To get 30% off your domain purchase and renewal:

Use coupon code: wallet30

Sure enough, we had a delivery on Friday morning, the day of the release and got our phones.   We all went with the 32GB model to carry files, music, photos, and hold a good amount of video.

The pre-order price was set at $499 for the 32GB with a new contract.   That doesn’t sound right, but we went ahead and secured a few anyways.   A few days later, an announcement was made that we would be getting a credit of $200 to bring the price to $299 for the 32GB.   That sounds more like it and a refund we did receive shortly after.

Due to the high volume of phone activations we had to wait a few hours for the activation, but our 3G phone were still work in the mean time.

Here we are 3 weeks later and are very happy with the upgrade.  The best part about the upgrade is the SPEED.   A huge difference when viewing email, web, applications, etc.  When we upgraded our 3G to the new 3.0 OS, you can see that the 3Gs was designed to support the 3.0 OS much better.

From a business standpoint, this phone goes beyond anything we need.   When we are on the road, we feel very comfortable not having the laptops at arms length.   We can check on our servers, client’s websites, e-mail, calendar, etc. and do it very well.

AT&T still needs to step up and give us tethering and MMS.   I expect to see the tethering available shortly, but you can count on paying for it.   As a heavy business user, we would consider paying for tethering depending on the price.  So let’s hope that they price it right.

Don’t want to spend the money on the new 3Gs?  Upgrading your phone every year can seem ridiculous to some, but awesome to others.   If you kept your box and your phone is in decent condition, than you can expect to get a great price on eBay.   Most auctions we have seen have covered the cost totally for the upgrade.

As for an Iphone case and screen protection.  We all installed the ZAGG invisibleSHIELD.   While scratches on the screen are usually the main concern when shopping for a screen protector, the ZAGG | invisibleSHIELD does much more.   I personally love that it protects well from fingerprints and I don’t have to constantly wipe down the screen.  It was very easy to install and a bit worrisome as you have to spray a liquid on your screen, much like tinting a cars windows.   But once in place this screen protector is awesome.  You can have the mobile crew at Best Buy install it for you for a small fee if you’d like.
That’s our review for now.  Next time we will go into some business applications that we like.

Gmail created and backed by Google’s reputation allows for personal and business email use from anywhere in the world.  The fact that it is free and as of today allows for 2GB of storage is enough to hook most.  But we highly endorse the SPAM protection to save you time and money of sorting through unwanted emails.

You may setup your GMAIL account as a pop3 account in your email program of choice such as Microsoft Outlook.  GMAIL does not have banner advertisements and confusing messages all over the page to side track you.  Did we mention it was FREE?

In a recent case study, our client Captain Jon Turner of Barefoot Charters called to let us know the enormous amount of spam that taking time away from his business.  We immediately told him about GMAIL and the various benefits to switch over.   All forms that were used to gather data were pointed to the new GMAIL address.  Within 1 week the results were remarkable and he could not be happier.

In some cases, GMAIL is not best suited for all small businesses and we feel it is much more professional to have an email such as john@myaccountingfirm.com within your domain.  You will need a spam firewall in place to make the life of yourself and your employees easier.  We use Barracuda Networks as our spam firewall and offer it to our clients.

Keeping your email account spam free is an art form and with the use of GMAIL or Barracuda Networks, you can be assured that your time is not wasted sorting through spam.

In my search to save more for retirement, I found the Self Employed 401k or Individual 401k.  This plan offers higher contribution maximums and they are tax deductible.

Available to the self employed with no employees, you should consider your expansion plan before setting this 401k up.  Your spouse can be employed by the company under the Individual 401k, however if you hire employees at any date, you will have to convert your plan.

From a tax standpoint, your contributions are tax deductible.  This means huge tax savings at the end of the year.   In fact up to $46,000 in contributions can be made and $51,000 if you are 50 or older.

For 2008, you are allowed 100% of W2 earnings up to $15,500 as salary deferrals to your plan.   The plan will also allow you as the employer to contribute 25% of W-2 earnings as a profit sharing contribution.

There are several companies offering the Self Employed 401k:

• Charles Schwab
• Fidelity
• Vanguard

All three of these companies have great customer service and the retirement specialist know this plan well.   We suggest you call them with any questions.

The deadline to setup this plan is December 31 and you have until your tax filing deadline to fund it.

There were not many good phones to choose from at the time, so we decided to hold out for the iphone 2.0.   Blackberry was at the top of list, but the non touch screen was quite the turn off.

The second version of the iphone allowed for developers to make applications that could be useful to the business users.  So out it came on July 11th.

After 1 week, I am personally VERY impressed with the phone.  While AT&T/Cingular may not have the best reputation, I have found the 3G service to be reliable and fast so far.

The web interface is obviously what separates this phone from others.  It is really like having a computer in your pocket.  When developing websites we now added the iphone safari browser as another test browser.

I personally sync the phone with my Outlook contacts and calendar each morning.

The phone is very slim and stylish.  The ipod works to hold your music and with 8GB I believe it will be plenty for light music user.  Those that use their iphone to hold large amounts of music or video will probably need the 16GB.

So did we wait in line with all the other chumps?  Sure did.  I was in line at about 7:30am and had an 8GB black iphone in hand by 10:30.  Some of our colleagues were in line even earlier.

I also picked up the new Jawbone Bluetooth ear piece and a mobile charger.  The jawbone took some getting used to, but once I adjusted the size of the earpiece and volume, I realized it is a great tool to have when working in front of the computer or driving.

Overall, this phone is only going to keep getting better and better.   A lot of other manufacturers are working 24/7 to come out with new models that will mimic it.  I expect Apple to really take over the PDA market.

Here is the definition of a conversion tracking from Google:

What is conversion tracking?

In online advertising, a conversion occurs when a click on your ad leads directly to user behavior you deem valuable, such as a purchase, signup, page view, or lead. Google has developed a tool to measure these conversions, and ultimately, help you identify how effective your AdWords ads and keywords are for you.

It works by placing a cookie on a user’s computer or mobile phone when he or she clicks on one of your AdWords ads. Then, if the user reaches one of your conversion pages, the cookie is connected to your web page. When a match is made, Google records a successful conversion for you. Please note that the cookie Google adds to a user’s computer or mobile device when he or she clicks on an ad expires in approximately 30 days. This measure, and the fact that Google uses separate servers for conversion tracking and search results, protects the user’s privacy.

In general terms we track from the point to where the user searches for your term, clicks on your ad, and then purchases a product, fill out a request form, or any other form of lead.
If we see a keyword set is not converting than we generally investigate and adjust budgets towards keywords that do convert. The first month or two generally consist of us making these tweaks daily to optimize your campaign and get it converts at the highest potential. From that point on, we do small tweaks and market research that help to improve sails and ROI.

Here is a screenshot from a client of ours that is highly optimized and doing very well in their niche market.

For every $16.35 spent, the is a conversion.

Is your campaign optimized well? Is it worth you hiring a professional to do so? You may be losing hard earned dollars by not doing so.

One example of a website we own is ReelReports.com.  We use this site to allow fishing guides from all over the world to promote their business.  We are constantly staying on top of the latest in search engine optimization along with the latest shifts in web technologies.  We bring these technologies directly to our clients and save them time and money.

In most cases doing business with friends and family leads to disaster, especially when you don’t pay them to create a powerful marketing tool such as website.    A website must be updated frequently and you must have your web guy on a short leash to make this happen.

A professional web design company can offer you far greater value than your friend in college that has his own web page and states he can provide your company with one.  At SFC Design Group, our staff including myself is educated in not only the latest technologies in web design, but in Marketing, Business, Information Technology, Accounting and Finance.  We provide you with offsite marketing that helps in better search engine rankings.  We also offer print marketing such as business cards, post cards, brochures and more to gain exposure to a down market.

By bringing our clients a vast knowledge of business, we can provide you with the most effective website for your company.  Every site we create is designed with one simple objective: INCREASE PROFITS.

Most small businesses that decide to have a friend develop their website that does not specialize in web design, do so for budget purposes.  However while the company does not have a large initial expense, the overall expense of a poorly designed website is far greater.

Do your company a favor and find a professional web design company that offers more than just web design.   There are many aspects to web marketing that a person/company needs to be versed in to offer your business the best value.

• Don’t List The Email Address On The Site – This is important as spam bots continuously crawl websites through search engines looking for email address variables. If you don’t list the email address than it is unlikely you will receive immediate bulks of spam.

• Hide Email Addresses In Forms – We like to use forms to submit email questions and comments for a business. It enables us to hide and/or encrypt the email address and makes it much easier for customers to contact the company.

• Stay away from common email address such as “Info”, “Sales”, etc. These are common targets of spam bots and will be spammed regardless.

• Free Email Is Great! - Use a free email service such as Gmail. The spam protection is phenomenal and did I mention “FREE”. You can set this account up in Outlook just as any other email account.

For our serious business clients that have several email addresses and prefer the email address to be listed on the site, than we offer a Spam Firewall by Barracuda Networks. It is truly amazing the way it catches spam and viruses.

Here is a brief introduction to our Spam Firewall:

As a verified solution to spam, we have purchased and installed enterprise-based hardware, from which we offer a premium spam/virus filtering service. Please note; as with similar services or products offered by other companies, we can not guarantee a 100% reduction of SPAM and Virus-infected emails. As to the success of this solution in particular, we are excited to share with you the results of one of our local affiliate companies who installed this same hardware at the start of this year. Over the past 6 months they have blocked/filtered over 760,196 SPAM messages and 8,856 e-mails containing Viruses.

Here is a link to the hardware we will be using to provide this service: http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/ (It is the first product listed on the page). In the brief description, you can see what other companies use this product.

This product is offered by us to SFC Design Group clients only. We have limited space on the firewall and reserve it for our clients.