Duplicate content can kill your site
By admin | May 14, 2008
Do you copy and paste other people’s content into your site? Besides getting into potential legal troubles, especially if you profit from it (i.e. use it for business), you’re also punishing your own site rankings. This is well-known among search engine optimization (SEO) experts, but [this article] frames it particularly well:
Topics: Free Tips | No Comments »
The difference between a day and a year
By admin | May 2, 2008
If this week 40 people would give $25 each to New Futures Orphanage, instead of that same amount spread out over a year’s time, the children could buy chickens, fish, plants, and other sustainable food sources that would last over a long time, and wouldn’t have to eat the small increments of money coming in, while they’re waiting, so that they have no future. If 20 of us could give $50 this week, instead of spread out over a year, they could eat all year, instead of just on the weeks that someone gives.
Choose a child from the orphanage photo below, hold him or her in your mind, and picture what eating all year long might do for his mind, his health, and his opportunities. Now picture him wondering every day if there will be rice today. It’s easy to do the right thing: give directly, so 100% of the funds go to the orphanage, which is run by volunteers, take it as a tax deduction (they email you a receipt automatically), and you break even, but their lives are changed.
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I’m asking for your help.
By admin | April 30, 2008
I first got involved with direct giving to the poor because of the New Futures Orphanage. I was scouring the net, looking for just, real, and direct ways to impact the lives of the poor, with small funds. I came across a [ blog ] kept by an English teacher backpacking through Cambodia.
She’d come upon an orphanage there that needed volunteers to teach some English to the children. Teachers would come through, and some would stay a while and do this, and she was captivated and decided to stay for much longer. I was captivated too, and I looked, and they needed $900 in small gifts - that’s all they were asking for last year, and it was being given in small gifts ($25, $35, $45 at a time) through [ givemeaning.org ] a site that serves as the vehicle for giving directly to such small charities.
They finally met their fundraising goal, which was used to provide some basic things to the orphanage, like cinder block walls and a roof to enclose the toilet. I read the updates from Claire, who was giving her time there. She reported on how the children were doing, their improving skills, what this means for their future. I read what the children thought about their situation, and their hopes for their futures; each one is an individual. I knew I had to help.
Recently, the landlord sold the orphanage and the children had to be taken to a facility that doesn’t have electricity. So they need to raise money to get 12volt battery-powered lighting installed and survive with the soaring food costs. The project has established a funding goal of $1000. I’m asking you to help me help them. Take the cost of a night out, or a new video game, or a month of cable TV, and give directly to them, for this need.
Will you help? Please? They are [ here ].
Direct Giving defined: Give in reality, not in theory. Give to people, not to ideas.
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What makes a good design?
By admin | March 7, 2008
Smart navigation. Navigation should be intuitive, laid out according to established web standards that users have grown to expect, and include everything the user needs to keep them on one site.
Search engine optimization. This is a whole other category of interest, and there are lots of myths out there that have to be debunked first. Suffice it to say, this is where an expert web designer can be invaluable.
A unified theme or scheme. Colors, logos, and structure should all work together to look like the site was planned that way.
Action. A bit of animation or moving text or dynamic content, maybe a little flyout navigation, can make the site seem like someone’s home. In the same way photos (of people shaking hands, of someone signing a contract, etc.) give the appearance of life. A video or two, a contest, a new feed… these continually communicate that it’s alive.
Interactivity. Lead capture forms or surveys are excellent ways of maximizing hits. A blog with comment section or subscription capability is a smart business generator.
Change. News feeds are the simplest example. Ever changing information translates into return visitors. A blog, of course, is the single most powerful means of ensuring that information is constantly updated. Search engines love it, and visitors flock to it.
Information. Weaving relevant personal info, human interest, and business content make the site less like a billboad and more like a representation of a brick and mortar business where you can walk in and shake hands.
Topics: Free Tips | 1 Comment »
Community
By admin | February 22, 2008
EditGeek supports the following charities, and asks that you consider these very worthy opportunities to share love.
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GlobalGiving provides a way for you to give 100% of your gifts to the orphanage, hospice, or other charitable project of your choice. You have the option of including a small gift (maybe 10%) to cover the cost of processing, etc. You choose your project, and give entirely to them. No large organizations. They take all forms of payment, including PayPal. You watch progress reports as the project succeeds. | ||||||
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GiveMeaning provides a way for you to give 100% of your gifts to the orphanage, hospice, or other charitable project of your choice. You have the option of including a small gift (maybe 10%) to cover the cost of processing, etc. You choose your project, and give entirely to them. No large organizations. You watch progress reports as the project succeeds. | ||||||
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By making microloans (say $25) to the working poor, you help a woman in Togo open a restaurant, and pull her family out of poverty, or a man in Ecuador buy a taxi and begin a business that provides for his family. You choose the project, the money is loaned to that person, and the money returns to your account when the loan is repaid. | ||||||
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A way of matching your area of interest or expertise with volunteer opportunities in your area, or even internationally. If you’re looking for a way to give your time, and want to see who needs it, this is the place. | ||||||
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Oxfam does not spend 60% of aid money on enriching US food processing and shipping magnates with powerful political connections. Instead, it buys food locally, helping local farmers rise from poverty, and transports food locally to the distribution sites, helping still others, and simultaneously reaching the ultra-poor who need it to live today. |
Topics: Community | No Comments »
Basic Marketing
By admin | February 1, 2008
- Use your voice mail to drive web site traffic. “I’m not in the office right now, but feel free to leave a message or visit my web site at www.___.com
- Put your web site in the signature or tag-line of all your e-mail messages. Why miss the chance to market yourself?
- Put your web site on your business cards, correspondence, forms, etc.
- Ask new clients how they found you. Track those that find you on the web.
- If you’re using aol, yahoo, gmail, etc., why advertise for the other guy? Why not yourname@yoursiteaddress.com ? We can help with this.
- Creatively market your site. Leave a business card with restaurant tips. Teach a free local class through your library about the real estate industry and use your web site as an example. When you sign a child’s permission slip from school, or when you fill out an information card of any type, include your web site next to your name, even if there’s not a space for it.
- Ask other business owners to carry a link to your site on their home page. That’s called an inbound link, and search engines like Google tend to rank you higher for it.
- Use e-mail flyers or newsletters to reach your client base (with a link to your site).
- Write articles in your field of expertise and publish them at any number of free article repositories online - be sure each article has a link back to your site. This will help your search engine placement, as well as help you come up in more searches and help others find you.
Topics: Free Tips | No Comments »
The Perils of Clipart
By admin | November 6, 2007
First, stock photography is almost always better than stock clipart; clipart tends to make a site look cheap. This post applies equally to both types of graphic:
Photography and clip art sites usually do a few different things:
1. Royalty Free: Some of them will sell you their work royalty free - this is the least hassle. The following are some inexpensive solutions.
2. Free: Some of them will give away clipart, but not for business use - if you use it on a business site, they expect you to pay. Rule of thumb: If you’re making money, they want money too.
3. Damned Free: Some clipart is completely, utterly free - but it’s usually of such low quality, that it’s not worth using. [Example]
4. Free for a Link: Some of them will let you use their clipart if you put credit to them on your site - usually an ugly banner, or gaudy link, and it looks unprofessional - but most of these still want money if you use it on a business site. [Example]
5. CD Collections: You can buy collections of clipart or photos on CD - but it’s a blind grab bag - you never really know whether what you’re getting off those things is useful or any good - often it’s garbage - you’re buying a lot of extra art you don’t need and not enough of what you do - and you end up having to supplement it w. the above sources anyway. Besides quality and quantity, you still have to worry about whether they let you use it for commercial use, and where they got it.
6. Stealing: Some people just grab any images they want off the web. You can do that from http://images.google.com but the problem is, expecially as a business, if you use these on your site, the owner of the graphic can find out and can claim damages. I wouldn’t do it on a business site, even if I know 10 people who do it (and worse 10 web designers who’ll do it and not tell you that’s where they got the stuff - leaving you at risk. You’re responsible for what’s on your site - not the designer if he made no claims for the origin of the images. And even if he did make claims, you’re still partly responsible.
7. At Your Own Risk: There are sites that have clipart that even *they* don’t know where they got it all - they tell you it’s not copyrighted, but then tell you they’re not really sure. [Example]
8. Mystery Graphics: There are sites with photos and clipart that don’t say anything at all about whether you can use them. If they didn’t specifically grant you rights, the law defaults in favor of the copyright holder - so they can claim damages at any time. [Example]
9. The a la mode solution: If you’re a real estate professional, chances are you use an alamode XSite. XSites have a significant amount of built-in photography that can be used. Most of it is real estate and related material, so if you want a hunting theme or fishing theme, it’s not going to be there. But for most users in most situations, it’s well imagined, well crafted graphics.
ADVICE: None of this is to be regarded as professional legal advice. But I always recommend, especially for business, using safe, legally-owned graphics that either:
1. You created: photos you took, drawings you made, or electronic graphics you created yourself from scratch
2. Came with rights you purchased: (e.g. either royalty free photography or work done by an artist or graphic designer - with rights explicitly granted for you to use the work on a commercial site)
Topics: Web Tools | No Comments »
Advertising vs. Marketing
By admin | October 6, 2007
If you’ve caught an episode or two of Mad Men, or even a preview, you’ve probably been reminded of the often seedy world of advertising.
It’s not hard to get turned off to advertising. Four out of five dentists surveyed failed to guess that only five dentists were actually surveyed, and they all worked for our Center for Chewing New Gums.
To be fair, there is good and bad advertising. Not everything is lying with statistics and used cars.
But Marketing, actually, is something else. Marketing is planning business activities to bring a professional (e.g. a real estate professional) and a client together for something mutually advantageous, and turning that planning into action. In short:
Marketing is believing in what you do enough to act to see it succeed.
If you’re interested in marketing, you’ve come to the right place.
Topics: Internet Marketing | No Comments »
