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Advice and opinion for freelancers and web entrepreneurs
: Business BlogLearn To Say Sorry
Earlier this year, I was given the runaround by my bank—multiple deductions from my home loan account, arguments with inept employees… the list goes on. Yet I’m still with them to this day, and recommend them to others. Why? Because they had the decency to say “Sorry”.
Scalability: Traction from a Slippery Beast
What do you do when you run into a growth wall and find that scaling your business isn’t actually generating more revenue? The first step is to admit that you’ve hit upon a non-scalable business model.
SitePoint Services: Introducing Clients To Vendors
Interested in trialling a new lead-generation service? SitePoint Services is a vendor-matching service that connects individual companies looking for web development services with qualified vendors who offer those services. As a customer, you can request multiple quotes for your project, at no obligation. And as a vendor, it’s a terrific way to expand your client base.
Can Microsoft Save Itself, Or Is It Too Late?
Even as a self-confessed Microsoft fan boy, I have to admit that Windows Vista is one catastrophe that a $300 million advertising campaign can’t save. Here’s why …
Google’s Flash Indexing Disaster
On July 1st, Google announced that, using technology provided by Adobe, it had enhanced the Google Search Engine to index the text embedded within Flash movies. What followed was bad advice from Google, second-guessing by web developers, and finally a few straight answers.
Why Multitasking is a Waste of Time
You often hear people extolling the virtues of multitasking: you get more done, It’s the way of the future.
Balls.
Multitasking is great if you want to fill your time doing a lots of things not very well, over a long period of time. Sure you can: flicking between checking your email, Twittering, writing a report, trying a new web app and chatting on Facebook. Are you busy? Probably. Are you productive? Probably not.
As I see it, there are two key problems here:
- Doing non essential tasks
Due to procrastination and self-distraction you are putting off certain tasks, by doing everything else but, the task you are supposed to be doing. - Task switching
The other often overlooked issue is that of task switching — moving between one task and another. This is the issue I want to draw your attention to in this post.
Task switching
Your conscious mind effectively works like a single thread processor. We do things best in a linear fashion. One thing followed by another. Multitasking is like trying to make yourself a multithread processor. Unfortunately, evolution hasn’t caught up yet, so you are stuck with your good old fashioned single thread brain. Sure you can sort of do multitasking, but …
Get Out and Boogie on the Customer Service Dance Floor!
One part of my role at SitePoint is to manage our Customer Support team. I often refer to this team as being “on the dance floor” with our visitors and customers, while as managers we’re just “sitting on the balcony”.
The Web Site Flipping World Championships
Why should Olympic athletes have all the fun?
If you’re a regular in our marketplace then you’ll want to keep an eye on this competition — the World Championships of Web Site Flipping are happening (a first for the site flipping industry, I believe), proudly sponsored by SitePoint.
Check out all of the contenders that have been spotlighted on the site — nothing really in there to suggest the talents of these flipping warriors, but fun if only to put some real faces to names in the site flipping industry.
There are a stack of prizes on offer — up to $20,000 worth, and that includes a copy of SitePoint’s Web Site Revenue Maximizer kit.
Watch the SiteFlipAcademy blog for more details as they come.
I’m a bit late reporting this, as the date for registering to compete has passed.Chaunna from SiteFlipAcademy informs me that it’s not too late to register and be involved. “You have until July 12th to flip like crazy and the score cards (that you’ll receive in the contender kit) need to be submitted by the 16th.” So if you’re interested in getting involved, get flipping!
I love you Mr AMD Opteron Dual Core!
The critical importance of performance in generating traffic to your site is something that you learn very early in your online education. But as your site grows and things become more complicated its true value can often become clouded. So easily are you seduced by more fun and interesting considerations such as functionality, usability, aesthetics, and interface design.
But here’s one simple reason why you can never EVER forget why site performance is so important.
In the last few weeks we’ve upgraded our our blogs and moved our forum to the latest version of vBulletin. Very quickly our sys admin became concerned with the growing pressure on our servers. I’m no expert, but even I could see the dramatic shift in some of the utilization graphs I was shown…
The tipping point was Wednesday and we raised the priority of some longer term plans as well as implemented a quick upgrade to our server hardware (a couple of shiny new AMD Opteron Dual Core CPU’s.)
The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. Our response times were better than before the upgrades…
Result: The next day, bang, a 33% increase in our forum traffic!
So you can …
The SitePoint Web Of Fortune
We’ve all heard the stories of everyday people turning small sites into a healthy income that have allowed them to quit their day jobs and enjoy lives of online entrepreneurship.
But if you’re yet to find that killer strategy to earn a profit from the Web, I’d like to introduce you to a brand new product that’s going to make your journey to online prosperity simpler, easier, and oh so much faster…
The Web Site Revenue Maximizer
By Peter T. Davis & Georgina Laidlaw
Niche sites with the right content and monetization strategy are extremely valuable assets and this new SitePoint kit will walk you through, step-by-step, how to generate profit from the Web. You’ll learn from the pros just how easy it is to plan, build, and earn a steady income from your online portfolio.
Then, when you’re ready to cash out, you’ll learn how to flip your sites for profit.
It doesn’t matter if you’re new to the Web, or you already own a couple of sites. You’re sure to find some amazing nuggets of wisdom which will ensure this kit pays for itself again and again…
Here’s a just snippet of what you’ll learn:
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