So this is what I want from you, please feel free to post your feedback (in the comments) about the past month’s articles here!  I would love to hear what you  have to say and what you might like to see more of in the future.

When you find yourself in a business where everybody has the same thing to sell, you have to find ways to make yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd.  One way of accomplishing this goal is to sell the service, as well as the product.  The idea is that you could get the mysterious product X from anybody out there, but you should get it from this place because of this, that or the other.

Selling a service, rather than a product, does take a little ‘bit of thinking outside the box.  Rather than trying to say how great your product is, you want to sell people on the experience of getting the product through you.

How Do You Sell the Service?

Now selling the service might vary from business to business, so I will try to make my suggestions here fit the most situations as possible.  You must paint a vivid picture of why your service is better.  Give details about how you treat your customers, guarantees for the services you provide and all the details you can about your company.  People like to know who they are doing business with – so the more details you give, the better chances you will have that they will be able to relate with you more.  

Customer testimonials are excellent for selling the service because it lets people see real customers giving their feedback and experiences on what they really enjoyed, when it comes to doing business with you. If your existing satisfied customers don’t offer testimonials on their own – feel free to ask them.  If they are really happy, they will often be delighted that you asked.

Best Example of Selling a Service

Here is an example situation.  I often order things online through Amazon.  Now sure, I could get the latest video games or techie devices through any online retailer out there, but Amazon has won me over with their Amazon Prime service.  With it, I can get next day deliveries at a really cheap price, or two day deliveries for free.  As you can see, they are not bringing me back by making their products better.  They are bringing me back to do business with them, because the experience is better.

I hope that helps some with your own marketing plans when it comes to selling your service.  Just remember that people are not just looking for the best products, they are also looking for the best place to get the products.

One of the best ways to market your stuff more effectively is to simply ask your current users or clients, what do they want?  Some of the feedback you get might not be all that great, but a lot of it should at least give you an idea of what people would like to see – so you can market your stuff towards those peoples wants and needs.

Feedback Form

Figure out a way, possibly on a website, for people to give you feedback or reviews of your service.  You might give them a link back to their website, or some other reward for sending in a review too.  Keep your feedback form simple, and to the point. Most people don’t want to really spend time filling out the form, because they have other things to do.  You might even just keep it as one big empty text field to fill out – so they can give their name, their feedback and then hit the send button.

Customer Survey

Surveys are also another good way to get feedback on how your current products are doing, as well as a place to get information on things you could be offering, that  you might not yet.  For example, what if Nintendo put out a survey asking people if they would like to see a Wii 2 that had a built in hard drive.  Now if 90% of the people said they would like to see that, well – lets just say we all know what little Jimmy is getting next Christmas.

Ask for Feedback from Staff and/or Friends

If you have a staff of people working for you – they might be the easiest group of people to get feedback from, since they are right there with you every single day.  Just remember, that staff will often look at things a little differently than a client would – because they are looking to make their own lives easier.  If somebody says they think it would help business to give all staff three day weekends, take that feedback with a grain of salt.

When asking for feedback, always remember that it is your job to call the people to action.  Make sure you persuade them that they will be better of by sharing their opinions, and reward them – if you can.

I hope you have enjoyed the evolution over the years and this new version of the website too.  If you have any feedback – or there is something you would like to see me cover, be sure to leave a comment and let me know. 

Thanks to you all, I appreciate all my wonderful RSS subscribers and website visitors.  Without you guys and gals, I’d just be rambling on to myself. (I’m not, am I?)

Once the shoutbox is added to your site, messages can be posted in it two different ways.  Your users can include the URL to the shoutbox in their tweet, and Jotabl will pick this up and place it in your shoutbox.  Users can also leave a message by signing into the box via Twitter, with the option to have the message tweeted for them.

You also can remove message and block certain Twitter users if they get too crazy with the shoutbox postings.  Now Jotabl doesn’t re-invent the Web, however it does provide a neat feedback interface for your users.  Give it a shot shout at jotable.com.

As you might of (or might not have, depending on how often you visit) noticed, I had DISQUS powering the comments on Mitchelaneous, the Web Hosting Show and Firefox Facts.  However, “had” is the important word.  This morning I removed DISQUS across the board.

Now I’ll cut to the chase, and tell you why.  It seems that no matter how I tweaked around with WordPress, I could never get DISQUS to pick up on all my trackbacks and comments.  One or two a day would get stuck going to the internal WordPress comment engine (which is practically blocked from you after you install DISQUS).

Having grown tired of checking two places for spam and comments, I decided things were simpler before DISQUS was brought into the picture.  It might be an alright comment system for some, but for me – it was just a little more trouble than it was worth.  Just my two cents here, so if you have an opinion that is either positive or negative about DISQUS post it in the comments.

Update: I have recently had a change of heart, and have decided Disqus is doing a much better job now, than ever before.  Before you make up your mind, be sure to check out my re-review and troubleshooting tips of Disqus.

I would like to know what you think of my site, and I like to let other people know what I think about their sites.  What Rev.iew.me does is organize all that under one tent.

One thing people will either love or hate though, is you must earn enough points before you can ask for your own site to be reviewed.  I have a feeling this is so people don’t sign up, ask for a review, and then you never see them again.  It forces you to be social!

How do you earn points?

You can get one point for posting a review between 100 and 299 words.  You can earn three points by posting a review between 300 and 999 words or by referring a friend to sign up.  Last but not least, you can earn five points if you post a review over 1000+ words.  You can read more about the points system on the points charter they have posted.

How do you spend the points you have earned?

• It costs 3 points to plug your site on the rev.iew.me plugboard
• It costs 5 points to add a site to rev.iew.me
• It costs 5 points to push your site to the front page spotlight

If you earn big points, you can trade them in for big rewards!

• For 300 points: get one free .com/.net/.org domain
• For 500 points: get free Star Membership
• For 800 points: get 6 months free hosting for your website

So as I said before, this is a very exciting new service that looks like it has a lot to offer from head to toe – as long as you are willing to be a productive member of the society around it.  Want to get your web site reviewed or share your opinions about what other people can do to make their sites better? 

Typing this as, well, I type I can tell you I am a Kubuntu user.  Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to get it just the way I want it.  Was I successful?  Well as somebody who has used just Windows all his life, it wasn’t easy – but it is now done.

Firefox is installed, Pidgin is up and running, so I now know I can at least do my day-to-day work done on here.

What is the Most Frustrating Thing About Kubuntu?

Well for me, my cries are pretty anal.  I don’t like that windows do not remember their locations when you close and reopen them.  Instead they just rotate corners they launch from.  I guess this will take some getting used to.

What do I like the most about Kubuntu?

The biggest positive is hard to put my finger on.  I like the basic look and feel of it, even more so than I liked Ubuntu.  Ubuntu just never felt right to me when using it, but Kubuntu does the trick.  Guess that makes me a fan of KDE over Gnome?  Hope that is right, getting the “lingo” down is another challenge for another post.

Feel like trying a new OS?  So if you have looked the other way with Linux distros in the past, give Kubuntu a shot.

We all like feedback right?  Here is how crowd sound works.  All you do is sign up for your free account, and then login.  Once you do, you can embed the widget into your web site.  Just copy and paste some simple JavaScript into your own design.

Now with the web site widget, you can add some entries. and then have other visitors vote up the idea or vote down the idea.  So this separates things into the people who want to give you good suggestions and the people who just like to vote for things.  You can also via the widget browse through the most recent or the most popular.

I think crowd sound is delivering a very unique way of looking at feedback gathering from your base.  Those could be customers, they could be readers.  The thing that is important is that you get their views to make your content better.

We will be short on a podcast this week due to the 4th of July weekend madness that has passed us by, but between your cleanup of fireworks and dumping out the barbequed leftovers please take a minute to take this short 6 question survey about the Web Hosting Show. 

Any and all feedback is appreciated and you know I am all about making you all happy so if there is something you like, hate or would love to hear about let me know. 

Take the Web Hosting Show Podcast Survey!

If you have ever wanted to share your opinion to me about what I do this would be the time to do it.  Also happy post 4th of July to all of you and thanks in advance!