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This was coming in my 2009 Wishlist post but here it is early… Roku will be adding Amazon Video On Demand to its streaming arsenal “soon”!!!

This is huge… We’ll have more on this later. This little device may be the best $99 I’ve spent on a gadget… If only Netflix would add their entire dvd library to the Watch Instantly library…

Press Release (pdf)

via cNet

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In Part Two of our Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy series, we’ll cover Analytics.

Analytics
Cost: Free - $20/mo
Time: 1-2 hours setup for each site, 1/2 hour weekly analysis for each site
As I mentioned last year - as well as on many posts since - analytics is a critical facet of your web strategy not only because it provides measurement, but it is one of the most valuable research tools you have at your disposal. Most people install analytics on their website and never look at the data again. There are many reasons for this. Some people don’t have time and most just don’t know what the data means.

If you don’t have time, you need to make time. Budget at least a half hour a week to peek into your analytics - there’s a gold mine of data in there that is essential to measuring and planning for an effective web strategy.

Tools and Services
At 48Web, we have used Google Analytics since its release - and we love it. Unfortunately we are growing out of it and there are other services out there that offer more features with real-time tracking. Don’t get us wrong, Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool with a great price tag - free.

We have recently started using Clicky and absolutely love it. We have a post coming next week about Clicky (make sure you subscribe), but for now we’ll let you know some of the killer features it offers. First off you get real time tracking - which is a must have if you are doing any kind of internet marketing. Other features include a WordPress plugin, twitter and feedburner integration, spy mode, RSS feeds for all kinds of stats, and an iPhone interface… Among several others. Clicky is an amazing service we are looking forward to using very much in 2009. The premium plan is only $20/mo, which we feel is a great price for the functionality it provides.

Also to note regarding analytics - if you are sharing content and links via social networks or email marketing, make sure you are tracking stats on those as well. There is a ton of information you can acquire by using URL tracking services. We have a rundown on URL Shorteners and list of the best tools. Also be sure to look into aWeber’s analytics tools for email marketers. Most of these tools are free and easy to insert into your workflow via bookmarklets.

Resources
Here are some resources to help you implement and understand your analtyics.

- Ask us at 48Web to help you implement and understand your analytics
- Google Analytics Blog
- Web Analytics Blog
- ROI Revolution Blog
- Google Analytics 2.0 (book)
- Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics (book)
- Web Analytics: An Hour a Day (book)

What tools do you use for analytics? How often do you check them? If you have any other feedback or recommendations, please let us know in the comments.

Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy
- Part 1: Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy - Hosting

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Last year this time we posted about setting up a budget for your web strategy.. So, we decided to do the same this year. When we plan a web strategy for our clients it always includes a cost budget and time budget . Here’s a generic version of our web strategy budget, including what 48Web budgets for our web strategy. This post turned out extremely long so we’ll be releasing it in chunks - for easier reading. In this post we’ll cover the hosting aspect of your web strategy.

Hosting
Cost: $5-$100/mo based on your needs
Time: 1 time setup approximately 2 hours, 4 hours maintenance per month
We raised our cost estimate this year because, well, our hosting costs went up and we added some new services. Our costs went up because we host many websites and the traffic for some of these sites went up tremendously in 2008. If you are running a single website or blog your hosting costs should not be more than $15/mo.

Tools and Services
At 48Web, we use Mosso for our production environment (See our case study [pdf]). Mosso is $100/mo and offers us a killer service, a very scalable platform, and unlimited websites. Follow Mosso on Twitter. We use Dreamhost for a low-cost development environment that costs us approximately $84/year.

Another facet of hosting we should discuss for use in 2009 are Content Delivery Networks. As this market becomes more and more commoditized, SMB’s have available to them high end, scalable, and very affordable systems for distribution of content - audio, video, images, etc. We have been using Amazon’s S3 service for our CDN over the past year. In 2009 we are looking into Mosso’s Cloud Files service as well as Amazon’s own CDN built on top of its S3 storage service called CloudFront.

If you have any questions, comments, feedback, disagreements, or feel we missed something - let us know in the comments.

Next up in Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy - Analytics

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• 10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech

  tags: getanewbrowser, technology

• 2009 Web Strategy Report

  More than 130 internet stakeholders were surveyed in December of 2008 on how they are approaching their web strategy in the upcoming year. Survey respondents represented internet professionals at corporations of all sizes, non-profit organizations and agencies.

  tags: web strategy, strategy, getanewbrowser

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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I wanted to share a great post with you from my friend and colleague Zane Safrit… I am often asked this question as I’m sure many are that are affiliated with Social Media. “How can my company embrace social media while we are short on time and money?”

To this I generally answer that there is time and money spent on traditional advertising and marketing methods that can be re-purposed into an very effective social media campaign using minimal resources. Zane took my answer one step further providing great resources, an execution plan, and a budget.

Results: Priceless. Traffic, community, conversation, prospects, enhanced brand image, and possible future savings from lower advertising budgets, free organic bite-sized market research with crowdsourcing on twitter and your blog.

I’m glad Zane mentioned time in his budget section, as that’s one thing I add to Web Strategy budgets I put together.

Your time: 10 hours the first week; 3-5 hours per week thereafter.

- Read Zane’s “Small Business Social Media Starter Kit”
- Subscribe to Zane’s blog
- Checkout Zane’s podcast

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