When I read the article by Darren Rowse on how to get things done when you’re feeling overwhelmed, there was a strong sense of deja-vu. I had been there many times. New website projects, although quite exciting, can be overwhelming too. I can empathise completely with the panic and overwhelm at designing, coding, building, publishing, marketing and promoting a new site. Especially, when I had no idea how I was going to achieve some of the actions needed.

Darren’s approach is to focus on the tasks you know you can achieve, break them down into small managable chunks and simply get started. He also suggests a timeline. When I look at a new project I have a brainstorming session and create a long list of tasks. Then I  prioritise each action, add a time estimate and place them in order. I must admit to picking out, what to me, are the easy task and doing them first.

But the trick I haven’t been doing is talking or collaborating with others. I tend to struggle on my own. This yeilds either very slow results or a complete roadblock. Particularly if I don’t have the skills or the time to do the task. This is where outsourcing comes to the rescue. And John Reese is the acknowledged master of outsourcing.

John has recently released a private coaching program, called outsource force, to teach webmasters and marketers how to outsource just about every every aspect of your web business. Actually, the program is sold out. This is how popular John’s courses are. And I think a reflection on how good his material is. He has mutiple web businesses and products, but doesn’t do any of the work himself. He runs them. He’s the CEO and stategist.

What a great way to run a business empire.

For something so complex, the conversion rate from browser to buyer of most webpages selling stuff is amazingly constant, sitting between the range 1-5%. And this statistic seems to be bourne out for all sorts of products and services across many different marketplaces. But doesn’t this figure appear depressingly low to you? It does to me.

Can’t we get a conversion rate into double figures at least? Sonia Simone talks about the content net as a strategy in how to find thousands more prospects for your business. Sonia’s content net is also Seth Godin’s relationship building marketing strategy. And they both involve using email marketing or newsletters or some kind of device to build a relationship with your potential customer by providing interesting and engaging content.

Then there is the desperate buyers strategy. Alexis Dawes has written an ebook called ‘Desperate Buyers Only’ and in it she talks about how to find buyers desperate for a solution to their problem. Then write a book or report which tells them how to solve it. Simple idea, but once you cut through the marketing smoke and mirrors of businesses  who claim to do this already, you find is hardly anyone really does it. Alexis provide a blueprint.

It’s a quick read and well written too. And the great thing about this strategy is the ebook or report doesn’t need to be your main product. You could ask your existing customers what their biggest problem is, then write a short report on how to solve it. Offer it at a low price, or free in exchange for your reader’s attention. Build your relationship with your new reader and it’s almost guaranteed you will get much better conversion rates when you market to them.

Don’t chase customers; let them chase you instead.

Most people know about google’s suite of office applications, but did you know businesses are migrating away from Microsoft Office and into the cloud with google apps? There are many advantages. You can have all of your firm’s data and workflow in the cloud with the ability to access it anytime and anywhere from an internet connection. You can save money maintaining your own IT infrastructure, but you do rely on good internet access.

Matt Silverman from Mashable talks about the advantages to companies in the small business guide to google apps. And at $50 per user per year, it’s good value too. You get gmail, calendar, google docs and more. Google docs is a now a very credible alternative to Microsoft Office. I’ve used gmail for some time now and it’s my email client of choice.

Gmail can be used through your existing domain name. You get 25GBytes of storage per user, which is plenty. It’s intuitive and easy to use. Conversations can be threaded, like a forum, keeping them all together. It has a chat feature and it can integrate all of your email accounts in one place. Very handy.

Google docs is a word processor, presentation, spreadsheet and web forms. Everything is done from your web browser and all data is saved in the cloud. You get document sharing and collaboration features; useful for projects. And you can control who has permission to see the documents, so it can be shared with clients, for example, but kept private if the information is restricted.

Calendar can keep appointments and events synchronised across your business. With the ability to share you can combine calendars for the bigger picture. Calendar can be shared to help co-ordinate meetings and avoid scheduling conflicts. You can create events and email all interested parties easily. And there’s lots more.

If you want to save money and reduce IT support problems, move into the cloud with google apps.

In a recent article by Karen Ruby for the Infopreneur, she talks about the 7 areas of your life where you can use Ockham’s razor to reduce what you do, to only what you need to do and no more. I don’t know about you, but for me there are just not enough hours in a day to get everything done. Often it’s down to priorites; sometimes down to what comes first.

As Karen says, you need to look for the simplest solutions. And if you are a webmaster there are many ways to do this. I have a schedule of what and when I do things on both a weekly and daily basis. I use tools a lot too. For example, google mail is great for consolidating all of my emails and email accounts in one place, using a simple and effective layout.

I use google reader and feedly to collect, organise and present the latest news, advice, technology and intelligence on everything that affects webmasters. This means I can stay up-to-date and know what’s going on. Tools like these save time. Time I might otherwise have spent surfing, which can be a very time-consuming activity with little to show.

So, for me, it’s a combination of powerful tools and the right mind-set. This involves organisation and planning. Something I notice not many people do. They allow themselves to driven by other’s people’s agendas. Especially people in service industries and jobs. Even when your time is not your own, you can organise, plan and use your time better.

Look for the simplest solution in every part of your life.

In a recent post Louis Gray talked about the decisions we all make when it comes to technology; PC or Mac, facebook or twitter, android or iPhone. Now I know it’s good to have a choice, but it often paralyses people. Everyone searches online for reviews or they ask their friends what they recommend. We are all afraid of making a mistake.

I think there is a better way. The explorer’s way. To recapture a little of the sense of adventure Captain Cook or the victorian explorer’s felt as they discovered, what to them, was a new world. Be open to trying it and if doesn’t meet your expectations, or more to the point what you want, don’t be afraid to drop it and be a little philosophical about your decision. That way, you will discover new and better tools and not become a stick-in-the-mud.

Perhaps if you are an Apple fan, try an android-based mobile. It works for me. I’ve tried Apple MAC and PC. I’ve tried firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome browsers. You always want to be using the best tools for you; the tools that make the web easier for you and make you more efficient and productive.

That’s what tools are for; try a new one today.

In a recent post by Darren Rowse of problogger, he talked about how he nearly killed an early blog because so few people were reading it despite all his efforts. Luckily he didn’t as the blog grew to provide him with a sustainable income. First appearances can be deceiving with blogs. But instead of killing it, he focussed on writing stuff that interested him.

This is a universal theme isn’t it? And it applies to all content you write regularly for the internet, whether it’s a blog or a website. Ask yourself what interests and inspires you? What are you passionate about? Don’t choose topics because they are ‘hot’ or get millions of searches, or everyone else is doing. Do what you want to do. Often you’ll write off the top of your head, because you know your subject so well, and you’ll be passionate, which will shine through in your writing.

Chris Brogan is another very popular blogger. When he is thinking about what to write, he asks ‘what do you have you feel is worth saying?’ And more times than not you get a feeling about this. This is where reading widely and learning about your topic is so valuable. I read widely every day and share articles with my social networks. And I find an article, statement or point will inspire me. I have something to contribute; something to add, or a totally different perspective.

Chris also recommends spending time on the headline and lead-in paragraph. This is where you lose readers. Pose a question as your headline. Evoke curiosity in your reader. Edit your writing so the best paragraph is the first one.  Grab a photo from the creative commons area of flickr. They are free to use. And before writing a single word, ask how you can be helpful. What ideas can you use? Is there a discussion you think is worth starting?

But whatever you wirte about, make sure it’s for you.

VOIP enables you to make phone calls over data networks. These could be private or public networks, such as the internet. It saves corporations lots of money. With google voice you get one number to ring all your phones, voicemail that works like email, free calls and texts in the US, and lots more.

Google Voice for everyone
1 video (Cross-posted from the Google Voice Blog)A little over a year ago, we released an early preview of Google Voice, our web-based platform for managing your communications…

The ability to create a rough sketch quickly is good for brainstorming, problem solving, product creation, infact, just about any new project. 37 Signals, publishers of basecamp and campfire, have launched draft, their first app for the iPad. this looks like a great combination as the iPad has a nice large screen, but is still portable.

Launch: Draft for iPad
1 Draft, our first app for the iPad, is now available in the App Store. Draft is a straightforward, basic sketch app for the iPad with email and Campfire sharing built in. We use it every day. We hope you will too…

The three goliaths of social networking, twitter, facebook and linkedin, can suck you in. They can consume much of your time. So, when a neat productivity tool comes along, it well worth a look. These apps could save you time and help you to connect to all your friends and colleagues across all three networks.

Twitter Lets You Automatically Follow Your Facebook friends
Twitter has announced that it is launching major upgrades to its Facebook and LinkedIn applications, bringing added functionality and integration between Twitter and two of the world’s largest social networks…

Now we don’t need an app to add hours to our day.

I’ve always been a fan of wordpress. It’s fantastic software and a very versatile CMS platform. You can configure it almost any way you want, it has thousands of themes and plugins, is backed by hundreds of professionals and has become the new standard for blogs and CMS websites. For me it’s always been easy to use and reliable, until now!

The arrival of version 3.0 has been accompanied by much fanfare and promises amazing new functions. I have a test wordpress blog, so I thought I’d try it out. Using a test blog is a much safer way of trying new themes, plugins and anything else I’m working on. I can make changes, which don’t affect visitors to my blog.

My test blog was running version 2.7 and as most wordpress owners know, there are buttons on the dashboard to invite you to upgrade when a newer version is available. So, I hit the automatic upgrade button…and nothing happened. No upgrade and no words of wisdom appeared.

Okay, so I’ll upgrade it manually. The wordpress site has good instructions on how to do it. So, I followed them to the letter. The manual upgrade failed. Although it did ask me for the database details but them promptly failed with some obscure error message.

Down but not defeated, I thought it’s only a test site so I’ll completely remove the old code and build a fresh installation. This is something I’ve done many times using the famous wordpress 5 minute installation and it’s always worked perfectly. Not this time! A brand new installation failed with another obscure error message. Right now, my test blog is in pieces. I’m not impressed.

Have wordpress become so popular and grown so big they are becoming another Microsoft. As most people know Microsoft is guilty of releasing new software before all the bugs are ironed out. I think the wordpress team have some work to do and I would advise anyone to stay away from version 3.0 until it becomes a little more stable. I think I will regress my test blog to version 2.9 for the time being.

Is wordpress 3.0 unstable? It looks that way to me.

Anyone in search of the number one ranking on Google, or any other major search engine for that matter needs to have a good understanding of search engines, how they work, and how to optimize your web site or blog. Don’t fret though. SEO techniques are well recognized and easily applied to any web site or blog.

To succeed with search engine optimization, you should focus on those techniques that have been proven to generate improved rankings over the long term. There are many strategies being used today that may help in the short term but can only get your site banned. Here are the best techniques I’ve used to dominate search engine rankings for almost any keyword phrase.

Researching keywords comes first and foremost. Wonder how you’re going to reach the number one position? The answer is directly correlated to what keywords you are trying to rank out on top for and how competitive they are. Said another way, if you are trying to rank well for a term that every one else is trying to rank well for, you have a long hard road ahead of you. On the other hand, if you are trying to rank well for a term with little competition, your odds of achieving search engine success go up significantly.

Focus on meta tags. Unfortunately meta tags aren’t weighted as heavily as they once were but that doesn’t mean that they are no longer important. Meta tags provide search engines with information about your website, the content you offer, and other aspects that can influence your on page optimization. Take the necessary time to develop the right meta tags for your site making sure to reflect the content you provide. This consistency can help improve your rankings.

Pages should load as fast as possible. Speed is everything when it comes to search engines. Sites like Google and Yahoo want to give browsers access to valuable content. This is next to impossible if they never reach the content they are looking for. If you want to improve rankings, be aware of how quickly your site loads compared to competitive sites. The faster it is the better you’ll be.

It’s all about developing inbound links. Today’s leading search engine uses a complex algorithm that puts a significant amount of weight on the number and value of in-bound links. The patented formula of Google PR captures the value of more than one hundred and twenty factors associated with each and every web page on the Net. The majority of these factors are dependent upon link value and significantly influence Google search results.

When it comes to search engine optimization there’s some really good news to celebrate. Even though Google and the other search engines like Yahoo do not fully disclose their search algorithm, we do know a number of things about how they work. This knowledge, gained through the analysis of many websites can help guide us on where to focus our optimization efforts.

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Tim Ash is an expert in conversion and landing pages. His company, sitetuners, promises to improve or optimise the conversion rate you get from your landing page. And in a recent interview with Ralph Wilson from Web Marketing Today he discusses the 3 elements that make a successful landing page.

Your landing page needs a clear purpose with one, maybe two, conversion goals. Typically these could be to encourage the visitor to buy, subscribe, fill-in a form or download a report, but whatever it is, it must be some kind of action. And Tim says landing pages can be too cluttered. Sometimes less is more.

There should be one main column that flows down the page, drawing the reader’s eye. And in this main column your page needs 3 elements; page headline, an action block with subheadline and a call to action button. I think we all understand what a headline and call to action button is, but what is an action block?

Tim describes an action block as visually different to make it stand out; maybe a different background colour or surrounded by a box. It could contain a product image or a form with a subheadline that tells the reader what they will get. And if you want to add more details, use an additional link, which displays a lightbox popover when you hover on the link. This is better for people with short attention spans, but caters for readers who want more information or need more convincing.

And Tim adds you should have a narrow, right-hand column, which is focussed on credibility. You want to provide reassurance about who you are. This could be a logo or branding, testimonials or awards, for example, and make the column stand out a little with perhaps a different background colour. I’m sure I’ve seen some landing pages just like this that persuaded me to take action.

See if you can improve your landing page conversions.