.

The right domain name, a domain name that contains a keyword which people are using to find the very solutions this client is offering… is making up for a HUGE blogging misstep on her part (not posting regularly to your blog is a HUGE blog mistake many beginning bloggers make).

Which brings us to two essential tools you need to have in your arsenal before you launch your blog.

Blog Keywords:

First, you need a better than the average bear way to find the keywords that are really worth the time and effort of optimizing your blog. Wordze is well worth the investment on this front.

For example, there’s a 4-word keyword phrase which is well worth optimizing for today. (Things change from day to day when it comes to keywords, which is yet another reason to make the investment in a paid tool rather than wait for the trickle down to occur into the free tools.)

On the free keyword front, the Google Keyword tool shows you that the keywords on the singular and the plural of this keyword combo both have a competition level equal to the searches performed. (Meanwhile the incredibly similar 3 word keyword phrase has an average search volume with very high advertiser competition.)

What the Google tool doesn’t show is that there is a lack of competition on the singular version of the 4-word keyword phrase. Wordze does. Oh, did I mention the .net extension of this exact keyword phrase was available for registration? This keyword has had a 94% growth over the past 30 days.

In other words, Wordze is WELL worth the money… especially if you’re getting ready to launch a blog.

Once you have your keywords, it’s time to pick up a domain name.

Blog Domain Names

My blog client got lucky. She was insanely lucky in the fact that she chose a keyword combination that people were already using to find her services. She also picked a keyword competition without a lot of competition.

I wish I had that kind of luck, but I don’t. I have to use Wordze and then plug in those results into the Domain Twist domain name finder tool.

This tool allows you to plug in two essential keywords and find interesting (and available) domain name combinations.

The right domain name, one that contains essential keywords, can act like rocket fuel for launching your blog.  I can only imagine how much further she could be if she had been creating her titles with those essential keywords in mind.

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