Recently I had a question from an associate regarding her website . It soon became apparent from the conversation, that she did not really understand how websites worked, what hosting was and what DNS was. I thought about it a bit and came to the conclusion that most people, like her, would not fully understand what is required so I thought I would write a blog post to explain it.

Today’s modern businesses have started the move to cloud based services for many mission critical functions. More and more are starting to use services like hosted Exchange servers, hosted databases, Cloud based computing and so on. What most people don’t realise is that all of these services rely of DNS to be found and connected to.

What is DNS I hear you say? Isn’t that just part of my website?

A bit of background first. Did you know that all website actually rely on two different types of hosting?

The one that most people know about is the hosting of the website. Effectively this is a server connected to the internet which holds the files for your website. The is known as web hosting. Typically that server will be running some sort of website hosting software such as Apache or Microsoft Internet Information Services. The files that make up your website can be coded in a variety of languages. You may have heard of things like HTML, PHP, ASP.Net and so on.

Now, regardless of the language and regardless of the system that it is hosted on, the aim of this technology, is to deliver a webpage to a browser which has been pointed to look at that server.

On the Internet, webservers are known by their IP address. Moreover it is possible that one webserver can host multiple websites. So when someone wants to open up a particular webpage e.g. www.markbuhagiar.com, they would normally just type in the name of that website and expect the site to come up. They certainly do not want to type in the IP address of 97.79.238.13.

Unfortunately at this point your workstation has no idea where in the world the markbuhagiar.com website is hosted so it uses a facility called DNS to find out.

DNS – The White Pages of the Internet

DNS is the second type of hosting I was speaking about. DNS stands for Domain Name System and the easiest way to think about it is to compare it to a telephone directory or White Pages. If I had the white pages in front of me I would look up your name alphabetically and with any luck find your entry. I would then scan sideways and see your phone number. To complete the process I would pick up the phone, dial the number and we would hopefully have an intelligent conversation.

In a very simplified explanation, this is exactly the same process that DNS uses. It looks up the domain name that you typed in and the DNS servers which host your domain name reply back to your workstation with the IP address of the server where that Domain’s website files are hosted. In this case it will be looking up the “www” record for the domain name.

Now, think back to the example of the White Pages, you can have an extended entry which lists not only your home phone number but also your mobile number and your fax number. DNS has exactly the same facility. Your domain name can be used for multiple things – your website (www) is just one record. You can also point an entry for your email to mail servers so that you can receive email addressed to the domain e.g. mark@markbuhagiar.com. These are commonly referred to as MX (Mail Exchange) records but there are many other records that can be created for each domain including entries for Terminal Servers and Cloud hosted databases.

Don’t Website Hosting Providers Also Include DNS for Free?

Many website hosting providers also include DNS hosting as part of the deal. Unfortunately it is really designed to be useful for hosting the website and standard email but very little else. It is difficult to modify and in some cases lacks reliability.

For many of our clients it has become more and more important that they have a reliable and fully managed DNS service, one that is independent of any other service.

Full Service Managed DNS

It is now becoming increasingly important when you are buying a domain you not only need to think about hosting for your website but also hosting for your domain name. Even with the best website hosting in the world, it is of no use unless people can find it and if you are moving to the Cloud or even planning to move, DNS hosting becomes a critical service that needs to be managed for the organisation as a whole.

My company Austlink, provides a fully managed DNS service utilising the Route 53 facility from Amazon Web Services. It is one of the most reliable systems available and one capable of scaling to cope with any amount of traffic and any amount of entries. At less than five dollar per month, can you afford not to have it? If you are interested call us on 1300 766 812.

Let me know what you think using the comment box below.

Enjoy the Journey.

Mark

Over the last week we have been bombarded with stories in the media about the security of hosting your business in the cloud.

The stories started a couple of months ago with a concerted attack on the Sony PlayStation network facility. Now whilst a number of people missed out on playing their favourite games no real harm was done except to the reputation of the engineers at Sony.

Recently though, there have been a couple of issues where businesses have been directly affected.

Dropping the Box

On the less severe end of the scale there were two issues this week, one with file sharing provider, DropBox and the other with WordPress.org. On June 19, 2011 a software bug caused an authentication issue with the login process at DropBox.

The problem occurred because of a new update of software at their end. It allowed people to log in without the correct credentials. The offending software was installed at 1:54pm and the fault discovered at 5:41pm, just under four hours later. It was fixed five minutes later.

I think it is important to note that unlike the Sony issue, this was not a hack attack. This was basically a mistake at DropBox who immediately corrected it once they found the problem. They have also gone to great lengths to check that no unauthorised access to people’s files happened during this four hour period.

WordPress.org provides the content management system for millions of websites around the world. It is a highly flexible, very robust and hugely popular system.

A Backdoor Into WordPress

On June 21, WordPress.org noticed some suspicious activity with several of the popular plugins (AddThis, WPtouch, and W3 Total Cache) containing cleverly disguised backdoors. Plugins are basically pieces of software which add functionality to WordPress. This looked like a genuine attempt to allow access to any website who used those plugins.

WordPress immediately fixed the issue and rolled out upgrades to the affected plugins. The only problem is that anybody who installed the offending plugins would actively have to upgrade them.

If you are in this situation, your WordPress dashboard would show that there were a number of updates available and you would need to at least press the button to allow them to update. Please ensure that you backup first.

The Destruction of 4,800 Websites!

I was amazed with the story of Australian hosting provider, Distribute.IT who managed to lose over 4,800 websites after a cyber-attack. Apparently, they sustained a focused and significant attack on Saturday night on June 11. It was a highly sophisticated attack which effectively wiped out their hard disks. In addition the hackers then went about destroying the company’s backups. It took them just half an hour to destroy thousands of hours and potentially millions of dollars’ worth of work.

All their client’s data, websites and email hosted on four out of their eight servers were totally destroyed and unrecoverable. Unfortunately, it also looks like Distribute.IT did not have any offsite backup.

The end result is that Distribute.IT is no longer and has been assimilated into the Netregistry Group.

Lessons from the Field

There are a couple of lessons to be learnt here. The first one is that if you are planning to use a low cost hosting provider then it really does make sense to back up your own data. There are a number of plugins that you can get for WordPress which automatically backup your site. They can be configured to email you a zip file of your website each day if that is what you wish.

These are great if your site is small but once you get a reasonable amount of content, the email facility will fail and your only backup will be on the website which in the case of the issue at Distribute.IT will be of no use to anyone.

A better system is to back up your site and your data to a facility like Amazon S3. This is one of the most reliable and secure systems in the world. It is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year. That is a lot of nines and makes it the service of choice.

If any of the Distribute.IT clients were backing up to this facility they could have had their site up and running again within a couple of hours.

How To Backup to the Cloud

We provide maintenance for your website which ensures that the site is always kept up to date and that it is backed up to the Amazon S3 facility. You can find out more information about the service by clicking on the following link:

Now don’t be lured into thinking that the best way is to have a server installed on your premises. I have been installing systems for over 22 years and whilst people might think that in house systems are safe and secure, the reality is that many of them are vulnerable to attack either due to a lack of maintenance or more basically because of a lack of physical security. i.e. it would easy for someone to come in and just steal the server.

Properly maintained, Cloud Computing is a great service and gives companies a significant competitive advantage. Regardless of whether you are using it for the hosting of your operational servers or to host your website it is imperative that you also invest in disaster recovery strategies. To do this you need two things – competent advice and a facility built from the ground up to be secure and reliable.

Let me know what you think.

Enjoy the journey.
Mark

Most businesses would rank their client list as one of their most valuable assets. Isn’t it amazing then that many of them do such a poor job of managing this important asset.

The Barrier of Trust

The biggest barrier to making a new sale is trust. To become a client a person must first find out about you and your company. They then must learn enough about you and build up enough confidence to engage your services or buy your products. Once they put money on the table, they evaluate the value that they have received in exchange and at that point they make a decision of whether or not they trust you enough to do business again.

Compare this to an existing client with whom you already have that trust. Selling to these people is so much easier because they already know you and trust that you are going to provide them with great value in exchange for their money. It is often said that it is 80% easier to sell to an existing client than it is to a brand new prospect.

Prospects buy when they are ready to buy not when you are ready to sell

The other thing to understand is that even once you have overcome the trust issue, people will only buy once they are ready to. You cannot control the events in their life so what you need to do is provide them with enough valuable contact that when they are ready to buy they immediately think of your products or services first..

The problem for most companies is this follow up is difficult for most people to do consistently. It requires a very dedicated person to remember to follow up with prospects week after week and it usually means juggling a number of systems to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Your List as the Authority

A better way to manage your list is to have your list become the authority. Wouldn’t it be good if you could just open one piece of software, find a person on your list, tick a box and automatically have that person become a member of your customer only website? Better still, what if a person could fill out a form or click a buy now button at your site, and as a result your list took care of the payment details, the scheduling of future emails to the person and the creation of a password to allow them to access the members area? How about if that person visited as a result of a recommendation from an affiliate? You would want that software to automatically record that transaction against your affiliate’s record.

Well, this is a system that I personally prefer as it makes one system the authority of your business information. To do this you need software that has been built from the ground up with this strategy in mind. One such package is called Infusionsoft and I use it inside my business. Infusionsoft is a top-end-of-town package. Unlike AWeber, which is only an auto-responder, Infusionsoft is a total business system. It includes a rules based auto-responder, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, multi-currency e-commerce facilities and an affiliate module all rolled into the one system.

Bringing All Your Systems into One

As you would expect, this one piece of software will replace many diverse pieces of your online software requirements. The great thing is that, as a result, all these systems will be automatically integrated for you. The downside to Infusionsoft is that, as a large comprehensive system, it does require some setup initially and it is often worthwhile getting some help with this. Once set up, though, it is easy to use and many of your business tasks will start happen automatically.

This makes it very easy to follow up with prospects and clients as much of the follow up is automated. For me, having the one system, which handles all of my internet marketing requirements, is invaluable.

Manage Multiple Projects and Business Units

Being a system that was designed specifically for businesses and internet marketers, it is easy to use Infusionsoft for multiple projects, each with their own separate look and feel. For starters, it uses a system of tags. Each person on your list can be allocated as many tags as you like. For instance, you could tag a person with the name of the website that they opted in at. You could also tag them as having shown an interest in a particular product.

You can also customise the look and feel of your web forms, shopping carts and order forms. You can have an unlimited number of forms and shopping carts and each one can be made to look totally different from the other. In practice what you do is create templates specifically for a particular website. Then when you want a new web form, order form or shopping cart for that site, it is a simple matter to give it the same look and feel as the main site. The client would have no idea that two very different sites are being linked back to the one back end database.

Multiple Payment Gateways

Another nice thing about Infusionsoft is that you can have multiple payment gateways. I have two, one in Australian dollars and the other in American dollars. It would be an easy matter to also have one in Euros if I wanted to. The good thing about this is, if I know a site is going to service a predominantly Australian clientele, I am able to charge in Australia dollars. On the other hand, for Americans, Asians or Europeans, I tend to use US dollars. Matching the currency, to the one your client is used to, gives them more confidence to buy and hence you will end up selling more.

A CRM on Steroids

The real power of Infusionsoft is that it is first and foremost a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Being able to record all dealings you have with your client makes it easier to interact with them in the future. It allows you to develop that relationship on a more personal level. Aside from the normal contact details, which are extensive, this module allows you to log all email for a particular client against that client. You can store files against that client record, see what tags, notes, tasks or follow up sequences you have associated with them. You can even add extra fields and store custom information.

Outlook Integration

The funny thing is, nowadays, I hardly ever log into the Infusionsoft website. I tend to do most of my things inside Microsoft Outlook. Infusionsoft includes a Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook which automatically looks up and shows you the details of a person, inside Outlook. As you click on an email, details of that person are automatically looked up for you, from Infusionsoft, and they are displayed in a convenient panel within Outlook. It is very easy to look up people, add tasks, notes, tags, and basically do whatever you want, all from within Outlook.

Getting Others to Grow Your Business

Finally, Infusionsoft also has an Affiliate module built in, which adds another integrated tool to your Internet Marketing business. Even if you are a traditional business moving some of your business online, the affiliate module can be a great way to incentivise your staff, clients and suppliers to recommend your business.

See for Yourself – Join Us on a Webinar

You can see why I, as a systems person, really like the power of Infusionsoft. Next Wednesday, 22nd June at 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time, I will be running a Webinar on Infusionsoft. Joining me will be a member of the Infusionsoft Team direct from the US.

To join the webinar all you need is access to a computer with internet access and the ability to hear audio. Just click on the following link and register for the event. Because of potential bandwidth issues we are limiting the number of places to just 60 so we will be allocating places on a first come first served basis. Even if you cannot make it on the day, register anyway because we will send you a recording of the event.

Note the Next Infusionsoft Webinar is on Wednesday May 23, 2012 at 9:00am (Sydney Time)

If you want to get a  head start, you can download a great little report entitled  “The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales“. It is free and will give you an insight on what is possible.

Enjoy the Journey.
Mark

There is an old adage that says your business is either growing or dying. The challenge in today’s economy is how to create the ideal conditions for your business to grow without having to spend a huge amount of money. Ideally, you want to increase growth, productivity and flexibility whilst at the same time saving money on key infrastructure and systems.

Last Thursday, I attended a presentation by Amazon regarding their Web Services division. Now, my company, Austlink has been using one of their services “S3 – Simple Storage Service” since the 23rd of May 2007. Since then we have ramped up our use, adding many more of their services for our critical business systems. We also provide their services to our clients. So for me they were preaching to the converted.

I have been in the business of helping clients with their IT Infrastructure, hardware and software for the last 22 years and I have seen many changes along the way. The amazing part is that I have seen technology going through similar cycles over time.

If you remember before the advent of the personal computer, companies would have installed a mini or mainframe computer inside their offices housed in a purpose built, raised floor, separately air conditioned, computer room. All the computing power was in that room. The users had access to it via dumb terminals (green or amber screens) at their desk, if they were lucky. These systems were expensive to install and maintain, but they had the unique advantage of being centrally managed. One upgrade to the software or the hardware and all the users in that organisation would have instant access to the latest and greatest version. Backing up this one system also backup every single person’s work.

With the arrival of the PC, decentralisation of computing power was the order of the day. Soon, people had more computing power and storage at their desk then the whole company used to have in their computer room. This was great for innovation and productivity but it was also the start of a nightmare for IT professionals. With decentralisation came a loss of management and a loss of control. Data was not being backed up and worst still, company secrets were being left in taxis.

The Genie was well and truly out of the bottle and there was no easy way back to the centralised fully managed model.

Move forward to 1995, a small company called Citrix, shipped a multiuser version of Windows NT with remote access, known as WinFrame. Later this became MetaFrame and when it was licenced back to Microsoft, Windows Terminal Services. I was one of the first resellers of this system in Australia, through my company “Accolade Computer Solutions”. This was a classic case of “Back to the Future” with PC graphical computing (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) being able to run via a dumb terminal. The server controlled everything and ran all sessions using it’s computing power and storage. The users were happy because they had the software they were used to and backups and upgrades were easy once again. Many corporates took up this technology and continue to use it today. This technology was critical to the accessibility of Cloud Computing.

Unfortunately for small businesses these systems required a substantial investment in servers and technical know how to set up and maintain. Even for large businesses they were a handful to manage and in particular were difficult to scale.

Leap forward to 2000 when Amazon (the book seller) was a 2.77 billion dollar business. At this time they ran all of their own infrastructure and they were finding it increasingly difficult to service the requirements of their ever increasing business. In 2004 they decided to invest over 2 billion dollars and change the computing paradigm. Instead of having a bunch of servers doing the same thing, they created something called “Service Rendered Architecture”. Basically they created a bunch of services that that were very task specific. The advantage of doing this was if one service was becoming overloaded they could just add capacity to it instead of having to upgrade all of the servers.

So successful was this endeavour that a number of large retailers like Marks and Spencer asked them to run their computer infrastructure for them. Seeing the opportunity, Amazon Web Services was born and they have gone from strength to strength.

One of the initial services offered was the S3 – Simple Storage System. Basically this was an ultra-reliable file storage system in the cloud. Their systems are so reliable that they promise not to lose more than one file in every ten thousand, every hundred million years. To this they added computing facilities via their “EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud”. Here was our centrally managed computer system again but with a huge difference. This time though there were no upfront infrastructure costs and you could pay by the month for just the amount of computing facilities you required.

In addition you could scale your operation up and down very quickly. Take the example of Animoto. These guys use the computing facilities of EC2 to render the amazing videos they create out of your simple photos. If you have never used their facilities then I recommend you look them up. They were using about 80 servers when a promotion they did went viral and millions of people started to use their services. To meet the demand they were able to add computing power from Amazon. In fact they added a whopping 3,420 servers in just three days something that would have been absolutely impossible in the past even if you had the millions of dollars required. When the demand went back down they just reduced the number of servers back again and they only had to pay for what they used.

Another service that amazon provides is a facility to deliver content such as videos and images. Amazon CloudFront uses 18 “edge locations” (read data centres) strategically located around the world to deliver content to your users regardless of where they are in the world. Let’s just say that you have a video that you have stored on the Amazon S3 facility. Using CloudFront, that video would be dynamically cached around the world so that if someone was to see it in London then it would be steamed from Ireland whilst someone in Australia clicking on the same video would see it from Tokyo or Singapore. This facility allows your videos to start up very quickly and can scale to almost any number of viewers.

I know many people worry about security in the cloud. The Amazon facility has been certified by a number of organisations. It is ISO 27001 and PCI compliant which gives you 100% data and payment protection. Security is built into every single Amazon service.

My prediction is that most organisations, large and small, within the next five years will be using some level of Cloud based technology in their business. It really makes sense. It is much more secure, is cheaper and more reliable and can scale infinitely.

We provide our clients with cloud based Exchange email, Computing facilities, data storage and video content delivery systems. The systems are very inexpensive starting at around eleven dollars per month for an Exchange hosted email box to around three hundred dollars per month for a fully managed server in the cloud. If you are interested in finding our more information or want to attend one of our upcoming webinars, please fill in your details below.

To put it in perspective, Amazon adds the same computing capacity to their facility every single day as they had in 2000. The same day I attended this seminar, Apple announced the release of iCloud. Now this facility offers only a small part of the existing Amazon offering and is very much consumer orientated but you can see the trend. Businesses are gaining a competitive advantage and reducing costs by embracing this technology. If you run a business of any size then this is something you should find out more about.

Enjoy the Journey,
Mark

It constantly amazes me how much people have to put up with when it comes to email.

Now I am not talking about spam and viruses which we all know are the bane of our existence but what about the simple basic functionality that we have to live with just to stay in touch. The reality is that we have gotten so used to having to deal with spam, we have not looked at improving the service that underlies what must be our biggest communication channel and business tool.

The Nightmare of Travel

If you have ever had to travel, be it for work or for pleasure, it becomes a nightmare trying to send emails when we are plugged in to a network that is not our own. Sure you can receive email but what about sending it. If you use a standard email account then the security systems in these hotels and resorts will actively block your outgoing mail.

Now you can’t really blame them. They block you because they want to stop somebody form high jacking their connection and using it to send Spam. So we get on the phone and speak to the tech support people who tell us that we need to change our outgoing mail server (SMTP) settings. And just before they put the phone down they say “and don’t forget to put the old settings back again once you get home” – what were they again???.

What they also don’t tell you is that every place you go to will have a connection that will most likely only authorise specific mail servers, so your next itinerary stop and you get to go through this all over again. You can even have this problem going from work to home with your laptop. It really is a nightmare.

I Just Want My Mail Everywhere

Call me greedy but I hate the idea of not having the ability to get my mail wherever I am. I mean aren’t we supposed to be living in a connected world. Well if you use a POP3 type of mailbox you will know that if you download email to your computer at home than the only place you will be able to find your email is on that one home computer. You cannot download it again on to another computer. If that computer is a laptop and you lose it then your email is gone forever.

Sure you could use another service called IMAP4 to get your mail on both your home and work computers but what about the mail that you send. If you send an email from your home computer, that “sent item” does not appear on your work computer and vice versa. You end up with your sent items being stored half on one computer and half on another.

It is the same with webmail. Unless you are prepared to use it exclusively then depending on what other clients you use, you may only have some of your mail available and you certainly will only have a very small proportion of your sent items – that is those items that you send using webmail.

What about Multiple Mailboxes and Multiple Domains?

These issues only compound further when you have multiple domains and multiple mailboxes. Sometimes I want my mail to be redirected to the one account whilst other times I want each mailbox to be separated but lets face it, I want to manage all my accounts from the one mail client without having to log in to each account individually each time. Using POP3 or IMAP4 makes for a very fragmented and complicated system.

Calendars, Appointments, Tasks and Contact Lists

It goes without saying that your Appointments, your Tasks and your list of Contacts should be in the same place as your email. When you receive an email from a colleague asking you to meet her somewhere it is just logical that you should be able to instantly schedule that meeting and have the system remind you when the allotted time arrives.

Lets take this further, what about group calendars or even the ability to view one of your workmates calendars? Really this is the lifeblood of business. It enables you to effectively collaborate with one another. Big business and some switched on smaller businesses have been doing this for years. In fact they have overcome all the issues I have spoken about in this email and they have done this by installing a server.

But Is Installing a Server Really the Answer?

You may know that as well as my many other hats, I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. For years I have been installing Servers with Microsoft Exchange Server at my client’s premises. These have worked very well for those workers in that organisation. Sure the configuration was difficult when came to supporting external clients but essentially a correctly installed Exchange Server will resolve all of the issues I have spoken about.

When you are overseas, at home or at the office, your email will be synchronised wherever you are and what’s more you will never have to change any of those pesky SMTP server settings. It is handled for you automatically. In addition your sent items are also synchronised everywhere as well.

To give you an example, with an exchange server you can have a PC in the office, a Netbook you take away with you and a Mac at home and have all of these devices synchronised with your email at the same time. In addition you would also have access to a webmail client that you can access with Internet Explorer which is almost a full replica of Microsoft Outlook 2010 with all your mail, contacts, calendar and tasks fully synchronised.

If you think about it installing an Exchange Server is a total no brainer except….. Yes you guessed it. An Exchange server can be expensive to buy and install. In addition you also need to install your own anti-virus solution and anti-spam facility. All these systems need regular maintenance so by the time you buy the machine, install it and maintain it, you end up paying a fair amount of change per user. And when things go wrong or a new upgrade comes out you are responsible for ensuring that the work gets done.

The cheapest server with Microsoft Exchange with Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus fully set up will cost about $8000. If you amortise this fee over the useful life of three years you get a monthly fee of about $222. In addition you would have to spend at least the same again for a support consultant to maintain the server. In short you would not get much change from about $500 per month and that is not counting the loss of utility of your money.

With these sort of figures you soon see that to make economic sense you need to have a minimum of ten but preferably 20 or more employees using the system. Even with twenty employees you are still looking at around $25 per user per month. With five it is a hundred dollars per user per month which makes no sense at all.

iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile

Now let us take this one step further, many of you like me run around with some sort of smart phone. I have a HTC Desire and have my mail fully synchronised on to it as well. I have turned off all the new mail notifications so I don’t get bothered and only have my meeting reminders make a sound. The thing is I don’t look at my mail on this device very often but it is so convenient when I have to. I remember being at the Sydney International Boat Show on a Friday during working hours and needed to get my staff to finish some of my projects. It allowed me to send off some instructions and review some work and enjoy the Boat Show all at the same time.

Those of you with iPhones, Android or Windows Mobile powered devices – well you can rest easy. A standard Exchange Server correctly configured will synchronise everything (email, calendar, tasks and contacts) to your device. The problem arises when you want to connect to a BlackBerry.

What about My BlackBerry?

Many people love these devices. They have been designed from the ground up as a business tool and work very effectively in that mode. The problem is that they are not natively supported by an Exchange Server. So to connect them you either need a plan from your telephone provider or you need to install another piece of expensive software to work with the Exchange server. The problem with the service provided by your service provider is that it will only synchronise your email. To synchronise everything you need a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). This is the software that costs thousands of dollars.

The BES connectivity provides you with real-time, two-way synchronization unlike the basic BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) provided by your wireless carrier that limits you to accessing your inbox via Internet. With a BlackBerry Enterprise Server you get:

• Everywhere emails
• Everywhere calendar
• Everywhere contacts
• Everywhere tasks

The addition of a BlackBerry Enterprise Server moves the equation even further towards larger and larger businesses. It is really not affordable for smaller organisations to get into the game.

A Solution for Small, Medium and Even Large Businesses

What if I told you that we had a service that where we would set up and run a fully hosted Exchange server for you, for as little as $11.97 per month? What if I told you that you could have this service even if you were just one person and only required just one mailbox?

The facility I am speaking about is a 100% fully certified Cloud hosted Microsoft Exchange Server. It is run by a team of Microsoft Certified System Engineers at a Microsoft Gold Certified partner. It is build in the Cloud on the Internet to be a global scalable facility. By its very nature it is designed to be accessible from anywhere and is as you would imagine designed to handle any load.

The twelve bucks a month also gets you the latest state of the art Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam facilities so you have one less thing you have to worry about. You can connect as many domains as you want to that one mailbox and pay no more. If you want to connect your BlackBerry with the full BlackBerry Enterprise Server features, well you can for a small additional fee. Just over four dollars extra will get you industrially strength archiving with unlimited storage and unlimited retention period. And if you don’t own a copy of Outlook 2010 (PC) or Outlook 2011 (Mac) well you can get that too for just $1.50 extra.

This is a solution that makes sense for anyone. It removes the headaches of having to look after your own servers and reduces the costs so companies of any size or individuals can have the advantages of large corporate facilities at a tiny fraction of the cost.

Naturally I use this facility for my own organisation and have used it for over a year now with no issues what so ever. If you are interested have a look at the information on this webpage.

Austlink Cloud Hosted Exchange Servers

Your own Exchange email facility could be up and running within the next 24 to 48 hours.

Let me know what you think.

Enjoy the Journey,

Mark

Isn’t it exciting – Together we have now raised well over $50,000 for the Queensland Flood Appeal. From the stats I have, at last count it was $54,024.

That is an outstanding effort by any measure which we should all be proud of.

As we have reached our target we will soon be dismantling the http://queenslandfloodhelp.com/ site. By now you most likely have already donated but if you haven’t, there is still a little time.

Just to recap if you give a donation of $47 or more, directly to the official Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal you will get instant access to a suite of Internet Business Products valued at $3,432.75! These are valuable products from 14 of some of the world’s top Internet Marketers. Even if you get just one good business idea, your donation will repay you tens of times over.

Here is a list of the products:

• 2 Day Workshop – How to Drive Traffic
• Twitter for Business Silver Pack
• How To Use Aweber
• 1 Day Workshop – How to do a Video Sales Letter
• Rapid Success Secrets
• Crack the Internet Code
• Internet Marketing Magazine
• Loaves and Fishes Program
• How to Craft the Greatest Marketing Message on the Planet
• How to Set Up a Self Hosted TV or Video Channel
• 12 Steps to Ebay Success
• The Deal Profiler
• Learn how one video can generate many visitors, and an ongoing revenue stream
• Information on hardware, cameras, lighting, microphones and accessories you need to make great videos
• AdWords Bootcamp – Beginners Pack
• Billion Dollar Marketing Secrets

More details on each product are available at http://queenslandfloodhelp.com/

Remember, this site is about to come down so you need to act today.

Once again thanks very much for your help. It is good to know that through this challenge, we have started 2011 on such an auspicious note.

Enjoy the journey.

Mark

Eben Pagan - Self Made Wealth

I just finished viewing the latest video from Eben Pagan. This video is on the relationship between education and wealth.

It is well known that if you have a degree of any sort you will on average earn 66% more than someone who doesn’t. Those people who have a professional degree you will earn a 300% more. But the really interesting thing is that if your education is specifically in the “money making” area then you will more than double that number again.

Each of us sees money differently depending on your specific level of wealth education. The more you learn the more you are able to see the multitude of opportunities around you. Small differences in investment returns can make a huge difference in the long run.

Over the last ten years Eben has sold over 100 million dollars of his products. His videos are second to none and this one is free to view and does not even require you to opt-in.

So Mark, do yourself a favour and have a look. You can view it by clicking on the link below:

Click Here To Learn More About Self Made Wealth

Enjoy the journey.
Mark

I need your help.

As you know from my email last week I have been trying to raise funds for the people affected by the Australian Floods. One of the things I am doing is donating 100% of any sales I make in January of my new book.

The next thing I was going to do was auction a “Done For You” Premium Website. I have put that project on hold though because a few days ago, my Queensland-based friends Andrew and Daryl Grant contacted me (and a bunch of other Australian and overseas internet marketers) to see what we could do to help out with the awful Queensland flood situation.

Although Andrew and Daryl were not directly affected, many of their friends, colleagues and customers throughout Queensland were. Many people have lost friends, homes, possessions and businesses, and they are emotionally, physically and financially wrecked.

So we decided to pool our internet marketing skills and launch the Internet Marketers Queensland Flood Appeal to raise as much money as possible for people who’ve been affected, so they can get their lives back on track as quickly as possible.

Before we reveal more about our unique campaign, here’s a few facts about the floods you may find difficult to comprehend.

• The flooding has covered an area the size of France and Germany COMBINED – so you can only imagine the devastation.
• Weeks of torrential rains have been delivering the equivalent of a massive two “Sydney Harbours” of water into the main Wivenhoe Dam daily.
• At the height of the event, the Wivenhoe Dam was forced to release the equivalent of up to 9,000 swimming pools per second – unfortunately contributing to the flooding downstream in capital city Brisbane!
• Around 40,000 homes have been flood affected across the State
• Up to 10,000 homes will need to be demolished leaving thousands homeless
• So far tragically 20 people have lost their lives in the floods with more still unaccounted for
• 120,000 homes and businesses were without power for long periods at the height of the crisis and still 20,000 remain unpowered.
• Initial estimates are that the total damage bill will exceed $10 billion!

So how can you help?

I’m honoured to be part of the team who has contributed an impressive collection of internet and business products, to create the Queensland Flood Internet Business Success Package.

When you donate $47 or more to the official Queensland Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal, you get access to all of the products. Of course we’d be delighted if you would consider donating more!

Simply click on this link – http://www.QueenslandFloodHelp.com – to see full details of our Internet Marketers Appeal and all the wonderful products you will receive in the Queensland Flood Internet Business Success Package.

Follow the two easy steps to help get the people of Queensland back on their feet and to claim your Package, valued at $2,747.

We thank you so much for your support – please do keep an eye on the funds raised tally and flood stories on the blog at http://www.QueenslandFloodHelp.com

Enjoy the journey.

Mark

PS. You can help even more by letting people know about this post. Together, if we can make this message go viral – we can have a huge impact on the lives of so many.

By now all of you would be aware of the devastating floods occurring around Australia over the last two weeks. In particular the state of Queensland has been substantially affected with 75% of the area affected by floods. To put some perspective on the magnitude of the problem, the area affected by this disaster is equivalent to the combined area of Germany and France. In other words it is huge – almost beyond comprehension.

Many have lots lives and loved ones. Thousands have lost their homes and businesses. The flow on effect will mean that many jobs will be at risk with some businesses not able to reopen their doors. The next year will be spent rebuilding, not only homes and infrastructure but also lives devastated by the whim of nature.

Naturally our thoughts and prayers are with all of the people affected at this time but I feel it is our duty to step up and do something concrete to help the rebuilding process. Many people have donated to the relief funds and this is only to be encouraged.

For my part I also would like to contribute, but like any good marketer I would like to do it in a leveraged way and to that end, I need your help.

As you know I have recently finished writing my book “Make Money From Internet Marketing”. This is a step by step guide to creating membership sites both as a passive income strategy for individuals and as a tool for businesses to grow their community of clients. I believe that everybody can benefit from the years of knowledge summarised in this book and regardless of the cause, it is a valuable asset.

This is what I would like to do. As a first step I will donate 100% of the selling price of my book for any sales that I make in the month of January. I currently have stock of 500 books for this and hope to sell them all. The price will be $27.25 (excluding tax which is only payable in Australia). There is also a small amount to cover shipping. Selling them all means a donation of $13,625 but that is not all – On Monday or Tuesday next week I am going to be announcing a special auction of a number of “built for you” websites and membership sites – again with 100% of all proceeds going to the Queensland Government official flood relief fund.

So, I would like you to help in two ways. The first way is to buy the book. The second thing though I need help with is to spread the word. If you have a list of people who you think would like to help then please forward this email to them. They could be your friends, clients or associates. Most people would like to find a way to help.

To buy the book just go to the following link. The book will be delivered within one to two weeks.

https://austlink.infusionsoft.com/saleform/nathnioo

Thanks very much for your help. Together we will make a difference

Regards,
Mark

Today (28th October 2009), Eban Pagan releases his latest program “10 Real Online Businesses You Can Start From Home… RIGHT NOW”. The program is called Ignition. Eban gives really great value. His videos are great – One of the most popular and successful Internet Marketers around.

If you are interested Click Here.

Ignition - Eban Pagan