The Water Cooler

testing out flock

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:10:54 +0000

i'm trying out the built in blogging thing in flock. looks pretty cool

Blogged with Flock

Starin' at the World Through My Rearview - Business Advice from Tupac

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:54:06 +0000

Tupac was known for the deep meanings behind his lyrics. One of his most memorable songs is "Starin' at the World Through My Rearview."

The world, the world is behind us
Once a motherfucker get an understanding on the game
and what the levels and the rules of the game is
Then the world ain't no trick no more
The world is a game to be played
So now we lookin at the world, from like, behind us
Niggaz know what we gotta do, just gotta put our mind to it and do it

Most people focus on the now, not looking to the future. The secret to being successful is looking where you want to go and then figure out how to get there. In business, it's called "identifying your exit strategy." Tupac referred to it as "starin' through my rearview."

This applies to every facet of your life - both business and personal. When you buy some stock, you (should) identify your exit strategy. It might be to sell it when its value goes up 20%; it might be to hold it for 20 years, reinvesting dividends, so that when you retire you can have a steady stream of income from the dividends. When you start up a business, your exit strategy might be to flip it in a few years (common in the technology sector) or to leave it to your kids.

What's your exit strategy for your career? Personally I want to be financially free by 35. This means:

No debt (actually, no bad debt. Good debt such as a mortgage on a rental property is good if it generates income and isn't overly leveraged).
The ability to retire. I want to have enough passive income from investments to cover all my expenses. However, that doesn't mean I will retire at 35; if I'm doing things right I won't want to (enjoy what I do).
Living comfortably. I don't need to have a huge car, a bentley out front and a helicopter out back. But I do want to like where I am, both physically, financially, and emotionally.

Once you define your exit strategy, you'll know exactly what you need to do to get there. Life isn't an endless road with unexpected turns and without direction; it's a game to be played. To play it, you need to be starin' at the world through your rearview.

Learning Entrepreneurship in South Africa

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 22:22:17 +0000

All across South Africa - in every elementary and middle school - kids are crafting business plans, doing market research, balancing budgets, and hawking everything from hot dogs at 50 cents a pop to car washes for $7 each.

In a dramatic bid to tackle this country's persistent unemployment rate of at least 35 percent, entrepreneurship has become a key part of the evolving postapartheid curriculum. Students can't count on getting good jobs when they graduate, so they're being taught to create their own work - and help forge a kind of Apprentice Nation.

Why can't the American schools embrace an entrepreneurial spirit? Schools are just training students to be dependent employees when they are older, unable to escape "the rat race" and too scared to try. The few who ignore what they learn in school grow up to be successful business owners and rich.

With the global economy and abundant outsourcing, we can't depend on a job market to support all of the Americans. Imagine if we, like South Africa, could soon be a country of employers and not employees. Imagine a nation in which outsourcing is done because there aren't enough people to do the jobs, not as a means of improving financial statements.

We need to encourage students to be independent and make themselves wealthy, not their bosses. But an educational system based on entrepreneurship would require the student to want to learn, to desire to be successful. An educational system based on such a choice is the antithesis of our current system; it is Socratic. And we all know what happened to Socrates...he was accused of "corrupting the youth" and killed.

Want a Gmail Account? I got a few spare

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 20:46:20 +0000

For those who don't already know about Gmail (the limited few, its all over the Internet and newspapers) here's google's quick summary of it:

If you haven't already heard about Gmail, it's a new search-based webmail
service that offers:

- 1,000 megabytes (one gigabyte) of free storage
- Built-in Google search that instantly finds any message you want
- Automatic arrangement of messages and related replies into
"conversations"
- Text ads and related pages that are relevant to the content of your
messages

Gmail is still in an early stage of development. If you set up an
account, you'll be able to keep it even after we make Gmail more
widely available and as one of the system's early testers, you will
be helping us improve the service through your feedback. We might ask
for your comments and suggestions periodically and we appreciate your
help in making Gmail even better.

Thanks,

The Gmail Team

It's the best free email out there, and has prompted all the other major free ones to upgrade their accounts (but they still don't match googles). So for those who don't already have one, I have a few extra. Simply click the link to set one up. If the link doesn't work, that means someone has used it already (one acount per link). I'll update this everytime I get new invites so check back if you don't get one.

[9/26/04]
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Also be sure to check out kevinrose.com Tuesday September 7th Between 4:00-5:00PM PST because he is giving away 2000 gmail invites.

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I don't expect payment for them, but I would like if you would click a few of the google ads on the side of this blog (I get a few cents everytime someone clicks one). I also ask that you post some of your invites on here too (when you have an account, gmail gives you a few invites to give people sometimes). Think of it as giving back to the community :)

Intellectual Property and E-commerce: How to Take Care of Your Business’ Website

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 20:58:29 +0000

here's an article I found through a business blog. It is very interesting and I think everyone should read it.

"A company's website can be a great tool for promoting business online and for generating sales. However, as Web commerce increases, so does the risk that others may copy the look and feel of your website, some of its features or the content on your website. The risk also increases that you may be accused of unauthorized use of other people's intellectual assets. This article deals with some of the basic issues that you should be aware of before launching a website."

Covered are questions such as:

What elements of your website can be protected?
How to protect your website
Who owns the IP rights in your website?
If you pay a person to develop your website, who owns the copyright?
What topics should be included in a web development agreement?
Can you use material owned by others on your website?
What to keep in mind when creating, launching, maintaining or developing a website.

Software Wednesdays - Firefox

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 13:20:25 +0000

"I am using firefox 0.9 version for a couple of months and one thing I can tell you that this browser is very good and more customizable than Internet Explorer. The features include download manager, popup killer, tabbed browsing and easy transition from IE (all your favorite book marks and other settings remain intact). Just downloaded the latest 1.0 version from Mozilla, which have added features like RSS integration. Are you ready for a joyous ride on Firefox?"

Software Wednesdays - Watchcat

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 02:26:53 +0000

Watchcat is a little program I've had for a long time that's extremely useful. It allows you to hide programs in the background without having them clog up the taskbar.

I have a few programs that I always have running: iTunes, Mozilla Thunderbird (email), Feedreader...and it is annoying having them always in the taskbar taking up space. This little tool allows you to hide programs by clicking on its icon and selecting which to hide. you can also set hotkeys to hide all open programs, unhide all, hide desktop, turn on screensaver, and many other things.

Download it, install it, and try it out. You'll definately find it useful.

You don't buy a drill to get a drill, you buy it to get a hole

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:41:14 +0000

The most common question I hear from web developers is "How much should I charge for a website?" It is an understandable question, especially if you think of a website as a product. I've seen sites developed for free and others developed for $1,000,000+. So how can one figure out what is an appropriate price to charge for a website?

I've seen many different techniques. A few include charging by the page, charging by the hour, and quoting the solution relative to its expected results (an ecommerce site for a small mom-and-pop shop would be quoted much less than the exact same site for a Fortune 500 company, simply because it is worth more and will make more money for the latter). All these methods have flaws. When charging by the page, you don't take into account the technical details of each page; an "about us" page with one paragraph and a picture would be much easier to develop than a complex article page that takes articles from a database and sorts them by date and type -- but both would cost the same on the "pay per page" payment scale. When you charge by the hour, the client has no idea what the final price will be, which can lead to budgeting problems. And don't ever tell a client you'll charge them more for the same product because it is worth more to them, you'll lose that client for life.

My method is an obvious, but often overlooked, one. "Charge for the hole, not the drill." A client doesn't really want a website, they want a result. Results include online sales, lead generation, cutting down on support calls and increased brand awareness. Identify what it is your client wants and build your solution around it. Most developers jump straight to the "how many pages do you want?" and "exactly how do you want your website to look and operate?" questions. The client doesn't know these things, that's why he hired you. It is your job to look at the client's goal and lay out a plan that addresses it.

Once you have the result in hand and have a good understanding of the business (through multiple meetings, phone conversations and emails), you sit down with the client and come up with the two most important documents: a sitemap and a user profile. The sitemap defines the pages of the site, their architecture, and a brief summary of what that page contains. This is like the blueprint for developing the site. The user profile describes the typical user: age range, gender, occupation, salary range, online experience (newbie, experienced, very savvy), online frequency, connectivity (56K, DSL...), types of sites visited, online purchases per month, and, most importantly, the reason she is at your client's website. This last one is important because it will shape how the website is developed. If the main desired user action is to purchase from the store, access to it will be made as easy as possible and it will be featured prominently on the homepage.

Once you have these project details in hand (the goal, the sitemap and the user profile) it is time to come up with an appropriate quote. You can't just look at these three documents and pull a number out of the air, it requires much more work. First, lay out the process for the development of the website. We often use the following:

Define Scope - Through a series of meetings, we will help you define the scope of the project and come up with an appropriate solution. Deliverables: Creative Brief, Contract, Sitemap, User Profile

Concept Designs - Using the Creative Brief, our designer develops one or two concept designs of the website. The concept design consists ofa homepage and inner page design. The designs are used to show the website's structure, color themes, visual presentation, and information architecture. Deliverables: Homepage and Innerpage Concept Design

Comprehensive Designs - Using the Concept Design, our designer now adds the content of the homepage and develops specific inner pages (see sitemap). Deliverables: Homepage and Specific Inner Pages Designed

Prototype Development - There are two parts of the prototype development: content-only site (whitesite) and the actual website. By this time all the website's content is required. We set up a simple site that contains just the content for you to proof-read and confirm the menu system without being distracted by the design itself. Once the concept is confirmed, we copy and pasted it into the acutal website design and come up with a working prototype of the website. Deliverables: Whitesite and Working Prototype

Testing - After the website is developed, we test it in many different browsers and operating systems to ensure there are no problems and that everyone can see it. If there are any problems that require us to modify the website, you will be given a Problem Summary and we'll make the necessary changes. Deliverables: Problem Summary

Delivery - We give you a hard copy of the completed website on CD and upload it to your server. Deliverables: Completed Website and Source Files (if applicable)

Now you identify specific tasks within each phase of development. For example, concept design might have:

• Design home page and inner page.
• Have it checked internally by Project Manager; make necessary changes.
• Have it checked by Client; make necessary changes.

Once you have all the expected tasks laid out, provide a time estimate for each and multiply by your hourly rate (or, if you have more than one person on your team, assign tasks to each member and have him quote his parts). Then add a certain percentage (I recommend 10-20%) to cover unforseen problems.

Now that you have an appropriate quote, it's important that you document exactly what that quote covers. You don't want to quote for a small 5 page website and end up doing a 500 page website. We detail the specifics in the Creative Brief. Finally, write up a contract and get an initial downpayment (I recommend 50%).

Now I cannot think of any project I've worked on that went exactly according to plan. You need to be prepared for the unexpected. The 20% extra should help cover most problems, but when you see your client wanting to add more and more to the project, you'll need to charge extra. I recommend having him fill out a Work Change Order that specifies exactly what the client wants to change/add to the project, then quote that separately. The additional expense will be added to the final bill. If you make them fill out the work change order and charge extra, they will be more hesitant to demand additions and make your life easier.

Also be prepared for the client who is never satisfied with your work. Add a clause in your contract specifying a limit to 2 (or however many you want) changes per phase as described in the project brief. For example, if the client isn't happy with the concept design, you go back and fix it. When you bring it back, if the client isn't happy with it, you will charge extra to fix it again. Some might say this is unfair, but it is the client's fault for not articulating exactly what he wanted, or changing his mind faster than the designer can make it. Also charge extra if, after signing off on a phase, the client wants you to go back and change something. For example, if you are on the prototype development (you are coding the actual website) and the client wants you to redo the design (concept phase) that will cost extra because it is a lot of extra work you will need to do.

All in all, when quoting for a project make sure you are providing the hole and not just the drill. This means selling a solution rather than just a website. And remember that most of the time a solution includes more than just a design; consider online marketing, maintenance and hosting. No matter how good your design looks, it won't be successful if no one knows about it or the content is never updated.

Typical IT Project

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 03:50:09 +0000

From Jan Tielens' Blog:

4000+ Gmail Invites

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 13:39:06 +0000

Kevin Rose gave away 4000+ Gmail invites and (we assume) all were taken in a few hours. If you want to try your luck at picking one that hasn't been used, I included the link:

http://kevinrose.typepad.com/allthegmail.html

oh and i'm still updating my old post with new invites as I get them. here's the permanent link:

"Want a Gmail Account? I got a few spare"

Software Wednesdays - ourTunes

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:59:40 +0000

I've decided to start sharing some great free software I've found, so I'll post a new one every Wednesday. This week's is ourTunes.

iTunes is an extremely popular music player and store. If you haven't heard of it, it has the largest market share of legal music downloads (they cost $.99 each), it is the companion software for the most popular mp3 player (the iPod) and is a great music player with great features like the library, search and smart playlists. If you are on a local area network, you can share your music with others on that network - the key word is "share." The only downside to iTunes is that you can only listen to other people's music; you can't download it and add it to your collection.

That is where ourTunes comes in. ourTunes shows all the music of everyone on the network and allows you to listen to or download the music. This is perfect for anyone at college because a large amount of people have iTunes running. You can either browse through all the songs, limit it to certain computers (called "hosts") or do a search for a specific song. If you are on a large network, i suggest the search.

If you don't use iTunes, you should at least check it out. I personally think its the best music player available; much more powerful than winamp, which I used back before I had iTunes. If you have iTunes and are on a network, this is a great piece of software that you should definately get. Before you download your next song, just do a quick search and see if it's already available on your network.

Mark Cuban's take on HDTV, DVD, Hard Drives and the Future

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 15:23:18 +0000

What is the best way to distribute content? DVDs which will be limited in capacity to 9.4gbs on a single DVD for another year, and then after that 50gbs on a single disk for years to come after that, or rewritable media that can hold 2gb already in a device half the size of a pen, or in a hard drive that can hold 200GBs plus in a drive the size of your cell phone?

Which device should content distributors like HDNet invest in ? DVD, knowing that the future standards will be locked for 7 to 10 years, or these storage devices that will grow in capacity, and shrink in size and price, not to mention the additional flexibility of being able to erase and rewrite the drives?

This article was extremely interesting. He brought up some great points and I have to say I agree with him. Why invest in dvd's whose capacity is limited (even HD-DVD and BluRay will have limited capacities when compared with hard drives) when you could provide the content on small hard drives that go for about $.50/gb. I really loved his idea about having the airport kiosk where, before your flight, you select a few movies and have them transfered to a keychain drive so you can simply plug them into your laptop and watch them on the plane. I'd definately buy that. And I also liked the netflix-inspired idea of paying a monthly fee to get a small hard drive (half the size of a cigarette box) with a hd movie on it. When you're done watching it, you send the hard drive back and get another one. (The only problem with this is the shipping charges. Netflix is relatively cheap because a dvd weighs almost nothing.)

He also brought up a good point about piracy. The problem right now is that quality is so low that the content can easily be transferred online. Bump up movies to full HD quality (even better than the compressed HD you get on tv because tv has bandwith limits) so that a 2 hour movie is 18gbs and you won't have many people downloading them. It's simply cheaper to buy a hard drive with the movie @ $.25/gb than download where your bandwith costs more than that.

Anyway, its an interesting read and i suggest everyone check it out. It also shows the workings of Mark's entrepreneurial mind. He had an idea (put a dvd on a keychain drive to watch on a plane), it worked well and he developed a whole business idea out of it. What differentiates him from us is that he can actually finance all his crazy ideas :)

Oh and in case you didn't know, Mark Cuban will be having a new reality tv show starting soon called The Benefactor. It will be similar to The Apprentice; you always here Mark and Donald joking about eachother's tv show.

(Click the word link to read the article)

Holiday E-Commerce Ideas

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:46:41 +0000

Is your e-commerce website ready for Christmas?

37Signals:

"In these pages you'll find dozens of ideas for improving the holiday customer experience at your site. Each idea is accompanied by examples taken from top retail sites (we've visited hundreds of sites over the past two holiday seasons seeking smart techniques)."

New iMac G5

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 20:33:33 +0000

Apple recently released a new version of the iMac. It looks quite nice (no longer a "screen on a stick" design) and the processor has been improved (now it has the G5). You can check the tech specs out at the apple website (link below).

I think it looks great, but I'm waiting to buy the Powerbook G5. I really need a laptop that looks great and is powerful enough to be a desktop replacement (and of course have the Mac OS on it).

Speaking of new Apple additions, they recently showcased the new version of the Mac OS - Tiger (Mac OS X v10.4). Very impressive operating system. I can't wait to use the search and iChat.

So eventhough the new iMac looks good, I'm waiting for the Powerbook G5 with Tiger.

Free Business Documents

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 03:13:10 +0000

For those who don't know, we have a page on our site dedicated to providing web developers with the business documents they need to succeed.

http://www.aestheticstudios.com/free-business-documents.php

Most problems web developers have during projects related to a bad contract (or lack thereof). So it is essential to have a well-crafted contract for every project. While the templates should help, we highly recommend seeking legal counsel to customize one specifically for your needs. While a lawyer (or for our UK friends, a barrister or solicitor) may be expensive, it will save you an unbelieveable amount of time and money in the long run.

I try to keep it updated, so check back sometimes to see if I've added a site or two. If you have any sites you think should be listed, please tell me. When people ask about business documents, I always refer them to this page so I would like to make it as comprehensive as possible.

26 Steps to $15K a Day

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 22:44:57 +0000

"The following will build a successful site in 1 years time via Google alone. It can be done faster if you are a real go getter, or everyones favorite: a self starter."

(Click the link at the bottom to see the full descriptions for reach step)

A) Prep Work
B) Domain name
C) Site Design
D) Page Size
E) Content
F) Density, position, yada, yada, yada...
G) Outbound Links
H) Cross links
I) Put it Online
J) Submit
K) Logging and Tracking
L) Spiderlings
M) Topic directories
N) Links
O) Content
P) Gimmicks
Q) Link backs
R) Rounding out the offerings
S) Beware of Flyer and Brochure Syndrome
T) Build one page of content per day
U) Study those logs
V) Timely Topics
W) Friends and Family
X) Notes, Notes, Notes
Y) Submission check at six months
Z) Build one page of quality content per day

"Do those 26 things, and I guarantee you that in ones years time you will call your site a success. It will be drawing between 500 and 2000 referrals a day from search engines. If you build a good site with an average of 4 to 5 pages per user, you should be in the 10-15k page views per day range in one years time. What you do with that traffic is up to you, but that is more than enough to "do something" with."

Shoppers Demand Decent Design

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 21:22:27 +0000

A whopping 65 percent of the 1,100 U.S. Internet users that were surveyed won't patronize a poorly designed site — even that of a favorite brand — and 30 percent reported that Web site design is more important than a great product. Even rock-bottom prices only persuaded 4 percent to shop on a poorly designed Web site.

What's worse is that nearly 30 percent stop buying from their favorite offline store if their online experience is poor.

It is obvious that a well-designed website is necessary to have a successful ecommerce website. If you lose 65% of your loyal customers online -- 30% stop purchasing from you altogether -- you can't afford NOT to have your website redesigned.

If you have an ecommerce site, I think it is necessary to commence usability testing and/or focus groups to ensure you website is successfully selling your products to consumers. The cost shouldnt matter; you might be losing that much EACH MONTH if your website is ineffective.

19 Year Old Entrepreneur Launches 11th Company

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 17:51:48 +0000

You're never too young to start your own business.

Johnson's entrepreneurial spirit was awakened at age 9, when his parents gave him his first computer, $50 and a checking account to help him learn about managing money. "I wanted to put more money into that bank account," says Johnson. "Things just expanded from there."

While most 10-year-olds were riding bicycles and playing video games, Johnson was the CEO of his first company, Cheers & Tears. The venture sold greeting cards that Johnson printed from his computer and eventually expanded to include online sales of Beanie Babies, ringing up $50,000 in monthly sales and making Johnson the second largest Beanie Baby retailer on the Internet.

Since then, he has launched a string of ventures that have brought him international fame and not-inconsiderable fortune.

These include SurfingPrizes.com, a business that paid users to surf the Web and at one point generated $15,000 a day in advertising revenues; Zablo.com, a group of online services for car dealerships that includes a system enabling potential car buyers to exchange their names, email addresses and phone numbers for a certificate worth $100 off the price of a car; and EmazingSites.com, aggregating several services from enhanced AOL Instant Messenger profiles to a $4.95 product that boosts cell phone reception.

Google's Gone Public

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:44:57 +0000

For those of those interested, Google began trading today (GOOG). But it hasn't gone according to plan.

Originally they estimated that the stock would open at $108-135/share, but after some major setbacks and recent "bad publicity", they opened at $85/share and only offered less than 1/2 the amount of shares they had been planning on releasing. But it closed today at around $100, leaving those lucky few who got in at $85 a 17% gain.

Those who bought at $85, sell now. Those who don't own any Google shares, don't buy any.

You're probably saying "Why not invest? Its selling below the estimated selling price and they've already had a 17% gain." Well, think again. All over-hyped IPOs (especially technology ones) have this first hiccup where they shoot up, only to come crashing down a few weeks or months later.

But is Google a good investment? Almost all signs point to no...

They are trading at 50 times earnings. That is a WAY too high P/E ratio. It's impossible to sustain that type of ratio for long.
Future earnings are too difficult to predict. Revenues went from $86 million in 2001 to nearly $1 billion between 2001 and 2003. So what do the next five years hold? The next two years? The next six months?
It's a fad. I'm not saying google isn't a good company (I'd love to work for them); but they came up so fast, they can easily fade away just as fast. Especially when all their earnings are based on website ads, and many popup blockers now block ads on the page as well (bad news for those looking to make money from ads). When your business focuses on new technology, you have to constantly work to ensure you don't fall behind.
Stockholders have very limited control. The management's stock gets 10 votes/share; the public gets 1 vote/share. While this is good for ensuring business operates as it is already (no big changes by stockholders), the business is being run by technology pro's who don't have as much business experience as major shareholders would have.

In the end, I think google will be a nice company to watch, but not to buy. It's too risky, overpriced and in an industry notorious for "bubbles." If you do want to buy some, at least wait a few months to let the IPO hype end and normal trading begin.

The 7 Crucial Techniques to Writing Web Copy that Sells.

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:16:40 +0000

All commercial websites have one thing in common: Their goal is to sell something. Online, the only thing that can sell your product or service is your copy. It is your sales rep. So you need to make sure your copy is written in a way that causes the visitor to stay, become interested, and then become motivated to purchase.

"Copy that Sells" for print has some similarities to that for web, but they have some major differences. If you put the copy from your brochure on the website verbatim, most likely your copy won't be very successful. The following tips will ensure your copy becomes your best sales rep.

Keep sentences short - People don't read online, they scan. Long paragraphs are difficult to scan, so make it easy for the visitor and cut it down. Paragraphs should be no longer than 4-5 sentences.
Blank lines vs indentation - Division of paragraphs in print is usually accomplished with indentation. Online, you should use blank lines rather than indenting. Blank lines will create more white space on the page and give the reader a place for his eyes to rest.
Keep pages short - Online, short, concise pages on a specific topic are much more successful (and search engine friendly) than long, rambling pages. The major content websites (C|Net, Wired, Sitepoint...) have about a 500 words per page limit.
Don't use crazy fonts or colors - The Verdana and Georgia typefaces were developed specifically for maximum readability online. The only problem with those typefaces is they don't print well. For both online and offline use, consider using Times New Roman or Arial. And as for colors, stick with the commonly used black text on white background. You don't want to distract the reader or make it difficult to read.
Use active sentences - Passive sentences bore the reader; let them feel the action and get into the writing. "We are a successful software developing company" is nowhere near as good as "Our success in software development industry is unrivaled."
Include bold, numbers and bullets for emphasis - These get the readers attention, so use them for key parts of the writing. If you want something to jump out at the reader, use bold. And instead of long, boring sentences that list lots of details, use bullets or numbers.
Include Search Engine Optimization techniques - You might have great copy, but if no one sees it, it won't do you much good. When writing, be sure to include SEO techniques like:

Have a set of keywords for each page, and use them in the title, heading, and body of the site (but make sure it stays interesting; don't just list keywords).

Have an interesting title and description for each page

Keep pages focused on a single topic; don't have one long page containing multiple topics.

Use proper alt tags on images and title tags on links.

If you use the above techniques in writing your website's copy, you'll have a much better conversion rate of visitors to customers and rank higher in the search engines.

The Secret to a Great Search Engine Position (that the Search Engine "Pros" Won't Tell You)

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:32:53 +0000

A website's success doesn't depend on its design, but rather its marketing. You could have the best looking site on the Internet, but if no one knows about it, it won't do you much good.

So once you have your site online, how do you market it? There are the free methods like reciprocal linking and submission to directories (which I suggest everyone does) and there are the paid methods like buying advertising. And then there's search engines...

"[According to Pew Internet and American Life Project] More than eight in ten American Internet users have gone to search engines to find information on the Web...Around one in four US Internet users... present queries on search engines on a typical day. Only email use outranks search engines queries as an online activity...."

Search engines are obviously the best way to attract customers, so how can you tap into it? Search Engine Optimizers will have you believe that you need to pay them hundreds (if not thousands) monthly so that they can implement the latest search engine tricks to get you the best position possible. But is this really necessary?

Let's take a quick look at what a search engine is: A Search Engine is a tool developed so users can find relevant, quality information quickly on the Internet. So what's the best way to get a good search engine position? Provide "relevant, quality information" on your website.

These tricks that the SEOs use to get high positions are just that - tricks. The major search engines are always updating their logarithm used to rank sites for two reasons:

Improve the rankings of sites with lots of good -- and frequently updated -- content.
Weed out the websites using these "tricks" to get high rankings.

So of course the SEOs will need to fix your site monthly because the techniques that worked last time don't work anymore. So why rely on constantly tricking the search engine into thinking your site is good? Just make your site good.

Okay, you now know you need to add relevant, high quality content to your website frequently. How much and how often? Well, these questions depend on your site, but it is suggested you add a new page to your site daily, or at least weekly.

That might sound like a lot, but keep in mind that Google (the #1 Search Engine) prefers short, consise pages on a specific topic as opposed to long, rambling ones. A few ways you can implement an "often-updated content" section would be through news (usually on the homepage) about your industry, interesting articles, or even a blog (like this).

Frequently updated content doesn't just provide good search engine positioning, it can support many other marketing techniques. If you decided to write a new article every week relating to your industry (or hire someone to do it) you could send a few articles out in a direct mail campaign targeting prospective customers who would find this information interesting. You could even have a monthly e-newsletter sent out containing your new articles, industry news, special offers from your business and anything else you can imagine.

Search engine optimization shouldn't be about tricking the search engines into thinking your site is a valuable resource if it isn't. It should be used to make your content pages more easily accessible to search engines. Good techniques your writer/editor should use when publishing the content online are:

Use of title tag - The title tag should describe the page (not just say your company's name).
Focus each page on a few keywords - Don't have long pages containing content about many different topics. Divide them up so that each page focuses on a specific topic. And make sure you use the same keyword throughout the content (if you sell websites, don't use web site and website interchangeably).
Keep paragraphs short (2-3 sentences) and use effects like bold, bullet and numbering to make scanning the page easy for the visitor.

As long as you add content frequently to the site and the writer/editor uses the above techniques, you should have no problem getting a good search engine position for your keywords. If you would rather not update your site frequently, you can spend your time searching for people to link to your site or spend money advertising. The time you save not adding to your site, you will spend attracting customers from other marketing revenues.

Open Programs Easily

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 16:12:44 +0000

If you're like me, you have a few programs that you use regularly and a lot of programs you use sparingly. I recently formatted my computer and applied the Mac Style (see Mac Style post) and after putting all my icons on my desktop, I thought it looked too cluttered. I knew most of them I wouldn't use often, but I didn't want to have to find them through the start menu if/when I did need them.

Then I found the run command (Start > Run or Windows Key + R). Some of you probably use it for DOS based tasks, like winipcfg or config. You can access a lot of programs with it too. Some defaults are:
winword - Microsoft Word
excel - Microsoft Excel
iexplore - Internet Explorer

But what's even better is setting your own run commands. I had a few programs that didn't have a default run command, like filezilla (my ftp client). Here's what you do to set one:

Open up regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVer
sion\App Paths\
Right click and create a new key. Call it file.exe (where "file" is what you want to type into the run prompt). Note that you need the .exe, even if the file you are calling isnt an exe file... You wont need to type .exe into the run prompt.
Open up the file.exe key and set the default value to an absolute path that goes to the program you want to run (eg: C:\Program Files\blah.exe)
Type it in run and test it out.

It works great. I have it for all my programs now. I even have some folders set up. When I type in as it opens my Aesthetic Studios folder. Now I don't have any icons on my desktop except recycle bin and a temp file.

Simple Image Enchancement Technique

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 03:44:40 +0000

This is something I've used often because it can make almost any picture look better. Anyone with Adobe Photoshop and a few photos can do it.

Open the image in Photoshop.
Duplicate the image layer.
Gaussian blur the top layer (I usually do a 5-10).
Set the top layer to overlay.

Now you have a great looking image. Here's a few examples:

Investing in the Real World

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 16:07:52 +0000

Many people are disappointed with the market; they see it as unreliable (which it is) and are unsure what to do. Professionals tell them to keep investing in the market, but they keep losing. They tell you to diversify, but that just hedges your losses and minimizes your gains. What they don't tell you is how you're meant to diversify.

Most people think a well diversified portfolio would contain mutual funds for large-cap growth and value, mid-cap growth and value, small-cap growth and value, hedged with a few bonds and some funds in a money market account. I hate to break the news to you, but that isn't diversified. Except for the money market funds, all you are invested in are paper assets. To truly diversify, you should be invested in the three different asset classes: Paper Assets, Real Estate and Businesses.

Paper Assets
These are the most popular form of investment because they are the easiest. You can invest however much money you want, its an easy process (call up your broker and tell him to buy it) and people think it is the best form of investment taxwise (maximum amount of taxation for capital gains is 15%, except for REITs). While all these are true except the latter, people fail to realise the con's of investing in paper assets. I'll List the pro's and con's:
Pro's

Easy to invest any amount of money you like. You can invest $10 or $10 million in the stock market: there's no preset limit (although you might not want to do $10 trades because commissions would probably be more than the trade itself). This makes it easy for anyone in any walk of life to invest some money in the market.
Easy to monitor the value of your investment. This can be considered either a pro or a con because focusing too much time on the current value can cause emotions to come into play and you might make a bad investment move. I consider it a pro because when it is time to analyze how your investment is doing, the information is readily accessible.

Con's

No Control. When you invest in paper assets, you have no control over that in which you are investing. If the stock is performing poorly, there's not much you can do to improve that investment.
Too much information. With the huge amounts of information available nowadays, you would think people would be able to make better investment decisions, right? Wrong. People ignore the important information - a businesses financial statements, how the company operates, what their plans are for the future - and take the trivial information about "what stock is hot" on the radio or on TV. If you want to succeed in investing in paper assets, do your homework. It's just like any other investment.
Too volitile. While all investments can be a little volitile, nothing comes close to the volitility of the stock market. Investing seems like a guessing game; you don't know what the market will look like in 5 minutes, much less a year.

Real Estate
Investing in real estate can be a challenge. People seem to think you need to buy properties with 100% down to invest - that simply isn't true. One of the greatest powers in real estate is the power of leverage. Leverage is getting more for less, or in the case of real estate, getting control for less monetary investment.

Here's a simple example. Let's say you have $100,000 to invest (keep in mind, you don't need this kind of money to invest in real estate, it just gives us a good, round number to work with). You could buy a $100,000 home and rent it for $1000/month, giving you $12,000/year and a 12% ROI (not including expenses like taxes, maintenance...). OR you could buy 10 $100,000 houses, with $10K down on each and a $90K mortgage ($700/month). If you rent it at the same $1,000/month for each house, you get $300/month/house, totaling $3,000/month or $36,000/year - a 36% ROI (in case you're wondering, ROI is Return on Investment). Eventhough you had 10% equity of the 10 houses, you still retained control and were able to leverage your money - getting a hire ROI. And over time you will build equity in all houses. If you need money for another investment, you can simply take it out of the equity of one of these houses. Anyway, let's get to the pro's and c on's.
Pro's

Easier to leverage your money. You don't need to keep all your money in a single investment, you can profit while only having part ownership (using a mortgage). You can even take out the equity you initially put in and use it on another investment later - getting your initial investment back AND keeping the monthly income.
More reliable than the stock market. There is a reason you are only allowed to buy a maximum of 50% on margin (have the broker buy it for you and you pay him back later, like the mortgage for real estate). It's because the stock market is much less reliable than real estate. The value of homes has continually gone up for the past 100 years - the stock market might have gone up on average, but there were huge ups and downs in there. Have you ever heard of a bank giving you a loan to buy stock? Of course not, they know that there is a good chance it will go down in value and you won't be able to pay it back. Real estate is the most reliable investment possible.
Most tax efficient. Those who thought the 15% capital gains made stocks so good obviously haven't heard of "1031". 1031 is the tax code that allows you to sell a property and, if you use it to buy a more expensive property within the period of 6 months, not pay ANY taxes on the sale, AT ALL. Not only that, but there is something called "phantom income." Phantom income is depreciation; it cancels out your income, tax-wise. If you made $10,000 in rental income that year, and depreciated the property $10,000, the government sees you as breaking even - so you don't pay any taxes on that income. How cool is that? You could earn TAX-FREE income for 10 years while you depreciate the property, then when its totally depreciated, sell it and 1031 the money into a different property and start all over again. And if that wasn't great enough, when you sell it it will be worth MUCH more than what you bought it for, due to appretiation.

Con's

Requires more work than paper assets. There is a lot more paperwork involved in working with real estate. So expect some attorney fees (or you could be lucky enough to have an attorney in your family). And after you have it, you have things like maintenance, taxes, property management and making sure the tenet pays to worry about. I highly suggest having a property management company manage it for you.
Can be more difficult to find the right investment. In "Real Estate Riches" by Dolf de Roos, he gives quite a good principle to use when looking for investment properties. He calls it the 100:10:3:1 Rule. What this rule says is that if you look at 100 properties, put offers in on 10, and try to arrange financing on 3, you may end up buying 1. While this might look disheartening, don't worry. After a while you will get good at it and enjoy looking at the properties. What would you rather do, look at 100 propertied in a month or work a 9-5 job for a month? It's up to you.
Can cause problems is you are overly-leveraged. What happens if you lose a tenet and the mortgage has to be paid? You have to pay it. In the 1990's real estate market decline, Donald Trump was over-leveraged and he ended up being $9.2 billion in debt. Although he was able to recover, I don't suggest over-leveraging.

Businesses
Building businesses are by far the best wealth-generation tools. However, they are also the most time-intensive. Two of the best secrets to developing a successful business is develop systems and leverage your time (have employees do the work in the business and you focus on working on the business). Here are just a few of the pro's and con's:
Pro's

Infinite income possibility. When you work for a company and get paid $X/hour or $X/year, the only way you can earn more money is to work more. If you own a business, you make money when OTHER people do work. That can lead to unlimited income potential.
Very tax-efficient. The tax laws for businesses are better than those for individuals.
You can do whatever you want. This might not be the biggest reason for starting your own business, but it is an important one. You don't have a boss telling you what to do. You make all the decisions. I once heard someone say he started his own business so he wouldn't work 9-5 - now he works 8-6. You set your hours; you determine how to best run the business; success depends on you.

Con's

Labor Intensive. There is a lot of work in starting your own business, and most of it isn't related to the skills you offer. If you are a plumber and you want to work for yourself, there's a lot you need to know other than just plumbing.
9 out of 10 businesses fail. Plan on making 10, and when one succeeds, celebrate.
It's not for everyone. Not everyone is an entrepreneur, wanting to start his own business and reach financial freedom. Some prefer trivial jobs that pay the bills so that they can do whatever they like on the weekends, not worrying about work. If you aren't dedicated to succeeding, don't bother starting your own business.

I've summed up most of the pro's and con's of all three investment types. Stocks are the easiest but also the most volitile and hardest to control. I personally prefer real estate, but I am invested in all three types of assets. So next time someone tells you they are diversified, ask them how much real estate and businesses they own.

The best ways to prevent Spam

bill.erickson@gmail.com (Bill Erickson) — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 18:45:52 +0000

I hear a lot of people complaining about spam, and with good reason. Jupiter Research analysts estimate that the average e-mail inbox receives 42 spam messages a day—a number that's expected to increase by more than two-thirds to 70 by 2007. Analysts at research firm Gartner have predicted that more than 50 percent of e-mail messages will be spam by 2004. So how can we stop it.

Now when I look at those stats, I know I must be doing something right. In the past two months I haven't received one spam message (after 2 months, my emails are archived in a separate folder). If I do get spam, its ususally less than one a month. So how is it that I get 1260 times less spam than the average email inbox?

1. Have separate personal and public accounts.
If I need to give my email to sign up at a forum, buy a product online, or any other situation that could make my email public, I use my public email address. I have a gmail account that I now use for public email, and before that I used a hotmail account. Many companies will sell your email address to advertisers, or at least send you frequent emails about their specials, trying to get you to do business with them again. I don't condone this (by this I mean the latter, not the selling of email addresses to advertisers) because I recognize it as a useful way to stay in contact with your past customers. But if it is a business I don't want to hear from often, I'll make sure I give it my public email address.

2. Use forwarders.
If I am going to post a request for contractors (people to whom I can outsource work) on a public forum or website, I will most likely give a forwarding email address. Basically a forwarder allows you to receive emails without disclosing your real email address. For example, I might say "Send all inquiries to contractors@aestheticstudios.com" which then forwards to my email address. Then once I no longer need this email address, I delete the forwarder. That way any spambots that found the email address wouldn't get much use out of it.

3. Don't use the root email account.
If you have your own domain name (www.yoursite.com), you were probably given a root username and password. Usually this is "admin", but it can be whatever the host sets it to. The problem with using this as your email account is that (usually) all email that doesn't reach a destination at your domain will be sent to you. So let's say there's some spam being sent to the email john@yoursite.com. When that account is deleted, all the email going to it will be forwarded directly to the root email address, admin@yoursite.com. By giving yourself another email account and setting the mailbox size for the root email to a small amount, you aren't sent all the leftover emails that don't have anywhere to go and you don't store all these on your server (if you left the mailbox size pretty large for the root email, eventhough you don't see the emails they would be stored in the mailbox).

4. If you do have to post an email on a website, encrypt it.
Sometimes it's necessary to have an email address listed on a website, like a company's contact page. Spambots crawl the web searching for email addresses, so how can you prevent them from finding your email address but still allow customers to see it? Easy. Encrypt it. Safe Mail will allow you to change a normal email address into html browser code (which most spambots can't read). Here's an example:

info@aestheticstudios.com

In your browser, go to View > Page Source and look for "Here's an example." Right below it is where the email address "should" be, but it isn't. Each letter was converted to a series of numbers, #'s and &'s. That is exactly what we used for the Aesthetic Studios Contact Page. People visiting the website can see it, but spambots can't.

5. When all else fails, have a good spam detector.
You can't expect to prevent all spam, and even if you implemented all these steps, you would probably receive spam from back when you didn't. Unless you are willing to switch email addresses, the people currently spamming you won't suddenly stop. (I've changed email addresses at least 5 times, I've finally learned how to prevent spam and not keep changing emails.) That is where spam detecting software comes in. For email, I use Mozilla Thunderbird which comes with some pretty good spam detecting software built in (although I've been lucky enough to not have much experience with it). This way, if and when spam does get in, it is dealt with.

Hopefully these tips will help you cut down on your spam. But keep in mind that all of these tips except the last are preventative measures. If you are already getting a lot of spam, you might consider changing your email address. The only way to stop current spam is by changing your email address or getting a good anti-spam program. These tips should help you stop from getting even more spam than you already receive. I know if 50% of my emails were spam I'd go crazy.