Posted on April 18th, 2010 by Randy
Not getting what you need from the mainstream sites? Build your own.
Building a social website isn’t the same as adding social elements to a website. You’re not just plugging in a widget to your website to show the streaming newsfeed from your blog. If your business model is focused on building a social website, what does this mean from a development point of view?
Features and Functions
Whether you’re building an online magazine or a social network
for your business, the most important thing to do before you start building is to outline your features. What do you want your users to be able to do? What information will be available to the public and what information will be private? What functions do you need to put in place to protect your data?
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Posted on April 18th, 2010 by Randy
Lucy Prebble, the 29-year-old British playwright, won over legions of critics and jaded London theatergoers last fall with Enron, a tragicomedy inspired by the 2001 collapse of the infamous Texas-based energy firm. Now the play is set to open on Broadway this month, and from the sound of it, it will offer something that hasn’t been around since the beginning of the financial crisis: a little love for disgraced CEOs and bankers.
Prebble chatted with Entrepreneur about the production, Jeff Skilling–Enron’s former president–and her plans after writing the Enron screenplay. (Of course there’s a movie in the works.) “I’ve got an idea for what’s next,” she says. “It will be set in a completely different world–I’m escaping finance.”
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Posted on March 26th, 2010 by Randy
What Alexa is most popular for – their traffic rank, is popular because it has been around for a long time and is well referenced. I don’t consider it to be a high value tool in terms of accuracy though. I think all these traffic estimation tools have a big margin for error, and its easy to read too much into the base/core number. Having mentioned that, you can try to use traffic data from Alexa, Google Website Trends / DoubleClick Ad Planner, Compete.com, and Quantcast to try to see how well they agree in terms of the traffic volume of a site or the relative volume between multiple sites in the same vertical.
In spite of my lack of faith in the Alexa rank numbers some people do put weight on it. Some investors use it. And when Markus Friend was launching PlentyOfFish he redirected Alexa users away from his site to stay below radar until his site was strong.
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Posted on March 24th, 2010 by Randy
Starting your own business can be a daunting task. Toss a down economy into the equation and things can become even more challenging. If you are out of work there’s no better time to start your own business.
There are many things you can do to start your own business. What is your trade or profession? Accountant, computer repair tech, fitness professional? Basically what I’m trying to say here is take the knowledge that you already have and use it as a basis for you to become your own boss. Do you really want to open a flower shop if you’re a personal trainer? Probably not. However you may want to start you own personal training service. Here are a couple of criteria that will help you get started and create a profitable business model.
- Find a huge expanding market.
- Market a unique or consumable product or repeatable service.
- Get in at the right time. You want to start when the trend for that product or service is red hot.
- Employ others. You can start out on your own but in order to expand and grow your business you will need to employee others.
I would not recommend starting a brick and mortar type store if possible. Online business such as website design or affiliate marketing or service businesses that can be run from the home are best choices for a new business start up in today’s competitive economy. These types of businesses require little or no money to start and don’t typically require an office and the additional expenses that come with retail or similar businesses.
While I can’t tell you exactly what business to start in order to be a success I can say that if you follow those 4 basic criteria you will have a much better chance of being successful no matter what type of business you start.
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Posted on March 21st, 2010 by Randy
I have to be honest I won’t be shedding any tears for WidgetBucks any time soon. After testing WidgetBucks on a half dozen of my websites I can see why they have decided not to stay in the game.
The cpc payout on these ads was o.k. however they had a serious problem with their advertisers. Some of their advertisers were using WidgetBucks to distribute viruses and malware which would infect the users computer when the ad was clicked on or even just with a page load in most cases. If that wasn’t bad enough the viruses would actually infect the blogs themselves which would in turn cause them to be blacklisted by the major search engines. Nice. Why was this happening you ask and why did WidgetBucks allow this to continue? I have a simple answer. They didn’t give a damn about who advertised on their network as long as they got paid. I had reported the virus issues to WidgetBucks on several occasions in an effort to actually help them determine the cause of the problem and find a resolution. What did WidgetBucks do with the information I provided to them? Nothing.
When they announced that they were shutting down I wasn’t the least bit surprised I have to say.
Do you want to hear more? Here we go. WidgetBucks decided to place a clause in their publisher agreement that stated that any publisher that didn’t accumulate at least $50 in revenue in their account would forfeit that money if terminated from the program for any reason. That includes in this case the fact that WidgetBucks is now defunct and that all publishers were now effectively terminated. Hey that’s a great deal for WidgetBucks! They get to shut the doors and not pay any of their publishers their money that was due to them if their balance was lower than $50. That’s right, if you’re account had less than $50 in it at the time they shut the doors then you get nothing. What’s that you say? I had $49.95 in revenue and I get nothing? That’s right. Kiss it goodbye baby.
Do I smell a class action lawsuit against WidgetBucks parent company in the near future? Maybe. Here’s the bottom line, you have to be careful what affiliate network you’re dealing with. Check out their track record, listen to the reviews of current and former publishers and then if everything looks legit, test them out.
There are still a lot of good affiliate publisher networks out there including Chitika, Kontera, Infolinks (excellent so far) and more. So don’t get discouraged if you run into a bad one here and there. I will be providing you with more insight on these affiliate publisher networks and more in some upcoming posts.
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Posted on March 20th, 2010 by Randy
Keyword Spy Research Account
Keyword Spy’s Research account gives you access to the following data
* PPC Ads (ad copy, the keyword, estimated search volume, estimated CPC, the position last seen of an ad and it’s average position, total days seen/days checked. You can also see the ad url and destination url of the ad in addition to other keywords being bid on for that particular ad, as well as an estimated ROI.
* PPC Keywords – showing individual keywords, ROI, search volume, CPC, total profitable ads, affiliate ads on that keyword, days seen, last/first seen
* Organic Keywords – showing individual keywords, position in the SERPS, total search results, estimated CPC, and the URL
* Competitors in PPC and Organic results.
* Sub-domains
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Posted on March 20th, 2010 by Randy
Believing these lies could be hazardous to your business.
As the pace of change quickens and business planning becomes more vital, untruths and mythology about the subject keep coming up. I’d like to clear them up.
Myth No. 1: Investors don’t read business plans.
Experts who should know better claim investors don’t actually read business plans. Some investors say they don’t. A quick straw poll of the group of angel investors with the Willamette Angel Conference (for which I am investment chair) revealed that most of us do indeed read the plans.
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