Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Patrick Bedard
Patrick Bedard wrote a magazine column that changed my life.
Patrick Bedard was an automotive writer and had a column in Car and Driver for over 40 years. He also raced cars and was in the 1984 Indianapolis 500, where he wrecked horribly. He walked away from the crash, but it caused a delay while crews cleaned up the mess and removed the pieces of his wrecked car from the track.
Other drivers were not happy with him. As you can imagine, there’s a bit of arrogance to being a race car driver and they weren’t happy that a “writer” was driving with them. I mean, who did he think he was?
After the race, another driver found him in the pits and went off on a tirade at him. “You’re just a writer! You’re not a driver! Who gave you permission to drive with us?”. He said he thought long and hard about what that guy said to him. After much thought, he realized that no one had to “give” him permission.
He wrote in his column “Permission comes from within”.
I wrote that phrase on a piece of paper and taped it to the inside of my front door, about eye level, so that every time I left my home, I would see that. It shaped how I saw life. I’d like to think it helped make me who I am today.
I’ve been running across a few posts with that common theme lately, or maybe I’m just more aware of it because I’ve been thinking about it.
Crossing The Red Line | IttyBiz
Nothing bad is going to happen if you cross the red line. You’re not going to be named and shamed. You’re not going to be arrested. Naomi’s not going to say, “Well, I’m not going to let you in, but now you have to pay anyway.” It doesn’t work like that. The worst they’re going to do is say no. Most of the time, actually, you run the serious risk of getting what you want.
Read the entire article at:
http://ittybiz.com/crossing-the-red-line/
and then there was this one:
5 Things You Don’t Need To Sell Your Art (And 5 Things You Do)
No one can give the permission you need to sell your art. I totally understand the need for approval – I’ve been there many times myself – but it’s a dangerous rabbit hole to go down.
You see, asking for permission and waiting for approval is a carrot on a stick. Once you decide to chase it, you’re forever grasping. Every step you take is on the back of someone else’s approval and the further you go, the more of it you need.
Not a good place to be.
You don’t need permission or approval to be you and do what you do.
Read the entire article at:
http://lateralaction.com/articles/sell-your-art/
Posted in business |
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
There are a lot of blogs out there that talk about how to build web site traffic but most of them are pitching an ebook or trying to get you to buy some elaborate Search Engine Optimization strategy that relies on complex (often under handed) strategies to accomplish something that is fundamentally easy, yet time consuming.
That’s right – building an online presence is actually one of the easiest things a person will ever do in the life time of business, much easier than building a web site or opening a retail location so why do so many people do it so badly? Fear, ignorance, uncertainty and shame.
Fear of the unknown, being ignorant of the unknown and being uncertain of where to start learning. It’s exactly the same reason I didn’t learn to cook until I was in my thirties or why I still don’t know how to change the gasket in my car.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.thisismyurl.com/4064/tutorials/marketing/the-secret-to-building-website-traffic/
Posted in web traffic |
Saturday, June 5th, 2010
I am working on a book titled “The Simple Guide To Basic Internet Marketing” and this is the rough draft of Chapter One. Please leave feedback in the comments.
Introduction
The world has changed. The Internet is becoming a normal part of everyday life for a majority of people. With every new change in technology, comes the rise and fall of businesses as they try to adapt, from railroads to airplanes, from buggies to cars, from radio to TV, from vinyl records to CDs to MP3s.
Today is no different. It’s adapt or die.
Many people who own a small business know that they should “do something” about the Internet, that there is a huge opportunity out there somewhere, but they are not quite sure how to do it, much less do it efficiently, and if that they miss that opportunity, it might mean the end of their business.
The biggest issue that we heard from small business owners, and everyone else, for that matter, is that they don’t understand this stuff. No one has the time to find and distill all of the information. They do research and the technical information that they find is too complex, too difficult to understand. They are afraid and overwhelmed by it all. It’s frustrating.
Our purpose is empowering non technical people by explaining technical things in easy to understand terms. This book is written in that “easy to understand” style and will show you how to use the tools available on the Internet to sell your products more efficiently. Your learning path will start with concepts that will solidify into goals, then work through the strategies, and end up with step by step tactics that will make it easy for you to understand what to do and how to do it.
Did I mention that it will be “easy to understand”?
Let’s get started.
Chapter One – Marketing 101
What is marketing?
Before we talk about marketing on the Internet, we have to talk about just plain old marketing.
Generally, you think marketing is that bad commercial on late night TV with the used car dealer yelling at you. That’s part of it, maybe the most visible part, but that’s not “marketing”.
The idea has been around the Internet for years now that “Everything you do is marketing“.
That means that the look and feel of your web site is marketing. How you answer the phone is marketing. Your profile picture, your pricing, the color of your products, and how big the font is on your web site is all part of marketing.
The Story
There’s another concept that I heard from Seth Godin, who has a blog that you should read every day. This concept is “the story“.
Everyone has ideas in their head, a bias, a point of view, a value system that works it’s way out to a belief system. When a person is told something, or becomes aware of something, it gets filtered through this belief system. You need to understand the belief system of your target market and “tell a story” that fits into their belief system.
You shouldn’t lie. We’re not talking about presenting a falsehood. You should present your product in a way that fits your audience and what they believe to be true. Most of what we believe is a matter of interpretation without an empirical basis in absolute reality. (I was a philosophy major in college for a while.)
You will not be as successful trying to change the belief structure in their head, as you will be selling into the belief structure in their head. If they don’t value what you are selling, they are no going to buy it, no matter what.
There are many examples in the world of politics and religion, but I want you to buy another book from me someday, so I won’t mention any of those. Let’s use a more common example.
Answer this question:
A Venti Caffè Latte from Starbucks that costs $5.85 is:
A. A handcrafted beverage that will give me the pleasure that I deserve because I’m worth it.
B. An overpriced cup of pretentious bitter hot water that rich, arrogant snobs buy.
(I know I said that I wouldn’t talk about religion and then I brought up Starbucks, which I know is a religion for some people. Sorry.) What did we learn from that example?
If you want to sell pretentious hot water, you need to tell the story of how high the quality is and why you deserve such a great cup of handcrafted beverage. Price won’t matter. Exclusivity matters. Quality matters.
If you were to compete against Starbucks, you might want to talk about how your coffee is even more exclusive and higher quality, like Stumptown Coffee does in Portland.
Here’s an example from the world of cars. This 1966 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe was sold for $88,000 at auction because Dan Hines ran it in SCCA SW division races in 1966. You can buy another car from a collector, identical to this one, except for the racing history, for about $60,000. Why pay the extra $28,000? You’re paying for the story. You’re not buying “just metal and rubber” any more than that latte is “just flavored hot water.”
Unique Selling Proposition
That brings us to you. You need to answer this question, and I don’t mean to be rude here, but you need an answer, “Why should anyone buy anything from you?”
I know you have reasons. You just have to define them. Price, reliability, and quality are all good, but not unique, unless they are. Why are you different than your competition?
Your competition includes “doing nothing”. Why is buying from you better than sitting home and watching TV? What is going to move a customer from arms folded across their chest to reaching for their wallet?
What exactly are you selling? Hot water or a handcrafted beverage? Perhaps you are selling “you”, your own personality. Maybe you are selling an experience more than a product. Maybe it’s a feeling. Would you like to buy a cup of bitter hot water or a cup of sweet superiority?
Target Demographic
One thing that working out this USP does for you is to define who you will be selling to, as well as who you will not be selling to.
You want to know who your best customer is. Demographic is a fancy word for describing a person. How would you describe your target market? Age, sex, and economic status are classic ways, but what is special about your target? Would they pay extra for the racing heritage of an old car? Would they pay for a handcrafted beverage? Who would pay for your product? What problem does it solve and who has that problem?
The area to focus on with your target is their needs, desires, and values. You want to solve a problem for them, so define the problems they have. You know some facts about them. Everyone has some common needs, like ice cream, but what are the specific needs that your customers have? What do you know about their needs, wants, and values?
If you don’t have answers to these questions, ask them. Call them, email them, casually chat with them, do Google searches for them, but find out the answers to these questions.
Worksheet Time
Half of the solution is asking the right questions. I’m asking you these.
1. What is your unique selling proposition? Name 5 things that makes you different.
2. Get specific. Finish these sentences:
My company is the one that ______________________
I am the person who ________________________
My product is the only one that ____________________
3. What are you selling? Name 10 adjectives describing your company or your product.
4. Describe your “story”. Write a 3 sentence description of your story.
5. Describe your ideal customer. Name 10 facts, needs, desires, or values that you know about them.
6. What words or phrases would your customers use to search for you with? Name 10 and rank them.
7. From everything you’ve written above, fill in the blanks below:
My customer needs ________________, more than anything, and my product will solve their problem by ___________________ because it’s the only product that is __________________.
Posted in marketing |
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
If you want advanced notice of products and other stuff that happens around here, if you want to be on the inside of what’s happening, if you want to be a hipster, or if you just want to find out how to make more money before any one finds out, fill out the form on this page and subscribe to the Advanced Notice mailing list.
You’ll be glad you did.
http://www.walton.com/advanced-notice-mailing-list
Posted in free |
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
As I’ve been talking with people about selling things online, I am becoming aware that there’s something holding people back that has nothing to do with web sites or SEO. It has to do with attitude.
I’ve talked to my wife about it and we have ideas, but I’m really not exactly sure what it is or how to describe it. It seems to be fear.
People are afraid of failing is my best guess.
What are you afraid of? What is holding you back? Please leave a comment and tell us your thoughts. I really want to work through the issue.
Here’s an excerpt from an article I found.
Successful people see failure as an acceptable risk.
This is one of the hardest shifts to make, but it’s the most important ones.
Habitual action-takers and bigger-game players understand that failure is part of the process, that for every stellar success there will be a their fair share of lukewarm events and more than one embarrassing flop.
Yet they keep the bigger picture in mind. They understand that the biggest failure is not to try (guaranteed zero results) and that failure gives them at least a chance of success. They also understand that there’s no such thing as a perfect person, ever. Even the greats have their black marks. In fact, the greats have plenty of them.
This is a big shift in thinking for most people who are stuck in worry mode. Successful people understand that there will be plenty of failure and potential embarrassment baked into the process, so it’s not a big scary thing. It’s just something to go through and minimize, kind of like taxes.
So yes, successful people are afraid of failure, but it’s a manageable fear because it’s built into the process. And because it’s acknowledged up front, it’s possible to compartmentalize it.
For worriers, inaction equals safety, which is nice because you don’t lose anything. For action takers, the idea of inaction is a huge loss in terms of opportunity cost. They know that if they take enough action, and they’re constantly evaluating their strategy, they’ll come out ahead.
So to sum it up, successful people say “Failure is part of the game. Let’s get it out of the way because there’s some raging success waiting to happen in there somewhere.”
Read the entire article at:
http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/why-worry-keeps-you-poor-and-how-to-fix-it
Posted in business |
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Victoria standing next to some ''art'' found on Jalama Beach
At one point in her life, my wife managed a large department in a huge corporation. If you know my wife, you know that she’s the sweetest, nicest, most generous, giving person you know. I mean, she’s really nice. It’s obvious that she’s nice. Nice is how you would describe her.
Now, counterbalance “she’s nice” against the image of managing a large department in a huge corporation. To survive in the huge corporate world, you need to be a cutthroat political animal, right?
I once mentioned to her that she wasn’t political. She disagreed. She said that she was VERY political. She told me that she had helped so many people and done so many nice things for so many people, because she was nice. She just wanted to help.
She also knew that if she ever needed anything, she knew the right people in the right places that would do anything for her because she helped them in the past.
Did I mention that she’s also very smart?
I read this post below and had to link. This seems to be a recurring theme among blogs that I read and friends that I have.
The people who are successful in life are the people who give. Love is the key to success.
This is not a feel good, bubble gum philosophy. Love is a very political act. You want something? Give it away and you’ll be overwhelmed with what you get back.
“How can I get more for myself?” The more in question varies: interest, customers, website traffic, subscribers, money, whatever—but it always relates to an increase in focus on the individual.
There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I’d like more too. But motivations can be interesting predictors of success. The more that we want tends to come along when we give more, but when we give because we want to receive, it doesn’t always turn out so well.
If it sounds complicated, it’s not. Here’s the secret:
Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience.
-Luciano Pavarotti
Read the entire article at:
http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/luciano-pavarottis-secret-for-online-success/
Posted in business |
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
This is the second in a series that I want to revisit. The original article outlines exactly the research we did on one shop’s competition so we can plan out how to beat them in the search engines.
Why Do They Rank So High?
Why are these ranked so high? Let’s use Yahoo’s Site Explorer to investigate them. We want to know how many pages and internal links they have on their site and how many people link to them externally, from other sites. These two factors are huge in determining search engine rankings.
westcoastseaglass.net
westcoastseaglass.net has 773 pages, more than I expected. It looks like every product has a page, using the same template, so they all link to each other. 773 pages is more than we can generate quickly.They have 2,149 total links, including internal links and 1,774 external links. That’s a lot. This will not be easy. Where do they get these links from? Browsing through their links quickly, it looks like they got picked up by 3 or 4 prolific blogs and put in their blogrolls. That means that there’s a link to their site from every page on these blogs. Every post on a blog can mean a lot of links quickly and easily. We’ll have to use the same strategy and maybe even target the same blogs. This looks like the top site to target.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.walton.com/2009/06/06/small-business-seo-%e2%80%93-sea-glass-jewelry-keywords-and-competition-part-2.html
Posted in SEO |
Sunday, February 14th, 2010
Since we just got a bunch of new subscribers from Etsy, I wanted to revisit a post that I wrote last Summer about doing research on keywords.
Keywords are the root of SEO. Picking the correct keyword is critical. You can’t optimize for everything. You can only optimize for one or two things. You need to figure out what those specific things will be. One keyword different can make the difference between a flood of traffic and a trickle of traffic.
Here’s an excerpt, but go read the whole thing.
What Keywords Should We Target?
Starting with “sea glass”, I used Google’s keyword tool and found that “sea glass” had 2,433 searches a day. I assume that people were looking for all kinds of sea glass, where to buy bulk sea glass, methods for finding it or cleaning it or whatever else. It’s not that targeted at jewelry.
Next came “beach glass”. I’ve never heard to it referred to this way, but Google has. 1,332 people search for “beach glass” every day. We also have “seaglass” at 398 searches, “sea glass jewelry” at 325 and “beach glass jewelry” at 95. From there, we have all sorts of other keywords with less than 100 per day, including “sea glass jewellry” at 24, so make sure to check those misspellings.
These are the keywords we’ll concentrate on; sea glass, beach glass, seaglass, sea glass jewelry, and beach glass jewelry. Next we’ll look at who else ranks for those keywords.
Who is the Competition?
We’ll do a search for each phrase or search term and see who comes up in what order.
When we search for Sea Glass: Wikipedia comes first. I don’t think we’ll beat them, but they aren’t selling jewelry, so I don’t think we have to. The seaglassassociation.org comes next. Again, not sure we need to beat them, but it would be nice if we could. The next two are westcoastseaglass.net and naturalseaglass.com. These look like they might be our biggest contenders.
Let’s look at “beach glass” next. Wikipedia is first. The next two are relishinc.com and bytheseajewelry.com. These are the ones to beat here.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.walton.com/2009/06/06/small-business-seo-%e2%80%93-sea-glass-jewelry-keywords-and-competition.html
Posted in SEO |
Friday, December 25th, 2009
It’s possible to sell crafts or art on the Internet without being slimy about it. You don’t have to “hard sell” anyone. All you have to do is tell people about how cool your stuff is. Tell a story about it. Help people understand why your stuff is as cool as it really is.
You’re not lying. You’re telling the truth and helping people get happy. How can that be bad?
People who want to sell their art, or their crafts, or anything that they created with love and care, should read this article.
Desdemona
Whenever you create objects by hand, the thing to remember is that it’s not the object you’re selling at the end of the day… it’s the stories behind the object. What’s important isn’t the object, but the process. And there’s nothing better than a blog for documenting this process. A lot of creators learn in school about the importance of process, but when it comes to their web presence or to the business side of their work, they seem to forget this.
The object you create (the product) is a symbol of the process (the story) that went into its making. And it’s that story that’s really the important part. You might think the aesthetics of the object itself are the most important, but they’re not, simply because taste is so subjective.
How to Document the Creative Process on your Blog
On the one hand, what I’m about to tell you is really simple. Absurdly simple. What’s hard about it is remembering to do it in the first place. You have to have a “documentary” mindset. Here’s the thing: you don’t know what others will find valuable, so just document and let others sort it out for you. This isn’t complicated:
Take pictures as you work through a piece, and take notes about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and what is the story behind that.
Shoot video in the same vein. Better yet, if you can get someone else to hold the camera and ask questions, the better. Otherwise, get tripod.
Make a time-lapse video of you working on the piece (setting it to some appropriate music is a nice touch).
Write about what you’re going through, thinking, and feeling as create a piece.
Tell the stories of where everything comes from in a piece, especially the sourcing of materials and ideas.
Read the entire article at:
http://remarkablogger.com/2009/12/22/artist-blogging-101
Posted in marketing |
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
I stumbled upon this advice on “how do I get more readers for my blog?” and thought it was worth passing on.
Businesses should blog. The search engines love it and your readers love it. It’s hard to start out without many readers, but if you follow this advice, you’ll soon have readers.
The trick is figuring out what to give them.
Stuff Christians Like
“How do I get more readers for my blog?”
That’s a great question, it’s just the wrong one to ask first.
Want to know the right question to ask first when you find yourself with a blog and a hope that people will read it? Want to know the secret that I start every day on Stuff Christians Like with? It’s pretty simple.
Don’t ask “How do I get more readers for my blog?”
Ask instead,
“How can I give more to readers?”
The distinction is subtle, but I think it’s an important one. At the simplest level, a blog is just a gift exchange. People you may never meet from countries you may never visit, show up at your blog and give you the most precious resource they temporarily have in their hands – time. Whether it’s 30 seconds or 3 minutes, they offer you something really special, minutes of their day that they will never get back.
In return, you give them something.
Read the entire article at:
http://stuffchristianslike.net/2009/12/1-secret-ive-learned-about-blogging/
Posted in marketing |
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Get an Evergreen for Your Blog This Holiday Season
If you want more traffic to your web site, you need to write posts that last a long time, that people can point at and come back to, over and over again.
These kinds of posts should be about what your site is about. They should show your expertise on the subject. They should be the kinds of posts that are so valuable, so informative or entertaining or insightful, that people will want to read them for years to come.
If you could write THE definitive guide or explanation to the subject of your site, there will be links and tweets and traffic.
Think about what your subject is, what keyword you want to be know for, and write a really good post about it.
You’ll see the traffic.
The evergreens we admire for their longevity
The most obvious way is to write about a topic that never gets old. These are cornerstone reference posts, like ‘10 Ways to Build a Better Blog.’ These posts are evergreen simply because people always need that information.
The good news is that evergreen reference posts are pretty straightforward to write. Do a step-by-step summary of how to do something from start to finish, and you’ve got yourself an evergreen post.
They’re also good for defining something that’s often mis-defined. For example, I have posts bookmarked in my ‘Evergreens’ folder on “What Marketing Really Is.” And I refer back to them often, because marketing is a slippery subject.
There are downsides to these types of evergreen posts. You’re up against a lot of competition, for one. There are already thousands of evergreen posts on building a better blog or providing better customer service. There’s probably an evergreen post on 10 Ways to Do Absolutely Any Topic Imaginable.
If you want your evergreen post to be the one that gets bookmarked, you’d better make it really, really good.
Which brings us to the second downside: Evergreen posts often require much more work than your standard post. You’ll probably wind up putting in at least 5 hours — and probably more like 15 — making sure everything is well-written, entertaining, compelling, and that you didn’t make any mistakes.
You might also be putting some extra hours into in-depth research if your evergreen post is on a topic that’s difficult to understand.
Read the entire article at:
http://feeds.copyblogger.com/~r/Copyblogger/~3/0GUusIszMsk/
Posted in web traffic |
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
This article, excerpted below, lists 13 reasons why you should NOT have a free wordpress.com web site.
All of them are valid.
The biggest cost of WordPress is the time it takes you to create a site and make it what you want it to be. The biggest downside to using a free service is lack of control.
I suggest that you try out a free site, (after all, it’s free), and learn the ropes.
When you are ready for a “real” web site, then get your own web host and install WordPress. You can point everything on the free site at the new site.
With your very own web site, you have complete control of everything! Sell stuff! Publish what you want. Make it professional and compete with other businesses. Rock the world.
Final thoughts.
13 reasons why you should NOT have a free wordpress.com web site.
If you already have a free WordPress site, and it is your only blog/website, I suggest one of two things. 1) Buy a domain, install wordpress and start fresh. You can always direct people to your new blog from your old blog, or 2) Export all your content from your free site into a paid site, then you’ll have everything in one place. The sooner you do this the better in my opinion.
That said, blogging communities are great and should not be ignored. Having a free blog within a blogging community however, is very different than having a website all your own. Of all the free blogging communities around, I like Tumblr the best. Here is a list of some of the most popular blogging communities.
WordPress is a blog application found at WordPress.org
Wordpress is free to use. It’s called open source.
Wordpress is awesome. Smart people use it.
Wordpress.com is a place to be part of a blogging community.
A free WordPress blog doesn’t make sense as your only blog.
A free WordPress blog is a great way to learn the ropes.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.socialmediatherapy.com/2009/07/03/a-free-wordpress-blog-can-really-cost-you/
Posted in Wordpress |
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Building an email list is important if you are going to be doing any marketing on line.
Building an email list is important if you are going to be doing any kind of marketing on line.
Let me repeat that.
If you are going to be selling anything on line, then you need to be capturing email addresses of people who are interested in what you are selling.
An email list is just an automated way to gather email addresses and send them emails in a managed way.
There’s a few moving parts to the system, so it’s difficult to understand for some people.
First, there’s “the list”. This is a list of names and email addresses.
How do people get on that list? Why, they subscribe, of course.
There’s a mechanism put in place to make sure that they people on the list actually WANT to be on the list. That’s the “confirmation email”.
When they fill out the form on your site, the system send them an email and asks them to confirm that they want to be on the list. They need to respond to that email or they don’t get added.
This second step does two things. It stops people from pranking other people by putting other people’s emails. It stops people from using bogus email addresses.
This means that every email on your list has received an email and responded to that email, so it has been proven to be a real email address of someone who cares enough to say “yes”.
The people who go through that process are golden. These are your people. These are the people who want your stuff. They want your content. They want you to tell them wonderful things to make their lives better.
These are the people who will give you money. Treat them well.
The second part is you sending them emails. We’ll talk more about that later. Go read this article first.
How Email Will Make A Difference To Your Blogging
I don’t think bloggers totally understand how the email list fits in with blogging, since on the surface they seem like very similar mediums, both delivering content with the focus on increasing the number of subscribers you have.
Oh, and to clarify, when I say build a list, I’m not talking about a list that just replicates your RSS feed service. This isn’t a list that sends out your latest blog posts and that’s it. This list provides unique value and has a defined purpose within your business.
People read email immediately as it comes in. People read blogs when they want to and tend to skip a lot of it because they scan due to consuming so much at once.
The mindset a person is in when reading blog content is different to email. When reading blogs you are either looking for entertainment, going from blog to blog in a mass content consumption frenzy, or searching for answers to a particular question.
When reading email you are consuming much more personal content. Outside of spam of course, emails are addressed to your name, some even come from family or friends, and while a message from a list you subscribe to isn’t necessarily that personal (it does have your name if the list owner does it right), it comes to you in a place where by nature you pay a special kind of attention.
Simply put – people pay more attention and a higher quality of attention to their email because of the state of mind they are in while reading messages.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/947/why-dont-bloggers-understand-email-marketing/
Posted in marketing |
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
How much control do you want?
Here is a great, simple explanation of the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
It’s a balance of simple and no control against difficult and total control.
Being the control freak that I am, I always choose control. I want you, as my client, to have as much control as you can. I can make the total control of your own web site a little bit simpler, and be there when you have questions.
Which do you choose?
Hosting: Self or Other
The biggest major difference between the two WordPresses is that the dot com version is hosted for you for free on Automattic’s servers, while the dot org version is software you install on your own web server. Automattic is the parent company of WordPress. Hosting with WordPress.com means you save a lot of money, because it’s free, and you never have to worry about your server crashing. You never have to worry about upgrades, because they’re automatic. Everything just works.
To receive those benefits requires you to give up something very important to a business: sovereignty. You don’t control the software or the server. There are incredible extras and freedoms unavailable to you if you go with the dot com version of WordPress. If you install WordPress on your own web server, we call that self-hosted WordPress to quickly tell which flavor of WordPress we’re talking about.
Self-hosted is a double-edged sword. With great freedom comes great responsibility. You have access to scads of themes and plugins that will let you do amazing things with WordPress that you can’t do on the dot com version—it’s like getting the keys to the kingdom. But you’re responsible for managing everything and keeping it updated. Plugins, themes, and WordPress itself require constant upgrading and backing up. Sometimes there are glitches that can only be solved by people who really know what they’re doing. If that’s not you, then you must have access to a qualified person.
Read the entire article at:
http://remarkablogger.com/2009/11/19/wordpress-com-vs-wordpress-org-the-definitive-overview-for-business
Posted in Wordpress |
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
The craft selling web site project has been updated a bit.
I was seeing it as a membership site, but I think people are looking for “a website” instead. People, mostly who are on Etsy, want more control than they have there.
Headway WordPress Theme
We’ve changed the price to be a one time, up front fee, without any month to month. Hosting will be $100 a year with the first year included. It will be a lifetime membership in the training and the support forum.
I’ve been working more with the Headway WordPress theme and it’s very, very cool. The more I play with it, the cooler it is. I’ve run into just a couple things that I had to do manually, but that was even easy to do.
I showed Victoria last night and she said “wow” three times as she tried different things. It’s that kind of a product.
If you want a web site, for the introductory price of $150, that includes Headway and a year of web hosting, this is it. Let me know.
You Can Sell Crafts - An Alternative to Etsy
The 3 Things You Need To Sell Crafts Online
Millions of dollars are made each year by people selling handmade crafts online.
You could be one of them, but the technical issues and marketing strategies are so confusing and complex that you don’t understand them. It’s all a little overwhelming and scary.
You Need Someone To Answer Your Questions
You need someone to show you through the pitfalls. Someone to ask when you have questions. You need a coach or a consultant or a support desk or maybe just a friend who knows.
You Need To Learn How It Works
It would be great if you had an easy to learn training program, aimed at non-technical people, to show you just what you need to know. A set of modules or classes that would let you learn at your own pace, in your own way. Maybe video or audio files that you could watch or listen to. Maybe written pages, so you could review anything you needed to focus on.
You Need A Web Site
When you are ready to take your hobby to the next level and make it into a real business, you should have your own web site. That’s the only way to have the control you want. Large group sites have a lot of traffic and a lot of competition. You get lost in the crowd. Your business is defined by the products that are displayed with your products. If you want to do what you want to do, then you need control over your own web site.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.youcansellcrafts.com/
Posted in crafts |
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Here’s a list of SEO terms that you should be aware of, if you aren’t already. There are more where these came from, so go check out the site.
Long tail
In SEO terms, the ‘long tail’ refers to the less obvious, more specific (and therefore less competitive) but still relevant keywords and phrases you can optimize your site for. So instead of trying to optimize for very general and competitive phrases such as “coffee”, a long tail phrase might be “buy Costa Rican coffee.” For a very competitive field such as coffee, you might have to think of even more specific and niche phrases than that in order to find the ones you can rank highly for.
Why You Should Care:
If you are a small business, or just starting out, the long tail will help you find free & targeted (there’s that phrase again!) traffic. You will be able to rank more quickly for long-tail phrases instead of wasting your time trying to compete for very general terms that have established competition.
SERPs
This simply stands for Search Engine Results Page – i.e. the list of results that comes up when you perform a web search.
Why You Should Care:
That’s where you want your site to be!
Read the entire article at:
http://www.webtrainingwheels.com/2009/11/online-marketing-terms-seo-edition/
Posted in SEO |
Monday, October 19th, 2009
He nails the secrets to making your blog effective for reaching new customers, but as he says, the details are up to you. Read the entire article. Good stuff for small businesses.
Attract Customers Like Magic to Your Business Blog
Business blogs are often described as a way to reach customers, but it’s not true. Blogging does not help your business reach new customers.
It is the exact opposite which is true.
A business blog is a way for your customers reach you.
This is much more than a clever switching around of words. We have an entirely different dynamic at work, here. Understanding this dynamic makes a significant difference in how business owners understand the online customer acquisition process, set their marketing goals, and create the objectives to reach those goals. These must happen in order to attract customers, engage them, sell to them, and keep them.
“How do I reach customers with my blog?” is not the right question. Instead, ask, “How do I make my blog easy for customers to reach?
This leads us backwards to a preceding question: How are my customers looking for me, now?
And so the fun begins!
Your customers aren’t looking for you, precisely. They don’t know you exist, yet. They don’t know your name or your brand. All they know is they have a need or a problem, and they want answers. They’re looking for information to help them make a decision. They’re looking for trustworthy, authoritative information.
How do you make your blog the most attractive, most easily found “answer?” I’ve identified two major strategies:
Be everywhere your customers are, so they have a greater chance of running into you.
Have the most trusted, authoritative answers to their biggest questions.
How do we make these things happen?
Read the entire article at:
http://remarkablogger.com/2009/10/13/attract-customers-to-business-blog/
Posted in marketing |
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Working with a search engine is similar to training with a puppy. You find out what they like and use that to get the behavior you want from them. Figure out what they are aware of and what is important to them, then figure out what response you want from them. This is really about training the search engine to fetch.
Working with a search engine is similar to training with a puppy.
The first step that a search engine takes is to send out a robot, which is just an automated program, to read each page on your site. As it reads the page, it will evaluate it and try to figure out what it’s about. It won’t keep a copy of the entire page in the search index. It will only keep a score for specific words and phrases and characteristics that it finds and deems important.
This process of reading web pages is called “crawling” a site. After it crawls one page and evaluates it, the robot “indexes” the page. Indexing means that it puts the scores for the page into it’s index, so it can find it when someone searches.
It’s not a human, so it can only guess what the page is about, using calculations based on what it finds. What does it look for and what is important to it? How would you determine what a page is about?
If you looked at a page in your favorite browser and looked at the “source” or the actual HTML that makes up the page, what would you see? Most of us see a bunch of gibberish, but that’s HTML.
The robot sees that same code and tries to figure out what the subject of the page is, based on what’s there. Robots have no nuance or intuition like we do. They are pretty dumb and pretty literal. They only see what they see, which is really just a string of characters.
Robots also look at and track the links on a page and all the other pages on the Internet. They use what they can figure out about these links that are pointed at your page in determining what your page is about also.
Each web page that’s indexed in the search engine has various scores associated with it. These scores are based on, 1. what it finds on the page and, 2. what links it finds elsewhere, that point to the page. When someone types a keyword into the search engine, it goes through it’s index of scores and finds the pages that score the highest for that keyword. It doesn’t read all of the web pages and calculate the scores when someone searches. It only reads the scores that it’s already calculated.
Since how these scores are calculated is a company secret, and probably changes weekly, so we can’t know exactly what they are or how they think. We do know the general idea is that the search engine looks at all of the scores for pages with the specific keyword, then returns the list of pages, the SERPs, to the user in the order of the scores. The page with the highest score for that keyword will be the first result. Our goal is to increase those scores for your pages.
Posted in SEO |
