SusanSFH's shared items in Google Reader

Why You Need a (Blogging) Business Model

2009-05-09T14:20:41Z

Today Shaun Connell from Learn Financial Planning shares some thoughts about blog business models.

After managing a website or blog for a significant period of time, it becomes extremely easy to assume that because we do our business online, that we aren’t engaging in ‘real’ business, and all of the ‘real’ principles of business don’t apply. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

You need a (blogging) business model.

This post explains why you need to actually write out your own business plan - even if you’re ‘just’ running an online business. Without a specific business model, you’re chances of success are greatly diminished.

But first, let’s dig a little deeper before we talk specifically about blogging. Let’s look at the fundamentals of science, business, economics and the Universe itself.

How the Universe Works

The most important concept I’ve ever read about was explained in a book by Richard Maybury, a popular author, investor and economist. In his book, Maybury explained that the world operates in terms of what he called ‘models’, or systems.

There’s the solar system, the system of natural selection, the system of economics, the systems of business - everything operates in terms of a system. Everything from door knobs, to atoms, to TVs, to Wal Mart - there’s a system to everything.

Maybury explained if you want to accomplish a certain goal, the most important thing you can learn is how the systems operate, and implement them for yourself. Timothy Ferris has taken this to the extreme, deconstructing everything from learning a language, to wrestling, to building a business based on logical system.

I know, I know — the word “system” is often used by scammers to lend credibility to a get-rich-quick program. Feel free to think the word “plan” instead of “system” and we’ll both be on the same page.

In the same way the ’system’ of a motor has fuel, a framework, pistons, etc - a typical business model has funding, a location, employees, etc. You’re blogging model will need content, marketing and monetization — a system.

Everything operates systematically. Everything.

Why Bloggers Often Fail

Let’s face it: most bloggers fail to earn a full-time income. Some spend literally years trying to make it. The statistics are “against” blogging success.

But it’s not because of a lack of information. Yaro, Darren, Brian and dozens of other successful people have poured their guts into free content and relatively inexpensive courses, explaining the ins-and-outs of building a successful blog.

Success certainly isn’t distant because of a lack of data.

But raw data is useless unless we know what to do with it.

A business is a business, whether it’s on a blog or in a ‘brick and mortar’ building. Blogging without a general business plan is akin to trying to start a ‘regular’ business without a plan. Success is possible, but much, much less likely.

How to Get a Blogging Model

A business “model” is basically just a plan — a roadmap that details every step and action you take in your business that leads to the end result of a profit.

There are dozens of popular ways to turn a profit online, with models based on affiliate marketing, pay-per-click advertising, search-engine marketing, social media marketing, etc. Most blogs mix-and-match the various tactics into a model they are most comfortable with.

As you write your own model, make sure to be as specific as possible without being restrictive. Here are some of the concepts your model will need to consider:

Content Model. Who will write your content? How often will your content be published? What’s the purpose of every article? Will you do straight-up blogging, or a little bit of traditional webmastering? Will you be doing “open-ended blogging” without an “end date” for your content to be roughly finished? Will you accept guest posts?
Marketing Model. Almost all traffic is good, but what kind will you focus on? Will you build links? Will you pay for ads? Will you write guest posts? Will you spend a majority of your time doing keyword research? Will you focus on social media?
Monetization Model. Some “gurus” claim the need to focus on content now, and think about monetization later. That’s risky, and for many small niches it’s a little naive. Will you use AdSense? What affiliate programs will you focus on? How will you get visitors from your “regular posts” to your money-making posts? Will you focus your web design on usability?

These questions are just the beginning. Most of us have a general idea of what the answers to these questions are, but putting them into concrete form helps “seal the deal” and gives us tangible steps to take in order to achieve our goals to make money.

Last Thoughts

Being a beginner blogger without a blogging plan is like learning to cook without using any recipes - success is possible, but not probable.

I’m not saying you should restrict yourself into a little box — that’d be counter-productive for obvious reasons. A good blogging model doesn’t restrict you, but allows you to focus on the important steps you need to take to achieve your blogging goals. That’s it.

This isn’t revolutionary material, and has been explained in literature from the Bible, to business textbooks, to self-growth books like “Think and Grow Rich.”

So what’s your blogging model? Have you ever spent a few moments to write down what your goals are? What your marketing strategy is? Any tips on writing a blogging plan that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments.

This post was written by Shaun Connell, the webmaster of Learn Financial Planning, where he writes about everything from picking a savings account to learning how to make money online.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Why You Need a (Blogging) Business Model

The Tao of Online Marketing

2009-05-06T17:12:55Z

You say people don’t act on your offer.

Yes, but they act as they are.

You say you shouldn’t have to appeal to human emotion.

Yes, but otherwise nothing gets done.

You say you want to change the world.

Yes, but you seek change through reality, not in spite of it.

The Tao that can be blogged is not the true Tao. So let’s just say it’s the way the world works… and that applies to online marketing as well.

As with my Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging post, this article is not going to teach you anything significant about Taoism (and still nothing on motorcycle maintenance). But it turns out that Taoist principles can actually help you become a better online marketer, especially in social media.

All you have to do is follow the path.

Wu Wei for the Win

Are you beating your head against the wall trying to tell people a story they don’t want to hear? Stop.

In Taoism, “wu wei” is roughly translated as effortless action. Wu wei means your marketing story is in harmony with the desires of your market. On the other hand, when you exert your will against your market, you disrupt that harmony and hit the wall.

The successful online marketer understands her audience first and foremost. She focuses less on what she’d like to say and concentrates on finding the story the audience wants to hear.

People don’t necessarily care about you and what you consider authentic. Better to get over your self and create a relationship that reflects what they consider authentic, while also providing the benefits they seek on a consistent basis.

Micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses are perfectly positioned to provide that consistent authentic relationship with online content marketing. It has nothing to do with becoming a social media star or an infomercial embarrassment, and is all about telling the right story and delivering on it.

If you’re tuned in to your audience, they’ll tell you everything you need to do and say to benefit them while succeeding yourself. Acting in harmony with the desires of your market is entrepreneurial effortless action, and it’s the way social media marketing works.

Four years ago, Seth Godin said all this much better than I have. Check out the provocatively-titled All Marketers are Liars for more.

The Three Jewels of the Tao

The Three Jewels are the basic virtues in Taoism. These three jewels also make the path to effective online marketing clear.

1. Compassion

Your capacity for sharing value before the sale will make or break you online. But in this sense, compassion goes beyond kindness and generosity.

It’s also about empathy and a sense of true identification. To get Godinesque once again, it’s about being a recognized and valued member of the tribe before you rise to lead it.

2. Moderation

In Taoism, excess must be avoided. In marketing, message repetition generally increases conversion. What’s the balance?

The independent value you provide with content between promotional messages strikes the balance. But then something amazing happens… you sell more because now people do care about you. They like you. They trust you. They tell their friends.

3. Humility

Many people are uncomfortable with shameless self-promotion. Others can’t turn it off with a gun to their heads. Does modesty really work in online marketing?

Well, remember this… what others say about you is more important than what you say about yourself. The goal is to get customers and prospects doing the horn-tooting for you. Do that, and let the other guy take the bullet.

The Selling Power of Harmony

Some people view selling stuff online as an exercise in “us against them.” The best salespeople, however, genuinely make people feel that we’re all in this together.

As I said in the early days of Copyblogger, no one likes to feel sold. But when the offer is right, everyone loves to buy.

Becoming harmonious with your market makes the salesperson disappear.

About the Author: Brian Clark is the founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Top excuses and tactics: Why haven’t you started your own business?

2009-05-06T17:06:01Z

In the last year, have you thought about starting your own company?

What are the reasons that we don’t follow through? Maybe it’s a genuine lack of technical skill, or we don’t know where to get started, or our friends around us talk us down. More commonly, we talk ourselves out of it.

Not everyone should start their own business, but a significant percentage of iwillteachyoutoberich readers are interested in entrepreneurship. And starting your own business can be one of the most rewarding things you ever do — even if it’s just a side project earning $20/month. That’s one of the principles of I Will Teach You To Be Rich: You can’t outfrugal your way to being rich, but there’s no limit on what you can earn.

A couple weeks ago, my friend Pamela Slim sent me her book. To be honest, I was worried. She had recently written positively about my book, and she writes about entrepreneurship on her blog, but her audience is pretty different than mine — typically older and more female than iwillteachyoutoberich — and I thought her book might have too many emotional/spiritual components like “Tell yourself that you can do it every morning!” I hate emotions. I tell my friends to call me an Emotional Robot because I care about the tactics, not how you feel. Witness my cold, listless countenance for people who ask, “Is it a good time to invest?”

But I was REALLY surprised at how tactical this book is.

Books that say, “Do what you love and the money will come!” are not helpful. Escape From Cubicle Nation shows you — not tells you, shows you — how to figure out if you should start your own company, how to analyze your skills to see what a good market is, and how to scale the business beyond just making $100/month.

Most importantly, she tackles the psychology and barriers of why we know we’re capable of more than a simple cubicle job, but fail to take action to put our ideas into practice with a new business.

This is the book I’m going to give to people who talk and talk about starting a business, but think that hating their job is motivation enough to quit and start a fanciful idea. It’s not.

I’ve asked Pam to write up a guest post with a basic framework on doing this the right way.

* * *

Guest post from Pamela Slim: The Excuses People Use To Stay at a Job

As a coach who works with lots of corporate employees with entrepreneurial urges and an author of the book on the topic, I totally agree that starting a business is a great idea in this economy.

Today, I wanted to share some advice for those who might need a tiny bit more guidance on working through your business ideas and fears.

Toss grapes to your inner lizard

Trying to wait until you have enough courage to start your business is fighting the way your brain is wired. One of the deepest layers of the human brain is a neural structure that evolved in early vertebrates. It is wrapped around the cortex of your brain and blasts signals on a regular basis intended to keep you fed and out of danger.

This “lizard brain” will scream at you all day when you are considering doing something new like starting a business:

“You don’t have enough experience for anyone to take you seriously as a consultant!”
“If you leave your stable job to go out on your own, you will live in a van down by the river!”
“You have no idea what you are doing and when you show your ideas in public for the first time, people will mock and criticize you!”

Instead of trying to suppress these lizard fears, learn from them. There is almost always a grain of truth in each fear, and by addressing them directly, you will both feel better (which will inspire action) and discover concrete, pragmatic steps you need to take to build a better business.

Examples of how to engage your lizard fears in dialogue :

“You don’t have enough experience for anyone to take you seriously as a consultant.”

What market can I serve really well in which my age will have no relevance?
Can I think of examples of other young people who have started successful entrepreneurial ventures? (Ramit, Ben, Shama, Carmen, Dan, Moe, Ankesh, Naomi, need I go on?)
How can I start to gain valuable experience to prepare me to work for myself while I am still an employee? Are there people I can talk to at my company who could teach me about finance, marketing, operations, sales or customer service?

“If you leave your stable job to go out on your own, you will live in a van down by the river.”

What are ways I could test my business idea in small chunks to see if it is viable before chucking my day job?
How can I shore up my personal financial situation so that I have some breathing room when starting a business?
How can I create Plans B, C and D in case my new venture doesn’t work out?

“You have no idea what you are doing and when you show your ideas in public for the first time, people will mock and criticize you.”

Who would be knowledgeable peer mentors who could give me straight and objective feedback before I expose my business in public?
How can I use this experience to fortify my self-esteem and toughen my skin? (Chris Brogan has a thought about this, and recommended read. I have always been a fan of The Four Agreements, which reminds us that criticism is never about you, it is always about the other person)
How might I better understand that perfectionists are losers and learn from photographers who know that it takes 99 so-so shots to get one great photo?

How to choose a good business idea

Good business ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can sit atop a bar stool, pontificating about how their start-up idea will be a space-changing, curb-jumping application that will make Google weep they are so eager to acquire your company.

Good business ideas cross over into good businesses with the following factors in place:

Natural Passion and Interest

Skill and competence

Business model that delivers the life you want to live

Solid business planning with well-defined market

You can get great information about markets, business models, business planning and finances at places like this blog, StartupNation, Duct Tape Marketing, Tim Berry’s blogs, Small Business Trends or Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

So I will give some advice on the first part of the equation, natural passion and interest:

Become a heat-guided missile.

People of all ages seem to have a struggle deciding what they are really passionate about. The main issues seem to be:

They have never chosen careers or educational paths that truly match their interests (often due to societal or family pressure) so they just feel kind of numb.
They have so many interests that they get overwhelmed trying to choose just one.

In the first case, you want to spend some time observing the world around you and use your body like a heat-guided missile. Your brain may try to trick you into thinking that you should enjoy one thing over the other, so a better test is how your body feels when you see or think about a particular topic.

A great exercise for this:

Go into your local bookstore with a small notebook.
Turn off your brain as much as you can, and just let your body wander where it most wants to go. Don’t get frightened if it drifts towards the “radical post-feminist literature” section, “Dr. Seuss anthologies” and “Rare newt species of the Southern Hemisphere.”
Note the areas of interest in your notebook as you drift around the bookstore.

When you get back home, look at the information and see if there are any patterns. Then begin a broader and more organized search on the Internet, in books and magazines and in your everyday life as you ride the subway to work or walk around your city.

Track and categorize this information into the following areas:

Topics that interest you (cars, entrepreneurship, alcoholism, quantum physics, knitting, martial arts)
Activities you really enjoy doing (writing, coding, coaching, drawing, selling, running)
Industries that interest you (alternative energy, high-end luxury resorts, construction, home-organizing)
Problems you are eager to solve (teenage pregnancy, horrible screaming sales letters that plague online marketing, broken music distribution system for independent musicians,)
Products you love (the iPhone, Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, Moleskine notebooks, Sony Playstations)

This passion inventory will give you all kinds of information you can sort out to see general areas of interest that you can move from vague to concrete.

The process of vetting business ideas (which I cover in detail in Chapter 6 of my book) will lead you to some obvious indicators of which of your interests are viable business ideas vs. entertaining hobbies.

For ideas on how to take a general business idea and make it more concrete, see this excerpt from my book:

EFCN Excerpt - Pages 114-117

RSS readers: Can’t see the PDF? Click here

Part of what will give you a huge competitive edge in your business is that you took the time to really understand how you are wired and select a business idea that you feel passionate about. The road of entrepreneurship is challenging, but with a strong sense of why you are interested in a particular topic, what meaning it makes in the world and how it matches your unique DNA, you will blow by your competitors.

Final word: Tips for breaking the news you want to start a business to your relatives.

When counseling an Indian software engineer about 10 years ago from a successful engineering firm in Silicon Valley, he told me:

“My father told me that I have three career choices. I could be a doctor, an engineer or a failure.”

So he became an engineer who longed to be a creative writer. He drank. A lot.

It is easy to underplay the influence of family and friends on your ability to start your business. In reality, it can eat you up and make holiday visits and weekend calls tense and unpleasant.

So here are some common traps and suggested remedies for discussing your new business ideas with your parents and relatives:

Parent traps:

Thinking they understand what you are talking about.
Have you ever tried to explain blogging or Twitter to your grandmother? Do your parents need to know all the gritty details of what you are working on, or can you explain it in a way that they can relate to or understand?
Solution: Reduce any and all jargon.
“Grandma, having a blog is kind of like sitting down and writing a letter to someone every day. But instead of it being delivered to only one mailbox, the same letter gets delivered to one thousand. And if someone likes what they read, they write back right away!”
Thinking they understand that you have changed since your failed lemonade stand in the fifth grade
Families have a funny way of holding on to impressions of you that were formed when you weren’t old enough to hold your sippy cup steady. So instead of fighting it, just accept it, knowing that by working on your ideas, results will speak for themselves.
Solution: Change your expectations.
You will never be able to convince your family you have outgrown your innate shyness, so stop trying. Show results by your actions. If you get frustrated in a conversation, smile and change the subject quickly. The worst thing you can do is to argue your point. You will never win, and will most likely revert to acting like a ten-year old.
Thinking they understand the changing job market
Some parents are perplexed by the fact that the average person now has seven careers in a lifetime. They grew up in a world where the best career security was finding a good job in a good company and staying until retirement. Lots of job changes were seen as being irresponsible, unstable, and a sign of a poor work ethic.
Solution: Come armed with a nice elevator speech about today’s job market so that you can help them see you are not outside the norm.
“Dad, most recruiters realize that in today’s tumultuous markets, smart employees will actively manage their careers and switch companies or start businesses as a way to mitigate risk. You don’t want to see me on the evening news walking out of my “stable company” with my things in a cardboard box like the Lehman employees, do you?”

By taking into consideration some of these personal and emotional issues related to starting a business along with the more straightforward ones, you will be much more likely to choose a business that has a chance of success, will deploy it faster, and will be more likely to be profiled as a raging success story on this blog, rather than someone mocked for inaction.

Success is the best revenge, isn’t it?

Special from Pam: Read the first chapter of Escape from Cubicle Nation here:

Ch 1 Escape From Cubby Nation

RSS readers: Can’t see the PDF? Click here

The book on Amazon:

* * *

Pamela Slim is a business coach, blogger and author of the just-released Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur. She’s been featured as an expert on entrepreneurship in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and US News & World Report.

Is Mass Personalization Possible?

2009-05-06T08:01:00Z

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Is Mass Personalization Possible?

One of the most effective ways to increase the effectiveness of advertising is through personal touches. The goal being that the recipient feels there was some care that went into the mailing and maybe they were the only one who got it. Now, if you need to reach out to your 1000 hottest prospects this is a little tough to pull off.

But, technology can help you add personal flourishes that can help make a mailing standout, increase response, and then go to work personally nurturing a lead to help move them along.

I'm not just talking about merge fields - hi [first name] - either.

A technology called personalized URLs (purl) been around for some time now, but is really getting to the point where even the smallest business can use it very effectively.

Imagine a prospect, Bob, being enticed to visit a web page from a pay per click, magazine or direct mail ad. Once there he is offered a free report that teaches him the best way to save thousands or dollars doing something he is getting ready to do. 3 days later he automatically receives a postcard with another compelling offer to attend a free seminar. But, this postcard doesn't just send him to a generic webpage, it tells him about the webpage that's been created just for him. In fact, the url is bob.ourwebsite.com and when Bob visits the page he is greeted with a welcome Bob message from the CEO of the company that personally invites him to the webinar. In addition, he immediately receives, via email, another special message from the CEO alerting him to the fact that if he wants to invite a guest to the seminar he'll get $100 of anything he decides to purchase from your company. And, Betty, the crack salesperson for that territory, is already dialing the phone to ask Bob where he would like his pre-seminar materials sent. (She was alerted the moment Bob visited his personal web page)

The example above might be a little over the top, but I think it gives a little glimpse into some of what's possible using this newer breed of mass personalization through data-driven advertising, personalized URLs, landing pages, lead tracking and autoresponders. Much of what I've described is not that new, but it's never been more affordable and available to the small business as it is now.

Some service leaders in this field.

SendPepper - I have to admit that this is the one I'm most familiar with because it's the one I use. Very affordable. You can create forms, landing pages and personalized URLs with Habañero account and visitors can sign-up for something and receive automated email and automated postcard mail several days later.
EasyPurl - Design and customize landing pages on the fly
MindFire - Personalize your responders initial online visit with variable data and images.

There is tremendous proof that the use of personalized URLs increases response rates, silly as it may be it's hard for people to ignore that URL with their name in it, but I also find that the tracking system this employs allows you to focus on the hottest leads and get to them while they are most receptive.

Image credit: jemsweb

7 Firefox Add-On’s to Help Jumpstart Your Online Business

2009-05-06T17:30:05Z

For the most part, Firefox has become one of the most widely utilized applications to browse the web. Mainly this is due to the flexibility and endless possibilities that this browser offers. If Firefox is an open source application that allows the use of extensions in order to simplify our everyday lives, why not place it upon your browser to aid you in jump-starting your online business?

Below you will find 7 Firefox Add-on’s that will help you jump-start your online business guiding it into the right direction.

Domain Lookup

One of the first things you have to take into account when starting an online business is finding the right domain name. This can sometimes become quite a difficult task, this where Domain Lookup steps into place. With this add-on if you’re searching the web and find a phrase or two that might make a great domain name if properly thought out, then you can search for generic domains that match those key words. This extension also checks for the validity of the specific domains by cross-checking the information with many of the webs top domain registrars.

Take a quick look at the Domain Look-up informative tutorial on how to search for domains here.

Firebux

Firebux lets you automatically and securely download transactions from your banks and credit cards. You can also automatically categorize them, create budgets for each and every category and receive real-time alerts on your mobile phone for free. In order to use Firebux, you need to have an account on Buxfer. Key features include: Automatically download transactions, track your expenses, track who owes you money, send money through Amazon Payments and more.

LinkedIn Companion

The thing about starting an online business is, well, you need recognition. Depending on what your business is focused on (web design, service of goods, IT solutions and more) than you can resort to LinkedIn Companion. This add-on allows you to open doors and opportunities for networking and the facilitation of finding projects through LinkedIn’s connection to over 25 million experienced professionals.

Gmail Manager

An important and vital part of your online business revolves around how connected you are with your prospect clients and future customers. The most widely used choice of contact on the web is the use of email. Countless amounts of businesses utilize Gmail as their sole provider for contacting needs, especially since you can easily register a customized Gmail account with your specific domain name through your web host.

Gmail Manager allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts all at the same time in the same browser window. You’ll instantly receive updates on new messages and replies with the use of a handy drop-down menu embedded into your toolbar.

Find on Xing

Xing is a global networking site for professionals that houses over 7 million online professionals in over 200 countries. Xing is very much like LinkedIn, however with a more diversified goal in global outreach to businesses and individuals. The Firefox extension Find on Xing allows you to specifically highlight a professionals name and find a profile or review of them on the Xing database. This will allow you to network, create social stature, and expand the available opportunities you’re able to take part in with your online business.

MoneyQuake

Have you ever wanted to virtually keep track of how much your exact earnings of advertisement services on your website are? Well with MoneyQuake you can pretty much do just that. This extension displays real time earning statistics from several of the most popular advertisement systems such as Google Adsense, Bidvertizer, SoftwareProfi, PeakClick and more. This will allow you to easily create and manage your websites budget on a daily basis.

Business.com

Business.com is one of the most sought out online resources that help you search for vital information to expand the presence of your online entrepreneurial ventures. This add-on will allow you to effortlessly search through this sites composite archive of hundreds of articles and thousands of resources that will help you establish your business, gain experience, and brainstorm with new found ideas.

Which one of these Firefox extensions were you able to find helpful? Please MakeUseOf the comment box below and share with us your valuable thoughts and insight.

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it.

New on MakeUseOf …

Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. You won’t regret it!
Get cheat sheets, cool PDF guides and more @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

Categorized under: business, corporate, firefox addons, social networking

Related posts

The 4 Hour Workday

2009-05-06T17:40:00Z

Photo: stock photo

By Scott Young

How to complete a full workday by noon? Sounds impossible, right? But on many days, by 12 o’clock, I have completed work that should normally take eight hours. And I don’t wake up at 4 a.m. to achieve this.

Actually, finishing everything by noon isn’t too difficult. If you add up all the time you spend procrastinating, distracted, or tired at work, it would probably make up half of your day. If you eliminated this wasted time, ending your day at noon wouldn’t be hard.

The problem, of course, is in the actual elimination of all that wasted time. A lot of productivity advice looks like simplistic dieting advice (”Eat less!”). Unfortunately cutting that wasted time is the tricky part. However, by making a few simple changes in your approach, you can make it far easier to cut the fat.

Don’t Pay Yourself by The Hour

If you view work as something that starts at 9 and ends at 5, you won’t be able to finish everything by noon. When you evaluate yourself for time spent working, rather than work completed, procrastination is often the result.

If you read the headline for this article and thought it was a scam, you probably suffer from this problem. Finishing by noon feels like cheating when you’re supposed to put in an eight hour workday. Unfortunately, it’s that attitude that causes you to procrastinate and stretch work out to keep you occupied until 5pm.

The solution is to stop paying yourself by the hour. Sure, you may continue to bill your clients by the hour. Or, your boss may continue to pay you a wage, and expect you to stay in the office until 5pm. But, that doesn’t mean you need to pay yourself that way. If you reward completion over input time, you will have a lean schedule.

In knowledge work, time input isn’t the point. As a writer, programmer or engineer, your value comes from your output. The end customer doesn’t care how many hours you spend behind your desk on Facebook or Twitter. Ultimately, your output will be what counts for your boss, clients or customers.

If You Work at Home, Never Work 9-5

If you are in a typical office environment (that rewards punctuality over performance), it will be harder to get your workday in before noon. Tim Ferriss - in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek - has some great suggestions for talking your boss into letting you work less, if you are more productive. If corporate policy chains you to your desk until late afternoon, I’d suggest you check out his book.

However, if you work at home, you have no excuse. Scheduling an eight-hour workday is wasting precious hours from your life. If you change how you evaluate your efforts, finishing eight hours of work in 3-4 hours is probable. You might even be able to increase your total output while reducing the amount you work.

Some people, however, don’t get it. I had a friend who owned an online business. He told me he had been working over ten hours each day on a new product. He said this without exaggeration, and I would say he honestly believed he was working at every possible moment.

However, even by judging his online activity, I knew something was wrong. He still had time to write long forum posts online and write lengthy emails. He made the mistake of judging his productivity by the amount of effort he was putting in, instead of results. Although it would have been less sympathetic, if he only worked five ultra-productive hours and rested for the rest of the day, he would have been more successful and less stressed.

How to Pay Yourself for Work Finished

I have a few productivity tricks I use to help remind myself of the “pay for completion” approach. The first I call Weekly/Daily Goals:

Weekly/Daily Goals

This is the core of my productivity system and it’s my key attack method to finish a full day’s work by noon. The idea is simple: at every point in the day, you keep two lists. The first list stores every task you need to complete that day. The second list stores every task you need to complete that week.

When you’ve finished all the tasks on your Daily Goals list, you’re done. If that happens at 11am, then congratulate yourself and go have a beer/coffee/tea/chai/nap. If that happens at 9pm, then put on another pot of coffee and keep working. Your day ends when your work ends.

This sounds obvious, but it is not how most people work. It is far more common to see someone finish at 11am, and then start working on another task. Or, after reaching 6 or 7pm in the evening, they give up and call it a day.

Instead of pay for completion, most people try to fit in eight hours. When they finish early, they add more. When they finish later than planned, they quit. Pay for completion is easy to preach, but pay for time wasted is more frequently practiced.

Keeping a list of daily goals puts only your work between you and relaxation, instead of some arbitrary amount of time for the day. Not a minimum amount of effort, just your most important tasks separate you and the finish line. This creates an incredible amount of motivation to cut distractions and keep the focus.

Why You Can’t Add More Work

If you finish early, the instinct will be to add more work. Unfortunately, you need to resist this urge strongly. The consequence of adding more work is that it defeats your system. The Weekly/Daily Goals system functions because you can’t add more work.

Imagine you are racing in a 400m race. If you pace yourself correctly, you should be completely exhausted by the end of the race. You will run as fast as you can within 400m.

Now imagine you were running a 400m race, but as you crossed the finish line, your coach yelled at you to run another 200m. If your coach did this frequently, you might start pacing your race to leave a bit of extra running energy for the end of your run, just in case you’re asked to run further.

The Weekly/Daily Goals system functions like the 400m race. If you keep adding on 200m whenever you finish quickly, you’re going to defeat the system. Instead of pacing your focus and energy to complete a particular set of tasks, you’re back to infinite to-do lists and ten-hour workdays.

Calibrating Your Weekly/Daily Goals

My productivity tripled when I started setting daily goals. But the disadvantage of this system is the irregularity. Some days will be light, because you accidentally under-scheduled. Other days will be incredibly hard, because you accidentally over-scheduled.

The solution to the irregularities isn’t to give up and go back to an unproductive pay-per-hour system. You simply need to calibrate yourself to the amount of work involved. As with anything else in life, you get better with practice and awareness.

Log Your Current Productivity

If you’re switching systems, the best way to calibrate is by keeping track of the amount of work you accomplish in a day. Quantify this into a metric you can easily use. As a writer, the best metric for me to use is the number of words I write per day, or the number of articles I finish.

Keep a daily log where you record the details of everything you’ve accomplished that day. At the end of the week, group up the different types of tasks and evaluate how much work was accomplished. This is your productivity baseline.

From there, you can set your daily goals to reflect this baseline. As a writer, I know I can typically write 3000-4000 words per day, or less if I combine this with non-writing work. By recording my current output levels, I can set my daily goals to match this amount. And I can make sure my daily goals list has at least 3000-4000 words of writing.

Why Bother Measuring?

If you know what your current productivity is in hard numbers it makes the switch to a new system more convincing. Without the hard numbers, you run the risk of feeling lazy when you finish early and take the afternoon off.

When I knew, from my old to-do lists, that I was accomplishing 2-3x more with this system than I had been previously, the choice to continue was obvious.

You can also use numbers like these to show to your boss. If I was an employer, I’d be happy if a worker could demonstrate, with numbers, how a new system had doubled their productivity, even if it meant they left the office early. And, even if you can’t convince your boss with the numbers, you can convince yourself.

Weekly Goals

The other element of my productivity system is keeping a list of weekly goals. The weekly goals list doesn’t need to remain as strict as the daily goals list. I find that the urge to procrastinate (and the motivation to work) stem mostly from the daily level, not the entire week.

The purpose of weekly goals is to ensure that everything you want to accomplish makes it to your daily goals lists. For years I’ve maintained a set of daily goals. It was only over a year ago that I decided to add a weekly goals list.

When you have just a daily goals list, some tasks are likely to be pushed off until tomorrow. That is, when you are planning your daily goals list, you may not include some tasks that you want to add into the next list. This form of meta-procrastination can be beat by having a separate list of to-do items for the entire week.

Finishing Your Entire Workday by Noon

Finishing everything by noon is just one benefit of using the Weekly/Daily Goals system. My goal isn’t to complete everything by noon. I use the system to get the maximum amount of work out of each day, so I can reach the goals I’ve set for my business. I love my work, so I use the Weekly/Daily Goals system to get more of it.

But I’ve also used the system to minimize the work I hate. If I’m doing work because I have to, not just because I want to, the Weekly/Daily Goals system works well. It allows me to finish work I would otherwise avoid or procrastinate indefinitely.

In some ways, the productivity difference is even more noticeable with work you dislike. If you enjoy work, it is easier to focus on it without distractions or procrastination. The power of the Weekly/Daily Goals system is that it forces you to get work done that you don’t want to do.

* What is your workday like? What can you do to make it more productive? Share your story and thoughts with us in the comment section. See you there!

If you enjoyed the article, please join Think Simple Now on facebook or follow us on Twitter. And we’d love it if you can share this article on twitter, thumb it on StumbleUpon or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Thank you for your support. :)

Other Articles You May Like:

Small Business SEO: Starting with the Right Success Metrics

2009-05-06T12:58:09Z

Posted by rishil

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

It’s been a while since I put together a Small Business SEO post. I thought it’s high time I tackled another key issue facing small businesses – deciding whether their SEO activity is progressing or not. SEO, and indeed SEM, is a unique marketing channel. It is quantifiable, responsive and flexible to an extent which I would argue other channels aren’t. However, that is my personal opinion. And the way in which I rate SEM successes is different, not unique certainly, but definitely different.

The first thing clients say to me when requesting SEO is invariably centered around rankings. “I want to be position so and so, for such and such a keyword.” And I am certain that this is a situation familiar to many of you providing SEO services. However, search isn’t always about ranking. And rankings aren’t an overnight success story – they take time to achieve. In the meantime there need to be other indicators of success. There are a range of metrics possible to use to act as such indicators, many of which are key to gauging small business SEM success. Ranking high for “xyz” may deliver huge volume of visitors, but not sales. On the other hand, capturing niche rankings for “uvwxyz” and “abcdefg” may deliver less traffic, but actually better sales, not to mention may be easier to achieve in a shorter lead time.

What I want to do is demonstrate a couple of interim success metrics that I use, that are different, and how I explain them to clients using my current playground, designer watches. Let’s break down some simple metrics that I use as indicators of success (Unique Success Indicators – USIs):

Keyword Coverage
Keyword Variance
Call to Actions

Keyword Variance and Keyword Coverage are slightly interlinked. In a previous post, Keyword Discovery for Small Businesses, I explored a range of keyword development routes, branching from a series of questions. The first part of the section dealt with expanding to long tail keywords from a series of parent keywords, for example:

Parent: Designer Watches

Long Tails: Designer Watches London, Cheap Designer Watches, Designer watches for Sale, Designer Watches bargains in UK. (Not an exact series, but I hope you get the gist.)

The second part of the post covered expanding the root in relation to other phrases, for example in this case: Gucci Designer Watches, Armani Designer Watches, Gucci Men’s Watch, Men’s Rolex Wrist Watches. What I usually start with is splitting these keywords into a series of “roots,” where, although “Designer Watches” is my top level keyword, I have other equally important keyword combinations, which in the example used would be the different watch brands.

So what is Variance and what’s the difference to Coverage? Variance is simply the “variety of root terms,” i.e., what are the most common top level keyword sets that the site attracts traffic for. In this case the Variety would be around the different Brands – Gucci, Armani, etc. Success metric – do I get a sufficient variety of root keywords in my referrer traffic?

Coverage in that case equates to the long tales of these root key phrases. For example, Cheap Gucci Watches UK, Gucci watches for men, Gucci designer watches, etc. Success Metric – do I cover a large proportion of long tail extensions of the roots in my referrer traffic?

The Calls to Actions metric is probably one I don’t like being on this list. This because I feel that it’s the SEM’s job to deliver traffic, and the site's job to guide that traffic in to carrying out an action. However, I still use it as a metric because it IS the SEM’s job to deliver TARGETED traffic. If you deliver an extra 2000 visitors a day who don’t buy, don’t fill in a questionnaire, don’t spend more than a few seconds on the site, don’t make an enquiry, don’t call the business, then you are definitely failing to deliver the right traffic. There is only so much you can blame on a poor site – and to be honest, if you feel that the site just won’t convert, stand up and say so.

Let’s take the example of my site (designer watches). It’s a poor site. The search functionality is rubbish, there isn’t a contact form, the call to action is pretty blunt, and there isn’t a way to shift and filter between offers. But that’s OK. My site's current aim is to target purely long tail traffic delivered via Google’s QDF algorithm. So I expect high bounce rates and low click through rates. However, my success metric for the present is Keyword Variance and Coverage. But that doesn’t mean that I should have no sales!

In this roundabout way, I hope I have demonstrated a different way to look at interim metrics. What I haven’t done is to explain how to relate these to a client's site.

It’s not a simple exercise, unfortunately. However, if you do follow certain processes while working on a client’s site (or even your own), I am assuming you would carry out some sort of an audit. I normally advise on an SEO SWOT analysis. This audit helps in identifying what’s wrong with a site, and what its position is in relation to its competitor and industry. The ideal scenario would be to split the metric indicator decision into two parts:

What needs to be done on the site? (e.g., link building, site cleanup, increased content, etc)
What are the client's metrics for success? (e.g., sales, visibility, ad impressions, brand building, enquiries, etc)

Once you have identified the above, you can then proceed to identify the quick wins against the long term goals. Splitting them into the two categories allows you to put together a range of success metrics that are achievable within your predicted timescales, given that the SEO/M work you carry out works for the site.

In my case above, I have given first priority to Coverage and Variance, which will then move on to rankings in the long run. In order to achieve rankings, I need links and content – so for the metric of High Rankings, I have two identifiable and quantifiable actions. Which highlights another point – short term metrics vary significantly to long term metrics.

Let me end with examples of other interim metrics I have used:

Quantity of indexed pages
Increase in backlinks
Universal search visibility
Local search visibility
Increase in indexing frequency
Ranking for targeted landing pages
Cross search engine visibility

I do have to apologise in the circular nature of this post - I felt that it’s strange ground to cover unless I put the whole thing together in a conversational tone in order to explain myself better.

If you would like to know more about Small Business SEM processes that I use, please feel free to read my take on SEO Swot Analysis, as well as:

If you enjoyed my writing, I invite you to follow me on Twitter.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Why we talk about a Twitter acquisition

2009-05-06T15:07:00Z

Caroline McCarthy rightly rebuts all the "so-and-so will buy Twitter!" nonsense, but there's a very good reason for this nonsense:

The microblogging service still makes little to no money, and the assumption is that it will continue to fail to do so, absent a big-brother type that can turn its community (that word again!) into cash.

As Google discovered with YouTube, however, big community doesn't necessarily equal big cash. The same is likely true of Twitter.

Some communities simply aren't designed to be monetized directly. Unfortunately, advertising isn't the panacea we once supposed, either, so Twitter can't just fall back on that tired Web 2.0 fix-all.

Hence the need for a big brother. Silicon Alley Insider insists that Microsoft should buy Twitter, MyStoreCredit's CEO suggests that Amazon.com should, while Valleywag's noncommittal declaration is that Apple "could" buy Twitter.

Of course it could, but it almost certainly won't, as McCarthy points out.

And yet, we continue to prognosticate about who will buy Twitter when. Twitter has no business, and so it must be rescued by someone that can gift it a business model.

Unfortunately, this is the very reason that would-be buyers remain on the sidelines: perhaps they don't know how to monetize Twitter, either. Twitter has a rich community of users but a poor community of payers. Back in the dot-com days, that seemed like a winning combination. In the recession, it's a recipe for failure.

So, here's my prediction: the minute that Twitter demonstrates an ability to make money, it will become ripe for an acquisition. Guess what? That's the same minute it won't need one, which is why if it does get bought, its valuation will be stratospheric.

Funny how that works.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Google: We're good for journalism

2009-05-06T17:47:00Z

Google is under attack for profiting from content produced by newspaper executives, magazine publishers, and The Associated Press, but the company's Marissa Mayer on Wednesday sought to convince the U.S. Senate that Google adds to journalism, too.

The most recent attack, by Forbes.com Chief Executive Jim Spanfeller, decried "the parasitical nature of its business model" and asserted that Google makes about $60 million a year directing people to the Forbes site.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Mayer, who is vice president of search products and user experience and manages Google's search and Google News sites, wants people to see things differently. For starters, she made the case that directing people to news Web sites shouldn't be overlooked as a valuable service.

"Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than 1 billion clicks per month. Newspapers use that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue," she said, according to her prepared testimony.

Mayer was one of a handful scheduled to speak before a Senate subcommittee on communications, technology, and the Internet hearing on the future of journalism. Other speakers set to speak are: lberto Ibargüen, CEO of the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation; David Simon, an author, TV producer, and former newspaper employee; Steve Coll, former managing editor of The Washington Post; James Moroney, publisher and CEO of The Dallas Morning News; and Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.

She also mentioned how journalists benefit from Google services. "The Los Angeles Times Web site last year followed the path of Southern California wildfires using Google Maps," she said.

And Mayer offered some constructive criticism about how to deal with Web publishing, indirectly making the point that the Web, not just Google, profoundly changes online journalism. Specifically, she said people often consume online news one story at a time--the "atomic unit of consumption"--not one newspaper at a time. That doesn't mean that news sites should leave readers hanging after they're done with an article, though.

"The structure of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the individual article," she said. "Publishers should not discount the simple and effective navigational elements the Web can offer. When a reader finishes an article online, it is the publication's responsibility to answer the reader who asks, "What should I do next?" Click on a related article or advertisement? Post a comment? Read earlier stories on the topic?"

Below is her full testimony.

Testimony of Marissa Mayer
Vice President, Search Products and User Experience
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet
Hearing on "The Future of Journalism"
May 6, 2009

Chairman Kerry, Ranking Member Ensign, and members of the Subcommittee.

Thank you for inviting me to contribute to this discussion. My name is Marissa Mayer, and I work as Vice President of Search and User Experience at Google. I manage Google's efforts in search -- including Web search and Google News -- and I also guide user interaction design across Google's products. In addition, I co-chair the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. In both roles, I've reflected on the intersections of journalism and technology and I will speak to that this afternoon. In my testimony today, I would like to cover three main points:

First, I'd like to discuss how Web search acts as a conduit for journalism by connecting individuals to the news stories they are seeking.

Second, I'll address our commitment to create economic opportunity for publishers and to provide tools to create more engaging presentations of their content.

And finally, I'll talk about how the very structure of the Web itself represents some challenges to, but also opportunities for, the future of journalism.

Search: a conduit for online publishing

Every day, millions of people search the Web for relevant answers to their questions. In response, search engines strive to connect each user with the right results, and those results can come in any number of different forms: a Web page, an image, a video, a map, or a news story - something of particular relevance to today's hearing. In each of those cases, search engines play the role of connecting users with high-quality content -- often journalistic -- ultimately sending traffic to the publisher's Website. Google is one such search engine that people use to find answers online.

Another service we offer is Google News, our specialized service that's designed specifically for users who are looking for news articles. Stories on Google News are selected and ranked by computers based on the freshness, location, relevance, and diversity of their content. As a result, these stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology, and users can choose from a wide variety of perspectives on any given story. We offer links to several articles covering a topic so that users can choose to read the story from the publishers and sources they prefer.

Both Google search and Google News connect users to answers and information as quickly as possible. We show people just enough information to invite them to read more -- the headline, a line or two of text, and a link to the news publisher's Website. A user clicks on the headline of interest and is taken directly to the site that published the story.

Together, Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than 1 billion clicks per month. Newspapers use that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue.

In terms of publications appearing in search indexes, we believe they have the right to control their content. That's why we allow site owners to choose whether or not Google can index their sites. Using what's called a "robots.txt" file, which has been an industry standard for many years, a publisher can block its Web content from any search engine's crawl. As a result, that site will not show up in Web search results. Effective use of "robots.txt" and other metatags gives publishers control over how their content is searched at a number of levels by allowing publishers to restrict: search across the entire site, individual directories, pages of a specific type, or individual pages only. So, while we think inclusion in a search engine can drive a lot of beneficial traffic, our policy first and foremost is to respect the wishes of content owners.

Creating economic opportunity for publishers

Because our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, high-quality content is incredibly important to Google. Our most basic goal is to connect users with high-quality and reliable information. Credible, factual, trustworthy content -- that is, journalism -- is critical to the millions of users who search for news stories on Google.

Google connects Internet users to journalists' work while at the same time helping journalists generate income to support their work, and providing tools to make news more compelling to readers and viewers. Most importantly from an economic perspective, once readers arrive at publication sites, our Google AdSense advertising platform helps publishers generate revenue from their content. By providing relevant ads and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, Google AdSense creates billions of dollars in annual revenue for publishers. In fact, in 2008, that figure exceeded $5 billion in revenue for AdSense publishers. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. We recently launched interest-based advertising, which we believe will be particularly helpful to publishers as it takes into account each individual user's interests in the hopes of making advertisements even more relevant.

In addition to providing revenue opportunities, Google also offers many tools for sharing information that are being used by newspapers. For example, the Los Angeles Times Website last year followed the path of Southern California wildfires using Google Maps at the site. Google Image Search brings the Life Magazine photo archive to light for a whole new generation of readers. National Geographic and The Holocaust Memorial Museum have created interactive educational content layers in Google Earth. And NASA has partnered with us to allow anyone to virtually travel the stars in Google Sky. Our Web technologies are powerful information tools, and we hope to continue to empower content creation through them.

The structure of the Web and its impact on publishers

The structure of the Web itself requires the presentation of news in a way that's fundamentally different from its offline predecessor. The Web has caused some parts of the news to be presented more easily and effectively. For example, Web pages can link to voluminous supporting materials without worrying about column inches. In addition, the always-on, always-updating nature of the Web means that real-time news updates can appear throughout the day without being tied to print production deadlines. However, other aspects are more challenging, particularly in regard to how users arrive at a news story, and how authority on a particular topic is established. I'd like to offer a few observations on what I call the "atomic unit of consumption" for online news, the prospect of creating living stories online, as well as a few simple steps online publishers can take to keep readers engaged.

 The atomic unit of consumption

The atomic unit of consumption for existing media is almost always disrupted by emerging media. For example, digital music caused consumers to think about their purchases as individual songs rather than as full albums. Digital and on-demand video has caused people to view variable-length clips when it is convenient for them, rather than fixed-length programs on a fixed broadcast schedule. Similarly, the structure of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the individual article. As with music and video, many people still consume physical newspapers in their original full-length format. But with online news, a reader is much more likely to arrive at a single article. While these individual articles could be accessed from a newspaper's homepage, readers often click directly to a particular article via a search engine or another Website.

Changing the basic unit of content consumption is a challenge, but also an opportunity. Treating the article as the atomic unit of consumption online has several powerful consequences. When producing an article for online news, the publisher must assume that a reader may be viewing this article on its own, independent of the rest of the publication. To make an article effective in a standalone setting requires providing sufficient context for first-time readers, while clearly calling out the latest information for those following a story over time. It also requires a different approach to monetization: each individual article should be self-sustaining. These types of changes will require innovation and experimentation in how news is delivered online, and how advertising can support it.

 The living story

The Web by definition changes and updates constantly throughout the day. Because of its ability to operate in real-time, it offers an opportunity for news publishers to publish on changing and evolving stories as they happen. Web addresses (known as URLs -- uniform resource locators such as http://www.google.com) were designed to refer to unique pieces of content, and those URLs were intended to persist over time. Today, in online news, publishers frequently publish several articles on the same topic, sometimes with identical or closely related content, each at their own URL. The result is parallel Web pages that compete against each other in terms of authority, and in terms of placement in links and search results.

Consider instead how the authoritativeness of news articles might grow if an evolving story were published under a permanent, single URL as a living, changing, updating entity. We see this practice today in Wikipedia's entries and in the topic pages at NYTimes.com. The result is a single authoritative page with a consistent reference point that gains clout and a following of users over time.

 Keeping users engaged

A much smaller but important factor for online newspapers to consider in today's digital age is the fundamental design and presentation of their content. Publishers should not discount the simple and effective navigational elements the Web can offer. When a reader finishes an article online, it is the publication's responsibility to answer the reader who asks, "What should I do next?" Click on a related article or advertisement? Post a comment? Read earlier stories on the topic? Much like Amazon.com suggests related products and YouTube makes it easy to play another video, publications should provide obvious and engaging next steps for users. Today, there are still many publications that don't fully take advantage of the numerous tools that keep their readers engaged and on their site.

Conclusion

Chairman Kerry, Ranking Member Ensign, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for having me here today to participate in this important discussion.

Preserving robust and independent journalism at the national and local levels is an important goal for the United States. Google is doing its part by driving significant traffic to online news publishers, by helping them generate revenue through advertising, and by providing tools and platforms enabling them to reach millions of people.

There are certainly many challenges to face in adapting the long tradition of journalism to the online world. I am hopeful, though, that innovation will help preserve journalism and its vital function in our society.

Thank you.

Markets in everything

2009-05-06T18:23:00Z

It's funny but to me this story is more surprising than the usual fare of prediction markets on whether bronzed bones of your ancestors will be transcribed into binary code for your Kindle, or simultaneously used as collateral for CDS swaps and bundled with adultery insurance:

Reached on the phone, Richard A. Hanson isn't quite sure he's ready to give an interview about this week's sale of Waldorf College. The college's president has talked quite a bit locally, trying to assure students, professors and the residents of Forest City, Iowa, that selling the liberal arts institution to a for-profit, online university is the best (in fact, only) option.

What persuaded Hanson to talk about what's happening at Waldorf is the question of whether he thinks other colleges will soon be facing the same choice. "You are going to be seeing a lot more of this from colleges like us," he said.

They're actually selling the college. Hurrah.

New Study Accuses Bankruptcy Judges Of “Routine Illegality”

2009-05-06T18:14:30Z

Bankruptcy lawyers are fat and happy these days; that much we have documented. (Click here and here.)

But are judges to blame for the fact that bankruptcy lawyers are earning such big bucks? Yes, according to a study out today from UCLA Law professors Lynn LoPucki (pictured) and Joseph Doherty.

“Meaningful objections to fee requests are few, and judges are shirking the duty to review fees absent objection,” the authors write. From 1998 to 2007, according to the study, bankruptcy professional fees increased more than 10% annually; more than twice the rate of inflation.

The problem, according to the study, is that judges routinely allow illegal fee practices in public-company bankruptcies. For example, it is common for judges to allow debtors to pay their professionals monthly before the judges have reviewed the professionals’ fee requests and determined their reasonableness — as the federal bankruptcy code requires.

Later in cases, bankruptcy judges do require professionals to submit formal fee applications, and courts can require lawyers to pay back any fees that are deemed excessive. Still, “payments are harder to reverse than to prevent,” LoPucki and Doherty write.

Here’s a Bloomberg story from today, which analyzes the study and notes that the Chrysler bankruptcy is adopting this purportedly illegal practice of paying professionals first and then asking questions later. (The debtor counsel in Chrysler, Jones Day, declined comment to Bloomberg.) Bankruptcy lawyers have a “cavalier attitude toward the laws that regulate them,” LoPucki told Bloomberg. The UCLA prof has been a longtime critic of runaway fees in big Chapter 11’s.

Nancy Rapoport, a bankruptcy specialist at UNLV’s law school, believes it is acceptable in many cases, in the interest of administrative convenience, to allow professionals to be paid before their fee requests are formally reviewed. “There is a presumption that if we don’t like what [the lawyers] did, they are good for it,” and the courts can claw back any excessive fees, Rapoport told the Law Blog. Still, she agrees with the study’s premise that “the foxes are guarding the henhouses, because lawyers don’t like to reduce others lawyers’ fees.”

A theory about selfishness

2009-05-06T15:53:47Z

In the last few months, I've developed a theory about why people are selfish.

Traditionally, we might think of a selfish person as having a character flaw. In some cases, we attribute selfish or greedy behavior as a sign of immaturity (eg. "He'll grow up someday and learn to share.)

Both of these notions are likely wrong. I think that selfishness is a symptom of a lack of confidence. We hoard because we think that the pie of life is shrinking and we aren't confident we'll get our fair share. We keep ideas to ourselves because we fear we'll never have another good one again.

We pass-the-plate for charities, church and friends in need because we are not confident that we'll ever make money again. In other words, selfishness flows from a crisis in personal confidence. As the economy shrinks from a lack of business confidence, love and charity shrink from a lack of personal confidence.

When I see someone behaving selfishly, I see a personal recession in full bloom. If you want to help someone learn generosity or patience, help them find some confidence. They can seek self confidence or confidence in an organization they belong to. When they find this confidence, they will also find the abundance mentality.

To come in future posts: How to bolster your total confidence and coach it in others.

To Pay Or Not to Pay: When to Move Beyond Free

2009-04-29T16:00:00Z

Written by Aliza Sherman.

The other day I noticed that someone had posted a quick poll on LinkedIn. I thought a poll like that might be a good tool to use for informal market research, so I clicked on the link to create my own. However, I was met with a message saying that I needed to upgrade my account to access the polling feature. I perused the prices, then quickly determined I wasn’t going to upgrade.

This isn’t the first time I’ve considered upgrading my LinkedIn account and decided against it, which led me to start thinking about all of the “freemium” apps — basically free apps with premium upgrades — I’ve been using. I started feeling guilty about taking advantage of the “free” in freemium services, especially because I’ve had the opportunity to interview founders of these companies, many of whom confess to struggling over pricing. So what makes us decide to pay for an app?

My decision process works something like this:

1. Is it mission critical? Not every app or tool I use is critical to the well-being of my company, but some are. Our project management system? Critical. Our internal social networking system? Not so critical, because we’ve not all adopted it yet, but this could change.

2. How useful is the free version? In my WWD review, I was impressed that Deskaway’s free version had more features than Basecamp’s. That could have won me over, but its interface just didn’t work for me.

3. Can I live without more functionality? I used Basecamp for quite a while without ever thinking about the reporting available with a paid plan. I was getting my reports from Freshbooks, and Basecamp was just a way for me to manage client information when I was working solo. I only upgraded to the $24 per month plan when I needed to manage more projects. Payment made sense because I had so much more new work to cover the expense.

4. Should I upgrade and pay or seek out a different app? Once I began adding more team members to my company, Basecamp’s inadequacies for deeper project management became obvious. So instead of upgrading a notch or two further — and still not having the functionality we needed — we moved over to 5pm at $4/month more. Again, the cost was palatable because more team members meant greater productivity and more moving parts to manage, so it made good business sense.

5. Do the fee levels hit my sweet spot? I realize I have two tiers of apps that I am willing to pay for, each with its own sweet spot in terms of pricing. For apps that benefit the overall smooth functioning of my business and provide real value that I can quantify, I’ll pay around $25 per month. I feel comfortable having four of these. The second tier contains apps that are useful in some aspect of my work, and I’ll subscribe to up to five of these at $10 per month. That’s about my limit. Right now, I don’t have a real method for deciding how much I will pay — it’s all from the gut. But we’re working to measure the costs of doing business and the impact our apps have on our bottom line, so eventually I should have some real numbers to work with.

6. How entrenched am I? In some cases, I begin to feel “trapped” by the choice I made initially when I started with an app. If I need to upgrade and the next level is out of my price range, what then? When I left Basecamp, I couldn’t easily figure out how to migrate information over to 5pm, so I just downgraded my membership to a free plan, and now cannot figure out how to access my data so it just sits there. Over time, those assets will be outdated and no longer as valuable as they were the first months of the migration, but I still feel a sense of my data being trapped. Avoiding this trapped feeling — as well as avoiding a huge learning curve of a new app — are two big factors when deciding whether to move to another service.

7. Can I afford not to pay? If an app I’m using has a positive effect on my business’ bottom line–or moving away from it has a significant negative impact–then I’m much more likely to dish out the cash.

Back to the case of LinkedIn. The lowest monthly upgrade is $24.95. Per month. For me, that hits a sour note. I get so much benefit out of LinkedIn at the free level and have for years that there is no incentive for me to pay. Just missing out on that Quick Poll feature isn’t enough to entice me over to a paid plan.

All LinkedIn could do right now to win my paying business — possibly — is to remove the free level altogether. But by doing that, their entire business foundation would crumble as many people migrate quickly away.

How do you decide whether an app is worth paying for? Which services do you consider well worth paying for?

Image by stock.xchng user jana_koll

Hey Google, Free The Orphans

2009-04-29T16:47:03Z

Once again, Google is facing antitrust scrutiny, this time over its proposed settlement with the Authors Guild that would clear the way for it to scan out-of-print books. Most sane people seem to agree that scanning these books and making them available in digital form is a good idea, and the settlement even provides for a token payment of up to $60 per book to go to copyright holders.

The objections, and there are many of them, seem to revolve around the right Google negotiated for itself around orphan books—books still under copyright whose copyright owners cannot be found or who simply fail to register in the Book Rights Registry set up under the settlement. If authors and other copyright holders fail to register by the deadline, which has now been extended for another four months, under the settlement Google will not be liable for any copyright infringement claims stemming from orphan works. The concern is that this will give Google monopoly rights over all orphan works, which is what it appears to do.

In letter to the judge overseeing the settlement, the Internet Archive asked to be added as party to the settlement because it too scans hundreds of thousands of library books, but it won’t be protected from “potential copyright liability.” The judge denied the Internet Archive’s request, but its arguments (embedded in the letter below) spell out the main objection:

The Archive’s text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.

There is also the issue of monopoly pricing. If Google is the only entity with blanket protection, it could start charging more for access to these works, or those works which prove valuable. Any single work is probably not that valuable, but taken all together they are very valuable, especially to Google which benefits by simply being able to add the text of all these books into search results and then make money off the associated search ads.

So Google is now in the position where it negotiated a favorable settlement on its behalf, but competitors are playing the monopoly card and saying that settlement would give Google an unfair advantage in book search and retrieval. And they kind of have a point. So what is the answer? Google should amend some of the terms of the settlement to make it non-exclusive and the Author’s Guild should extend the same terms to any other company or organization that wants to digitize orphan books.

In other words, Google needs to free the orphans. Don’t make this just a deal between authors and Google. Make it a deal between authors and any existing or future book digitizer. Copyright holders should also have the option to place their works under Creative Commons licenses. If Google wants to stop being treated like a monopolist, it needs to stop acting like one.

Internet Archive Intervention: Google Book Search

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Technology Business & Law intervention settlement

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

How to Make Loyalty Vanish

2009-04-29T15:57:00Z

1. Act overworked, annoyed and irrational. That way people will stop asking you so many damn questions.

2. Be pervasively unpredictable.

3. Cling to any available shred of power.

4. Completely ignore the self-interest of everyone but yourself.

5. Create an environment where people are afraid to ask questions.

6. Demonstrate complete and utter unwillingness to understand how other people experience you.

7. Exude a constant sense of scarcity by creating a monopoly on information.

8. Focus all of your efforts on keeping people “satisfied.”

9. Form your vocabulary around the following phrases:

Because I said so. Call back later. Do it anyway. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m off the clock; you’ll have to ask someone else. I’m on break. It’s not my fault. Just look on the website. My boss said I couldn’t. My shift is over. No. Not my problem.

That’s against the rules. That’s not my department. That’s not my job. That’s not our policy. That’s the way we’ve always done it. We don’t do that. Don’t bother me right now. Don’t bring me problems; bring me solutions. Here, you handle this problem. I’m busy. I don’t have time for you right now. I don't want to hear it. I know it’s a holiday, but… I know it’s Saturday, but… I know it’s your day off, but…

In case a bus hits you, I want to make sure you and Karen are inter-changeable. My mind is made up. That is THEE stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. We’re replacing you with this robot… You don’t really feel that way. Your office chair didn’t show up so you’ll be sitting on orange crates for the next two weeks.

10. Give people the illusion that they participated in the decision.

11. Give your customers no reason to be proud to be your customers.

12. Give your employees no reason to be proud to be your employees.

13. Instant and incessant compartmentalization of everyone you meet.

14. Instead of digesting people’s information, think about how you are going to impress them with your next comment.

15. Instead of taking the time to understand things, try this: (1) get angry, and (2) create uninformed opinions based on those emotions.

16. Keep the constant river of bullshit flowing; yet refuse to acknowledge its existence.

17. Lead from a script and manage from a handbook.

18. Make it hard to complain.

19. Monopolize everything but the listening.

20. Prohibit any shred of playfulness.

21. Refuse to acknowledge, listen to or implement the ideas of ANYONE born after 1980.

22. Refuse to demonstrate any loyalty yourself.

23. Refuse to give people insight into how you operate.

24. Return calls slowly.

25. Return emails slowlier.

26. Say as much as possible without actually saying anything.

27. Sell price WAY before value.

28. Share your wisdom and advice at every possibly opportunity, especially when it’s not asked for.

29. Silently demand that people read your mind instead of actually telling them what you’re thinking.

30. When asked questions, immediately reach for ready-made replies and pre-packaged answers.

31. When customers are lined up outside your door, ready to buy, refuse to open your doors even a MINUTE early.

32. When customers are still browsing, ready to buy, refuse to close your doors even a MINUTE late.

33. When people become upset, immediately tell them to “calm down.”

34. When people tell you their problems, reflexively respond with the following five-word lie: “I understand how you feel.”

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How are you making loyalty vanish?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS...
For the list called, "12 Ways to Out Service the Competition," send an email to me, and I'll send you the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Coach, Entrepreneur
scott@hellomynameisscott.com

Never the same speech twice.
Always about approachability.

Watch The Nametag Guy in action here!

How You Can Help JobSeekers Using Twitter.

2009-04-29T16:24:26Z

Ten percent of us are out of work.

And all of us can imagine how we would feel if we lost our job. There is a sense of loss, grief even, akin to losing a family member or a divorce, experts say. At best, the out of work person is frustrated, maybe even angry. At worst, he or she is demoralized, with his self-confidence and self-worth permanently affected. No one understands yet the long term impact of a workforce that approaches their future work in such a negative manner.

Even though we all might want to help these job seekers, we don’t know how. Sure, we help a few network into our own little network circles. In workforce centers, church basements and Starbucks all over America, people are trying to figure out how best to find a job. We want to work. You feel for them, but what can you do?

Well, here’s an idea for you. It involves this blog, Twitter and the power of social media. To make it fun, I am calling it a contest.

First, the backstory. As many of you realize, we are in the job employment space. Being a small company, we lack the resources to buy Super Bowl ads like our competitors. We have to be better and do better. Our LINKUP idea is our better idea. Seriously. It is the best place to look for a real and available job on the internet. Our traffic is building quite nicely…mostly because job seekers are thrilled to have found it, and publications like TechCrunch, PCMag, and others have written us up. But most job seekers have not yet found it. In tough times, the default seems to be one of the big job boards. Advertising does that. You can change that, if you want to help these people…but you have to lead them by the hand somewhat.

Here is how you can help. It is easier than you think.

First, you have to be on Twitter. If you are not yet, go to twitter and sign up. It is free and easy. Here is a simple guide to Twitter that you may find useful.
INSTEAD of twittering what TV show you are watching, twitter a real job opening to your network of followers.
All you do is go to LinkUp. And…being as creative and fun as you can be, do a search for a job that you think your followers might like to see. Here is the homescreen; remember you can put almost anything in the search box because we are looking at the most robust job descriptions directly from company websites, so if your word choices match, we will show you THOSE jobs. In the example below, I entered “social media and 401k” because the fictional job seeker might want to work in social media and have a company with a 401k program.
The results will look like this:

Go to Twitter, and twitter about it. Here is what my Tweet looks like:
The more times you do it, the more creative you are, the more likely someone will RT your tweet (especially if you ask them to), and somewhere, someone will look and start their own job search.
In summary, you are showing people what kind of jobs are currently available, you are not sending them to a website that will spam them, or charge them for access to the job, either. In effect, you are taking them by the hand, and showing you care by giving them some ideas of jobs that are now open. Your followeres will LOVE you for the goodwill you are showing. The more times you do it…the more likely it is that someone will find a job….BECAUSE of you. How cool can you be?
Leave me a comment here if you are going to do it. Use my name @glhoffman or @linkup on your tweets, so we can track just how many times you tweet, get RT’d and so on. If you need the characters, you can leave those names off…the main thing is to help jobseekers.
Just think how many people will be helped if @chrisbrogan, @oprah, @ashtonKucher, or @guyKawasaki would do this. Maybe they will see your tweets and decide to help out.
As far as prizes.…I will write about you glowingly on my blog in the future. The most unusual as well as the most creative will get mentioned. True success stories from job seekers is what I really want to hear. Let’s get started, the ‘contest’ ends Sunday night at midnight.

Recession Marketing to Moms - Tips & Insights

2009-04-29T13:59:17Z

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

Lately we've all been seeing many marketing messages aimed at us women that are embracing the fact that we are in a recession. Some are good, some not so great. If you now Google the term "recession marketing" you've find quite a few recent articles on the topic as well as some paid "sponsored" ads from those jumping on the bandwagon as well.

I wrote about this marketing trend last month in this post here which was about giving value for consumers as well as values! The recession today is affecting most people, but specifically women with children, no matter what age their kids are. Young children are just not in tune with the economic concerns of today even though moms are trying to teach them. And teenagers, well there teenagers, and even though they are aware of what's going on, the world still revolves around them and they "need" many things.

So one thing moms today are doing is seeking more products that are durable. We need to make things last and brands and companies that are offering this are experiencing growth. This image is an example of "brands that last" which I've included courtesy of John Gerzema, author of "The Brand Bubble".

Most recently I came across this article in PROMO Magazine written by Elizabeth Harris who is a marketing professional at an agency in Chicago. Elizabeth wrote about the "Lipstick Effect", a phrase that is very close to the heart of this blog. Here's what she says:

"She (today's mom) hasn’t given up on shopping, but is fostering what’s known as the “Lipstick Effect.” When times get tough, women stop splurging on the large extravagant purchases and start treating themselves to small luxuries, like lipstick. Ever since The Great Depression, female lipstick buying patterns have been the reverse of market indices. Marketers must realize that in times of crisis, the American mom doesn’t stop shopping, she just shops differently—which usually means more strategically and less often."

Elizabeth's article goes on to outline some key questions marketers need to ask themselves when evaluating properties and promotional tactics in 2009. I think these are great tips and since Lipsticking is mostly about marketing to women I thought I'd share them with our readers here as well.

Is it helping women bring home fun—for herself and her family?
Is the creative upbeat and positive? She is hearing doom and gloom from all sides. Partner with upbeat properties. Play up the good and happy, downplay the bad.
Is it a “fly-by-night” or a tried and true entity? Is it an entity that she trusts and with which she has experience? Partners with strong brand recognition like Disney, McDonald’s and Nintendo may be a better bet right now than unknown new kids on the block.
Is it a potential teaching tool—for her and her kids?
Is it helping her bring her family together? For example, promotional sweeps and contest, which the whole family can participate in will be a hit.
Is it helping her to do more with less or the same with less? Kellogg’s Corn Flakes make a great breakfast cereal, but also a snack on the go or a topping for veggies and casseroles.
Is it converting a “want” to a “need”? For example, a high-end cappuccino maker may seem like a want, but when amortized over a two-month period, the product will pay for itself in the money saved by not buying pricey coffee drinks out of the home.

So, if you go back and read the post I did on this subject you'll see some great examples of brands that are doing what Elizabeth is recommending and succeeding at it, such as McCormick Spices and Campbell Soups. Plus I couldn't agree with her more that marketers should be doing more promotional sweeps and contests. This has always been the area of my expertise and is a great tactic to build a brand, connect with customers and also let them have some fun as well.

Here's a good example of a current promotion from Country Crock where they're asking customers to test their knowledge of how much they know about calcium with a quick quiz. Those that take the quiz could earn a $25 Visa Gift Card and then be entered in a sweepstakes to win a family trip to Yellowstone National Park.

So it's back to the basics, which is a good thing. Please keep these tips in mind when evaluating your marketing and promotional plans and as consumers embrace those brands that you see following in this path.

Working The Line In A Restaurant

2009-04-29T14:47:01Z

Constant Motion - The Art of Working the Line

Even if you’ve never been to culinary school or worked in a restaurant or seen cooks putting out food in a commercial kitchen, you’ve probably eaten in a crowded restaurant and wondered, “How do they keep track of it all? How can they possibly feed all these people without screwing up or serving cold food?”

The answer is organization and division of labor. That is a deceptively simple answer, not simple in the sense of “easy,” but simple in the sense of “basic.” I’ve been back there and seen cooks hard at work during a busy dinner service. Even from a layman’s point of view, it may be basic, but easy, it ain’t.

The backbone of any service—breakfast, lunch or dinner—in a restaurant is “mise en place”. Each cook at each station is responsible for getting every component prepped for every dish that comes off that station. The trick is to make sure that, once tickets (orders) start coming in, the cook has everything he needs to fill those orders without ever having to leave his station. This can get very murky for a novice. Let me explain by illustrating.

Say a cook works the Panini station. (For those not familiar with Panini, it is a sandwich served hot or cold but most of us are more familiar with toasted Panini.) On the menu is a grilled vegetable Panini with goat cheese and herbed aioli on focaccia, a grilled Portobello Panini on ciabatta, a Cuban sandwich on Cuban bread and a bacon, lettuce and turkey Panini with Swiss cheese on seeded rye. All items come with fries, potato salad, side salad or chips. That doesn’t sound like too heavy a load, but let’s look at the mise en place for that station:

Pre-slice, pre-toast breads
Make vegetable marinade
Marinate vegetables
Grill vegetables
Make herbed aioli
Prep goat cheese
Make mushroom marinade (if different from veggie marinade)
Marinate portobellos
Pre-grill Portobellos
Slice cheeses
Slice some cheddar—there are always substitutions
Slice pickles (or stage pickles)
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Cook pork shoulder
Slice ham
Cook bacon
Wash and stage lettuce
Slice turkey
Make potato salad
Have chips ready
Oil for Panini press
Salt and pepper
Chop herbs

Being Prepared For Anything

Not only does the cook need to make sure that everything is prepped, but he has to make sure that he has enough of everything to make it through service. While it might be no big deal to send someone back to the walk-in cooler to get another dish of mustard, it’s a huge deal to need more grilled vegetables when the grill cook has the grill full of hamburgers. Often the cook will have two pans of their ingredients ready - ones at the station to start service and ones in the walk-in or in the low-boy under the station for back up.

In looking at this prep list, it becomes obvious that, even though the cook is making the sandwiches to order, it is vital to get as much of the preparation done before service as possible. The more steps that can be done beforehand without adversely affecting the final product, the fewer steps have to be taken when the order comes in, and the less time the customer must wait for their meal.

It is always a balancing act between high quality and short wait times. Savvy customers are willing to wait a few extra minutes to get a great meal, but nobody wants to wait while a cook marinates and grills vegetables for a sandwich.

The guys who work the line at your favorite restaurant come in hours before service starts to make sure that their mise en place is done and that their station is all set up. Still using the Panini cook for a reference, he needs to make sure that the Panini grill is hot and ready to go, that he cleans it periodically through service, that all his garnishes are on hand and that, if a side salad or fries goes with the Panini, those items are ready at the same time the Panini is ready.

This requires constant communication with cooks at the salad station and fry station. If the chef decides that too many salads are already coming off of the salad station, the Panini cook might be responsible for his own side salads. In that case, his mise en place grows: he has to prep his lettuce and other greens, prepare any add-ins like sliced onion or shredded carrots, and make sure he’s got dressings to last him through service.

After two or three hours of steady preparation, service starts and tickets begin coming in. All action becomes focused, and the motion, while constant, is spare. No motion is wasted, and there are no wasted words. There is no time for that. There is only time for firing orders.

If you were in the kitchen, you’d hear orders being read and cooks repeating the items they’re responsible for. You’ll hear cooks talking to each other: “Where are you on Table 206?” “Two minutes ‘til window.” “Two minutes, heard!” or “Drop fries for Table 27.” “Drop fries, heard!” The kitchen moves to the constant driving rhythm of service. Everyone knows that if anyone misses a beat, if anyone forgets to drop those fries, they all go down together, and service grinds to a halt.

Let’s go back to our Panini cook one more time. “Order in: one grilled veggie Panini with fries, solo.” “Veggie Panini with fries, heard!”

Brush Panini press with oil
Get out split, toasted focaccia
Give each piece a squirt of aioli
“Drop fries for my Panini, please.”
“Drop fries, heard.”
Add grilled vegetables
Add the goat cheese
Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper
Add chopped herbs
Assemble sandwich
Close the press
Set up the plate
Wipe down the station
“Fries are up.”
“Fries up, heard! Plate me.”
Get fries from fry cook.
Get Panini out of press.
Plate panini
Place garnishes.
Wipe plate.
To the window.

Now, this is just one solitary order. Imagine if that Panini cook has three or four other orders up at the same time, some of which go with a lot of other dishes, some of which request substitutions and some of which want aioli on the side! Now, multiply that times the number of cooks in the kitchen with the same issues! It is glaringly apparent that, if the cooks aren’t working together, the whole system falls apart.

Fortunately for us, the dining public, most successful restaurants that have been around awhile have worked out most of the kinks. The guys in the kitchen are pros, their mise en place is always set, and they can put out great food at an amazing rate. Once they get in their groove, they repeat the same motions and the same dishes over and over again with precision and consistency.

Controlled Chaos

The kitchen is a study in controlled chaos. Every cook knows that if one batch of fries gets burned, or one salad gets sent back for having too much dressing, everyone is in the weeds (another restaurant term for complete chaos). With that knowledge comes teamwork—they all sink or swim together. An experienced line cook is never afraid to ask for help if he is “going down,” and an experienced chef rarely derides them for it. There is always someone who has a few seconds to drop another batch of fries or make a salad “on the fly.” In that way, the cooks keep service flowing smoothly, and the dance continues.

Related Topics

How To Choose A Culinary School

Becoming A Pastry Chef

The Rest of the Kitchen

10 Ways to Turn Google Calendar into an Effective Time Management & Productivity Tool

2009-04-29T14:42:33Z

Google calendar is an awesome, multi-feature and easy-to-use productivity tool. Let’s see how we can make it even better:

Google Calender Feature Enhances

Go offline:

By utilizing Gears, an open source project that adds features to your browser, Google starts offering offline version of the calendar. You can get a read-only access to your Google Calendar when there is no Internet connection. Just check “Offline (beta)” link in the top right corner of the page when logged in to your calendar. The further steps are quick and easy:

Integrate with Gmail:

Since recently Gmail has been offering its own official way to add Google Calendar to your Gmail interface. It is added to the sidebar:

Another way to add Google Calendar to Gmail sidebar: Add Your Agenda To Your Gmail (Greasemonkey) Install the latest edition here here.

Add an extended Google Calendar to Gmail: Integrated Gmail (also available as an experimental addon): integrates Google Calendar onto the same screen as your email inbox and lets you manage it from there:

Integrate with Facebook:

Facebook to Google Calendar: adds Facebook events to a Google Calendar you are currently logged in.

Facebook Fixer is another great Greasemonkey script that integrates Google Calendar with your Facebook account. It adds links on any profile to add their birthdays to Google Calendar. It also adds a link on the birthdays page that lets you export an iCalendar file with all your friends’ birthdays. This file can be imported into Google Calendar (as well as other time management tools).

More features:

Google Calendar Notifier: turn Google Calendar into the reminder - bring its updates to your browser. The addon integrates with your Google Calendar and notifies you of upcoming events. It does have some bugs reported though like time zone problems and errors.

The Milk FireFox extension talks to Google Calendar when it detects that you’re adding a task related to an event in your calendar, and “automagically” figures out when your task is due.

Google Calendar Beautifiers:

Better GCal is a great addon that beautifies Google Calendar. It is a compilation of user scripts written by several Greasemonkey scripters, most of those scripts are either abandoned or never updated, so it is better to install the addon.

Alternative Management:

Google Calendar Desktop Gadget: allows to manage your calendar without logging in using web interface.

Twittercal.com allows to manage your Google Calendar from Twitter. Just follow gcal and send it Tweets. Note: you will have to disclose your Google Calendar login information for the bot to put your event on it (I didn’t do that but that’s up to you).

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

10 Ways to Turn Google Calendar into an Effective Time Management & Productivity Tool

As AOL-Time Warner Dissolves, a Social Media Juggernaut Sleeps

2009-04-29T15:40:34Z

This news has been a long time coming, but now it’s an all but certainty: Time Warner and AOL, who joined forces in a $164 billion deal in 2000, are going their separate ways. Specifically, Time Warner anticipates spinning off AOL, possibly in multiple parts, as separate companies to Time Warner shareholders.

We don’t need to rehash all of the reasons this deal didn’t work (impeccably bad timing, the decline of dial-up Internet access, mismanagement, etc.), but rather, look at what remains of AOL, and what’s still interesting about this company almost a decade after the deal that came to symbolize the absolute peak of the first dotcom boom.

The most interesting piece that remains of AOL in our eyes is probably the smallest – at least from a revenue standpoint. AOL People Networks – which comprises of several AOL acquisitions – like Bebo, Socialthing, Yedda, Userplane, and Goowy, as well as long-popular products like AIM and ICQ - is an intriguing company on its own, and actually one of the biggest in the space we cover.

Just yesterday, AOL launched Socialthing for Websites, a tool that lets website publishers add FriendFeed-like aggregation of their user’s activities across the Web. Meanwhile, Bebo – though perhaps one of the priciest deals of the Web 2.0 boom – is starting to show signs of growth in the US as it has become the default profile for AIM users and added its own social aggregation features.

AIM, and to a lesser extent ICQ, still serve tens of millions of users, which creates a platform for People Networks to drive adoption of its other social products. We’re expecting to see further advances from AOL in this area soon, in the next few releases of AIM. Overall, you’re looking at a pretty far-reaching social software company that targets both consumers and Web publishers.

That said, all is far from rosy for AOL, and spinning off a sexy but unprofitable division of AOL might not make a lot of financial sense. Overall, advertising revenue across all AOL properties decreased 20% in the company’s most recent quarter – almost as bad as the 27% decline experienced in the antiquated dial-up Internet business.

It’s more likely that AOL would split across the lines of Web and Access, leaving People Networks as an intriguing piece of a still large and bureaucratic organization. Which is a shame, because with all of the tools in its arsenal, AOL - at least the part of it that we deal with - could actually rise again if managed correctly.

Reviews: FriendFeed

Tags: aim, aol, bebo, Socialthing!, timewarner