SEO and the Single Blogger
By brewmaster | August 19, 2008
Or, married blogger, for that matter! 
I’m getting some good, basic SEO info from SlingBrain. Daily emails that aren’t too “pitchy” (and not the kind of “pitchy” Randy Jackson talks about on American Idol. You know what I mean.
It’s definitely SEO 101 stuff, but good!
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Entrecard Drives Traffic
By brewmaster | March 31, 2008
Without a doubt, one of the newer social linking systems is a real traffic producer. I first got involved with Entrecard a few weeks ago when launching a blog aimed at promoting the content for the websites produced by my day job. It’s an experiment in content syndication and promotion that is working really well, thanks in large part to Entrecard. Since then, I’ve put my personal blogs in the system. It’s great.
The premise is simple, but effective. Earn credits by visiting member sites and then use those credits to advertise on member sites. Their growth seems to be explosive, and I hope they’re able to scale well enough to keep this wonderful system going. They’re using Amazon’s S3 scalable web app environment, the same one used by Jungle Disk, so they shouldn’t have the growth problems that have plagued so many other successful startups.
If you look to the right, you’ll see an Entrecard ad purchase on DollarJoe. If you’re a member and you click the “Drop” button, a credit appears in your account, one of a maximum of 300 you can earn in a single day. You can then use those credits to buy ads on whatever member sites you want, provided you have enough credits. The more Entrecard traffic a site gets, the higher the ad rate.
Click on the badge to go to the Entrecard Blog. Good info there. Join up!
By the way, directly under my Entrecard widget, you’ll see a list of links called “Entrecard Blogs.” It’s a dynamically generated list of users who recently dropped their cards on one of my sites. I used Yahoo Pipes to combine and parse my Entrecard inboxes. Just another way to support the community.
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A New Direction
By brewmaster | March 16, 2008
For the past year or so, DollarJoe has been a little bit of a sandbox for me. A few posts here and there, some design work, a little journaling, etc…But nothing with a lot of direction. That’s okay, because that’s been its job.
But now, as my other sites become more popular and profitable, I figured I’d use DollarJoe.com to help share some of the things that have worked for me on those sites.
I’d love to have your comments, questions and clicks. I’m going to use the site to help us all make money on the net, because a profitable internet is good for all of us!
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On the “Bucks”
By brewmaster | August 1, 2007
I’ll make the disclaimer right off the bat. Dollar Joe is the name of the coffee company I’m developing, mainly because I love coffee, but don’t especially love what the retail coffee industry has become. I’m not sure I’ll fix any of that, but I have a vision for what coffee patrons are looking for today, and rather than just bitch about it not being in evidence everywhere, I’m working to make it available somewhere.
That being said, it’s really become apparent to me lately that the big dog in the coffee business has shifted it’s emphasis from being a customer’s "third place" as they used to say (internally, at least), refering to the location patrons spend time after home and work, to being a place to drop in, drop as many dollars as possible and leave. Is it just me, or has all the charm of the coffeehouse been exorcised from Starbucks?
The new stores seem to be set up to handle a line of people first, and the comfort of coffee drinkers and lingerers second. Displays of crap to buy are everywhere, helping to create aisles for people to line up, but comfortable seating with spacious tables are less and less in evidence. Is that by design? Doesn’t Starbucks want to see us anymore, after we’ve deposited our money in their till?
I understand that table turns are an important thing in the food service business, but I thought the coffee house was different. Sadly, Starbucks has run off scads of true coffee houses only to make their place a drive-thru. Though I take my fair share of the blame, it’s sad the bait and switch they’ve done. There are wonderful, homey Starbucks I’ve visited, like Montgomery, Ohio and Schaumburg, Illinois. But most of the new stores are rectangular boxes designed to handle the line of people waiting to grab and go, and that’s sad. It’s why I hope Caribou Coffee continues to expand and never changes the feel of it’s stores. That’s great atmosphere, and it gets the coffee house industry back to where it should be.
Tags: coffee, Starbucks, Caribou Coffee
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Mom - Identity Thief
By brewmaster | July 14, 2007
What happens when your Mom steals your identity and runs up a bunch of credit cards?
Sad, scary story from the Mint blog.
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Some changes
By brewmaster | July 5, 2007
I didn’t come to my vacation to work. I came to clear out the jumble in the mind, get some long-term personal passive earning work done and figure out how best to stay sane until we get the big lottery hit (just kidding, though we do play - somebody’s gotta win!).
One thing on my list was to be one of the first to buy a new iPhone. Which I did. And after using it for a few days, I’ve made some decisions about some things. You see, the iPhone is elegant and very non-complicated. Like life should be. There are a lot of things the phone could do, but opts not to, because in the end, they’re just not very important. Like my Blackberry. There’s a lot it does that I don’t need, but use anyway. It’s a great complicator. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been standing in line at Starbucks on the weekend flipping through my emails and see one from someone not terribly important that pisses me off and generates a polite but immediate response, and I’m steaming more than the milk in my extra-hot vanilla latte.
That’s just stupid. One of the decisions I’ve made is to start to heavily use email filtering and two email sprints per day - I’m thinking :10 at the beginning and :10 at the end of the day. Certain, high-value contacts (boss, boss’s boss, boss’s boss’s boss, etc…) go to my iPhone, and THAT’S IT. The others will just have to fit into a sprint, or get their email love from someone else.
I’m still working through Timothy Ferris’s The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Tags: iphone, blackberry, 4-hour work week
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The 4 Hour Work Week
By brewmaster | June 18, 2007
The latest Amazon craze is Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Though he doesn’t exactly (at least early in the book) lay out a get-rich scheme (that’s not the point), he does have some paradigm-changing ways to look at what you do. One of which is a very simple concept that many employees and even more employ-ers don’t get. It’s a concept that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and is:
A job will fill the time allotted to it.
Again, Ferriss doesn’t say this, but his ideas brought this concept jarringly to the front of my mind. How many of us truly have 40 hour jobs? I work hard, but how much of that is because I’m paid, not only accomplish a certain group and number of tasks, but also to spend as many hours as possible on premises doing so.
Think about that.
How much of your job could you do in 30 hours if your boss said "hey, when you’re done, get the hell out of here and enjoy your life?" My guess is, probably all of it. How about 25 hours? Again, if it didn’t matter a damn if your face was seen arriving early and leaving late, you could probably get it all done then. I think most of us take lunch, not because we need out of the office nourishment, but because we know we have to be in the office until 5, so we will damn well take as much time in the middle of the day as we can. If that was our time we were cutting into, we’d be eating smaller brown bags at the desk more. It’d probably be better for our waistlines, too.
The company I work for, Conglomerate, Inc., bought us a big, beautiful corporate home that is the pride and joy to all, especially the big bosses with their huge corner offices and mini-conference tables and sofas. When the home-office types come calling, and butts aren’t in the chairs, the local bosses get quizzed about why the hell we needed so much square footage. So, we get memos policing office hours and "you must be at your desk" type proclamations. It’s all insane, and makes us no money. 100% salespeople, who rarely make money in the office, have to fill out time-off requests and sickday explanations, and they are paid completely on commission. It’s not about getting the job done, it’s about everybody looking like they’re working.
And it’s why good, productive people opt-out. Well, not everyone. The ones who are happy to look like they’re working stay.
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Should YOU self-employ?
By brewmaster | June 16, 2007
Let’s face it, you’re either a self-employment type or you’re not. Working for yourself, accountable to no man (or woman) isn’t for everyone. Some of us know which of the two camps we’re tenting in - we know whether we’re cut out for the life of the self-employed. But for most people, it’s not that simple. Here are some ways to tell if you’re cut out for the self-employment life.
1. You get much more accomplished, and enjoy doing it when you’re allowed to self-direct. Does the best work you do come from those projects and times when your boss is on vacation and the decisions you follow are your own? My bosses have learned that I know what I’m doing, and the best way to get maximum results from me is to let me run my ship, so I’m at the helm. If you’re in that same "boat," (to overextend the metaphor) use those situations as confirmation to yourself that what your boss knows is true - you do know what you’re doing.
2.You think through what can possibly go wrong in a given situation, and have plans or ideas about what you’ll do to meet challenges brought on by your actions. If you can’t be bothered by possible roadblocks and failures and don’t feel like planning for them because they would be "someone else’s problem," you probably not cut out for self-employment.
3. You can do everything you ask subordinates to do. Delegation isn’t just to make your life easier or hire out something you don’t know how to do, it’s to act as a "force multiplier" for your talents and allow you to accomplish more with your standard issue 24 hour day. If you need someone else to handle your email or hook up your cable modem, you’re probably not going to be happy in the world of the self-employed.
4. Your switch doesn’t automatically go off at 5 o’clock. In the late 70s, my father sold an extremely successful business to a man he’d known for several years. The business was making a lot of money and times were good. A few months after the transaction, the economy stumbled a bit, and the buyer had problems making the agreed-upon payments for the business (my father had largely financed him, since they had been partners in a couple projects before, and were friends). The buyer and his wife came to visit my family out west where we had relocated, to try and figure out how to serve everyone’s best interests in the deal, since my father wanted to be paid for the business, but didn’t want to have to sue to get it. My parents put them up in very comfortable surroundings, and made sure they had a nice time.
In talking about how the buyer and his wife were running the company and how bad business was, the couple were pleading poverty. They had 4 children, and all their assets were tied up in the business. During dinner and non-business talk, the wife mention the big family vacation they were planning. This took my parents by surprise, since they were saying they just didn’t have the money to pay my parents what they owed them. When they saw how that information was received, the wife said "well, we HAVE to have a vacation!"
The buyers of my father’s business clearly weren’t cut out for self-employment. My father, instead of suing and taking their home, ended up forgiving the debt, which the buyer and his wife never forgave him for. They never spoke again.
When my father was building his businesses, once the family’s basic necessities were met, the businesses were nurtured and luxuries came when they could be afforded. The result? Consistent and substantial self-employed success.
5. You don’t equate the trappings of success with true success. Great big mahogany desks in 1,000 square foot corner view offices usually don’t make the business a lot of money, unless the business is based on impressing people who visit you in those offices. True success in business is about providing yourself with more income at less cost than someone is willing to pay you. Period. It’s not about having a job that becomes your life, it’s about providing for the kind of life you want.
If, by your own desire you make your job your life, it’s by definition, no longer your job, it’s your life. And that’s okay, but it’s not what we’re talking about here.
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Bragging without bragging
By brewmaster | June 7, 2007
Increasing your credibility in 30 days is another excellent post from lifehack.org.
I love this one:
Write an article that captures the essence of what you are doing that makes you great.
An easy type of article to write is one that incorporates a ten point list, targeting the key area or areas. Circulate the article or drafts while soliciting feedback from select friends, clients and partners.
So simple, yet so rarely practiced.
Nice.
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New Version of Moveable Type
By brewmaster | June 5, 2007
A premiere blogging platform, Moveable Type moves to version 4. I’ve loved many blogs based on MT, but was never able to get it up and running successfully myself, and I’m a bit of a nerd! Fortunately, Six Apart has the wonderful Typepad hosted platform and am still a customer (though this blog is published using WordPress).
For giggles, I may try MT4 and see if they’ve finally gotten down to my level!
Six Apart Releases MT 4 | via Searchblog
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