I don’t want to just read about Tim Ferriss, I want to listen to him speak. And the search lead to this blog by Scott Allen. At the SXSW Interactive Festival, Scott got to hear Tim Ferriss’s talk on ‘The possibility of designing luxury lifestyles in the here-and-now without waiting for retirement’. Scott heard little, got impressed and read more. Later Scott got to capture 40 minutes of Tim Ferriss and here it is The 4-Hour Workweek – A Podcast Interview with Tim Ferriss. Listen and go ahead, design an NR lifestyle.
We all need a plan
I have a number of clients that are brick and mortar that I have been helping with the creation of a business plan. I have been using a really simple template to help guide them. This is really an easy to configure for almost any type of traditional business, it does not really translate well to more Internet centric business ideas.
I hope that you find this helpful.
1. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
a. A statement of the goals of the company
b. A list of specific objectives and when they will be accomplished
2. PRODUCTS OR SERVICES
a. Description of the product line. If the company anticipates developing more than one product, how will the promotion and manufacture of one affect the other?
b. Proprietary position: patents, copyrights, trademarks and other legal and technical considerations.
c. Requirements of regulatory agencies
d. Comparison to competitors’ products
e. Break even analysis by product
3. UNIQUE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
a. Management experience or skill
b. Product superiority or price advantage
c. Market advantages, such as a large contract with a major customer or supplier
d. Other advantages, such as proximity to a large market or proximity to labor, supplies, raw materials, energy, transportation or cheap land
The Text Message Scam
In the United States we are not used to subscribing to services via our cell phone text messaging or SMS’s but in other parts of the world these services are prolific. I anticipate seeing scams like this being reported on this side of the pond very soon.
Watch the video and remember – Don’t loan your cell phone out to strangers.
Does a top 5 position in google translate to more money?
One of the passions that I have is Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. I have a Masters Degree in Marketing and I have always had a passion for understanding why people do what they do and I seem to have a knack for getting great placement for my keywords in Google. The question that I wanted to know is just how much impact would it really have on a business to have a top ranking for a keyword that is very specific to their industry?
People are always telling me how much better their business would be if they only had a top 5 ranking in Google. They speak top positioning as if it were the Holy Grail to unlock the potential of their business! BUT IS IT ALL THAT IT IS CRACKED UP TO BE?
So I choose to put this to the test, I have two clients who are in very high margin businesses but their Internet sales; rankings and overall Internet strategies have been disappointing. They have owned the domains for a number of years and have relevant content on their pages.
They have not done any real optimization but did have meta-keywords on each page from when their web sites were written. They were basically blank slates with no bad habits and low search volumes. They had the basic of for e-commerce and some feedback forms to get more information. I am not going to tell you what the specific sites were but the industries are medical devices and convention supplies.
My first steps were to determine what their highest margin or most profitable products were and also what they would like to be selling online. What had the lowest rate of return and what items had pictures that really helped the customer to understand just what they would be getting. They each picked five total product and we I am not talking about popular keywords but sort of niche business-to-business phrases that have low search volume but are highly specific to the industry. So they should be perfect for a SEO project. High relevancy, low search volume niche products.
Happy Birthday to the Internet
Tomorrow April 7th 1969 the first “request for comment” or RFC was published. An RFC is a template or road map that helped to pave the way for the creation of the Internet. Here is a link to the original document, it was written by Steve Crocker who has worked can continued to work on the Internet after all these years.
It’s not about what was said but the RFC process that he developed created a way for engineers to share new ideas in a public forum. Without RFC’s the Internet would not be as open and available as we know if today.
Well Happy Birthday to the Internet, Happy Birthday to You.
Big Bear Trip
The last few weeks have been a little stressful, so I needed a little break. A great friend of mine Aaron said that he had a house at the lake and it was time to open up the cabin for the summer. The goal was to clean up all of the winter items and get ready for the summer fun. This meant putting the boat in the water, doing a little cleaning of the refrigerator and just making sure that things were in tip top shape.
We left San Diego at about 2pm on Friday and headed up the 15, we were expecting the trip to take about two and a half hours but with all of the construction traffic I was a grueling three hours and forty-five minutes in the car. When finally made it up the mountain we saw some posted signs by the marina that it would be open for Summer April 1st. No big deal today is the 30th we could just put it in the water tomorrow… Right, them we remembered that 30 days have September, April, June and November all the rest have 31… Ouch.. That’2 two days away and we did not have that much time. Was the weekend going to be wasted?
Not at ALL! Aaron really knows that mountain and he was able to secure us a launch at a different slip and we were going to take this boat out tomorrow. All that we needed to do now was charge the battery and to startup the engine in the driveway – no big deal. We were able to trickle charge the battery all night long and on the first time the engine started – we were on our way.