Marketing World Online

My G+ Experience

2011-09-28T10:47:00.001-04:00

I spent about a month working with Google Plus. More like three weeks really. The first couple weeks, didn't do much except observe. During that time I added about seventy people who seemed smart, knowledgeable, or otherwise talented in photography, tech, or social networking and followed their streams. As people added me to their circles, for the most part, I added them back. I also created a noteworthy number of social circles so I could kind of keep track of various G+ conversation streams, and made a few comments in some of the more interesting discussions.

The G+ user interface is uncluttered, and most of the controls are intuitive to use. The exception for this, of course, is the most important part, the account controls. I uploaded a profile picture... for those of you that actually haven't ever used a social network before, the profile picture is the first picture of you that visitors will see when they look up your profile. This should be a good picture.

The first profile picture I uploaded, didn't look very good. Neither did the second. The third ended up being just ok. I made a mental note to schedule a visit with a portrait photographer, and then tried in vain to delete the two poorer examples that I had uploaded. There were no readily apparent tools to delete photos. Not in the photos section either. It's not like I upload bad photos either, G+ automatically resized the profile photos using some mysterious (broken) algorithm resulting in some surprising results for profile images I use (and that look good) on other web fora.

The third week was the most interesting. Circle sharing was formally introduced. In this, experienced users could (if they wanted) share their circle of contacts (Who might have not desired to suddenly meet other new G+users) using a point and drag interface in the web browser. I was able to add a couple of 250 person circles (One in photography, and one composed of Non-Profit Organization G+ members). Later on I added an additional photography circle, as well as some individuals using the G+ search tools.

After this I began having problems adding other G+ member circles, and in moving members from these larger general purpose circles into smaller more well defined social circles. As it turns out, this is because of the database API.

Whenever one moves a member, adds a member, or deletes a member in a circle, this updated information is sent to the G+ cloud database. Some G+ users are being limited (or throttled if you will)... in the number of hourly or daily reads and writes they can make to the cloud database. While some G+ users are having 4,000 to 10,000 contacts added every day and they are able to arrange their circles any way they like, I was unable to change even one contact in one circle.

It didn't matter what browser I was using. I tried Opera, IE Explorer, and even Chrome. Using Chrome, I even tried to send a trouble report to Google. It crashed the first time I wrote the trouble report , just more lost time... time I don't have to lose. My second trouble report was brief and included my resignation from G+.

I like the idea of an extended social network. I'd like to be a part of such a network to help make a better world. It needs to be a network that is hassle free, where the features work as advertised, ...and not just for some of the network members.

Putting your business into the Fast Lane!

2011-09-15T10:05:00.000-04:00

Good Business is all about solving problems that other people have. The quicker you can contact people and identify their problems, and then offer a solution, the quicker you'll end up getting paid! Here's some notes for doing exactly this by writing quick short articles for your blog or website:

Quick Effective Articles for Bringing New Business In!

What unusual obsessions do you have? If you had to teach two things related to your obsession (three minutes each), what would they be?

Create Two Article Titles: "How to..." "...101"

Create two New Article titles: "How... can help you..."

Create an Article about the Future: 250-750 Words or <5 Minute video (Make for friends, share with friends)

Create two more titles for "The Difference between A & B..." (products, services, goods)

Create an article on "How somebody gets something done..."

On E-Mail

Irresistable E-mail subject lines are useful, ultra-specific, unique, & urgent.

Identify yourself.

Shorter is better.

I have a prize for the first commenter that can identify where most of these ideas were originally published!

Raising Money for your latest Project

2011-09-15T09:47:00.000-04:00

Originally Published May 14th, 2010

Note: Since this article was originally published Kickstarter has made it even easier to get funding by allowing anyone to post a project for consideration. Turns out letting the buyers decide for themselves what constitutes a good investment is just good business!

Kickstarter

There are times when you may need to raise some short term capital for your business. Maybe for a new CD or video release, maybe to complete a product launch or to acquire some new tech. Maybe you need to expand your office and add a decorative alcove or a couple new workstations, or maybe you want to publish a book. If you happen to need one to twenty-five thousand dollars (and possibly a bit more) It would be well worth your while to look into:

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Kickstarter is a funding platform designed to help you fund and complete a single well-conceived project. The way it works is this: Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering smart, fun, and tangible rewards (like products, benefits, and experiences). This is ALL-OR-NOTHING FUNDING!

Every Kickstarter project must be fully funded before its time expires or no money changes hands. Kickstarter projects are efforts by real people to do something they love, something fun, or at least something of note. These stories unfold through blog posts, pics, and videos as people bring their ideas to life. Take a peek around the site to see what they're talking about. If you want to start a project here, note you must be willing to Blog about it, for the benefit of other creative people there.

Note also, that this is not about investing, Project Creators keep 100% ownership of their project.

Note also, that this is an invite only process. It's a great idea, and even if you don't get an invite, there's no reason not to implement your own version of this, on your own website. I'm going to add this to my 2010 Resolutions to-do list!

Twitter

I actually joined Twitter about fifteen months or so ago. The first run was a total crash and burn as I quickly gathered a hundred or so followers, followed about two hundred Twitterers (is this actually a word?), that is to say Twitter followers (Tweeters maybe?) and was then also quickly overwhelmed by spam, pretty much of the worst sort. I ended up unfollowing everyone and withdrawing from the Twitterverse for about six months or so, and spent some time thinking about other more important things as I couldn't figure out how it could actually be used for business ... you know...to improve my income... The bottom line. Twitter came back to me though.

And I finally figured out how it would fit for my business, how it could improve my business, and other people's business as well.

In the traditional business world as you are rising up the corporate ladder you cultivate mentors and gatekeepers. People with connections. People who were willing to refer you to other business people, and who would refer other business people to you. Twitter is great for this, and so takes a place in my business portfolio as a valuable resource, for me, for my clients, and customers, and for my Twitter followers.

Here's how I'm using it, along with a few words on twitter etiquette.

I'm gathering my mentoring group. It's a wide diverse range of Tweeters that include writers, bloggers, comedians, artists, actors, musicians, bands, business leaders, entrepreneurs, attorneys, real estate investors, home buyers, home sellers, politicians, information technology specialists, multimedia specialists, a few resellers, some wholesalers, motivational speakers, advertisers, open source software advocates, socialites, media personalities (just a few), advertisers, travel agents, web designers, graphic artists, small business owners, physical, mental, and spiritual health advisors, photographers, game designers, motivational speakers, social media advisors, news reporters (especially business news reporters from around the globe), wholesale discounters, and of course, a few fine purveyors and bloggers of fine coffee and food.

Right now, I have about four hundred and fifty followers and follow just about five hundred other tweeters. I'll stop actively recruiting followers when I get to a thousand or so. While this is happening, I'll be doing features on my website and in my community about my Twitter followers and their businesses, and I'll be answering requests for help or otherwise meeting with other tweeters as they request, to help them with their business. I'll be selecting a few to work with as partners, and I'll be purchasing goods and services from a few as well.

They say that many hands make light work. Let's see how this works out over the long run.

On Twitter Etiquette

Generally I'll follow you back, if you follow me. There are a few exceptions though.

Spammers

Number one on my unfollow list is spammers. If it takes more than one tweet to get your message out, I'm ok with that. If you tweet ten or fifteen tweets in the span of a just a couple minutes a day I'm ok on that as well, as I understand your time is valuable and you may only allocate a few minutes a day for the twitter part of your business. If you are tweeting something every twelve minutes, you are not going to find a place here.

At over a hundred tweets a day, you are just spamming. Not only that, you are wasting my time sorting through all that spam to connect with the real twitters that care about their businesses and their customers who tweet exceptionally valuable information, but only once or twice a day. You are not allowed to drowned them out with your noisy self!

Sorry... just not going to do a follow on this, no matter how much you want me to. There are a few exceptions of course, a couple of news sites, stock trading, foreign exchange trading and such. There's no hard and fast rule, however if you are tweeting anything more than once an hour, I'm looking at, and leaning towards, the unfollow button.

Sex Tweets

Another way to get unfollowed real fast, and even blocked, is to tweet about sexual favors and/or services. I'm married and unavailable as a partner, toy, plaything, casual fling, or paying client. It's unfortunate the twitter API doesn't have any easily accessible IP address detection features to determine the IP address of tweets, because it's the same few businesses that follow my Twitter account in order to spam me with unwanted and unneeded sexually oriented offers.

Retweets

Retweets are the most powerful tool in the twitter tool collection for rapidly releasing news, new information, and recommending messages from other Tweeters. A dedicated group of Tweeters can really make an Impact with a news, timely information update, or new product release, and I'm all for that!

It's also unfortunately the most abused twitter tool with folks repeatedly retweeting simply stupid messages or recommendations, or retweeting headline news. If I want a flock of Parrots, I'll buy them. Twitter recently added a button that allows you to choose which followers you will receive retweets from. Thanks for that! I'd prefer keeping that button, however with the default set so that retweets are automatically not broadcast in my timeline unless I specifically choose to add the retweets of a specific tweeter.

More Opportunities for Startups!

2011-09-15T09:35:00.001-04:00

originally published August 8th, 2009

Pitch TV
An opportunity to get exposure for your new business!

As part of the 25th anniversary celebration of Virgin Atlantic and Sir Richard Branson is inviting entrepreneurs in search of investment and exposure for their business ideas to upload short video pitches.

The community at Virgin will vote for their favorite video pitches and each month, the winning videos will feature as part of Virgin Atlantic's PitchTV show which will air on their inflight entertainment system as well as on the virgin.com website thus gaining exposure to the hundreds of business professionals who regularly fly Virgin Atlantic or visit Virgin.com. Anyone interested in hearing more about the most popular entrepreneurs' business ideas will then be able to get in contact and maybe help take their ideas further.

You can find out more here:
Richard Branson's Blog

Andreesen Horowitz
Aimed purely at investing in the best new entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the technology industry. This new firm with it's three hundred million dollar venture capital fund is planning on aggressively funding brand new startups with seed-stage investments that will often be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They we will also invest in venture stage and late stage rounds of high-growth companies.
Find out more here:
Andreesen Horowitz

Growing the Economy

2011-09-15T09:23:00.005-04:00

Originally Published August 4th, 2009

I recently came across a thought provoking article I'd like to share with you by Herman Daly. He is an authority on economic models and speaks of the world economy as shifting from a growth economy to a steady-state economy. The article discusses some of the implications of this, and what this means for business, and business growth around the world.

http://www.eoearth.org/article/From_a_Failed_Growth_Economy_to_a_Steady-State_Economy

While reading this article it dawned on me, the nature of the new economy he was describing is very similar to the economy of ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians leaped ahead of other nation-states in their region first and foremost by developing and refining their agricultural practices and technology.

The fertile Nile Delta provided sustenance for all of their peoples, and as their skill and know-how grew, they were able to export grain and other crops, eventually becoming well known as the breadbasket of the Mediterranean. They had the funds from this effort to support larger than normal armies to defend their country, and engaged in trade with other nation-states. This was the power that sustained the Pharaohs for three millennia. Eventually though, that growth diminished and eventually ceased . They were limited by the prevailing technology in use at that time to distribute water across the desert and irrigate new fields, and by the availability of arable land that could sustain the growth of these crops.

Eventually they started a growth economy again, only after they had been absorbed by the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine empire and became a part of a larger economic network. Never did their economic growth attain the same levels as during the early days.

What would have happened economically in their country, if, instead of building Pyramids and other monuments they had devoted those resources to cultivating newly identified arable lands and in building an irrigation network to extend their reach beyond the Nile valley?

Finally, what if those resources had been focused instead on developing new crop production and crop yield technologies?

Spring is here at last!

2011-09-15T09:15:00.000-04:00

Originally Published April 3rd, 2009

Back in November we published an article here on leadership titled Thinking like a Winner! It featured Warren Buffet and his purchase of Goldman Sachs stock and options. While I can't say for certain, looking back now, It would appear to me that his timely intervention on behalf of Goldman Sachs saved that institution from the fate of Merrill Lynch. His action also temporarily paused the domino-like cascade of failures that large American financial institutions were experiencing, and further demonstrated to the federal government that immediate intervention was necessary on a stepped-up scale to prevent the collapse of the entire financial sector of business. To this I say again, well done! and more... Thank You!

Yesterday, Goldman Sachs stock opened at $115.21

Why is this important? Two reasons;

First, if you had followed Warren Buffets example and purchased Goldman Sachs stock at any time between then and now, even without obtaining the generous compensation Mr. Buffet received for his initial investment, you would be earning a hefty profit, especially if you had purchased GS right before Christmas when it was hovering at $50 a share. Right now, today... that represents an approximate 230% return on your investment in five months! All for just buying stock at Christmas time and holding onto it for awhile in a sign of support for the besieged American economy... I'm just saying.

Second... his sales agreement also included an option to purchase additional GS shares at $115 a share. He expected Goldman Sachs to exceed that, and wanted to lock in an option to buy additional GS stock at one-one five.

You have this option right now as well as GS opens this morning at $114.22

Over the next ninety days, I expect GS will climb to somewhere in the range of $132-$150 and then stabilize as it waits for the rest of the American economy to catch up and begin the 2009 recovery in earnest. I'm seeing news reports that Goldman Sachs is both ready and willing to repay the TARP loan it received last November and has not done so only on account it's waiting for approval on that move from the federal regulators that have also taken a stake in GS. Look for some more positive movement in the price around or immediately after the 15^th when they have their conference call to announce their 1^st quarter results.

In related news, Goldman Sachs Banker Bryan Trott will be leaving to startup his own merchant banking firm, BDT Capital Partners. According to the Wall Street Journal, BDT Capital Partners will focus on investing in family-controlled and entrepreneurial companies, and advising them. With a two billion dollar initial investment fund, this is a big win for the small and medium-sized business sector and represents a significant shift in leadership towards building new companies and supporting privately held companies within the United States.

Reference:

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/03/30/byron-trott-to-leave-goldman-sachs-warren-buffett-signs-on/

On Google

Google has taken plenty of heat recently, with numerous articles showing up on how Google stock prices are currently overvalued, and how it should continue to move down in the near future. This is an overblown affair with plenty of hype from parties that have plenty to gain, but only at the expense of Google. Google has demonstrated great leadership throughout the financial crisis of 2008-2009 by delivering timely news and commentary. In addition, they are doing their part and have also committed significant resources to kick starting the economy with the $100 Million Dollar (This year alone!) Google Ventures Fund which opened for business last Monday, a fund that will support innovation and encourage new technology and business development in the consumer internet, software, hardware, clean tech, biotech and industries.

They are currently taking applications from anyone here, so if you have a good idea, or need to expand your business, simply want an experienced partner, or to have your expansion underwritten, or even simply funded, you should contact them. It doesn't get any easier than that. Never has there been a better time to start a new company!

Google Ventures

http://www.google.com/ventures/

Seven Steps to Putting Your Business Online!

2011-09-15T09:07:00.001-04:00

Originally Published January 13th, 2009

Putting your business on the internet is a good way to increase your sales and your exposure. If you are in a small community like me with few customers around, or if you simply want to grow your business, automating the ordering, shipping, and delivery processes of your business can streamline your operation, lower your operating costs. This allows you to focus on delivering the best quality of goods and services, and allows you to concentrate on making more sales in the same amount of time. You also many have more potential customers online, and if you do it right, these customers will seek you out and find you, and order! Every day something like twice the entire population of New York City buys something on the Internet. There's every reason you should have your products or services available for them to buy!

Products & Services

First you need products or services. It's possible to start with as little as one product or service, however it is helpful if you have a tier of products or services so that buyers have a few choices available to them to fit their budget. In addition, offering choices turns a yes/no option into a this or that option leaving the door open to closing a sale. So pick a few products or services that you have to offer, and organize them into a few tiers. If you don't have any products or services you can arrange to buy some wholesale of course, and then resell them.

Using a 3^rd party Website Vs. setting up your own Website

There are plenty of 3^rd party websites out there where you can already sell your products and services. Amazon and E-Bay immediately come to mind for most anyone who has shopped online. These sites make buying new and used merchandise easy, and if you happen to have merchandise or products it's simply a matter of registering, providing a credit card so you can pay any necessary charges and fees, uploading images, entering pricing and product descriptions, and setting up your preferred shipping options. For selling products this is ideal, They have already worked out the optimum sales geography, and an advantage these services confer is that it's a very quick way to get started earning money almost immediately, often you can start making sales the same day you start selling.

You can also setup your own commercial website. There's a bit more work involved, however

this confers some additional benefits which I'll describe here. When you setup your own commercial website there are two main ways, You can completely setup your own site or you can signup for a hosting service where you park your site online at a server farm.

Your Own Commercial Website

You need to have adequate servers running and telecommunications services in place to handle all the customer requests that you could possibly receive. Underestimate the number of visitors, or the bandwidth requirements for communications and you'll find that customers are only able to access your website slowly, or not at all. You are totally responsible for keeping your website up and running. The key advantage here is related to scale, If you plan on doing an extremely large volume of business like say thousands of sales per hour, then it is probably worthwhile to setup your own commercial website. Your initial cost is highest with this, your long-term costs are lowest. Most people however choose to setup

Your Own Hosted Commercial Website

With this, you install some software on a commercial server farm, it could be a blog, or a content management system, or a shopping cart. Generally you are responsible for keeping your website running, Your website hosting service is responsible for keeping a connection to the rest of the Internet, and for making carbon copies of your website on different servers in the server farm so that all of your website visitors get to view your website pages quickly and efficiently. They automatically scale the service to accommodate the demand for your products and services. Hosted commercial websites are the middle-of-the-road approach, in terms of cost and this allows you to pay-as-you-go. If your website experiences some rapid growth, you only pay for the additional extra bandwidth used, and you should have some additional sales from the additional traffic to pay for the extra resources used in this manner. This is my personal preferred method for setting up commercial websites because it also allows for total content control. This is very important if you are trying to establish your own unique brand or market share. Also, you have control over all of the advertising served up to visitors, also providing an additional source of income for you, by the way for your website. 3^rd Party websites generally put up their own advertising which often competes with your advertising, and slows your growth just a bit.

Credit Card Processing
A must, for your business to be profitable. You must be able to accept credit cards online if you are serious about growing your Internet business. Generally 3^rd party websites automatically process credit cards on your behalf, they also charge the most for these services. With your own website you can contract a discounted rate for credit card processing from a variety of credit card processing vendors, and keep your operating costs down.

Advertising

With 3^rd party websites, they generally take care of all the advertising for you. This saves you time to focus on products, and in delivering services. With your own website or hosted website, you setup your own advertising allowing you to present your brands or lines exactly how you intend. You can also charge other businesses and place ads for them on your website earning additional revenue for your business. Blogs represent a great way to do business this way, and I know of several people that earn six figure incomes, by writing regular articles in blogs and in selling the advertising space on the article pages. One blog author successfully sold his blog for fifteen million dollars U.S. In 2008. You can be successful with this business model too. You also become an expert on whatever you are blogging on, which can lead to speaking engagements, and additional product endorsement opportunities. All good!

Getting Traffic

There are many paths to getting traffic for your website. The single best way is to have a large amount of traffic or visitors to your website. 3^rd party websites feature a steady flow of traffic browsing through pages looking for good opportunities to buy and your page is featured there. If you have a unique product or service, you'll automatically receive a steady flow of traffic.

If you have your own website, You'll want to concentrate on SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This is the art of making your web pages easy to search using the search engines. The easier your pages are to find, the more people will find them, the more traffic you will have, and more people will buy your products or services. Keywords are good, however content is king for SEO as many Search Engines automatically index an article now and rank it based on existing traffic patterns, and keywords chosen by the search engine companies. Having well written, authoritative articles and features will noticeably boost your traffic (and sales) over time.

In addition, you can also receive a quick traffic boost by advertising on 3^rd party social sites such as Facebook, basically anywhere you are permitted to putting a few good words in to promote your product or service. Other people seeing your ad, and liking your products and service, and telling their friends about it, create a network that drives traffic to your website, and of course drives sales up. Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Second Life, Wikipedia, Slideshare, StumbledUpon, Digg, DaftDoggy, NetVibes, and Del.icio.us are other examples of this social media where a few good words about your latest product or service release can bring some additional traffic and sales to your website. If your product or service is exceptionally good, other social media users will refer your website creating a chain reaction of referrals and creating a traffic and sales spike. This is known as Web 2.0

Closing the Sale

3^rd Party websites automatically do this for you. They make it easy to buy, and will notify you of any sales. All good if you have a high sales volume, or low maintenance products or services that require minimal effort to ship or deliver. While it takes some more work in designing sales closing pages, Having your own website, allows you an opportunity to experiment and find the best methods for closing sales under different circumstances or conditions. It also allows you to tailor or customize your offers depending on the preferences of your buyers, and allows you some flexibility in the timing of delivering a closing sales pitch to your prospective customers. Finally having your own website allows you to continue to deliver upgrades or additional services or additional offers after the initial sale is made. Very important in establishing long-term business relationships.

Growing Your Business

Have a plan of growth and succession. Do you want to sell your website for a profit after you finish building it and move on to something else? Do you want to build a network of agents or affiliates that receive a share of the proceeds to help you continue to sell products and services?

Do you want to gather a group of experts in a specific category or field of business? Decide now, and streamline the design of your website from the start so that you can achieve your goal in the fastest amount of time with the least effort.

Good Luck! And let me know if we can help with this!

Thinking Like A Winner!

2011-09-15T08:59:00.001-04:00

originally published November 3rd, 2008

Two words here. Warren Buffet. While the stock markets have tumbled with companies losing anywhere from 10% to almost 40% of their value over the last eight weeks, with with financial advisors and brokers offering stock, securities, and bonds in record numbers, Warren Buffet has quietly been buying American stock and making key investments in companies where he believes he'll make the most money in something he can understand.

The three companies he invested heavily in:

General Electric Company
Dow Chemical Company
Goldman Sachs Group

He started with Goldman Sachs, and probably single-handedly saved that financial institution from considerable difficulty, as doubtless they too had invested in the mortgage debt financing that wrecked other financial giants and unbalanced confidence in the entire financial/banking sector. Now he received a better deal than the average investor, and will earn better returns, however his investments were made in a scale so vast, that currently, only the Federal government is matching that to stabilize other business giants. If you do happen to have any money to invest, these three companies have received a cash infusion, with the exception of Goldman, are not subject to the same sort of supervision as companies that are borrow from the Fed as part of the bailout, and are in stronger positions in their respective markets, thanks to Mr. Buffet. That's a vote for confidence for American companies by the way, and Mr. Buffet is voting with his pocketbook.

Three things he looks at with companies he buys:

1. How the business generates cash
2. How well managed it is
3. Whether it's customers will stay loyal if the company raises prices on goods and services

If you are a building a company, and want a strong company, these are three things will give the company a strong foundation.

How do you generate cash? Will that remain stable in the face of an economic slowdown? Will it grow stronger faster, or grow stronger sooner, with a minor economic upturn?

How well managed is your company? Are your managers dedicated? Do they delegate too much? Do they have too many partners?

Mr. Buffet likes private companies that carries a long-term debt of less than one times current net earnings. Mr. Buffet also likes companies that have a monopoly on their product or service. So what does Goldman Sachs have that other financial institutions don't?

Good Management. When they did realize the financial markets were accelerating out of control, Goldman Sachs likely contacted Mr. Buffet and requested private help.

On September 24th Mr Buffet through Berkshire Hathaway provided Goldman Sachs with five Billion US Dollars in exchange for Goldman Sachs common stock that was trading for $124 a share at the time. In addition he received warrants good for the purchase of five Billion Dollars of additional Goldman Sachs stock at $115 a share at any time over the next five years, and finally Mr. Buffet will receive a 10% dividend on his shares.

On the 14th of October, Goldman Sachs was charted as a bank holding company.
On the 23rd of October Goldman Sachs announced it would cut 10% of it's workforce and will cut 3,250 jobs
On the 29th of October Goldman Sachs received 10 Billion Dollars in Federal loans in the first round of of the bank bailouts.

Last May, Goldman listed 13.5 Billion Dollars total in Variable Interest Entities... with 6.5 Billion Dollars listed for real estate and another 7 Billion Dollars for corporate investments, and 3.4 Billion Dollars of this total specifically in residential mortgages. Goldman Sachs received 15 Billion Dollars in cash provided by the recent support of the Fed, and Mr. Buffet over the last six weeks.

Goldman Sachs is healthy, it can meet all of its customer obligations, and now has the ability to buy other U.S. Banks as well. Currently Goldman Sachs is trading at 92.50 a share

Even if it were somehow forced to write off it's entire portfolio of questionable real estate derivatives and other securities (which is unlikely considering the price support efforts by the Fed), they would still earn enough with their other business to pay back the federal bailout loan and earn additional interest on that loan with the investments they make in the intervening time. Right now, they have nowhere to go except up.

Here's the lesson. Build your own company with a strong foundation. Don't get into debt. Find and adapt or create a unique product or service. Make sure your competitors have considerable difficulty in duplicating that product or service. Treat people right, and you'll be good to go. Over the years Goldman Sachs has steered a number of investments to Mr. Buffet's company, Berkshire-Hathaway. When they hit the skids and made that phone call, Mr. Buffet returned these favors and provided them with support at a critical time when their fate hung in the balance. Now that's thinking like a Winner!

If more American leaders had done this, on the whole, we would be in much better shape now.

reference:
http://www.stockbrokerfraudblog.com/brokerage_firms/goldman_sachs_1/

Three Ways to make your Commercial Website Valuable!

2011-09-15T08:50:00.000-04:00

originally published December 26th, 2008

1. Unique Content

Content is king, when it comes to your website. What you have on your website is more important than anything else when it comes to building your Internet business. Here's why, In the Internet community people don't often have the chance to meet you in person, so they can only go by what they see and experience when they visit your pages.

Having news, information, tutorials, examples, testimonials, and illustrations will automatically add value in the eyes of your potential customers, especially if this is unique and generally unavailable anywhere else. Concentrate on providing information that is not easily available anywhere else. Doing this will do more for building your Internet business than just about anything else.

Hand-in-hand with this is website navigation design. The content should be easily accessible, with just a few mouse-clicks to get to the good parts, and there should be opportunities for your visitors to buy your products and services, to provide feedback, or otherwise contribute if they want to. Your job is to make it easy for them to do this.

2. Showcase

Your website should be a showcase of your products and services. Include illustrations or images whenever possible, along with simple and clear descriptions of what you have to offer. To successfully sell your products or services, you have to find out what in your products are services are important to your prospects that will make them most likely to buy that product or service.

Your product or service should have an image of quality, that is, characteristics that convey long-term value, comfort, and that is also easy to use. Need an example here? What do you think of when you hear the word Disney? Pixar? Nascar? The NFL? When people think about your product, they should have the same warm fuzzy feeling, as when they think of the things I mentioned.

"Discounts and sales do not equate to quality and are generally signs of products and services that are distressed or otherwise inferior."

Generally sales only attract a small portion of customers and are often not worth the expense or trouble in what they return. See, your price customers are fickle, and will abandon you just as soon as a better deal comes along. Do you really want that? You are much better off providing high quality products and services and spending to maintain the quality of your goods or services.

3. Community

The most successful sales people will be the first to tell you that they attribute their success to all the help they have received over the years. In fact, look behind the successful sales person, and you will see an entire community of other people supporting these sales people. So too, with your business. If it is to be successful, you need a community of supporters, fans, and happy customers. They will do more than you ever can to promoting and selling your products and services. This can happen much faster than you think, too. I setup my first commercial web page in 2001. By 2002 I had over one hundred happy customers and clients, Also, I had built up a mailing list of over 1,400 people interested in my products. Could you use an extra hundred customers about now? If I can do it. You can do it too!

What's in it for them!

2008-10-02T11:29:00.002-04:00

Tell them what's in it for them!

Now you have a service or product. Your pages are online. People can order from you direct using a credit card, and you've managed to also include information on how your mail order works, or contact information for services. The basics are all in place!

List an immediate feature of your product or service and describe the benefit it provides them! Include with that an opportunity for them to take immediate action either by placing an order, and by providing feedback, either with a poll, or with a comment form.

You want to foster participation and engagement! Tell them about your public events, sign them up to participate, detail what additional features and benefits your event will cover!

Let them know a little bit more about your company. What your long term goals and vision are.

Maintain consistency in what you offer, and consistently and positively react to the feedback that is being provided to you! Each time to you respond to feedback, remember to include your offer of goods or services.

Once you have delivered the goods or services, followup with an inquiry about how this met their needs, and ask how you can do better for them.

That's all you need to do to build your successful business.

Online Shopping, Anyone?

2008-09-02T08:45:00.000-04:00

So I wanted a shopping cart for my new website. Not just any shopping cart would do though.

I wanted to retain the aesthetic style of my website, and for sure, didn't want the shopping cart to look like so many of those shopping websites these days that throw up a whole page of products with prices, and overly succinct descriptions, and garish colors, and what not. Frankly the whole shopping cart Industry reminds me of the early days of the internet when the big deal was all about what kind of BBS software you could put up with as many features as possible to attract the largest user base. Scaleability was everything, and it still is, apparently. Never mind the fact that not everyone is going to be interested in your website, or mine for that matter, and that no matter what your customer conversion rate is, there will still be people that simply can't find your website, because they don't know how, or they simply don't care to find it. They only have so much time they can spend online shopping, anyway.

I sought for a cart that would not attempt to get the visitors e-mail addy with an annoying popup, and I quested for a cart that didn't have sidebars loaded with anonymous third party advertising. It's called click-through advertising, by-the-way, and it's the latest rage. It will last, but only in those tawdry websites that sell cheap knock-offs of famous designs. For one thing, each additional ad you display on your page, takes a little bit away from what your pages are trying to say. These ads mute the message you are attempting to convey!

So what if they provide you a few pennies of revenue, for each person that clicks through? If you have a thousand people visit your website and twenty-five people click-through to another website, and you get five cents for each click through, you get $1.25

Increase your click-through rate by 25% with some more clutter and you'll earn $1.55

Put up a hundred websites like this, and you'll earn $155 a day. There's folks that swear by this, and doubtless are lolling around now on a beach somewhere in the tropics, with a little drink and an umbrella, laughing all the way to the bank. Wouldn't it be better to earn $155.00 instead, selling a few of your products, or an hour or two of your services? Without all that clutter and noise? I thought so.

I couldn't find a shopping cart, so I ended up building one. It works too. It's not very fancy, yet, but it's functional, and best of all, my webpages look clean, and uncluttered. The initial outlay for the infrastructure costs a bit more than buying a commercial shopping cart, and it's going to take considerable time to fully integrate the application programming interface (the API), to add all the desired features. It will payback in the long run, as the credit card processing fees are some of the lowest available.

There are 26 new passwords, and half that many user id's that were setup to create this website, and it took a couple of weeks of time. However the website with the shopping carts is as secure as the best on the web, with full SSL encryption to protect credit card transactions, no storage of credit card numbers and personal information on the website.

For those of you that don't know, SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. That's Geekspeak. What it means in plain english is that the messages and transactions on the website are both scrambled and encoded, to prevent eavesdropping, message and transaction forgeries, and tampering from any third parties.

Best of all, the webpages are uncluttered, and background security is transparent!

Website Hosting

2008-08-14T09:16:00.001-04:00

It's amazing, the technology these days. Simply amazing.

I spent quite a bit of time searching for a new webhost for my blog. Webhosting, for those of you that don't know, is a service that allows one to put up an entire website on the internet. It includes tools that allow you to update the website by sending files, information, data, documents, and images. Good webhosts provide tools that also allow you take things that you put up on the web down rapidly too... Not so much to revise history, as to provide new products and services, and to remove discontinued or out-of-date information.

Traditionally, webhosting was a difficult affair. You either needed to be a computer geek or you needed to hire one. While, I was a computer geek, and was content to put up my own webpages, the good news is the technology has advanced to the point where you don't have to.

I settled on Google. Google provides a full suite of tools, including this Blog as an example. They have plenty of other tools that allows one to setup and administer websites, even networks of websites. All the tools work together too. They mesh. Very Nice! Best of all, It gives me my time back. Time I can use to talk to prospective clients and focus on improving the quality of their business, their advertising, their sales, and their workflow.

I looked at two additional toolsets for building a website including Microsoft Office Live, and the Open Source Software Zope.

Zope is still good, and I would have probably used that as my first choice, As it is ridiculously easy to use, however finding an affordable Internet Service Provider for Zope these days is a real challenge.

As for Microsoft Office Live, They said I could setup a free website, at least initially, so I signed up. Then about a month later, an unexpected bill came in my e-mail for my Free website. So much for that.

Google on the other hand, also opened with an offer for free website hosting. They also added, "By the way, if you'd like to play with all our neat tools in our toolset, and you want a website that will scale and grow as your business grows, we offer these additional opportunities, for a reasonable annual sum. If you grow, we offer the opportunity to scale your website hosting costs in proportion to your growth."

That's a winning approach in my book. One I use for my clients and customers too. I'm looking forward to working with my new business partners!

Hi, and Welcome!

2008-08-12T11:02:00.000-04:00

My name is Dirk Collins, and I'm your host today. This blog is a celebration of building your business, and if I do my job right here, you'll learn a few useful things. Things that will improve your bottom line, and increase your profitability. Things that will help you make more business friends. Good business friends. Everyone says that time is money. Really, time is so much more! Everyone who is really doing something useful, or rewarding, needs more time, and more money for that matter. Here, you'll learn about strategies and techniques that will save you time. Big Time!

Over the last few years I have expended my time in sales, and in providing customer service. This was for a variety of business sectors including retail, direct marketing, business-to-business, entertainment, and yes, even for the government. Two things all these different sectors had in common, One... They were all looking to increase the number of clients or customers they have, and two, they all had a program designed to accomplish that goal. At least they said they did. The reality was a little bit different.

Only one of them had a written plan for their program outlining their long term goals, and techniques for achieving that. None of these business sectors provided any detail on advancement opportunities within the organization. When I inquired (and I did), They said, or they implied “Well, just get good at what you are doing, and we'll get back to you if we need someone”. Then the matter was simply dropped and forgotten.

One of the companies actually did begin developing a written plan for improving customer service, but they did that without consulting the customer service representatives. The plan was extremely detailed, simply issued as a directive, it was not allowed to be changed in any manner by the customer service representatives, and the requirements and standards varied for each representative that was part of the plan.

One of the companies said “We don't need a customer service and business development plan. Conditions and circumstances change too fast for us to implement any long-term plan”.

Another company said: “In your position. You don't need to worry about getting new customers.”

Another company said: “New business? New customers? You have them talk to me!”

As if I couldn't sign them up... Actually. I couldn't. There was no customer sign-up plan, no contract for me to provide them along with a telephone number, if they had any questions about the contract. Each customer was handled by the executives on a case-by-case basis. Why?

Which brings me to the best. The best customer service was provided by the government agency.

Really! Imagine that?

They also had a plan. The plan was pretty much directed by their annual budget, but at least they had a plan. They did get back to me on advancement opportunities as well, only after I had made some other commitments though, which kind of prevented me from taking them up on their offer.

Which brings me to you. Need a new plan? Need a better plan? Just need a few odds and ends to tack on to your plan so it will work better for you? Stay tuned then. In the meanwhile, you are welcome to explore the website here... There are resources available for you to put together your own advertising, some services, there's plenty of good help available as well, and there is a celebration in progress. A celebration for your business!