About John Cottone

John Cottone is a freelance web publisher and online media professional, whose background includes several years of experience in online product marketing and strategy. He has directed revenue operations for web publishers ranging from industry leaders (WebMD.com) to early-stage start-ups.

Today, John develops and executes online product strategy for small and mid-size internet firms. He is the founder of Tone Media LLC, an independent web publisher and internet marketing services provider.

Follow John Cottone on Twitter for his thoughts and favorite links on social media, online advertising, and more.

Posts by John C:

Blogging for Cash

A new trend in American employment now is blogging part-time or full-time to make money. Many people have taken up blogging only to find themselves not only having lots of fun, but making more money than they did on their nine to five job. So they quit and just blog full time. It’s a real phenomenon.

There are a few ways that bloggers make money:

(1). The most common way for bloggers to make money is through ads. When blogging first started, Adsense and Blogads were the way to create income. But since that time loads of other ways have emerged. Some of these are Chitika’s eMinimalls, Adbrite, Adgena, AVN, and many more.

(2). Sponsorships are another way to earn money with your blog. Once a few bloggers and a few companies figured out how lucrative this could be for both sides, it was on from there. They found it was an excellent way to advertise and to sell.
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Product Review: GTime Tracking for Freelancers

There are quite a few tools out there to help freelancers manage project hours and billing, and today we look at one of the effective, low-cost solutions. I tried out GTime Tracking this past week, which is a simple, yet elegant software that runs on Adobe AIR and stores your timed-task information with Google Spreadsheets.

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Excel Password Recovery

I’ve been freelancing now for two years, and I love the benefits of being able to work from home and have a certain level of independence. Sometimes that individuality comes with a price, as I found out this past week – no in-house IT support!

While compiling a proposal for internet marketing consulting, I knew I had a couple excel reports from a previous job that could be repurposed for this project. Unfortunately, I hadn’t opened the documents in a couple years and couldn’t remember or find the password. Obviously, contacting my previous company for the key was not an option.

Maybe Microsoft can offer an online service to securely store user passwords for documents? I’d love the ability to submit a “forgot password” request and receive a new one via email, much like every online login service in the industry. Oh well, until then we have to use utilities and cracks to access our forgotten files.

I ended up finding a good solution with step-by-step details and a free download for excel password recovery at Petri IT Knowledgebase. Their guide simply shows you how to use the utility’s two available options for recovery, and didn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. Give it a try if you ever find yourself in a similar (embarrassing) predicament as mine.

A Recommendation Engine for Your Next eCommerce Project

Internet giant Amazon.com popularized the product recommendation engine more than a decade ago, by creating a system that suggests items to customers based on what they, and others like them, had previously purchased or viewed. That deep level of personalization is a major factor in the company’s success today.

In 2009, Netflix awarded a $1 million USD contest prize to researchers who could significantly improve their proprietary recommendation engine. In theory, the more Netflix DVDs that customers add to their watch list, the longer that subscriber will remain with the service, since new movies will just keep coming. The prize may seem hefty, but Netflix was so impressed with the results that they granted the prize and immediately announce that there would be a sequel to the recommendation competition.

So how can a freelance web developer implement an enterprise-quality recommendation engine for your smaller e-retail clients? You may think that you’d have a tough time competing with Amazon or Netflix on functionality. However, low-priced service providers are now focused on enabling that process of discovery for small-site shoppers. These engines have low monthly costs, can be easily implemented in an afternoon, and work on the idea that you need to incorporate behavioral targeting in addition to monitoring a customer’s previous purchases.

Strands Recommender provides one of the low-cost recommendation engine options. Their engine suggests products of interest based on a specific customer’s purchases, visits, searches, wish lists, and other behavior. The system is quite flexible as well, with back-end capability to configure your recommendation display widgets. The retailer can also create rules and product filters for each widget, where results can be previewed prior to being applied to the site.

Click for more detailed information on Strands’ eCommerce solutions. They can help make your eCommerce clients successful, and strengthen your site proposals by creating additional ROI.

Open Thread: Work Visas for the Traveling Freelancer?

The allure of freedom and adventure is often an element that attracts folks to the world of freelancing. For some people, myself included, the flexibility to work in different spots around the neighborhood is a great draw. For the more adventurous, an extended version of the “working vacation” (mentioned in our previous article about Alternative Work Spaces) might be more suitable. I’ve asked myself lately, why not experience a new land for a new challenge and change of pace? How might this process work?

The timing might be good – the slide into recession for certain countries is making people think about moving abroad in an attempt to escape. Also, you can emigrate to countries perceived as offering a better quality of life and lower cost of living.

After scouring the web for more advice on working visas, I found quite a few services that assist independent workers in navigating the complexities of immigration and visa law. Global Visas is one firm, and they offer services for both private individuals and corporate organizations to acquire Canadian visa, UK or US visas. From their site, it looks like they’ve had some good press mentions, and they offer some free guidance on their site about qualifying for various country visas.

Feel free to comment below on your experiences with these companies, or offer any advice you may have for taking the leap into a foreign land.

Around the Web: Telecommuting is a Quiet Environmental Success Story

Our friends at GreenNationToday.com make the case that telecommuting is much better for sustainability and the environment than traditional work modes. We say that the same applies to the freelance workforce, who share many of the beneficial aspects of the telecommuter’s working style. As stated by Richard Blake from GNT:

One of the most effective and certainly one of the easiest steps that can be taken to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and cut US dependence on foreign oil – and the balance of trade, national security, economic and other problems directly associated with that dependence – would be the widespread use of telecommuting or telework by US businesses.

Click to read the rest of Telecommuting is a Quiet Environmental Success Story

Announcement: FreelancerMagazine and NorthxEast.com to Merge

I am pleased to announce that NorthxEast.com and FreelancerMagazine.com will soon be merging and operating as one site. Our combination unites two complementary resources, with NxE aimed at providing advice and resources for independent bloggers, and FM providing additional resources on marketing, productivity, self-management, and more.
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