by Aaron | Feb 9, 2006 | General
I see it again and again with businesses not taking ownership of their web presence. They are leaving money on the table in the bucket loads.
If you don’t take control then no one else will.
Just talking with people that I come into contact with about their sites, it’s truly amazing to here what they have to say.
Some don’t even know how much their website is costing them in actual dollars per year to run, domain fees, hosting fees, useless editing fees from consulting firms that they pay and no edits ever take place. This astounds me, when they are small businesses that are usually solo operators.
When I talk with them just in general conversation (no sales pitching going on at all) about enhancing their website to generate more business for them, I’m met with blank stares. You can give people all the information in the world, but if they aren’t ready to take it on board, it’s a useless battle.
Does anyone else have this problem? Getting a point of passion across to someone that just isn’t as passionate about it as you are.
That reminds of what a founding hosting customer of mine once said to me. “You care more about my website than I do”. I remember laughing at the time, because it was so very true.
Aaron
by Aaron | Feb 9, 2006 | Web Hosting
Domain sniping (aka fleecing, aka duping) is rampant.
I own several domains, more than I can count on my 2 hands, and yet again another year rolls around and I keep getting these Domain Name Expiration Notices from a company (Domain Registry of America) that has absolutely nothing to do with the company that I get my domain names from.
It’s a very smartly marketed letter sent direct mail and to the uninitiated it looks like a bill that needs to be paid, and I bet many people just pay it like a bill, without understanding what it all means.
The worst part is that their fees are $25 US or $38 AUD for a .com for 1 year. But what is even worse than that is that I know people that have .com domains where they paid and continue to pay $90 AUD for them per year. So to them this appears as a real bargain and they of course jump at the opportunity.
With the likes of godaddy and registerfly, and many others now flogging domains for $6 US, and spending money hand over fist advertising it like crazy on all mediums, you’d wonder why anyone would pay these sly marketers.
There is a lesson here people, that it doesn’t matter what you charge, it’s how you approach the sale. These offline direct marketing techniques for online businesses should be embraced.
I disagree with this particular mail out since it takes advantage of those that don’t know any better, but there is very much a place for offline marketing in online business.
To date my marketing efforts have been exclusively online, but with my current Website Renovation Contest underway, I’m stepping up my offline marketing. Starting with the free publicity generated from the contest.
Aaron
by Aaron | Feb 8, 2006 | Web Development
I’d like to quickly mention that I personally use WordPress and b2evolution for my blogging needs.
In fact I’ll be moving away from b2evolution on my other sites and into WordPress, since I find the SPAM filters in WordPress to be far superior. Blog SPAM is as much of an issue as it is for normal email. So any software that handles it better will put you ahead from the start.
Customising WordPress is straightforward and simple, and the admin area is very easy to use. I can see why after installing and customising a couple of WordPress blogs it has grown so fast among the blogging community.
We have several blogs in our installable scripts area that you can install and try out.
b2
b2evolution
myBloggie
bMachine
Nucleus
pLog
pMachine
Serendipity
WordPress
Aaron
by Aaron | Feb 7, 2006 | General
I need to have a party now. The Web Smart Central Business Blog (or Aaron’s Business Blog) is finally here. The title is not set in stone yet.
I’ve ummed and ahhed about putting the blog live since November 2005, for several reasons.
The main reason is that blogs are personal by their very nature and you can’t escape that, and I had reservations with the fine line between keeping it business and not getting to personal.
We’ll over the last few months my thinking has slowly changed, and over the last 2 weeks, I’ve done a complete backflip on business blogs and for a business throughly recommend them, and I’ll go into why I think so.
I’ve stumbled across (isn’t that always the best way to find something) a great site through another great site. Flying Solo by Robert Gerrish is a site dedicated to the Solo Entrepreneur, which I frequent regularly, and that led me to Entrepreneurs Journey by Yaro Starak dedicated also to you guessed it Entrepreneur content.
I’ve also had the pleasure of following Ed Dale a very successfull internet marketer from Underachieving Mastery for a long time.
Yaro Starak just did a blog post and Ed Dale has just done a blog for a large multinational IPO and has espoused the virtue of blogs for ages, which has combined convinced me that blogging for any business is a good thing.
Let’s face my facts. I own and operate a small business. My target market is other small businesses that are looking to or already have an internet presence.
Why hide it? as many internet businesses do. They think just because the internet is anonymous they can get away without putting contact details and not disclosing who’s involved with the business.
We are in business with each other. People do business and want to do business with people, not faceless websites.
Offering a blog that is business based but also my own is a fantastic way to build rapport with my online family. Both existing and those still deciding.
I’m not alone in my business, I do have helpers that also now how to operate the business, but I do run the show and as such can stand up and say that I am proud to own and operate a small business that I truely get enjoyment out of. Sure it has it moments but what in life doesn’t.
Aaron
by Aaron | Nov 23, 2005 | Web Development
I have just noticed not 1/2 hour ago, that for the last 5 months or so months (I don’t really know how long) our main logo was displaying badly in Internet Explorer.
PNG format with alpha transparency in IE5.5 and up, was rendering with a light blue background. I can’t believe it.
I was positive that I checked IE before going live but it was so long ago that I’ve now forgotten. And no one mentioned it to me.
Talk about egg-on-face.
You always say it can’t happen to you until it does.
There are several fixes for this out there here’s one of them.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/
Oh by the way, I didn’t bother with any fixes, I just changed from PNG to GIF because I could with a standard white background on our pages.
Aaron
