Feb 13th, 2010 by Onlineme
Social networking is all the buzz, and going around meeting people can be fun. A time comes, though, when there is not enough time to meet and greet personally. So how do you get new fans? Facebook advertising is one way, but it is costly, you need to keep the ad fresh, and your landing page needs to compelling to induce the reader to sign up with you.
Classically one of the most successful viral email campaigns was Hotmail’s campaign. It resulted in them being bought by Microsoft in early 1998. The reason they got big enough to be noticed? A single line attachment at the end of each email that had a link to them. People clicking on that link in emails from friends garnered Hotmail nine million users in less than two years.
Is it possible to do this on Facebook? I have seen a fair amount of advertising, and many applications and pages. The ones that get more initial interest and keep my interest for longer are those that friends have highlighted. And what do friends do in their idle moments? Take a quiz.
Take a look at the application, not mine, ‘What tea do I need’. The maker of the quiz owns a herbal tea business. They have used their knowledge to create an intriguing way to give the quiz taker a short answer and to lead them into a more personalised service. And a way to get their advertising to appear on more facebook walls.
Tags: advertising, facebook
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
Jan 18th, 2010 by Onlineme
Open source is a great idea. Find a widget that does what you want, make a contribution to the authors, drop it into your web-site and go forth. There are some great widgets and systems out there. Without Apache, mySQL, and hundreds of other packages the internet and systems development would be a more sterile environment.
But there are also all the other open source developments. Great ideas with some great programming, but could have done with a once over with someone who is experienced in the areas that the initiator is not expert in. On the one hand at least I have a starting point, on the other hand it puts some butter on earning my daily bread.
I was trying to think of how to compose an organised thread on this topic when I saw this excellent representation 
.
The number one reason people ask me to look at their open source web-site is that they are starting to generate traffic and the site just gets slower and slower. The reason? SELECT alist FROM tablea, tableb WHERE tablea.id = tableb.id;. Learn how to use joins properly and we can all get to do more interesting and productive work.
Thanks.
Tags: database, open source, sql
Posted in programming | No Comments »
Jan 11th, 2010 by Onlineme
My web-site is tuned to my customers. I am suitably colourful, easy to read, and well defined. What do you mean there is more?
Beyond getting a web-site tuned for customers, busy small business owners need to be aware of keeping those sites tuned to maintain visibility. What can be done for this? Reviewing keywords and ensure they bring the right traffic. Apart from just getting the traffic, if the searcher only spends .01 of a second at the site the keywords that matched are not working.
For instance, if the keyword is psychic reading the link will be one of a million returned results. The likelihood of being on the first page is low if you do not already have a solid traffic stream. Now making the keyword “psychic readings”, an exact match in Googlese, knocks out one quarter of the competition. Added to that it is not likely that you will to get people who are actually looking for bible readings will not see the link. This is because with a broad match, no apostrophes, the readings word would have caused a match. Thus you have increased the likelihood that the viewer is looking for your site.
Enhance the keywords to “psychic readings” -free. The -free means do not include those people searching for free psychic readings. Another half a million links disappear. The possibility that a click on the link is actually going to get the person to the site for them to spend enough time to read the opening is increased.
So, if your site is handcrafted there will be a line on the pages
<meta NAME=”keywords” content=”database, design, … “>
each keyword, a keyword may be more than one word, is separated by a comma. Ensure they are working for you.
Just make sure that opening paragraph matches what was displayed in the search results to the searcher doesn’t feel they’ve reached the wrong place, they will be gone in an instant if they do, and your hard work is for naught.
Tags: keyword, links, search, SEO
Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »
Jan 8th, 2010 by Onlineme
There is a certain satisfaction in solving a client’s major coding problem in a matter of minutes using the Liveperson experts’ chat suite.
Most programmers are used to the black hole syndrome. No matter what you try or how many times you look through the code, you just cannot see the bug. More and more time gets sucked up by what often seems to be a trivial issue.
With more people working alone in home offices the old standby of having another pair of eyes looking at the code no longer works as well as it did. Taking a break only works if you manage to get your mind off the issue and the pile up of working accumulating while your energy gets drained away.
Liveperson has a large range of experts with most programming languages covered. A five minute call can cost as little as $5.00 or even nothing if the expert can just type the answer straight back to you.
Tags: debugging, telecommuting
Posted in programming | No Comments »
Nov 29th, 2009 by Onlineme
22 Things You Don’t Know About Your Customers | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
Posted using ShareThis
This excellent article reminds us that our web-sites have a function. Whether it is to generate business, make sales, or generate interest in a cause, none of us are web-site owners just for the hell of it. To summarise the excellent article:
It is the customer.
Let them know as soon as possible whether this site is going to meet their needs. Yes, it is fun, or ego-rewarding to think up nifty lead ins, ways of exciting interest, etc. But that is for the advertisements and promotions. Once they are at your site, confirm their interest and let them make the purchase.
It is not your name, it is your product.
Too many sites that I maintain concentrate on using key words based on their name. Unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, people don’t remember the company name. Further, the reason you’re advertising or thinking about search results is because you want to reach new audiences. Tune your key words, based on the content of your site of course, towards what your potential audience will be searching for.
The design can hurt.
Less is more. Developers and marketers can be all too keen to add the latest gadget, pump another ad into that bit of free space, or use product placemenet to help with affiliate sales. Well, you may say that if it is separated out, they won’t click. If it is not, they may click but they don’t come back. So in the long run it is better to get them to came back because they are interested in something you’re offering and you have put so much effort into getting them there, than to loose them. Returning customers are the bread and butter of long standing businesses.
Tags: customers, design, placement, purchase, SEO
Posted in SEO, marketing | No Comments »
Nov 2nd, 2009 by Onlineme
Can you be found often enough to make it worth it?
SEO, or search engine optimization is the most important item to get your website earning for you. This blog post reminded me of a recent critique I had done for a client. The most important points are:
Know your competition. Who owns the sites in that are your close competition, what are they doing, and how are they doing in the search results competition.
Keep your site current. Web technology changes constantly. Every new thing is not necessarily for every site. Every year or so a significant shift is achieved. So review how many of your competition are moving with the times. If it is enough of them, you don’t want to look like yesterday’s news.
Be unique but not out there. People, and searchers are not different, like something special. This is not the same as liking a site that behaves in ways they have never seen before. Unusual search behaviours or purchasing procedures put people off. If it makes them uncomfortable or distrustful, they are going to leave without committing to you.
Have a descriptive blurb. Have you read the search results for your site? Does the blurb make you want to click your link?
Track and interact with your visitors. Do you know who is visiting you and when they visit? Even the most basic statistics can show you which state or country the visitor is from. More sophisticated statistics will also show when they visit and how they got to your site. Providing the visitor a means to interact with you increases your list and provides you with an opportunity to learn something more from them that is important for your business.
The end is to have a site that encourages visitors to look around and come back to you. Over optimization may take more work than the results are worth, but ignoring where technology and search engines are at will leave you with less and less visitors.
Tags: analytics, SEO
Posted in SEO, market, marketing | 1 Comment »
Oct 5th, 2009 by Onlineme
“I have terrible news..
I think you should probably sit down for this. I don’t know how to break this to you, so im just going to go ahead and say it: the page you were looking for.. It couldn’t be found. I am so sorry.“
How many times do we face situations like this in our working life when it is just not necessary.
The main thought behind wikis is to create a common knowledgebase so that everyone can work from the same page, something sorely needed in today’s world of global development, disjoint work force and hours, and the sheer amount of information flowing around. True, much of that information is ephemeral and dies almost as soon as it is read.
Major firms today use wikis to keep everyone up to date, and companies can even come to a standstill if the wiki server goes down. Wikipedia controversies show that strong rules are needed for what goes where, and who can release information publicly (within its operating context) to prevent idea wars. Once those have been resolved, it is a great way to keep going effectively.
Mashable’s short review of business wikis also includes a comment for a wiki for small business’ SocialText.
Tags: socialtext, wiki
Posted in technology | No Comments »
Sep 6th, 2009 by Onlineme
A common part of a freelance programmer’s life is updating web-sites for clients. If you’re lucky you have created the site yourself and this can make it easier to update the site. Sometimes you did not, and it can be a blind pick-a-box to try create a fair but accurate quote to update the site. Apart from the inherent requirements of the update, the construction of the existing site ranges from straight html to someone’s experimentation in what they thought would be the next greatest framework.
A freelance programmer can restrict themselves to one type of site in order to manage this complexity, however, when you’re making this your livelihood generally more flexibility is required. And hence each site is potentially a learning curve. In addition the necessity to be able to create code quickly and efficiently to keep productivity up and costs down is an ever present concern. But more on that later.
Another factor is the amount of input the people offering the job want to put in. From wanting to specify how the database should be organised, to requiring random additional components, to specific looks this all adds to the interest factor in accepting a particular piece of work. I just pray that all these factors are expressed up front. So that endless redevelopment cycles are not required. Limiting the work to a reasonable amount is definitely a skill in a freelancer’s negotiation skills once the job has been accepted.
Four sites that I have worked on that ranged through variations on this theme are
http://www.newryparkcottage.com.au/ to add the farm stays and book now widgets.
http://www.tuningmaestro.com/sell.php to add the sell subsystem, still iterating through look and final version.
http://www.findjewishbusinesses.com/ various maintenance tasks for a lovely client.
http://www.onlinemediasupport.com/stickler/ one day we will agree with what the site should actually be.
Tags: client, development, framework, freelance, programmer, website
Posted in marketing, technology | No Comments »
Aug 27th, 2009 by Onlineme
The phenomenon of eBay has been much written about. It is hard to find someone that has never bought something from e-Bay. It has provided a fantastic avenue for millions of people to get their business or hobby started. Craigslist today is reaching a similar audience making it a viable source for many businesses to earn a living.
To some extent the sheer size of these popular sites makes it difficult for new people to launch their business especially when necessity is driving the earning leaving marketing plans developed on the hop. So are there places where people can start with more visibility? Yes, places like Etsy, eCrater and a multitude of virtual malls with Atomic Mall being a leader in 2008 offer many different avenues for product based businesses to offer their wares to develop successful business channels.
Another perceived disadvantage is that these are primarily product based market places. There is also many different service based avenues for developing new channels for your business. A few, like Liveperson offer a channel for a wide variety of services having the advantage of referring between service types, while many are service type specific. Examples are for computer services Guru.com, a large competitive market, Rentacoder with more variety in the levels of services that can be offered, Elance with more internet tech services, for psychic services Keen and many more business niches.
Launching out into business can be a big step, but with a market place for just about any product or service is available. From places that treat you almost as an employee through escrow, marketing and abuse controls to those that barely do more than offer a central place for visibility means it is possible to find a place suitable for your wish for independence balanced with your risk tolerance.
Come and join me on
Tags: advertising, business, hobby, market, product, selling, service, start up
Posted in WAHM, telecommuting | No Comments »
Aug 18th, 2009 by Onlineme
Setting up a series of reports for a client this week on SQL 2008 report server was an interesting experience in how far databases have come since the 1980s. They are now so far from the dba controlled, three week development cycle days of yore, that we are in danger of forgetting why that perceived bottleneck was there.
The interface definitely allows the easy building of front end web based filtered reports. Thoughtful well-designed reports can fulfill many user expectations and requirements on demand. The options available for the parameters of stored procedures are cool, especially when they haven’t taken hours of programming and testing.
But spare a thought for the database department. Their mandate of providing secure 24×7 database access has not decreased but their ability to control how that availability is demanded has increasing the reactivity quotient of their work.
Tags: database, development, programming, SQL server
Posted in programming | No Comments »
