Here is the first video of our new tutorial series for Ofuz’s invoicing features.
This video shows and describes how to both create an invoice and get a payment in 3 minutes.
When you create an invoice in Ofuz, you have the ability to send it by email. And from only that email, your client will have a link to review the invoice and pay it online.
He will also receive a PDF version of the invoice for him to keep off-line on his computer.
We made the process of creating invoices and receiving payments as quick and simple as possible. Give it a try and let us know how fast you got paid.
Didn’t have time to write much to the blog as we are spending all of our energy on the open source release of Ofuz.
We are very excited about it; we are preparing all the cool stuff we wanted to have in an open source project.
Our challenge is to make it simple for developers to customize and extend Ofuz without the need to learn how the Ofuz Core works. So we are creating 3 APIs: Block, Tab, and Setting, each with very simple hook logic so in a few minutes a developer can integrate his own code and customization in Ofuz open source without modifying the Ofuz Core.
The plug-in API is 80% done, the multilingual i18n is 100% done, the forum and wiki are up and running, but the documentation is still only at 10%.
Everybody that requests an alert on our Open Source Page will have an early access to the source code downloads and community site.
In the meantime, we have fixed tons of little bugs and annoyances on Ofuz. You can follow the development of version 0.6 at:
Ofuz 0.5.8 has quite a few new features, and over 90 across the board improvements. In this blog post, I want to tell you about the new Auto Responder feature in Ofuz.
An Auto Responder is a mailing list feature that sends timed followup messages to your mailing list. You create a sequence of email templates and tell the Auto Responder how long to wait before sending each one. Then, when new people join your mailing list, the Auto Responder sends out your emails at your chosen intervals using the merge fields from your email templates to personalize each email.
Auto Responders can be a great way to convert contacts into customers. Remember the following important facts:
On average, it takes 7 contacts within 18 months to make a sale. Reference
2% of sales are made on the first contact, 3% on the second, 5% on the third, 10% on the fourth, and 80% on the fifth to twelfth! Reference
Auto Responder sequences should provide interesting or valuable information to your contacts, and it should remind them about the benefits of becoming a customer.
Here’s how to set up an Auto Responder in Ofuz.
Sign in to your Ofuz account.
Set up any email templates that you plan to use for your Auto Responder.
In the top right of the Ofuz page, click Settings.
On the left navigation bar, click Auto Responder.
Click Create New.
In the Auto Responder Name field, type a name for your new Auto Responder.
In the Tag Name field, choose the tag that you want to associate with this Auto Responder. Contacts tagged with this tag will receive your new Auto Responder sequence.
Click Create.
The new Auto Responder appears in your list of Auto Responders. Click the new Auto Responder’s name.
Click here to the right of You do not have any auto responder Email Templates for Auto Responder1.
Either click Select Email Template and choose an existing email template to add to your Auto Responder, or create a new email template using the form that appears.
Fill in the Name field with a name for this template.
Fill in the Subject field with the subject you want this email to have.
In the Send it in field, type the number of days you want to wait before sending this message.
In the Message editor, create your message.
Click Create.
To create additional emails for this Auto Responder, click Add a new email, and then repeat steps 11 – 16.
That’s all there is to it! Ofuz contacts that are tagged with the tag assigned to your new Auto Responder will automatically receive personalized emails at the intervals you’ve chosen. You can really save yourself some time by combining the Ofuz Web Form feature with the Auto Responder feature.
We’re wrapping up our three-part series on how to create a free squeeze page using Ofuz with two screencasts, walking you through the process step-by-step.
Creating a squeeze page on a free Blogger.com account:
Creating a squeeze page on a self-hosted WordPress blog:
We’re excited to announce a new version of Ofuz that includes almost 100 changes, new features, improvements, and bug fixes.
We listen to our users, and your feedback really drives our development. In this release of Ofuz, about 90% of the changes are directly based on your feedback. Please keep the feedback coming!
Some of the new features include:
Taxes on Invoices (global and per line)
PDF invoices can be downloaded from Ofuz and sent by email
Payments can be applied to multiple invoices
Client view includes a list of all the invoices due
Auto Responders allow you to create a series of email templates and attach to a tag
View all your invoices for the year by default instead of Month by Month
Update the invoices status, so you can manually set an invoice as Sent
Cancel invoices and delete proposals
Copy a note, file or document from a contact to a project
Attached Tasks to Contact and Project
Notes can now contain some HTML tags
View Tasks grouped by projects
Private client link with invoice view and online payment
We are very exited about this new release as we have now reached feature parity most of our competitors in the Online Invoicing space. Remember that Ofuz does invoicing and has powerful contact management, group emailing, and task management features!
We are now getting closer to our next major release, Ofuz 0.6. That release will be available as a web-based application at Ofuz.com and as an Open Source download.
Stay tuned, and if you haven’t already, sign up for a free Ofuz account now.
In the first part of this blog post series, we talked about why you might want to create a squeeze page to build your mailing list.
Now, let’s talk about how to do it. Here’s what you need to get started:
First, we’ve created something of value to give away to people we think would make good customers. That Thing of Value is a short ebook we’ve written specifically to appeal to people who might make good paying customers.
All they need to do to get the free ebook is provide us with their name and email address, and permission to contact them in the future.
Second, we’ve got an Ofuz.com account. That’s the other big part of this solution. You can sign up for mailing list management through Aweber or Mailchimp, but those products are often overkill for what the small business or freelancer needs to do. Ofuz, on the other hand, is just right for folks who need to manage several small or medium size mailing lists. That’s us, so let’s get started!
Here’s the process:
We’ll create a WordPress page where potential customers can download our free ebook. It will be “invisible,” meaning that it’s not linked to by any page or post on our site.
Note: WordPress.com, for security reasons, blocks all embedded forms, even safe ones like your Ofuz web form. So, to use this technique, use another free hosted blog service like Blogger.com, or use a self-hosted WordPress installation. We’ll show you both methods in the screencast later this week.
Create an Ofuz web form. Directions for doing that are found here. Make sure the thank you page for the Ofuz form is set to the URL for the download page you created in the previous step.
Create a WordPress page where your squeeze page text and the Ofuz web form will go. The squeeze page contains text that describes the value of what you are giving away, politely asks for permission to use their email address in exchange for the freebie, and contains the embed code for your Ofuz web form.
That’s all there is to it!
In the final part of this blog post, we’ll have a short screencast that walks you through setting up a free squeeze page using WordPress and Ofuz.
Stay tuned, and in the meantime sign up for a free Ofuz account now!
I recently was contacted by a potential customer who was completely off my radar. He hadn’t written me in months, but I had been keeping in touch with him. You, known, sending him the ocassional update on what I’ve been up to, what new things I’ve learned and think are cool. Like we talk about here. He never responded to these emails, but this week he wrote out of the blue to let me know I’m still on his short list for work.
That’s one small example of the power of repeated contact. All advertising is based on the principle that familiarity is a big part of the decision to buy. That principle can apply to freelancers, small businesses, and anyone else who wants to increase their sales. Before we go any further along this line of reasoning, let’s look at some of the things that good marketers take for granted:
On average, it takes 7 contacts within 18 months to make a sale. Reference
2% of sales are made on the first contact, 3% on the second, 5% on the third, 10% on the fourth, and 80% on the fifth to twelfth! Reference
You better have two things before you contact someone:
Their permission
Something of value to offer them
The takeaway: If you want to convert a contact into a customer, you need to make repeated contacts to do so. An opt-in email list can be the best way to stay in touch with contacts, contact them repeatedly, and convert them into customers.
One way to build an opt-in email list is a squeeze page. This is based on what’s known as the give-get exchange. You give something of value to people who are likely to want what you have to sell, and in return they give you their email address and their permission to receive emails from you.
If you’re going to create a squeeze page (and we recommend you do, or at least work on building an email list of potential customers), then keep the following things in mind:
The difference between spam and email that will help you get new customers is value (and permission). The email must have something of value for your list.
Be careful how often you contact your list. Remember that “familiarity breeds contempt,” so keep your emails to-the-point and not too frequent!
In the next post, we’ll walk you though building a squeeze page using Ofuz and WordPress. Stay tuned, and sign up now for a free Ofuz account.
I just tested and confirmed that Philipe has enabled the Contact Sync feature to work with Google Apps. That means that if you are using a custom domain handled by Google, you can synchronize your contacts with Ofuz. This will allow you to then invoice, time track, and collaborate with any of your contacts. Give it a try!
For more information about importing contacts, check out this blog post.
Keeping in Touch: Micro Mailing for the Solo Entrepreneur.
As a small business, very small business actually, we have to always keep one eye on business development. We always want to be the first person that comes to mind when potential customers have a project that we can do. You could create a mailing list and send out bulk emails with any of the email marketing tools that are out there. However, email readers are notoriously unwilling to read another generic, nicely formatted newsletter. If you are sending these out, you would be fortunate if one fourth (25%) of your recipients actually read your email.
That is not what we are looking for in customer contacts. We want to have personal communication with potential clients. So, instead of collecting a thousand email addresses of questionable value, we send out “micro mails” using Ofuz.
An Example Micro Mail:
Hey Josie, I just wanted to send you a quick email to keep in touch and let you know what I have been up to.
The past three months have been a pretty busy time for us . Philip has been deeply engaged in white papers and other collateral on virtualization subjects, including deep technical dives and sales focused documents to show the value of virtualization in the new IT environments. He is working so much on virtualization that he has started to act virtual himself. On really busy days he loses his normally shiny presence and I can actually see through him.
We tried to make the case with the IRS come tax time that since he was virtual he did not need to pay actual taxes. They did not go for it.
Meanwhile, I have been working on some more marketing focused clients. For our friends at BlueVolt, I wrote this new video (shown here on their landing page) to demonstrate the value of their rather complex marketing and learning tool.
That is what the Word Lions do: We explain the complicated things.
Both of us are working on documentation and messaging for our new friend Philippe at Ofuz. We are really excited about his tool to help freelancers manage clients, tasks, time, and money. The Word Lions are using Ofuz and are finding that it helps us to track our many tasks quite effectively.
With Spring, we are starting up on some new exciting opportunities to apply our fierce technical communication chops to other project . In the next few months we are planning
A Learning Management System and courseware for a client that is developing a complex — but really really cool — software tool that will help to control the Bonneville dams. A lot of people need to be ramped up on a whole new mission critical user interface and we are going to build a learning tool to get them all ramped up.
We have been investigating podcast, both audio and video, as a way to deliver our customers’ message. Research has shown that by adding podcasts to your marketing delivery, you can increase your exposure. We see that as a way to multiply the value of content across multiple platforms. We could take your white paper and affordably turn it into a podcast that appeals to a whole new audience.
We hope your endeavors are keeping you just the right level of busy. What kinds of things are you working on these days?
Yours,
Joel Barker
Tips for Your Micro Email Campaign
Keep it brief or they won’t read it at all.
Let people know what service you offer.
Give them ideas of how you can help them.
Give them something of value or something entertaining
Ask about how their business is going.
Like any good marketing piece, end with a call to action. Some times I like to couch this in the form of a question as I did in the example above: “What kinds of things are you working on these days?”
In the Email field, type your Gmail address and then click Import.
Then, tag the contacts that you want to email.
Click the Contacts tab.
Click in the white space next to each contact you want to tag.
The white space around the selected contacts will become light yellow.
In the text box above the selected contacts, type the tag you want to assign to those contacts.
Click add tags.
When it is time to create a message, use the Search by Tags feature to select all of your prospects.
Then, send a simple, readable email to these prospects. Don’t go overboard with formatting; this is a personal email, not a bulk newsletter. Use the Insert Merge Fields to add business name, contact name, and the contact’s position wherever it is appropriate in the email.
Every freelancer and solo entrepreneur that I speak with is challenged by the demands of business development. While Ofuz does not take all of the leg work out of selling yourself, it does mean that we can be more successful while committing less time.
In the last blog post, we talked about how Ofuz can help the freelancer reduce their Opportunity Losses through better mailing list management. Before we talk about how to grow your mailing list using Ofuz, let’s wrap up a few more items related to managing your mailing list.
Follow-through is Critical
Using a tool like Ofuz to manage your contacts is great, but the follow-through is always up to you. As with other functions that are critical to our freelancer, he can use Ofuz to stay on top of what needs to happen next with his contacts. Maybe it’s a followup call to discuss a project idea, or a thank-you note for work that’s just been paid for.
Ofuz offers two features that help our freelancer get an A in follow-through: contact notes, and contact tasks.
A note is attached to the contact, and provides additional information about that contact. Things like the results of the last interaction with that contact, important things to remember for that contact, etc. Our freelancer adds a not to a contact this way:
Click the Contacts tab.
Click on the name of the contact you want to add a note to (the name will be highlighted in blue).
In the Add a Note About <contactname> field, type your note.
If you want to attach a file to the note, change privacy settings for the note, or notate time for your timesheet, click more options. Otherwise, click Add this note.
Our freelancer can also attach tasks to a contact. These are used for more action-oriented items, like reminders to call the contact by a certain date. Tasks attached to contacts show up in the Ofuz dashboard, just like tasks attached to a project. To attach a task to a contact, our freelancer simply:
Click the Contacts tab.
Click the contact’s name.
The contact details page appears.
On the left, click add new task.
The Add a Task box appears.
Fill out the Task description, due date, category, and project fields.
Click Add this task.
Building Your Network With Ofuz
Ofuz offers a great way to passively build your network. You can create a web form, which you then add to your web site. Site visitors can fill out the web form to be added to your Ofuz contact list automatically. When you use a web form, you’ll also want to use the feature that tags contacts created when someone fills out the web form. That way, you can identify which contacts were created through the web form.
Here’s how to create a web form:
Click Settings (top right of window)
Click Web Forms (left side of window)
In the Form Title field, type the name you want to use to identify your web form.
In the list of fields, select the ones you want to include on your web form.
In the Tags for those contacts field, type the tag you want to use for new contacts that are created when someone fills out your web form.
In the Web address to take the user after submitting the form field, type a URL where users will be directed after submitting the form.
Click Create.
Another great, easy way to create new contacts is to use the Ofuz email dropbox:
Click Settings (top right of the page).
Click Drop Box Note.
Take note of the email address under Drop Box Note Setup.
CC the email address from step 3 and a new Ofuz contact will be created (if necessary) and a copy of the email will be attached to the contact as a note.
Staying Billable With Ofuz
Ofuz helps you stay billable by integrating your contact list with your workflow. From contact management to creating new contacts, Ofuz connects your contact list with your task management in a way that helps the freelancer spend less time on the administrative tasks of sales and lead generation, and more time on billable work!
