We plan to post the September 2004 Internet monthly update to our six monthly update web sites on August 30th.
The September disk update will be processed Monday, August 30th and and the disks will be shipped on the 31st. You should have the disk update by September 2nd.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Subscribers who are still receiving disks can save up to $100 per year by switching to updates by Internet. Please read the last section of this bulletin for complete details. Don't wait for your next invoice to make the change. Compulife will bonus your subscription renewal deadline for switching from disks to internet.
In the future you can expect disk updates to be shipped a little later as the majority of subscribers are now getting their monthly updates by Internet. Therefore, those getting monthly updates by disk may find the update is routinely coming in on the 2nd or 3rd of the month rather than the 1st. We are no longer targeting the 1st of the month as the date for the shipment to arrive in your office. Our target is to have the update on our websites at least the day before the 1st of the month.
The only downside for our disk update customers is that the system will squawk after the first of the month, complaining that it needs the new monthly update. You simply click OK and move forward to do quotes.
This change will help us because a number of companies typically introduce first of the month changes at the end of the preceding month. Frequently this puts us in a squeeze at the end of the month. It has happened on more than one occasion that we have already preparing our monthly update, have gone into production, when a company calls to tell us that they are sending us new rates for the first of the month. This means that only those who get a midmonth update get those rates.
This month term4sale.com is now offering links for agents listed at www.term4sale.com. If you have missed our previous announcements on this matter, and have not added a link to your term4sale listing, you need to look into getting that done.
WARNING: If your listing at term4sale.com does not have a link, it will be a less prominent listing than those who do. It is comparable to a one line listing in a yellow page ad, versus a "boxed" listing.
The more prominent listing at term4sale is available at NO CHARGE!
IMPORTANT: While there is no charge for this link, there are some conditions. Make sure you read this entire section and understand the conditions.
The first condition to having term4sale.com link to your website is that the website must also have (in the fine print if you want) a link to www.term4sale.com.
The second condition is that the web page must be visible to internet search engines.
When we first announced this option in our June midmonth update we had a few subscribers call immediately. They were excited about the new option and had already gone ahead and added links to term4sale.com. After investigation we discovered that the subscribers had web pages that were not .html pages on their server but were pages generated from internet programs/databases. In other words, as far as the search engines were concerned, the pages don't exist. Having run into this with a couple of subscribers, and having discovered that those subscribers had little if any control over the web pages on their site, we have come up with a remedy for the problem; please keep reading.
With respect to the www.term4sale.com on your web page, the link does not have to be prominent. We don't care if the consumer or any consumer uses it. The reason that we want the link is in order to drive up the number of web pages that point to term4sale.com, which will strengthen and improve Term4Sale's search position on popular internet search engines such as Google. That could mean more traffic for term4sale, which could easily lead to more business for you.
That's why it is vital that your web page, which we link your term4sale listing to, be a page that is visible to the internet.
If it turns out your web site has been developed using a database system, which makes the content of your pages invisible to search engines, you do not qualify to have your web page included in your listing at term4sale.com. To address this, we will require that you create and place a visible web page on your site in order to be able to get your link from term4sale. Actually, we think it is smart to have a special page for your term4sale link anyway; please keep reading.
We have often been told by agents that they would like to see more information about themselves available in the agent listings at our site. The most common request is for the addition of an e-mail address but some want more information about their experience, etc. With this new option you will be the author of the web page which the user will go to when they click on the "more info" button next to your name. Compulife will only object to content of your page if you say something negative or inaccurate about about term4sale or if you refer to other agents at term4sale.
In addition to the reasons mentioned above, it would be a very good idea to give serious consideration to a "unique" web page for this link. Rather than simply going to your web site's home page, a separate page that anticipates the arrival of the consumer from the term4sale site would improve your chances that the consumer will contact you. After all, a consumer looking for an agent having visited term4sale is looking for term insurance, not all the other things that your web site may talk about. This does not mean that your special web page cannot talk about your web site, or offer a link to it, because it should. The point is that you should target your page to the reason why the consumer visited it in the first place.
There is another reason for this special web page. Frequently we ask subscribers who are listed at www.term4sale.com if they are getting calls as a result of their listing. Many say they don't know. What that means is that they don't have any way to tell where the contact is coming from. If you design your special term4sale page properly, you should be able to devise ways to determine that the contact has come from a term4sale visitor. (such as adding a page counter)
For Those Without Websites or For Those Who Can't Create A Special Web Page
If you are in this situation, and we suspect a number will be in this situation, then we have come up with a deal that will solve your problem. Three of of Compulife's web providers are now offering a web site solution that includes the cost of your domain name and a single .html web page for $99 per year.
DID YOU READ THAT!
You can now have a basic website/page for $99 per year!
NOW WHAT IS THE EXCUSE?
You can have a website for only $99 and you don't have one? WHY NOT? What possible reason can you have for not wanting a website?
Here are some things you should think about including on your basic webpage:
Assuming that this is the page you want term4sale.com linked to, then you should consider having comments about term4sale and why you are the agent a consumer should deal with. And most important, in order to qualify for your link at term4sale.com, make sure you have a small link to www.term4sale.com.
Please feel free to contact Bob Barney at 800-798-3488 if you have any questions.
One of the problems with the link to your website at the agent listing at term4sale.com is the fact that those links are generated by a database and so they are hidden. Isn't that a bad thing? Yes and no. No because the search for a zip code is the result of a program which looks up the nearest three zip codes then generates the page. Yes because your link at term4sale.com cannot be seen by a search engine.
If you would like a link at term4sale.com to your website, a link that can be seen by search engines, we recommend that you consider writing a testimonial. The "Testimonial" option is now activated at term4sale.com. Check it out and see what other agents have to say about our service. Note the links next to the author's name. If you write a testimonial, we will be happy to add your link there and the page is visible to search engines.
And a visible link to your page is important because term4sale.com is a highly ranked domain name. We are advised that this carries weight in the search engine world.
The improvements made to the automatic Internet updating system in Compulife appear to be working perfectly. The new system can now automatically download updates for as many as 12 servers although the actual number of servers that we currently use is 6.
As we announced last month, another feature added to the system was that your program reports to the monthly update website when you are downloading a monthly update. That new reporting system is also working extremely well. Each download of a monthly update is being recorded into our on-line database which tells us what customer (serial number ONLY) obtained an update. Our system also records the ISP that was used by the subscriber to download the update, when they downloaded the update and how long it took to download.
A preliminary review of the downloads turned up a small number of agency subscribers (Standard License) who appear to be exceeding the permitted number of computers that they are allowed to install Compulife on. The standard license agreement permits 5 computers in one location (Standard License). Some appear to be exceeding that limit.
This limit does not affect Personal users who can place the software on any machine that they use or that is used for them. While it is hard to imagine that a personal user would need to download and put Compulife on more than 5 computers, an initial review of download results do not turn up any problems with personal users.
Before we jump to conclusions about the problems with agency customers, we are adding the machine ID to the information that is reported to our database. In other words, if you take a monthly update on a machine, then for some reason get the same monthly update on the same machine, that is NOT a violation of our agreement. We assume you must have had some kind of problem that required another download. Because a number of machines can share the same IP, we were not able to tell if it was the same computer getting an update, or two different computers on the same network. The individual computer ID will now tell us which specific machine got the update.
If you are an agency, and have only one license which allows 5 machines, and you are exceeding or need to exceed 5 machines, a sub- license can be added for $199. The sub-license allows another 5 machines (in the same location). If you need to add more than 10, another $199 covers 5 more and so on.
Please make sure you are being fair to Compulife as we will be policing this more carefully. I have a hard time believing that an insurance agency, which needs our system on more than 5 computers, can't afford the additional sub-license(s). Compulife is a small company, with a small number of employees. If you avoid paying us what's fair, we personally feel the impact. Given how hard we work, for the little we charge, we take bootlegging of software very personally.
We have added substance abuse to our Preferred Health Analyzer.
We have also eliminated the "Finish" window which terminates the entry of data into the Analyzer. In its place we have put a "Finish" button on what would have been the last page prior to the previous finish page. This will save one move and click of the mouse.
As part of our ongoing efforts to move customers from our DOS software to our Windows software, we will be removing DOS software from our DISK UPDATES updates effective December 1, 2004. The exception will be the install program which your computer uses to update from disks.
Currently disk updates contain BOTH Windows and DOS software. This means that the disk updates contain more files than we would need to ship if we were only providing Windows software. Further, because the majority of our customers now update by Internet, and because disk capacity is not an issue for monthly updates by internet, and because we prefer you to get updates by Internet, we will be removing the DOS program from our disk updates effective December 1, 2004.
This is particularly helpful in Canada, which will cut disk shipments from 3 disks to only two.
What does that mean and what do you need to do if you are getting disk updates? You have two options:
Second, learn to use the Windows software.
Actually, we recommend both because as we noted, we will not be supporting DOS software after the 3rd quarter of 2005. By that point all Compulife subscribers will need to be using the Windows program.
Warning: The December 1, 2004 monthly disk update (NOT INTERNET UPDATE) will have a GO.EXE file that will not run the DOS software, it will simply start the Windows software. Effective the DOS software will be removed from your computer on December 1, 2004. Once again, this only applies to those who get monthly updates by disk.
For those who update by Internet, Compulife has gone to great lengths to provide you with redundancy in our web sites. Our main web site is:
However, we keep two completely separate websites, on two completely different servers, at:
Whatever we update to compulife.com, we are also updating to compulife.us and to compulife.cc. If one web site goes down, for whatever reason, either of the other two are ready to serve you. That includes both monthly and mid-month updates.
For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we rely on three other web site to supply monthly updates. These are automatically checked and used by our automatic Internet update software.
For those receiving updates by disks, you are responsible to return those disks each month. Not returning disks can lead to the termination of your update service. For those not wanting to return disks there are two ways to eliminate the problem.
1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.
Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $100 per year in subscription fees.
To switch to Internet monthly updates, go to our web page www.compulife.com and select the last menu choice "Forms, applications, instruction tutorials, etc." Under the section "License Agreements" you will need to select and complete a new License Agreement for the type of license you have. After you have printed the new agreement, please read it, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our "mid-month updates". If you haven't done that before, call us and we'll be happy to step you through the procedure. It's easy.
2. Disk Purchase Program
The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.