Small Office, Home Office Information

I really should preface these comments with a little background briefing. Toni and I designed our first websites in 1996 and have been making money on the Web with design, marketing and text since 1998 so we tend to know which way is up when it comes to web design.

So now to the story.

Toni wants to launch a new site but neither of us have the time anymore to spend on designing graphics etc. so she decided that she should use the services of a web design business. We duly visited the business and spent some time with their designer.

He tried to sell us on the whole web development package they had to offer while we tried to tell him that all we wanted was some graphics. In the end it was getting a little tedious because he just wasn’t listening so I pointed out that when we first entered the industry he was still in high school.

That seemed to slow him down and we could get round to talking about the design that Toni wanted for her site.

We left feeling a little confident but yesterday the first rough drafts of the design arrived and they were … dull … boring … and I really wondered if some high school kid on work experience with the business had done two of them.

Somehow I don’t see feel very positive about the outcome here.

And while I’m talking about web design here is a link to a brief article about what users hate most about Web sites

Whether you’re small business is involved in online marketing or you just want to advertise your business online here is something that might interest you.

I know that Google has been experimenting with video ads but they don’t seem to be having much success with them and the ones I’ve seen have looked rather clunky.

But today I was visiting Microsoft Watch and on this page I found this ad:

The ad is part of a rotating series so you might have to refresh the page a couple of times to get one in this series. When you visit the site don’t only press the ‘play’ button but also click inside the image and check out the video that you will find on that page too.

To my way of thinking these ads are how video ads should look - what do you think?

Those are wise words when your a small business and data is important.

That’s advice that I tend to stick to and certainly have for the last six hours today.

But what do you do when the computer that you were saving all that work to suddenly tells you that the file is corrupted and then shuts down?

You sit patiently and wait for a house call from the guy who runs your favorite computer shop and hope that the computer was delirious when it told you all that work was corrupted

Sigh

I’ve been up for just on two hours - it’s 5.45am - and today is definitely shaping up to be one of those days.

I had set aside most of my time today to work on some text for just one client but to do that I need to see his site and of course his site is down. To make matters worse he’s on the other side of the planet and is already in bed so I’ve got about six hours ahead of me till he’s up and able to fix the problems.

So, while I was trying to get my head around the next task on my list, I was catching up on some reading from a few blogs. Darren Rowse from Problogger posted a piece about his A List of blogs - blogs that he read several times every day. While he has 100 of them I only have a handful so I thought I might share them with you.

Perhaps you’ll find something on here that will be of use to you.

Seth’s Blog - a blog that will make you think about marketing.

Search Engine Watch - the name says it all.

SEOmoz - another blog full of great search engine tips

Copyblogger - copywriting tips for anyone who has something to sell.

So there are the top ones out of the 75 I have on my list. I guess it shows just what is important to our small business

Late the week before last our friend who runs a computer shop here in town was approached to become an agent for Global Chat - VOIP telephony provider. At first he wanted to turn the offer down but Toni prevailed on him to at least look a little deeper into the offer.

Needless to say Toni spotted another good deal and over the weekend he installed Global Chat in his shop and will now begin actively marketing the service and we’ll be involved with that.

Within 24 hours of making the decision to market the product - and before he had anything to demonstrate to customers - he already has firm orders for three accounts and the required equipment.

While I was very keen to move into the VOIP arena on a commercial basis for our small business I was a little reluctant to move away from Skype but one thing convinced me that Skype was not going to be good for us and ultimately for any small business or home office.

To feed credits into your Skype account you must use a credit card - that’s the only way they will accept your money. I found that rather interesting because Skype is owned by eBay and eBay has a fairly firm grip on PayPal and yet you can’t use PayPal to fund your Skype account.

On the other hand Global Chat has about six different ways to fund your account ranging from PayPal and direct deposit through to the more usual method of using your credit card.

So that was a no-contest - we’ve ditched our credit cards and we’re not going back to them just to use Skype when there is an alternative that is happy to take our money in other ways.

There is a gender shift going on guys and you would do well to pay attention to it.

By 2010 analysts predict that women will control 50% of private wealth in the United States. Already women control around $7 trillion in consumer and business spending and women-controlled businesses employ more people in the United States than all the Fortune 500 companies combined.

Women are now the majority users of the Internet and have passed men as the primary consumers of computers, cameras and PDAs.

So why are women still facing discrimination, physical abuse and salesmen who can’t cope with the idea that women may have more of a clue than they do?

It has long been known that testimonials from satisfied customers really do work when it comes to attracting new customers to your small business. To make those testimonials work even better for your small business there’s nothing quite like including a photo of that satisfied customer who thinks so much of your business that they want to tell the world about you.

But there is one thing you should never do and that’s use fake testimonials - even on a website - because if you do then you are going to get caught. How Not to Post Testimonials: DVDDropShip Example is a must read for anyone who is thinking of adding testimonials to their small business website.

And for those who want to add real testimonials to their site then this podcast on How to Use Testimonials Effictively is worth listening to.

A couple of weeks ago Toni and I met with a really bright young guy here in town to pick his brain about servers. Toni has this idea that she would like to run the server for our sites right out of our own office so we talked to a teenager who does just that.

Of course there’s a vast difference between the sites he runs on his server and ours but the basics are the same so we talked to him. That gave him the chance to ask for some advice on setting up his own small web design business and we talked last night.

I’m sure I gave him plenty to think about - especially when it comes to charging for his work. He was going to charge such a low rate for his time that he would never have covered his costs.

He also asked why Toni and I seemed to do so little when it came to our business. He wasn’t being rude but he wondered why I talked about using a graphic designer and a guy to write the scripts that run in the background on some of the websites that we build for people.

His idea was that he could do all those things and so he would be the one who did all those things in his business. That gave me the chance to explain that most successful small business people concentrate on what they do best and get others to cover the work that they are not so good at.

For example, I provide great text for websites that encourage people to buy what the website is selling but I’m very slow when it comes to producing attractive graphics for those sites so I don’t even try. By saving that time I then have more time to devote to writing and that then puts more money in my pocket.

And that’s the way it is for just about every small business. If you want to use your time effectively and efficiently then concentrate on what you do best and buy the services of other people to do all the other things for you.

… here is a story of a stolen mobile phone that you will find interesting.

I received an email on Monday from a lady who wanted to exchange links with this site. I have to admit that over the years I’ve received many requests for such link exchanges and they all sound exactly the same.

“I’ve visited your site and I think a link exchange would benefit both of us. I’ve already put a link to your site up here (usually a page that no one will ever see - and quite often has no way of being found from any other page on the site) and in exchange I would like a prominent link on your site.”

These requests usually come from people who have bought what could best be described as a website in a box. They’re a bit like the field rations we used to have in the Army - powder and chunky bits that you tipped out of a package and after adding hot water they turned into something that rarely looked or tasted like what the label on the packet said.

This link request came from one of those ‘just add water’ sites and after doing a little digging on the site I found that the person who wrote to me had paid around $297 for this ticket to fame and fortune.

The hype on the page that advertised the site sounded wonderful but was just hype. Few people, other than the person who is peddling the scheme have the ability to turn cruddy template sites like that into real money so avoid them like the plague.

There is no shortcut to making money on the Net - and if there was do you really think you could buy it for just $297 with thousands of dollars of freebies thrown in to sweeten the deal?