This video is very good video as it search engines are always developing to combat spammer and help users to find the most relevant information. This video is more an hour long, but I watched it all and here are some highlights if you don’t have time to watch.

Highlights:

• If you have fancy navigation (in flash) make sure that your page is accessible in many ways. Static htmls are the easiest for search engine to crawl
• Alt text on the images is very important. This also correlates with Whiteboard Friday video @ seomoz.org
• Do your keyword research in AdWords you might rank high for a certain word, but there might be a very popular search term in your industry that you are completely missing out on
• Don’t use too much bolding, people can’t read it very well and crawlers might think it is a spam
• Make sure your thumbnails lead to bigger pictures. Google tries to index bigger pictures as this is what users are searching for
• Basic, but make sure your loading time is appropriate. Especially if you want people to access your website from cell phones
• ALWAYS backup your website. Everybody gets hacked, timely back-ups will allow you to quickly restore your website.
• My favourite: best $20 you can spend is by taking a random person, tying your hands behind your back and ask them to use your website
• Before buying a website make sure you check its history. Some urls were owned by spammers, burned to the ground and then put up for sale

Overall great video. It is almost like going for class session on SEO.

It’s been awhile since I wrote. Running a real life business is demanding both emotionally and time wise. Most of the time at the end of the day, after all the battles, I just wanna watch a movie and hit the pillow. The internet business is like anything else in life, if you want to succeed it is not going to be a bed of roses; you will have to work hard and some days you will hate what you are doing.

This time I wanted to write about the emotional part of running any business. After almost a full year of running a business I can say that no business school in the world can teach how to deal with the emotional aspect of starting up the business. Even working in a big corporation and being responsible for bunch of people won’t give an idea what is like to fight for your idea, be responsible for other people’s lives, have fun, make money, and stay sane while doing it.

I think that no matter what business you are starting it won’t go as smoothly as planned and you are likely to run into obstacles that can bring you down. In an internet business like mine where you sell ads you don’t even have a product to sell in the beginning (no page views no sales). We’ve been doing a lot of seeding work and you won’t see the fruits of our labour immediately. We’ve been screwed over by our web company that effectively prevented us for close to a year to start making any money on the website. So how do I personally and the company as a result keep going?

As “Good to Great” states we face the brutal facts and then we still have unconditional belief that with hard work we shall reach our goal no matter what. This is simple advice, but sometimes it is hard to continue believing in yourself when nobody else does, when you family/friends tell you to get a real job and you start doubting yourself. Guess what? This why running a business is not for everybody. This is what separates fighters from wanna-bes. Your ability to not let the emotion take over you, to believe in yourself and continue to push hard is what makes a winner. In anything there is a breaking point where 90% of people will give up and 10% will continue to push, people who push become extraordinary in whatever they do.

We only live once, so I think it is worth figuring out are you a fighter or not?  So NEVER and I mean NEVER stop believing in yourself.

-I booked a pick -up truck (because we have bicycles) and had a confirmed reservation for our four day trip

-two hours before the start of the trip I get a phone call saying that there no pick up truck as the one was in accident and that they appologize for the inconvenience, but they don’t have any other cars

-they told me I can call main line of customer service

-I left 4 voicemails to customer service and sent a letter, and I didn’t even receive an apology

My thoughts: that is some awfull customer service.I mean the left me on Thursday running around trying to rent a pick-up truck from other companies, of course they were almost none left and the prices I paid for one was way bigger than expected. I was just lucky I could get one. i understand that accidents happen, but they happen in every industry and for that you have a buffer. (Exta cars) if you don’t have anything, you go to your competition (like airline companies do ) and make the trip possible.  IF you can’t do anything you still should do something to make it up to your customer: free rental, apologies, vice president calling you – something!

Not only these guys screwed up, but they also didn’t leave any ways of communicating with them and just showed they don’t really care about me. Well if you don’t care me I can less about you Discount Car Rental. I just hope other people don’t get into the same trap.

Top 10 Jobs for Class of 2009 -interesting to see if your job is in the list

Google Profiles Give You Control Over What Google Says About You – bottom line is that you get Googled all the time, you should control your personal brand. You can check out my profile at www.google.com/profiles/zelvensky

Tourism Montreal is Now Using 100% Web-Based Advertising -  that is pretty significant shift from a government supported office. That is a great opportunity for people in media business like myself. Got to figure out who is taking care of their media buying. I think toronto4couples.com would be a great fit for them.

Blog Promotion Using Yahoo Buzz – seem like a nice tip, I am yet to try it myself

Ashton Kutcher on Larry King after winner the battle over 1 million followers - I think this is amazing that he rubbed it into CNN arrogant faces.

This past Friday the topic was  Ontario Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit (OIDMTC) . OIDMTC is a refundable tax credit based upon the eligible Ontario expenditures claimed by Canadian corporation for an interactive digital media products.

These are my notes from the discussion:

-bigger portion of the discussion was centered on SR&ED vs. OIDMTC . Conclusion: SR&ED is better since you can apply for it year long and you don’t have to have a successful product in a time of application. However, if you are in doubt either your company is eligible for SR&ED you can apply for both programs and government will choose which is the most appropriate program for you. You can’t stack two of these credits.

-OIDMTC is a labour credit. Some nuances might arise when you sub-contract work to other companies. If you do plan to claim this credit make sure you meet with an accounting firm that has an expertise in this field to make sure you stay in requirements of the credit.

-it is a good idea to hire an accounting company to fill out the application for you as it can be very difficulat to do it for a person. Most of the accounting companies work on contingency basis (10%-25%) depending on a difficulty of an application

-when you do use outside company make sure you still understand the process of the claim and what is submitted to the government. When they come with an audit you want to be able to showcase that you do what you claimed you do in your application.

-some of the other funds used for financing are Telefilm Canada New Media Fund and Bell New Media Fund

-you have up to 4 years to claim OIDMTC and if you constantly update your product (for example website platform update) you can only apply once in two years. From what I understood you have to apply by the end of your fiscal year.

-two deadlines May 11th and October

Overall it seemed like that if you are eligible it is actually humanely possible to receive this credit and people in OMDC are actually pretty nice and answer phone calls. Being a new entrepreneur during recession times there are so many things I have to take care of and sometimes it is hard to pay attention to everything. However, optimizing you company and getting financed through governemnt should never go off your radar as cashflow and investment is a bloodline for a start-up business.

I will post in the future my experiences with applyijg for different tax credits.

Comments?

What can I say to the carriers? boo hoo your APRU was so high historically that you have a lot of place on where to fall. I mean only in Canada we get charged: system access fee, we pay separately for voicemail, caller ID and received SMS messages from online. Even just writting about it makes me mad for the amount of money I pay to Rogers every month and how they still treat me like a second class citizen, because they couldn’t care less.

I guess the honemoon period is soon will be over: you can’t be ripping off Canadian customers forever!

Like a lot of people in Toronto I get bobarded by flyers from Extreme Fitness that usually say: $8 per month, no contract, no execuses etc… I think I receive at least 2 flyers per month from them.  My buddy and I decided to finally check it out, plus we heard they have an MMA program as well. The assumption was to check out the gym see the real costs and what kind of teachers they have for MMA. The conclusion was that it costs way more, they push the sale worse than a used car salesman and their MMA intstructors have more attitude than young Mike Tyson.

The experience started from us filling out some crazy amount of paperwork. After around 10 min a nice guy ( he was actually nice) said that he will show us the gym. He asked us both another 20 or 30 questions about our fitness goals etc… I tried to tell him that we are pretty experiences people and just want to see the gym, get the costs and the schedule for classes. It didn’t matter as he continued the same line of questioning, later I understood that was in order to sell their private lessons. I asked couple of times how much MMA classes costs and he said he doesn’t know “they need to asses my fitness level.” I asked a pretty reasonable question how is the price related to my fitness level? He said don’t worry lets just talk to one of our 2 MMA trainers they both fought in Pride.

So we went to check out the gym which was not bad at all in itself. Then we finally reached George K (couldn’t find his last name anywhere) who is supposed to be the ex Pride fighter. He was leaning back on his chair when he saw us, didn’t even stand-up to shake our hand. On me explaining that I take Muya Thai and Aikido and was just wondering how much MMA would cost here he said “We did you ever see free MMA in this city?.” I said no and I don’t expect it to be free, but I want to know how much does it cost – he still didn’t respond and just wanted to sign us up for a free demo. I can’t explain his attitude in writting, but he acted like he is some undefeated champion of the world and I am kid who wants to get an interview. If I might say quite an asshole attitude.

I finally asked the guy about the prices for the gym itself they are : $66 if you want to use one gym and $74 if you want to use multiple gyms. This price is valid only with long term contract, go figure after all their flyers saying that their is no contract. He still didn’t tell me the price for MMA. Once we were about to leave the manager came and tried to push their sale on us again. He even tried to close the doors till we buy the membership. After we finally left the plae I decided to never go back to Extreme Fitness again! Last thing I need in my life are pushy sales and crappy attitude.

When I went home I checked out a bio of the second MMA trainer George Kiriakou their had over there and turns out he is not that nice of a guy either. Check out the video and comments bellow. BTW I didn’t find any single mention of him or his buddy being in Pride. Also as somewhat experience martial artist I can tell you that there is no way two teachers can give you an adequate training in Muya Thai, BJJ, Wrestling, Boxing and Conditioning.

So overall I figured out that Extreme Fitness spends a lot of money on marketing to you, pushing their sales onto to you and then sign you in a long contract. I really that after that they have a good customer service. This is a no for me.

Finally, Russian wrestler tenders apology

]]> http://romanz.org/extremely-negative-experience-with-extreme-fitness-in-toronto.html/feed 5 http://romanz.org/extremely-negative-experience-with-extreme-fitness-in-toronto.html#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/romanz/DJzg/~3/9vuW1hmREJ8/new-koodo-campaign-succesfull-or-not.html http://romanz.org/new-koodo-campaign-succesfull-or-not.html#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:22:54 +0000 Roman http://romanz.org/?p=195 Almost a year ago I published an infamous post Koodo Mobile in Toronto or why develop a fake brand? which generated a lot of controversy between and my readers (mostly just my friends). Back then I thought couple of things:

1) What is the point in creating of what I call a fake brand or sub-brand of Telus?

2) Originally Koodo was supposed to be targeting younger people and I didn’t understand how is 80’s work out tape relates to the target audience

3) I didn’t think that “fat free mobility” was actually fat free.

So was I right or wrong? I think I was right in some things and that Koodo adjusted in a year and is now looking more like what is supposed to resemble. Here is my reasoning:

-Now almost a year later same advertising agency Taxi 2 changed its advertising campaign from 80’s workout tape to clever new words like “bigbiliffication,” but still kept the same colors.  I think that was a great move as that 80’s tape was annoying the hell out of people. Just check out Twiter if you don’t beleive me. I still don’t know what is the point of people with big mouths, but I think they have a cleaver slogans and it was good they kep the colors to keep the branding going.

-Telus did grow their customer base quite a bit, but is not releasing how much of it is attributed to Koodo.  Somehow I think if the figures were good they would release them openly

-They deviated from “fat free mobility” and now offer: web browsing, mms, call forwarding and when you add all the services it still doesn’t come out that cheap

-They did eliminate service charge – which made them look like an actual discount brand.

I still beleive that brands like Koodo, Fido, and Soho are just one of the way to trick consumers in buyng the same service. Some people do it, because they like marketing others just don’t see any other alternative. My opinion is that when new players like Globalive enter the market Rogers, Bell, and Telus will have to adjust and make their prices reasonable as a a result Koodo, Soho and Fido will have to either disappear or become even more discounted in order to attract customers that would want to use services from new players.

I personally can’t wait for that time. We really need a second GSM company in Canada!

Hence, my search for advertising sales representative who will sell newspaper first and then when pageviews go up on the website to sell ad space there as well.

You would think that with a recession economy it would be easy to snatch some top talent, but I find it pretty hard. I posted ads on all of university websites, craigslist, my facebook and twitter.I specifically asked not to write “canned”  cover letters, but rather describe goals and how the job fits in with them. I need to know what my employees ultimately desire to see if this job will actually help them. In a nutshell I want somebody real who will be able to develop relationships with clients and is eager to learn real business, rather than just have a line on their resume.

Results after one day:

-got two resumes without cover letter at all

-three cover letters start with “To Whom it May Concern” even though my name is in the ad

-one letter says that working for RomanZ Media Group Inc. was a person’s life long aspiration. I am flattered, but the company is only couple of months old.

Needless to say that I didn’t read past the cover letter. They all might have been very qualified candidates, but they failed to start a conversation with me  – and that is a must have for any sales rep.

So I will keep looking, I would rather have no sales reps at all than have bad sales people (they cost more in a long run).

Conclusion: if you are desperately looking for a job, don’t send your resume to 1000 people per day, send it to 10 but make it personal – that would yield more results trust me!

Today I learned that they increased a time between upgrading your phone from 12 to 24 months only for smartphone. My questions is Why???

As a blackberry bold user (that I bought on craigslist, since Rogers didn’t let me upgrade even though my monthly bills are around $400) I spend more money with you than your average voice only customer.  Furthermore, I am a business user so I will have roaming charges, long distance charges and higher voice usage. Overall I would consider myself a pretty good customer in terms of revenue.

My question is then why shouldn’t you take care of me even more than you do of a low paying customer? Have you ever heard of parreto principle? I want to see my cellphone company as my business partner, you don’t look like one right now! It looks like that because you know I can pay more – you charge me way more not giving anything in return.

Shame, shame, shame.

We say in Russia the world is round and we will meet in the corner. I hope that one day your monopoly is over – and you will suffer or even go bankrupt from years of abusing your customers.