Daniel Watrous

Back in 2008 I was feverishly trying to turn a few small websites of mine into something more than just a waste of time. I had invested as many as seven years into some of them. I worked through countless iterations. I change features and logos and colors and anything else that I could think [...]

The gleam and apparent glamor of the internet marketing way of life has created its own host of bewildered onlookers wondering why they can’t make a fortune overnight. The sales letters they read day in and day out clearly explain that it should be possible with “virtually no experience” and on “100% autopilot”. All you [...]

I absolutely LOVE the entrepreneurial culture in America. Sure it exists elsewhere, but I seem to remember being saturated by it when I was even just a boy. For example, I loved hearing stories about my Grandpa who started life with next to nothing in a tiny cabin in the hills outside Salt Lake City. [...]

Oh the lure and luster of good sales copy. It’s like anticipating an inheritance or buying a lottery ticket that just ‘has to win’. I’m sure that someone is about to head straight to the comments and tell me that writing good sales copy is scientific and not at all like the lottery. If you [...]

I absolutely love my Kodak Zi8. One of the reasons I chose the Kodak Zi8 was that it accommodates an external microphone. It turns out that the built in microphone is very high quality, but it’s range is only several feet. If you’re recording puts you any further away or want really great sound, you’ll [...]

UPDATE [9/1/2011]: This plugin is now available for download. Get details and training at http://mobilevideoforwordpress.com/ I’ve built a lot of membership websites in WordPress, and perhaps the most frustrating part is getting the video right. Video is one of the key components to communicating with your members. In fact, video should be used throughout the [...]

As marketer I’ve grown in my appreciation for the value of segmenting the contacts that are added to my email lists. In fact, just last week I created a very sophisticated email list segmentation framework for MemberWing to ensure that my membership websites can accommodate the sales funnel and user customization that I know will [...]

[UPDATE: read below to get free software] I recently developed a tool to increase the optin rate on my websites (and for my clients). During development I got to work with nearly all of the major email service providers. While many of them are very strong and offer some clever tools to make marketers more [...]

The following fragments come from a conversation with a client who was using 99designs to produce a logo for her website. I thought they would be useful and instructive. Hopefully my designer friends will chime in and tell me if my advice was sensible, but the most important part in my view was the opportunity [...]

Pearl S. Buck wrote of a young man Wang Lung, a pre-revolutionary Chinese farmer.  The story begins on his wedding day, but unlike the opulent weddings that our prosperous culture is accustomed to, he woke in a three room stone house where he lived with his aging father.  A small curtain separated his bed from the rest of [...]