Mashable posted a list of 50 Web design tools yesterday, and we’re thrilled that siteMighty landed near the top (#8). They said:

“[T]here are now scores of tools that turn ordinary folks into designers.”

We couldn’t agree more. Like we always say, we built siteMighty to enable anyone to build an affiliate marketing web site. And not just any site, but one that’s beautiful, powerful and that can be built in about 5 minutes.

I came across an interesting blog today titled, “One Year Goal, Can one man really make $100,000 online in just one year?” This got me thinking, can siteMighty make you $100k in a year?

I get this question every day from our users, how much can I make with siteMighty? My answer is always the same, “it depends.”

I’m not being flip. It really depends on how much experience you have marketing an affiliate site; how much time you’re willing to invest into your site; and how much you’re looking to make with your siteMighty site.

We have users at every level of earnings, some are happy, others want to make more (ok, I’m sure everyone would like to make more). The best thing about siteMighty is that we enable someone who couldn’t market affiliate programs before siteMighty, to build a site and get started. So many people find the affiliate marketing industry prohibitively technical and complex, that’s why we built siteMighty. siteMighty simplifies everything, and gets you started within minutes.

That $100,000 question is still unanswered, I know, but the best answer I can give is still, “it depends.” A better question might be, “Is it possible to make $100k a year with siteMighty?”

Yes. I’m sure of it. There’s nothing stopping you. I mean, we would never say, “Whoops, you reached your earnings limit for the year, now turn it off.” We’re your biggest fans! Go for it. Make tons of money. We’re here to help every step of the way.

It’s really disappointing to see companies taking advantage of people. It’s even more distressing when it’s a competitor of your company making everyone else look bad by association.

Today, I discovered a company that offers a service similar to siteMighty, but the similarities end there. The most glaring difference between this company and our own is that it charges over $5,000 to get started. Immediately, a red flag goes up.

Being the marketing person that I am, the first question I ask myself is “What’s the pitch?” (btw, if you’re an affiliate considering this $5k+ program, your first question should be “What’s the catch?”). The pitch is important to me because it’s the value proposition we extend to our users and potential users. For the $5k+ company to pitch such an exorbitant fee, means that there pitch is either very compelling or untrue.

When we talk to our customers, we are very aware of the language we use and the promises we make. Especially for affiliate marketing, we have to be very careful about telling people “you’ll make X over the next month.” No one can tell you that for certain. People enter this industry (and join siteMighty) at varying stages of experience. Some of our users know how affiliate marketing works and can get started right away. Most of our users, on the other hand, are brand new to affiliate marketing.

These are the people we built siteMighty for. siteMighty is perfect for anyone who wants to start marketing affiliate programs, but has either no way to build a site, or no budget to hire someone to build a site. You can literally come to siteMighty with zero experience in site building and have a site up in less than 5 minutes.

Keep in mind that this is just getting the site up. Step 2 involves marketing your site, and, admittedly, in the beginning we thought all we had to do was get your site built and that was it. But there’s another step which involves setting you on the path to marketing and gaining traction with your siteMighty site. We’re figuring this out and have already implemented a number of features, tools and offerings to help our users market their siteMighty sites (i.e. training guide, 24/7/365 Live support, etc.).

We’re looking for love. We want you to love us at sign up, but also love us 7 months later when you’re rocking with your siteMighty site. We can’t expect someone to to come to us with no experience and start making $10,000 a month right away. Don’t get me wrong, $10k/month is a lofty goal, but it’s attainable.

The point I’m trying to make here is that we love affiliate marketing. We believe in it. But to do it well means that it takes time to get to know it. With siteMighty, you’re given all the tools and expectations you need to succeed. Plus, we’re here to help every step of the way. We’re nothing without our amazing users.

The bottom line is that we want to add value to the industry, overcome the stigma that a few in our industry perpetuate, and see our users succeed.

The marketing department is in full swing here at siteMighty, so I thought I’d take a moment to share our latest strategy leaving the nest. Blog outreach.

We learned a lot from launching Huckabuck (our very cool Google-killer), but the thing I learned the most was how to engage blogs and get their authors to write about us. In my experience, it’s no easy task, but when it happens it’s well worth the wait. The goal here is to get a mention or review in a popular blog.

Here’s how we do it:

1. ID Blogs: I started the discovery phase of the blog outreach by going to Technorati and searching around. In the past, I would have searched for subject specific blogs, but I decided to take a look at the most popular blogs and was amazed at how many entrepreneurial blogs there are. Way more than a year ago when we were launching the Huck.
2. Make a list: You can make a written list on paper, or make a spreadsheet. I’ve even found it works to bookmark blogs and keep them in a folder on my computer. This time around, I’m using netvibes. Now, on a single tab, I have my first round picks and I’m ready to monitor.
3. Monitor the posts: This is you, in a helicopter, monitoring a high-speed chase. Just watch, take notes and report on what you see. You’ll find that if you screened your blogs correctly, they’ll blog on a theme and it’s that theme you’ll want to align your product with.
4. Comment, Post & Link to: By monitoring the blog, you’ll get a feel for the blogger’s voice and the types of people that read the blog. Become one of those people publicly. Start commenting on the blog, and really bring value to the conversation. The whole reason you monitor is so you really get the blog and can actively and legitimately participate. You should also start posting on your own blog and link back to the blogs you’re monitoring as much as you can.
5. Approach: I want to believe that if you do the above things well enough, you’ll never have to ask someone to blog about your company, product or service. But if you do it right, getting something from a blogger when you’re a real member of their community is going to be much easier.

I’ll keep y’all updated on the progress we make with siteMighty.

Whoa. Chris reminded me this morning of how long it’s been since I last posted to the Voodoo blog. It’s been an incredibly busy time for us here at siteMighty, but now, Blake’s back and ready to blog, blog, blog.

From now on, I want to primarily post about siteMighty happenings, specifically regarding marketing/growing siteMighty. We officially launched in March 2007, and as of 7/17 we have over 1700 users. Not bad, but we can do better.

We have an amazing team of interns that are bringing a lot of new energy and fresh ideas to siteMighty. They’ve helped us get siteMighty to a point where we can emerge from our beta phase, and move into hard-core marketing. Coming out of beta means we’re:

• Polishing all the content on siteMighty
• Releasing a comprehensive FAQs and Knowledge Base
• Offering a training guide for help with marketing a siteMighty site
• Integrating tutorial videos through the siteMighty account interface
• Adding 24/7/365 Live Support

More about our amazing Summer Rockstars:

1. Claire (The Artist): Claire’s bringing her talents in graphic design and experience in viral marketing to siteMighty. She is currently working on a viral marketing project involving videos where we will engage our users by connecting them to the siteMighty culture and team. We’re going for a YouTube hit with this one, but our primary goal is to connect with our users and get them excited about not only using siteMighty, but about being a part of our family.
2. Will (The Godfather): I’m calling Will the Godfather because he has tons of experience on the software development side of things. He’s working with us to learn more about how to launch a start-up and how to market a new product. He’s an MBA Fellow at Tulane. Moving forward, Will will take an active role in developing search marketing strategies as well as our blog outreach campaign for siteMighty.
3. Tannia (The Story Teller): Tannia has a very curious mind, and is always interested in how things work. She’s also great at putting things into plain English which is really great since we talk in “geek speak” a lot of the times here. Tannia is currently working on a series of press releases with Jeff as part of an awareness campaign for siteMighty.
4. Jeff (The Great Communicator): Jeff is just wrapping-up his Master’s coursework at SLU, but he’s already added a great deal to siteMighty. He was the lead on an award entry project where siteMighty was ultimately named New Orleans’ CityBusiness Innovator of the Year 2007. This is a big deal for siteMighty. Jeff is going to be working with Tannia on the awareness campaign for siteMighty.

These are all the lead projects that they’re working on, but in addition to these, we’re also starting our blog outreach campaign. Blog outreach takes lots of finessing and time. We’ve not found much success in the past “cold calling” a blogger and asking them to write about us. In those cases, we got dismissed as just another sales pitch.

We’ve developed a more sophisticated approach:

1. Identify Blogs: Use Technorati (or another blog search engine) to define a vertical, or a subject that a group of bloggers consistently write about.
2. Comment and Trackback: This step involves adding value (in the form of content) to the blogs in your vertical. Don’t pitch at this stage, just ease into the conversation/community. Comment on their blogs, and link (trackback) from a related post on your blog to their blog.
3. Request a mention: I’m not calling this a pitch, because if you do #2 well, you won’t have to ask for a mention.

For those of you who don’t know, our offices are located in New Orleans. Far from the fervor of Silicon Valley or the pace of NYC, being a technology/Internet company in the deep south has it’s own set of challenges and rewards. One of the perks is getting the chance to work with people like the team at iCommissions.com.

We’ve been active in the affiliate marketing space for years, and have worked with iCommissions for a while now. When we made up our minds to start building siteMighty, we introduced the idea to iCommissions and without pause they committed to step up and help us any way they could.

Inviting their users to try and test siteMighty has proved to be invaluable as we learned (and continue to learn) a great deal about siteMighty from the user’s perspective. They told us what was working and what wasn’t which is exactly what we needed - honest, genuine feedback. Many of the features you see on siteMighty today have been tweaked, polished or suggested by an iCommission’s user.

iCommissions is located in Mandeville which is on the Northshore just across Lake Pontchartrain from us. We try to get up there as often as we can to talk about siteMighty, have lunch and drink in the crisp, lake front breeze.

We thought we’d post some pics from our last visit so you can get to know our good friends at iCommissions.com.

(Pictured: Natalie Yarbrough and Scot Rumsey of iCommissions.com)

We’re slowly but surely getting our new office outfitted. We got our new conference table today, and you can see it if you want. In fact, you can see us (when we’re at the table) by checking out Voodoo TV Live.

My friend, Blake Poutra, told me about the Cork’d acquisition this morning. This story is right up my alley because it’s about growing a site (which is what we’re doing with siteMighty), and because it involves some amazing design. But first, here’s a little primer on Cork’d:

Cork’d was a niche site, a place for wine lovers who aren’t wine masters to meet and share their wine experiences. Cork’d is a site that an average person can visit to learn a bit about wine, get a recommendation or two, and type up some tasting notes without feeling overwhelmed, out of their depth, or talked-down to.

We’d built the site over a few months, working in our spare time during evenings and weekends. We were trying out new techniques, pulling out the stops, seeing what it would be like to create a site that wasn’t driven by client deadlines, statements of work, or contractual obligations. We were building it for fun.

Of course we had no idea if Cork’d would ever become something people would actually use. I remember right after launch we agreed that if we had a total of 500 user sign-ups in the next 30 days, the site would be a huge success. As it turned out, we had that many members within the next few hours. Within the week, we had over 5,000 new members. We were amazed as the user base climbed to over 20,000.

Ok. Cork’d exploded not because of the idea, its innovative strategies, or amazing design principles. It flew because it gave the users exactly what they wanted, and by doing that, it fulfilled a need. This is a hardcore community of wine enthusiasts which leads me to the reason I wrote this post in the first place. Take a look at the screengrab below. Note the language this user uses:

“The funk is there for sure”

“Nose: asparagus, toe sweat, and V8″

“Like chewing on the strings of a baseball glove…”

That last statement is what got me. When I first read the review, I was like, oops, some spam got through. Then I realized that he rated it 90.0/100.0. They must have liked it. Then I remembered chewing on my own glove in the outfield as a kid. It was a happy memory. This review must be good.

So then I recall my days waiting tables when I used to have to know a little bit about wine. I would get people every now and then who would come in and make strange requests about very expensive bottles of wine (i.e. placing a bottle of Chardonnay in an ice bath half ice, half water and a tumbler of club soda).

This guy is speaking to Cork’d members who are looking for a toe sweaty, tomatoey Red to go with their lamb. And Cork’d members are seeking reviews like this on Cork’d to make a purchase decision about a particular bottle of wine.

Kudos to Cork’d for getting out of the way and letting this type of conversation take place.It’s a fascinating example of how your users can really take you places. It’s the new way of saying the customer is always right.

A few months ago, we met Mitchell Cohen at SXSW. He’s a passionate entrepreneur who’s already sold one of his companies, and is starting another (or two). Did I mention he’s 20? His new company, ClixConnect.com, offers 24/7/365 live-chat support for the little guy (aka not Nordstrom or Amazon). I love stories like this, and we’ll continue to follow Mitchell’s path to complete world domination. In the meantime, chew on this interview:

Tell us a little about yourself? Who are you? How old are you? What’s your background?

I just finished my third year of university at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

I am essentially a serial entrepreneur; I was the kid sitting in front of his lemonade stand everyday in the summer (and not only that, I had a hot chocolate stand in the winter, I grew up in Canada). I started a tech consulting company with a friend as a fun summer project about 4 years ago. We grew it and it was acquired last summer (June ‘06). I can’t sit still, so now I’m working on this project with a friend from school here in Montreal (his name is Miki, he started a CD/DVD distribution company 5 years ago, [and] it is profitable). I’m also working with a group in another .com startup at the present time (that one is much, much larger in scale; we’re in stealth mode there, so I can’t say much).

I am 20. I was born in Toronto, Canada, lived in Reno, NV and Chicago, IL for a few years, and then decided to make the loop and return to Canada for school.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

Where did the idea for ClixConnect come from?

I love to do my shopping online, because it doesn’t matter if it’s 1:00 AM or 1:00 PM, it can be done anytime. The problem, however, is that most smaller online merchants cannot justify the cost of having someone around 24/7 to staff a live-chat tool. As such, when you’re browsing their site at 1:00 AM, there’s no one around to help you if you have a question. For these smaller guys, this is a huge competitive disadvantage because they’re not really 24/7, like a Nordstrom’s or eBay, both of whom have 24/7 live chat support. Visitors to these smaller merchants’ websites MAY send an e-mail inquiry when live-chat is closed, and even if they do that, there is no guarantee that they won’t purchase from a competitor while waiting for a response. We decided to setup a service enabling small online merchants to create a big-merchant feel for their websites, and ensure that prospective customers do not defect to the competition simply because they can’t get an answer to their question. If you’re paying $2.00 a click to get someone to your site from Google, it would be a shame to lose a prospective customer (and $2.00) just because they couldn’t find an answer to their question.

Who’s involved? How many people are working with you? For you?

There are two of us in Montreal; myself and a friend of mine, Miki. We manage the business. We have a team of 4 people monitoring the live-chat service 24/7, to ensure that all inquiries are responded to quickly and efficiently. We are working with 1 coder, from Romania, who has done a fantastic job on developing the back-end software.

What are the roles of the people involved?

Myself – Ops, customer support, marketing
Miki – Sales, marketing

How does it work?

A subscriber signs up for our live-chat service at www.clixconnect.com. We then create an account for them within 24-hours, customized to meet their specifications (custom logo, greetings, etc.). We send the subscriber a tiny HTML code snippet, which they can then install on their website (or we can do it for them, free of charge) (this is what enables the ClixConnect live-chat button on and proactive up-sell/cross-sell tool their website). Then, subscribers are able to respond to chat inquiries on their website using the ClixConnect operator console (which can be run online from ClixConnect.com, or can be downloaded onto their computer). When the subscriber is not logged in, or does not respond to an incoming chat inquiry after a predetermined amount of time, the inquiry is automatically forwarded to a ClixConnect operator. The ClixConnect operator will respond to the chat inquiry on behalf of the subscriber using information obtained from the subscriber when they first signed up. If the operator is unable to find the answer to the website visitor’s question using the information obtained at signup and information available on the subscriber’s website, the operator can place an outbound call to the subscriber (if the subscriber wishes) to find out the answer to the website visitor’s question. The operator will then respond to the website visitor with the information obtained in the phone call.

The other feature, the automated up-sell/cross-sell is included in the HTML snippet sent to the subscriber (in the previous section). This tool enables the website owner to specify automated chat messages to appear when website visitors are on certain pages of their website. Say you are a clothing outlet. You can specify that, after 10-seconds of viewing a certain red shirt on your website, a chat box appears recommending a nice pair of blue pants to go with that red shirt. The website visitor could then view the blue pants by clicking the link in the chat box, or could respond to the inquiry by typing a response into the chat box, at which point the operator console rings with an incoming chat request (subscriber then ClixConnect operator). There are timeout settings which can be adjusted so that website visitors do not get annoyed by receiving too many proactive messages during one visit.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

How are you funded?

100% bootstrapped!

Where do you hope to be 1 year from now? 5 years? 10 years?

1 year – We hope to have a strong customer base (400+ customers), be profitable, and be having a great time doing what we’re doing.

5 years, 10-years – I can’t really speculate that far into the future. Remember, I’m only 20. If you had asked me 10-years ago where I thought I’d be in 10-years I’d probably have told you that I would be a professional hockey player, and in the off season, I’d be swimming with Shamu at SeaWorld. I’m an opportunist. I go where the opportunity takes me 

Another Point:
Miki and I are both very intensely community-focused. We have a passion for bettering our communities and the world in general. In an effort to do our part, we have developed a 5/5 initiative. With this initiative, we are donating 5% of our profits and 5% of our service capacity for ClixConnect to non-profits. It’s a small thing, I know, but we’re trying our best to do our part.

Now, some questions from my perspective as a potential client.

Who is handling the support? Is it your local team or do you outsource?

Half and half. Miki and I try to get as many inquiries as possible. When we’re not around (or sleeping, for those 3-4 hours per day), we have a back-end team that takes care of incoming inquiries.

Right now, I’m handling most of our support. I have somewhat specific techniques I use to communicate with our users. We are very friendly, personal and have tons of Aw Shucks appeal. How do you handle representing a variety of corporate cultures?

We tailor our representation strategies to meet the needs of each individual client. Every time we acquire a new client, we go through a rigorous process of understanding the client’s business culture, and then transfer that knowledge to our support team over the course of a few training sessions. We’re still very small. As such, we can be very flexible when it comes to our strategies in working with clients. We are here to make our clients happy, and we’ll do everything in our power to make that happen.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

How much is your service?

Tiered pricing model, based upon ClixConnect operator minutes desired:

• $49/mo. – 100 minutes/mo.
• $139/mo. – 350 minutes/mo.
• $299/mo – 1000 minutes/mo.
• We can create custom packages for 1000 minutes/mo. +

How are you planning to scale? (Meeting the needs of tons of requests once you’re huge)

Our outsourced team of support agents can scale very quickly. Anytime we hit 70% of total capacity, we will add another agent. We will not let ourselves hit above 75% capacity, ever.

How do you protect against outages and downtime? How are you ensuring 24/7/365?

Outages and downtime – We have redundancies in place to prevent against this. We also host our software on high-quality, dedicated servers.

Ensuring 24/7/365 – We have 3-4 operators online and responding to chat inquiries at any given time, 24/7/365. If one needs to step away for 10-minutes, the others will cover his/her position.

Do you handle any support yourself?

Yes. As was the case with my previous company, I try to take inquiries whenever possible. Additionally, I handle all customer/billing/installation issues.

I think it would be interesting to learn how you are building your team. Especially for a company like this, finding good people is paramount. Walk us through what you have in mind for building an amazing team.

We plan on taking on a team of experts in customer interaction and business development once we reach the appropriate scale. Individuals looking to work with us need to be intensely focused on one thing; the customer. That’s the only requirement we have. Everything else can be learned as time progresses.

Learn more about ClixConnect now.

I was going to paraphrase this Wikipedia entry, but it’s just too good to change:

The term “forbidden fruit” is a popular metaphor that describes any object of desire whose appeal is a direct result of the knowledge that cannot or should not be obtained or something that someone may want but cannot have. The phrase refers to the Book of Genesis, where it is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As a result of eating this fruit, Adam and Eve lost their innocence, began to know good and evil, and were exiled from the garden.

Popularly, the fruit has been identified as an apple (perhaps as a Latin pun of ‘malus’ sounding like ‘evil’ and ‘apple’), although the Bible does not identify the fruit as an apple.

The term most generally refers to any indulgence or pleasure that is considered illegal or immoral and potentially dangerous or harmful, particularly relating to such things as human sexuality (underage, extramarital, or otherwise), recreational drug use, and underage alcoholic beverage consumption.