Open Letter to Vendors and Readers

I have been running this blog for almost six years. In many ways, it has remained pretty much the same. We're now pushing cloud services in addition to managed services. But, really, the blog is about the business side of running a business.

Way back when, I decided that the world didn't need another techie blog about the inner workings of active directory or how many vpn connections you could get on an SBS box. To be very honest, I'm pretty darn good on the technical side. I would put my technical abilities up against anyone in the industry. But you can get that information everywhere, from vendors, bloggers, technical schools, and mailing lists.

This blog has been about the business side of business . . . and will continue to be so. Yeah, sometimes we delve into the tech stuff. But for the most part it's about making money in the small business space.

There's really only one area of confusion I've found with readers, partners, and vendors: What I promote and when.


Blog Promotions

Here's the deal. If you send me an occasional press release, I'll publish it. If you send me an email announcement of a product or event, I'll publish it. If you ask me to publishing something, chances are pretty good I will.

Will I promote your user group? Yes.
Will I promote a product? Yes.
Will I publish promotions for a product I don't use? Yes.

Do you have to pay for any of this? No.

Podcasts? Yes.
Webinars? Yes.
Things that compete with me? Yes.
Roadshows, road trips, etc.? Yes.

Pretty much anything that anyone wants to promote to the I.T. Professionals and Small Business Specialists out there, we'll promote. If it's related to cloud services, we'll promote it.

If it focuses on the new computer consultants entering this field and trying to figure out which tools to use and which products and services to sell, we'll promote it.


Weekly Newsletter Promotions

My newsletter has a slightly different twist. That's a smaller format, so I can't load it up with dozens of press releases.

Basically, I hand select what gets published there. So give me a good reason and we can talk. Otherwise, look for it on the blog.

I do have a calendar of live events in the weekly newsletter. I try to keep that up to date. It lists live, in-person events that SMB Consultants might want to attend. The only criterion here is that they are live events.

If I tried to publish every conference call, podcast, and webcast, the calendar would be so overwhelmed it would be useless. So I stick to live events.

If you don't fit in that category and you want to get your message out to thousands of computer consultants, see the next section.


Major Promotions

Then there's the big picture. I have Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. I have blog posts (I write several blogs besides this one). I have podcasts. I will do webinars, but I don't have them regularly scheduled. I give speeches and put on road shows.

I can promote events, products, and services on the dozen major and 300 minor web sites I maintain. We have a decent sized mailing list.

So if you want to promote something to this audience, and you have a budget, I can help. I don't mind doing an all-out push on all my lists, newsletters, blogs, etc. IF it's worth my while.

I don't get paid to blog. I like to blog.

Blogging is that happy convergence between my need to share a vision of the world with other people's desire to learn what others are doing in their business.


The bottom line: Send me your stuff. If you send too much, I'll just ignore some of it. If you "use" me in moderation, I'll help you promote. But *I* get to decide what gets published, where, and when. If you want to buy access, then you're welcome to do that.

We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and beer.

:-)

Want to figure out how to make money with Cloud Computing? Join the Cloud Services Roundtable today and listen a great series of podcasts! www.cloudservicesroundtable.com