If you're like most people, you started out that new website project feeling excited and optimistic.

You couldn't wait to see your shiny new site! Sadly, that feeling often starts to wear off and you're left feeling somewhere on the spectrum between feeling ripped off by the designer you hired and wishing you had known how much work was involved on your side.

Are you frustrated because your website doesn't generate many leads? Don't feel bad. This is one of the biggest issues with websites. You spend good money to have a nice site developed, and it seems like it just sits there like a teenager on a sofa. And sits. And sits. Before long, you start to wonder if it will ever do anything.

Marketing Automation isn't just for the big guys any more; businesses of all sizes are using it to communicate more personally with their customers. But many clients are confused about what automated marketing actually is, and we want to give you a better understanding. Though email marketing is often referred to as automated marketing, it's really just a part of a true automated marketing system.

Ask writer Dennis Cooper and you'll find that the answer is Yes.

Cooper had hosted his blog on Blogger.com since 2002, only to find on June 28 that his 14 years of work had been deleted by site owner Google, with no explanation. Making matters worse, they also deleted his Gmail account.

You may not know it, but we're already in the Third Wave of the internet, or the Internet of Things (IoT), as it's come to be known.

Yep, that's right, and if your business is typical of most, you're still stuck at the end of the First Wave – at best.

You're probably thinking “not only do I have no clue what the Third Wave is, but I don't even know what the First and Second were.”