Archive for the ‘Web Business’ Category

Managing Your Web Business Health

January 7th, 2012 by kct from shrewdies | Comments Off | Filed in Web Business

Managing your web business health is vital for all site owners. Let’s resolve to get healthier in 2012.

As the owner of a website, you have the responsibility for ensuring that the health of your website is the best it can be. There is a good business advantage to this, and there is an added business bonus that I will cover later.

Is Your Web Business Fit For Purpose?

I have written at length about the importance of producing your website in accordance with a good websites business template founded on a clear Internet business purpose. You need that to develop a healthy web business, but you also need to check that it is being produced in a fit and proper way.
Read how to manage your web business health

Information Web Business In Hours Not Months

July 20th, 2011 by kct from shrewdies | Comments Off | Filed in Web Business

I’ve written lots about the importance of planning. I truly believe the old adage about failure to plan equaling planning for failure.

But sometimes you just want to get on with it.

So here is a quick guide to setting up a web business from scratch, which I am writing as I do it for a new project.
Continue reading Information Web Business In Hours Not Months

Shrewdies Still Open

February 24th, 2011 by kct from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Web Business

Despite the lack of activity here and on shrewdies.net, I am still open for business.

In fact, business is booming, so I just do not have time to develop these web business help sites.

If you are desparate for help, I’m still around, so I can soon answer questions – I just can’t get involved in more projects at the moment. Add comments anywhere here or on shrewdies.net, and I’ll follow up.

What’s It All About, WordPress?

December 13th, 2010 by kct from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Web Business

Though I try to avoid technical issues here, I feel that business owners in general, and web business owners in particular benefit from seeing the context of important technical tools.

The most important tool in my business is WordPress. I know that there are many other tools for developing websites, but experience tells me to consider WordPress first, and only consider other options if the planning stage reveals a level of complexity beyond the capabilities of WordPress.

Prompted by a message from a client today, I realized that the context of WordPress is important to business owners looking for new or improved websites. You can only get the best tools for your business if you are aware of their existence. Though you might direct those tools by hiring appropriate professionals, you need a broad understanding to avoid your technicians directing you. Of course, if you are a one man band, you have no choice about learning – but approach the project with your management hat on at this stage.

The message I received (from an email to my client) was:

I also wanted to ask you about your site and Shrewdies.net — what you use for WordPress. Are you able to use this yourself, or is this a developer tool? I’m looking to update my website and am searching for the best solution…

Continue reading What’s It All About, WordPress?

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Web Business Safety

October 23rd, 2010 by kct from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Web Business

Though I’m most concerned with your web business safety from the commercial sense, I’m also concerned that you do not wreck your web business by losing important data.

In some senses, this is a technical issue that belongs on shrewdies.net. However, the commercial implications are so big, and the technical requirements so simple, that this remains a management issue.

Safety Of Office 2.0

I’m sorry to have lost the link to the site that inspired me to think “Office 2.0.” That site, long before Google Docs became the hot productivity tool that it is today, extolled and promoted several web based office services.

This is not really the time to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of Office 2.0 services except to state the obvious conclusions:

  1. Using online applications to manipulate and store your information saves you time backing up data.
  2. There will always be some data that you need to store locally. In my case, mainly images and PDF files that I am editing and some financial and business information that is too complex for Google Spreadsheets.

Web Business Data Safety

So we all have vital web business data on our hard drives, but is it safe? The reliability of modern hardware can make us lose sight of the disaster that will happen if the computer crashes or gets stolen. Even with local backups, it can be time consuming to restore data from local backups.

My best solution is to use an online backup service. I prefer Dropbox because it is so easy to use. I get immediate benefit from:

  • Automatic backup of my data to a secure remote server.
  • Instant access to the backup data from any Internet connection.

So wherever I am in the world, if I can get an Internet connection, I can retrieve a copy of all the data on my office computer.

And it’s free! But more about that in a minute, after I’ve explained the final benefit.
Continue reading Web Business Safety

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Web Business Retirement Plan: 50 Is Too Late

June 3rd, 2010 by kct from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Web Business

Business Retirement Plan

I need a good business retirement plan!

Not too long after one personal milestone[1], tomorrow brings another – I’m retiring.

Four years ago, I moved from full-time to part-time employment. During that time, I also shifted careers to a job in PR[2]. Tomorrow sees an end to paid employment for me. An end to work.

But not an end to income, because playing on the Internet is my new income source. My best web business retirement plan.

The way I do web business is to find something I enjoy – something I would still want to do if I won the lottery. Maybe it’s something I enjoy, like programming and configuring computer applications to get the most out of them. Tinkering is a great way to pass time between social visits. Maybe it’s researching subjects that interest me and presenting good knowledge to others. Teaching is a great way to pass time between trips to the coast and beyond.

I’m writing this between sunbathing sessions. Nice to get a cooling break every so often.

Retiring from working for others to spend time enjoying making money is a pleasure. Having time to spend it is a joy. It’s too good to rush, so things will develop here very slowly.

Yes, this site will teach you how to plan and manage your own web business. Yes, my WordPress Web Hosting site will teach you how to handle the technical issues if you don’t want to pay someone else to do them. But it might be a few months before there are comprehensive step by step plans. My priority is to run my existing sites to fund my retirement plan. As time allows, I’ll pass on the best tips for you to enjoy your own retirement.

Read more about my Web Business Retirement Plan

Start A Web Business The Quick Way

February 24th, 2010 by kct from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Web Business
Yesterday, I looked at the possibilities for starting a web business the quick way.

There is no substitute for good planning, and PROSPRA provides the vital cycle that accelerates the growth and stability of your main web business.

Quick Start Business

  • Limit scope – reduce time
  • Filter business wheat from brainstorm chaff
  • Freeche Lite – fast blueprint
  • Live test project next week

Uniquely, PROSPRA is scalable, so today I will look more closely at the scope for saving planning time.

See how condensing a few days planning & preparation into a few minutes is easy when you limit your context to a simple project.

The Web Business Challenge

The planning time is reduced considerably by limiting the scope (or context) of the web business. The Purpose, Rewards, Objectives, and Strategies stages are condensed to:

Provide a zero-cost website that generates affiliate income in the shortest time possible.

This can also work with other limited but certain contexts, such as “raise $100 on a free hosted website about poverty to fund my own self-hosted web business” or “divert as much traffic as possible away from the competition.”

It works because the rewards are unambitious, but the investment is minimal, so if it works, we can put more into it (Appreciate it), otherwise ditch it, and try a new target. If your brainstorming sessions have given you a thousand ideas, this is an easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

This fast-track approach is also good if you have already started a web business using one of the methods that specializes in very tight niches, and you are disappointed in the results. Of course, the best way might be to re-plan and relaunch the business following the full PROSPRA guidelines, but if you are impatient, let us at least try to reap some quick rewards. Freeche Lite gives us a few options on where we start reaping those rewards.

(more…)

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Fast-track Web Business Startup

February 23rd, 2010 by kct from shrewdies | 3 Comments | Filed in Web Business
Seems like everyone is looking for ways to fast-track web business startup.

PROPSPRA is the ideal way to build any business, but many people simply will not commit to the planning stages.

Planning is important, but other methods often bring success without spending as much time on the foundation stages.

Can you be successful taking shortcuts with PROSPRA?

As I look at more and more startup websites from a business success angle, I’m struck by the number that do not seem to have considered the basics of traffic building. This is usually just a matter of poor planning, but often there appears to be some planning, but no workable process applied once website production has begun.

The PROSPRA process is unique in covering the foundation and post-production stages, in addition to the production stages that are the target of most web business building schemes. I had a good grounding in C>T>P>M the Content>Traffic>Pre-sell>Monetize process that drives Sitesell franchise businesses. This is a fairly sound process, though it completely ignores the foundation stages that PROSPRA brings. It is also massively mis-sold, but more on that some other time.

As I looked at some sites that had not even considered a path to monetization, it struck me that the Freeche tool for traffic building that I am developing would be ideal to boost such sites.

But how could I prove it?
(more…)

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Web Business Purpose Forum

February 15th, 2010 by kct from shrewdies | No Comments | Filed in Web Business
With the introduction of the web business Purpose pages, I have started my explanation of successful Internet business planning.

I am committed to helping you every step of the way. I have mentioned a forum to help you with specific questions.

Let me introduce you to that forum.

Planning is vital for any successful web business, but it is often missing from many proprietary schemes – or covered so badly that it might as well not be there. It can be difficult to explain, as many people who sell schemes to help Internet business startups focus purely on marketing, and have no real planning experience.

I do not expect everyone who wants to run their own online business to become a financial planning expert, but you must do some planning to prevent your website losing direction.

I know that the PROSPRA method gives an easy way to tackle planning, but I also know that individual circumstances differ widely, and many of you need to ask specific questions.

I include a forum here, but it is different from many typical forum applications. I call my simple forum shrewdChat, and it is based simply around WordPress posts and comments. At the moment, I am reviewing the procedures for starting new topics. If you have a burning question to ask, or opinion to share, please just add it as a comment. I will create new topics for any comments that merit them.

I will add full forum guidelines soon, but in the meantime, please check my linking policy. I remove the nofollow attribute to encourage regular contributions, but I need serious questions, opinions and experiences – not spam.

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SEO Is Futile

February 3rd, 2010 by kct from shrewdies | 7 Comments | Filed in Web Business
SEO is futile.

Let’s start as we mean to go on, and explode the biggest web business myth.

The world is trying to convince you that Search Engine Optimization is vital to the success of your website.

It is not.

And I’ll prove it.

You’ve all seen the websites, books, and presentations that tell you how to start a web business:

  1. Brainstorm ideas
  2. Do keyword research
  3. Select best KEI
  4. Build content around keywords ensuring that keywords are prominent:
    • In the domain name
    • In the file name (URL)
    • On the page
    • In the title
    • In meta description
    • In meta keywords
    • In heading tags
    • In bold tags
    • In links to other pages
    • In incoming links

It is all rubbish.

OK, you can help yourself by including the above in your plans (except KEI, which is worse than useless – it can harm your web business), but that should never be your first focus. You are not going into business to be a search engine specialist – you are providing goods or a service.

Your first focus has to be your purpose. Your own purpose first, then the purpose of your web business, then the purpose of each page you write, and each link you forge.

Do you want the proof?

Why SEO Is Futile

This site is about creating an online business. The prime focus, as you can see from my purpose, is web business. It’s a big topic with a lot of sites – Google reckons around 405,000,000 pages available with over 500,000 searches a month. I will not waste my time discussing KEI. Lets look at some of the other gold standards of SEO in the light of the page that ranks 1 in all those millions.

Web business:

  • Is not part of the domain name
  • Is not in the file name (models.html)
  • Does not appear anywhere on the page!
  • Is split and reversed in the title (Business Models on the Web | Professor Michael Rappa)
  • Is not in the meta description (Welcome to Managing the Digital Enterprise®, an open educational site that surveys the many opportunities and challenges managers face in an increasingly digital world.)
  • Is not included in the meta keywords, except split as parts of other keywords (e-commerce, electronic commerce, e-business, electronic business, web analytics, business models, digital automata, auctions, dynamic pricing, channel conflict, trust, computer security, internet privacy, intellectual property, internet governance, web ethics, open courseware)
  • Cannot be in headings, bold or links as it is never mentioned
  • Does not appear in the first 65 of the links into the page.

So how can it be number 1 for web business, when it doesn’t even mention it?

Because the page is totally focused on explaining to it’s visitors what a web business is, with a comprehensive analysis of the forms it can take. It is authoritative and thus gains well over a thousand links in.

You can learn how to do that, and how to use SEO without it using you. You just need to have a clear purpose.

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