Start Using Your Trademark™

The first step in filing for a trade mark, indicated with the letters TM: ™ is to stake your claim in the ground and start using it. Coin your phrase, create your unique trade name and put the letters TM after it raised to the power, i.e., ™. For example, if I wanted to trademark the phrase, “Artists Café“, the first thing I would do is post Artists Café™ every where on my website, in my printed material, on my advertising, and on my business cards and brochures. The first step is to start publicly using it.

Conduct a Trademark™ Search

The next thing you need to do is research your trademark™. Go to the US Patent and Trademark Office website, www.uspto.gov, and find their TESS database. Search that database for phrases, which resemble your trademark™. If nothing comes up, that’s good. Next, surf the web for your trademark. Start with the obvious, add a .com, .biz, or any other extension to is and see if there is a website after that name or phrase. Then, just Google your trademark phrase. Take special note to see if any of those results has either the ™ symbol or the ® symbol.

File the Trademark

If you haven’t found anything or any one competing your trademark, then it’s worth it to make the investment in filing for the registered trademark®. There are a couple ways you can go. One is to file directly with the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). However, it’s an incredibly bureaucratic office and if you don’t know what the hell you are doing, you are going to waste a lot of time and money and go away very frustrated. I strongly recommend using somebody who knows what they are doing.

Trademark Attorney Recommendations

1. Visit LegalZoom.com, for about $375, they can collect and submit the information you need to the US PTO
2. Contact Bert Vermeulen of Corp21 in Boulder, Colorado – sometimes in New Mexico. He’s not an attorney but knows what he is doing.
3. Google, “Patent and Trademark Attorney” in your city or state

Patent and Trademark Books

• Patent It Yourself by David Pressman
• Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights for Dummies
• Trademark: Legal Care for your Business and Product Name

What’s the Difference Between a ® and a ™ ?

Well, a registered trademark, ®, has been registered and approved with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Whereas, a ™ is a placeholder, a stake in the ground, kind of like “Patent Pending” to indicate that you are planning to file or are in the process of filing for what you ultimately want, a registered trademark®.

Copyright Law

In general, you should visit the U.S. Copyright Office website in conjunction with the Library of Congress to learn more about US Copyright Law.

What is a copyright?

A Copyright© protects the original work of an author or artist from theft of their creative or intellectual property. It is protected by US Copyright Law enacted in 1976 making it illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights of that copyright owner. The copyright immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work at the moment of creation. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright. However, in the case of work made for hire, the employer and not the employee is considered to be the author.

How do I copyright a Photo?

No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created. However, publication of the copyright notice helps to enforce your copyright. The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain all the following three elements:

1. The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word “Copyright.”
2. The year of first publication of the work.
3. The name of the owner of copyright in the work

Example: © 2008 John Doe

How do I copyright a screenplay?

You can electronically submit your screenplay to the Library of Congress at the U.S. Copyright Office website and save money. Normally, the basic registration fee is $45. However, if you submit it electronically, it is only $10. To manually register a work, send the following three elements in the same envelope or package to:

Library of Congress
Copyright Office
101 Independence Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20559-6000

1. A properly completed application form
2. A nonrefundable filing fee for each application
3. A nonreturnable copy of the work being registered

How to Prepare Website Content for Google

Many of my clients ask me for a little guidance on writing content, preparing website content, and optimizing their site for Google and other search engines. So, I put together a little bit of guidance for them and you…

5 Rules for Preparing Website Content

1. Determine what laymen terms your ideal clients might use to find you if they were searching for you, your products, or your services online. These laymen terms, we are going to call, “key words” or “keyword phrases”.
   • For example, in our case, we are an online marketing agency. However, my clients would never think of using those key words to find us in a Google search.
   • Putting myself in the mindset of my client, if I were looking to build a new website then I would be looking for a “website builder” or “website programmer” or “web site developer” or “web site designer”.
   • It doesn’t really matter what I prefer to call myself. What matters is what words or phrases my clients would use to find somebody like me.
   • So, when you develop your list of key words and keyword phrases, it helps to pick up the phone, call one of your favorite clients and ask them, “if you were looking for my products or services, what words would you Google to find me?” Then, start writing furiously as they think out loud.
2. Prepare a table of contents (TOC), like what you would expect to see in the beginning of a textbook, which structures the information and message that you want to deliver, in a way that is logical and easy to understand. In the case of this particular website, www.artistscafe.com, the table of contents is:
   1. Home
   2. About
   3. Websites
   4. Marketing
   5. Blog
   6. Contact
3. Use your keyword phrases define in Step 1 within your table of contents.
   • The table of contents will ultimately be the names of the links or the pages that your website visitors will click on to get information.
   • If you want your site to be intuitive and if you want to get caught up in Google searches, it is critically important that the links to your pages reveal the information that lies on the other side of the links.
   • So, when you create that table of contents (TOC), make sure they both use your keyword phrases and reveal what information people would expect to find if they were to click on that link. If you look at the bottom footer section of www.artistscafe.com, you will see a more expanded and elaborate version of my high level table of contents, which reveals a bit more about what you expect to see if you were to click on the link:
     • Home
     • Website Designer
     • Web Design Options
     • Online Marketing Agency
     • Online Marketing Blog
     • Contact Web Designer
   • I recently met with a guy who rents out photography equipment for professional, commercial photographers. He has a couple trucks, which are fully loaded with commercial camera and lighting gear.
     • Currently, his high level site structure is as follows:
       • truck 1
       • truck 2
       • assistants
       • booking
       • billing
     • The links do not accurately reveal to me what I would expect to find if I were to click on that link. Worse, his company name is a meaningless acronym and at first glance of his site, I can’t figure out what he does. In my opinion, I should be able to figure out within 3 seconds or less what this site is about, am I at the right place, does this site have what I’m looking for, and where should I go or what should I do next. He should have a name with meaning and a tag line that says in 5 words of less what he does and who he serves. From a high level perspective, I would prefer his table of contents be more along the lines of:
       • Solutions
       • Resources
       • Booking
       • Contact
     • Or, if I really wanted this to be intuitive AND get caught up in Google, then I would rename the high level Table of Contents:
       • Commercial Photography Equipment Solutions
       • Commercial Photography Resources
       • Reserve Commercial Photography Equipment
       • Contact Commercial Photographer’s Supplier
     • Of course, the only problem with this is that it doesn’t look nearly as elegant as:
       • Solutions
       • Resources
       • Booking
       • Contact
     • So, at some point, you need to decide what is more important; design or content, design or functionality, design or traffic.
4. Name each page of your website in a way that uses the most important and general keyword phrase for that entire page. The name that you choose for each page of the website is one of the most important pieces of information that Google looks at. At a glance, Google wants to see what this page is about, whether it’s worth indexing or not, and whether Google’s website visitors might be interested in the content on this particular page. At the code level, your page name should be placed within the <title> tag and the <h1> header tag.
5. After you fill in the details and the information for every section within your table of contents, be sure to use the proper tags, which search engines like Google and Yahoo pay attention to, i.e.,

• Page title should be within both a TITLE tag as well as the H1 HEADER tag
• Prepare your pages like an executive level PowerPoint brief using bulleted lists
• If something is important, emphasize it using either the bold (STRONG) or EM tag
• User hyper links to point visitors to important or relevant pages*

Paranoia will Destroy Ya

* Don’t be so selfish or defensive or afraid to create links, which point outside of your website. Don’t worry about the stickiness factor. I say this for the following reasons:

• The Internet exists and has value because of hyper links (inbound and outbound)
• You provide a valuable service and information by referring people to outside resources
• You obtain better credibility and authority by referring people to other sites
• You can always direct the link to open up in a new tab, window, or browser so that when they are done with that site and close that window, yours remains open, then end up back at your site in the end
• The most successful networking relationships, and I’m talking about schmoozing, working the room, and personal networking, is when you offer information, guidance, value, and assistance to people without expectations in return. Linking out follows this altruistic strategy
• What goes around comes around. This is karma. If you want people to point to you, to link to you, to create inbound links into your site then guess what … you have to do the same to others and for others.
• The Golden rule. Do unto others what you would expect them to do unto you. But when you do, be positive, be optimistic, be generous, think of the best situation, assume the best of people.

Google Earth – Google buys ImageAmerica

July 22, 2007 – Google buys ImageAmerica

Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1billion

April 14, 2007 – Google acquires online advertising company, DoubleClick, for $3.1 billion.

HP buys LogoWorks

April 24, 2007 – Palo Alto, CA. Hewlett Packard (HP) purchases Arteis, operator of LogoWorks.

Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion

October 9, 2006 – Mountain View, California, Google acquires San Bruno-based YouTube for $1.65 billion in an all stock transaction.

Google buys SketchUp

March 14, 2006 – Google acquires @Last, makers of SketchUp, a 3D authoring tool for designers.

eBay acquires Skype for $2.6 billion

September 12, 2005 - eBay purchases Skype for $2.6 billion

News buys MySpace for $580 millioni

July 18, 2005 – Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, purchases MySpace for $580m.

eBay buys Shopping.com for $600 million

June 2, 2005 – eBay acquires Shopping.com Inc for $620m

Google buy Urchin

March 29, 2005, Google buys analytics software Urchin and releases as Google Analytics.

eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 billion

July 8, 2002 – eBay completes purchase of PayPal for $1.5b

Amazon Mergers, Buys, Purchases, Acquisitions

Amazon.com acquires Brilliance Audio

May 23, 2007 – Amazon announces acquisition of audio-book publisher Brilliance Audio.

Amazon.com acquires DP Review

May 14, 2007 – Amazon acquires Digital Photography Review (www.dpreview.com), a web site for digital camera information and reviews.

Amazon.com purchases ShopBop.com

February 28, 2006 – Amazon purchases Shopbop.com, a site specializing in designer clothing and accessories.

Amazon.com buys CustomFlix.com

July 11, 2005 – Amazon buys Santa Cruz, CustomFlix Labs, company that creates DVDs on demand.

Amazon.com buys IMDb.com

April 1998 – Amazon purchases the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), www.imdb.com.

Amazon.com buys Alexa.com

June 1999 – Amazon buys Alexa.com

Amazon.com buys Exchange.com, Bibiliofind.com, and MusicFile.com

April 27, 1999 – Menage a trios, Amazon buys Exchange.com, Bibliofind (www.bibliofind.com), and Musicfile (www.musicfile.com) for $645 million.

Yahoo Mergers, Acquisitions, Buys, Purchases

Yahoo buys Zimbra

September 17, 2007 – Yahoo acquires Zimbra, creator of an innovative Ajax-based mail client that integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, search and VoIP into an incredibly cool browser-based interface. $350 million.

Yahoo purchases BuzzTracker

September 14, 2007 – Yahoo has acquired BuzzTracker, a news aggregator combining editorial judgment and algorithms taking into account how many times the story was blogged, and how recently.

Yahoo gobbles up MyBlogLog

January 8, 2007 – Yahoo! purchases MyBlogLog for $10 million.

Mergers and Acquisitions: Yahoo buys Flickr

March 20, 2005 – Yahoo! Buys Flickr

Delicious is appetizing to Yahoo

December 9, 2007 – Yahoo! purchases Del.icio.us

Executive Summary

Popularized by Affiliate Marketing is a method of sales, marketing, and lead generation enabled by the Internet whereby an independent blogger or webmaster promotes or delivers links to third party retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers; and in exchange for successful sales conversions receives compensation in the form of a commission on the sale or fixed price per lead.

Performance-Based Marketing

Affiliate marketing provides incentives to people who promote a business or product. We all know that word-of-mouth viral marketing advertising is great for two reasons. First, it is usually free and second, because it often comes from the heart. Affiliate marketing lies halfway between advertising and . One great aspect of affiliate marketing is that it is performance-based, which makes it a win-win situation for everybody involved.

An Army of Sales Reps

With Online Affiliate Marketing, people who manage web sites for their own personal or business use will promote third parties. If they are effective writers, there will be valuable content that is of interest to many readers. As a sales person, my most effective form of communication is story telling. If I can relate an authentic story that illustrates my point from a third party perspective, then I am much more effective in compelling my prospect to buy. In the same way, if I can write an effective article or story and within that article reference a person, product or business from a third party perspective, then the reader is much more likely to take an interest and possibly buy.

Viral Marketing

A virus will spread in correlation to the density and exposure of the host environment. In other words, the more traffic that a website has and the more credible the author, the greater the chance of spreading the word and promoting the product. It’s also a numbers game, simply having thousands of affiliates all promoting the same product will also product effective results. The best online examples of Affiliate Viral Marketing are Amazon, Google and eBay. Together, they have the highest penetration of affiliates in the world. In fact, when you Google just about any subject and click on the link, you will often find Google, Amazon and eBay advertisements embedded within the code.

Search Engine Optimization

The Google algorithm for determining the Page Rank of its Search Engine Results Page (SERP) depends on three primary factors: titles, headers, and links. These are the three most important factors in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As an Advertiser or entity that provides a product or service, your SERP Page Rank will dramatically increase along with the number of affiliate merchants that you have. If you have 1,000 people who link to your website from theirs through Affiliate Marketing then, in Google’s eyes, you are a very popular entity and Google likes to promote popular entities.

Synergy

The combination of multiple merchants promoting your product along with their inbound links to your site, which in turn increases your popularity on Google and Yahoo, creates a very powerful formula for igniting your overall sales performance. You create brand awareness, multiply your evangelists, increase inbound traffic and propel you towards success. As a referrer or publisher, affiliating with an advertiser offers the chance for a steady stream of revenue as well as opportunities to add valuable content to your website.

Affiliate Marketing Management

There are two ways to manage an affiliate program. The first way is to set it up yourself and the second way is to work with a third party broker. Managing an affiliate marketing program independently is obviously more work. However, it allows more control and a greater share of the revenue. Working with an Affiliate Marketing Broker, or Affiliate Aggregator, has its own advantages. For one, the system is already set up. You just establish an account as either an Advertiser or Publisher and then click through the options. In some cases, you can immediately establish affiliate relationships and be on your way. In addition, there is third party verification of commissions, which publishers often appreciate because it is an added layer of credibility. Finally, it promotes the concept of districts, which funnel like-minded people together and promotes the entire industry.

Districting

In other words, the success of clustering similar and even competing products and service providers together generates increased traffic for everybody. This is why the diamond district, flower district, and photography district are so successful in New York City. Examples of Affiliate Aggregators would be:

• Link Share
• Link Connector
• Commission Junction
• Performics
• KowaBunga

Guy Kawasaki wrote an outstanding book, “The Art of the Start,” on seeking venture capital and launching a business. In it is great advice that goes above and beyond simply raising money or starting a business. It applies to many things. But, one of the most important concepts that I walked away with, that has been confirmed over years of project management and business startups, is that sometimes you have to just do it.

Analysis Paralysis

Certainly, it pays to plan, think things through, and approach whatever you are doing with thoughtful purpose and deliberate action. However, there also comes a time when you need to just do something. In our pursuit of perfection, our perhaps procrastination, or fear of failure, or whatever, we sometimes tend to get bogged down in what many label, “analysis paralysis”. This is so true in many organizations large and small. And, it doesn’t matter if it’s a sole proprietor or a consortium of decision makers, it’s easy to just get bogged down.

Rapid Prototyping

While it’s great to brainstorm on a white board or paper, sometimes it’s better just to start slinging code. Get something out there, throw up a website or a blog, use a content managements system (CMS) so that a simple CSS switch or theme swap can change the entire look and feel of the website while the content remains the same. But, just get something out there and start working with it. Nike got it right when they coined the motto, “just do it”.