Small Office, Home Office Information

I’m one of those people who hate to drop names. All too often when someone does it they’re really trying to say “Look at me, I’m important because I know …”

Well I freely admit that I’m a nobody and no one in their right mind would admit to knowing me. Even our own kids will quite openly tell you that their parents are way too radical and are really an embarrasment to them - but that’s ok because we tell them that they really can’t be our children because they’re way too conservative.

We then all have a good laugh and sit down and behave like families normally do.

And now - after that rather convoluted introduction - let me tell you that Dave Taylor of Ask Dave Taylor sent me his latest book the other day. It’s called Growing Your Business with Google and at first I didn’t know whether to frame it or read it.

However, I finally succumbed to the more base instincts within me and I decided to read it and I am glad that I have started to do that because it is a goldmine of information for anyone who wants to advertise their business on the Net.

When I say that it is a goldmine of information for anyone that’s exactly what I mean. Toni and I have been around the Net since 1996 and making money online since 1998 and even though I’m only up to page 34 I have already found plenty of invaluable information.

When anyone starts their book with an opening gambit like the quote below they are guaranteed to have my attention.

When you started to think about moving your business online, even if just as a digital billboard advertising your retail outlet or professional service, you were doubtless inundated with expert advice. Your site was likely build by one of those ostensible experts and today serves as a lonely outpost, producing the occasional customer.

Here’s the unfortunatel reality: odds are very good that your web designer has led you astray. Not through any fault of their own, but because web designers and developers have a bad habit of being focused on how things look rather than on how things actually work.

Worrying about pretty graphics was a fine strategy a few years ago, but as Google and other sophisticated search engines have growin in importance, the need for websites that are built around content, about what rather than how, has become critical.

Even by page 34 I have no hesitation in recommending this book but I’ll tell you more about it through the coming week or so - it’s not that I’m a slow reader, it’s just that my reading time for the next week or so is very limited.

Toni and I are off to have breakfast with a friend this morning, but this is more than just a social event. For some time now we have been working with him to develop his small business and attract more customers.

Customer retention has never been a problem because his workmanship and standard of customer service are way beyond that of any of his competitors in town. However, actually getting customers to his business has not been so easy.

His business is located in a shop front in a small complex that not many people know about and his previous attempts at advertising in the local papers have been less than stellar. So this time he has been working with us try and achieve some better results.

The first step is a short television ad that has already been filmed and will be going to air in a good time slot in the coming week. That step was something that he had already decided on before he asked us to become more involved.

But a small television advertising campaign was never going to be enough and he realised that he was going to need to do more. So many people would see that television ad as something that would stand alone - do the ad and wait for the customers to come flocking in.

But the reality is that an ad like that is really just the introduction. It’s something to get a business noticed by its potential customers but it should never be the only step taken to increase customers. It should always be part of a package of measures that are aimed at increasing your business.

And that’s what we’re doing this morning. We’re looking at some branding options and some further advertising options to continue the momentum that the television ad should generate. And there when we talk about momentum we’re not talking about people coming through the door. We’re only talking about the momentum of keeping our friend’s name, and the name of his business, in front of his potential customers.

I’ll let you know how it all went.

by: Tom Dean

I’m sure many online marketers have kids and they often come over to the desk when you are busy working online to ask questions like “what are you doing dad/mom” etc.

How many of us actually tell them what we are doing or better yet show them?

I have been guilty of being “to busy” to answer questions or saying not right now daddy’s busy.

All this changed the first time I actually took the time to explain to my daughter (11 yrs old) just exactly what I was doing.

My daughter has some “challenges” that I won’t go into here but the result of me explaining a little bit of what I do and why to her has been no less than inspiring to me.

She took an interest in this whole marketing thing, especially wondering why people buy things and what makes them buy one item instead of a similar one.

We have had lots of conversations about this and looked at lots of products and ads, everything from tv, ebay, online sites and even the wso’s on the forum. We’ve discussed Christmas and observed the transformation of stores and tv ads during the holiday season.

She has learned a lot about.

* Integrity and honesty in promoting a product and many of the various ways to get the attention of the viewer.

* How a buyer that feels fooled or cheated won’t be back and will tell people they know not to buy from you.

* Wanting to belong to a group” – she was sitting next to me when I signed up for the Alliance forum and witnessed first hand how building anticipation and exclusivity can work.

* Selling something you are passionate about - how it won’t seem like work and you will probably have a better chance of success when the passion you have for a product show’s through.

Soon all these evening conversations and lessons lead to Stephanie wanting her own website to sell something from.

First she needed some money to launch her site. At the time I was an active power seller on ebay. Her little brother Thomas James was really into Bionicles (a toy) and was always cruising ebay looking for a deal on the latest Bionicle. One night we were at Wal-Mart and as usual in the Bionicle section with Thomas. The little toys were on sell at less than half price. Stephanie suggested that we could buy them and sell them on ebay. We did, we bought them all and sold almost all of them at retail or above. She helped design the ad and suggested posing some out of the boxes for pictures and was involved in the design of the auction ad. Enough was made to start her website. More ebay auctions followed to raise a few more dollars.

After some discussion Stephanie decided what she wanted her website to be about.

She decided on:

* The pet niche – an area she is definitely passionate about (three dogs, hamsters, guinea pigs, fish and turtles make their home with us).

* She picked out several private label products and click bank products to promote.

* She chose the domain name http://freepettips.com

* She bought the website to use a starting point for her site (she picked it out from ebay for $25). You can see the beginnings here. http://tomdean.net/Pets (it’s not finished this is just the starting point) but it will be up and running soon on her domain.

Her site will be online soon and will include private label products about dog care, click bank products, resell rights products for dog/cat recipes, articles, adsense, and two of her very on products written for her but based on what she wanted them to include. One is on buying and caring for hamsters the other is on guinea pigs and includes plans for the guinea pigs home and an outdoor guinea pig play box. Of course I will be the one to finish up the site and get it on the web but the concept, product selection, chosen design and her products were all decided on by her. Think of all she will be learning from this process that she is involved with every step of the way.

Many of her own graphics will be used on the site and in the products. She went from coloring graphics with crayons (her other passion) to drawing them in a paint program using a pen mouse that she purchased from her ebay proceeds.

All of this from dad just answering some questions and deciding not to say “I’m busy right now”.

I know we all get busy and stressed especially when that site is just not working out or your latest mailing didn’t do much for you. But take some time when the little one ask what you are up to. You may be surprised by how much they are really interested in what you are doing and how much your time means to them. You will also be surprised with what they can teach you if you just listen.

* My daughter is 11yrs old and is currently taking art class and learning to draw online with a mouse pen using photo impact and ms paint along with getting her website ready to launch.

Tom (a proud dad)

About The Author

Tom Dean is a Webmaster and Publisher.

You can get Free Templates-Tools-Headers & Complete Websites at http://www.tomdean.net/Join.htm.

Visit his Viral Marketing Newsletter at http://www.tomdean.net.

Recently I posted a brief snippet of information about eBay. Evidently there are now over 750,000 people deriving all or part of their income from selling on eBay and it really is something that just about anyone can do.

If you want to read more about it have a look at the article that I have just added to the site. I love the title, It Pays to be Lazy on eBay. I hope you find it useful.

If you’re one of the growing number of online businesses that uses Skype for free phone calls across the road or across the planet I’m sure you will be pleased to know that there is a Skype virus loose on the Net.

It won’t come to you via Skype and and it doesn’t actually infect Skype but it will create havoc on your computer.

It comes in the form of an email that claims to contain version 1.4 of Skype’s voice over Internet Protocol software. Opening the attachment with the email doesn’t install Skype at all but it does install the Trojan.

Skype did release a new version of its software back on October 10 but it does not distribute any of its software via email.

If you have any doubts you should always visit the Skype website at http://www.skype.com/security/.

I sometimes think that many small business people are very short-sighted. They tend to forget that the people who are doing work for them today may well be their own clients at some point in the future.

An example of what I am suggesting happened this week. A friend who runs a small business here in town was having his carpets cleaned by a professional cleaner. The conversation turned to advertising and our friend mentioned that he had a website.

The carpet cleaner told our friend that he spent thousands of dollars each year on advertising and would like to talk to someone about having his own website. Our friend, as all good friends do, recommended us and the carpet cleaner asked our friend to get us to call him.

I called him next day and obviously caught him at work in someone’s house so he asked me to call him back after six that night. And I did call him back after six … and got his answering service.

I left a message and asked him to return my call.

Several days later I’m still waiting for that call.

Now if he couldn’t return a call how reliable is he to come and clean carpets at a pre-arranged time?

In small business you shouldn’t just be working to impress your clients, you should also be working to impress those who are working for you. You never know when those people could turn into prospective clients.

Yesterday I talked about clients and customers who explain what they want by telling a story. I guess that, in a low-key way I was trying to suggest that we shouldn’t become angry or frustrated with people who take time getting to the point of why they might be standing in front of us.

By telling a story, instead of just giving us the facts, they are dealing with something that they don’t understand and can’t explain in the language that you and I might use to describe a problem that we do understand.

That was yesterday, today I want to suggest that telling a story works the other way as well. Telling a story allows us to explain something that might be quite technical to a client or customer who might not otherwise understand.

I saw it in action last Thursday when we were down at our friend’s computer shop. An older couple came in and they wanted to purchase their first computer. They knew nothing about computers but they were savvy shoppers. They had been to just about every computer retailer in town and they had printed quotes from each of them.

Our friend sat them down and a gently questioned them about what they might want to do with their computer and he explained that he needed to know the answer to that question so that he could decide what level of components to include in his quote.

He also asked them what the other quotes had been and they willingly showed him all those pages that they had brought with them. The lowest quote that they had received was around $1200 and the highest was $1500.

We work with our friend from time to time – when we need to get out of the house and do something different – so I knew that there was no way he could match those quotes and I thought he was probably just wasting his time.

But I was wrong. For about 20 minutes he sat there and quietly told them the story of why quality parts and individual components in a new computer are better than cheap parts and components that share resources.

He told them the truth; he didn’t embellish the facts in any way. He was able to draw on a well known story here in Australia of a CDROM sent out with a gardening magazine that simply could not be played by any computer with an on-board graphic card because it pulled too much memory from the processor when it wanted to play the CDROM.

And he told it like a story is told – in language that people can understand. When he was finished they handed over $2200 and asked him to build their computer.

Seth Godin once said that marketing was telling a story and I didn’t understand until I saw it in action.

There are times when we sit down at our friend’s computer shop drinking coffee and just listening. Of course we listen to our friend because he has a lot to teach us about computers but we also listen to his customers too.

The one’s I find to be particularly interesting are those who bring their computers in for repair. These are mostly people who have no clue about computers. Some are highly articulate and successful in their own businesses while others are just ordinary people. There are retirees, students, mums and dads … just ordinary people who don’t understand much about computers.

I find that the stories they tell our friend are really interesting. There are times when I get quietly frustrated with them - why don’t they just give our friend the facts? Why do they have to keep waffling on and wasting time when just the facts would get our friend on the job quicker?

These people have a need to resort to stories. They don’t have the technical background and so they don’t have the technical words to use. To them there are no short sharp facts - there is only the story. And our friend understands that.

To these people there is only the story because the story helps them understand what happens and so the clues that our friend needs are embedded in the story.

Do you listen to the stories when the customers and clients of your small business come to you for help?

Or do you miss the clues because you don’t understand that telling you a story is the only way that many of your customers and clients can express their need?

A business with attitude can be very attractive to potential customers but some business attitude tends to get right up my nose.

The Korea Times is preporting that Samsung is about to release a new mobile phone that includes a 3 gigabyte hard drive. With that much storage users can carry up to 700 music files.

The new phone also comes with a 2 megapixel camera built in. The camera has a 2x optical zoom.

Unfortunately we Luddites in the rest of the world won’t be seeing this camera and here is a direct quote from the Korea Times to explain why.

The outfit has no plan to ship the models to other countries since there will be no demand for the top-of-the-line phones other than in Korea which boasts ubiquitous tech-savvy people.

Is that a sad reflection on us or on them?

I’m sure that there are a lot of people out there who have heard about Konfabulator and their widgets before. If you’re one of those people then I guess that you’ll just have to humour me because I only found out about them on Friday.

Konfabulator popped into someone’s brain back in 1998 when that person thought it would be cool to have a skinnable MP3 player. From there it was only a short step to thinking about skinning any information you wanted to see on your desktop and that is how Konfabulator came about.

Kofabulator is a fairly quick download and an easy set up and once you have it you can then go to their site for the widgets that you think you will need. A widget is a simple script that can display information on your desktop.

There are currently over 1300 widgets to choose from and they include games, dates and times, news feeds, systems utilities, webcams from around the world and a lot of other stuff too. There are even several widgets for cricket scores.

Downloading the widgets is pretty simple too and most of them are self-installing. Once they are on your machine you can have them running on your desktop continuously. They consume little in the way of resources and disappear into the background when you’re working.

At the moment, because the novelty hasn’t worn off yet I’m running six widgets on one of my screens. There are

a couple of system utilities

an analog clock

an interesting little widget that shows which parts of the world are in darkeness (that might sound useless to lots of people but we work constantly with clients all round the world so it helps to know when they’re asleep)

a picture frame that cycles through any image directory I might point it to

a headline reader that shows me the latest offerings on slashdot.com

I think it’s a great idea and most people will find something useful in amongst all those widgets. Yahoo thought it was such a great idea that they bought the company.

And just an interesting footnote to this story. It took the guy behind this idea 3 years to find someone who was prepared to help him develop Konfabulator. He approached a lot of talented people to work on the project with him but no one was interested.

How many of us would have had the courage to persist when no one wanted to work with us?