So I’m checking around on my latest article Building Street Cred for Your Small Business and I have to say I was quite amused…sort of. I know that people steal stuff online…it just happens. I also know that people buy “so-called” private label rights articles and put them out as their own work just changing a word here or there. I personally can’t stand the thought of putting my name on something that I:

1) didn’t write and 2) don’t think is good

…but that’s an entirely different issue…

So for the first time I’ve run into a ridiculous hybrid. This blog “Or Capital On At” whatever that’s supposed to mean…and no I am certainly not going to link to them, has put up the following…

Building Street Cred for Your Small Business

“As a substance of principle, I never go to the first yearly anything.” - Saint George Carlin

As an entrepreneur, one of the toughest barriers you run into when first starting out is edifice your reputation. Whether you are in a service industry or merchandising your ain new merchandise line, how make you carry prospects to go clients? At times, it can look like an impossible task, but take heart, there are things you can do.

My first piece of advice for any new concern proprietor is usage the people you know! Whether it’s friends, family, past employers or neighbors, do certain everyone you cognize (and everyone they cognize for that matter) is in the cringle about your new concern venture. I would propose sending out an e-mail to everyone on your contacts listing giving them a dislocation of what you’re doing and asking them to go through it along to anyone they cognize who might be interested in your service or product. You’d be amazed how fast your contact listing can multiply by just asking the people you cognize to go through your information along. You can even include a particular Family and Friends offering or discount. Remember, it takes a batch of work and money to acquire your concern off the ground. Even if you only interrupt even or lose a spot of money on these sales, the portfolio and/or great mentions or testimonies you addition will be invaluable in the hereafter of your business!

Ok, so maybe you got a few gross gross sales or undertakings out of that and you have got a few solid mentions under your belt, now what? I would propose before you throw a clump of money into conventional advertisement that you take a small more than clip to really construct a first social class client list. I’ve establish one attack to tapping into a grouping of possible clients that is a small friendlier than your tally of the factory cold-calling assault. Range out to prospects that you already have got got something in common with or a connexion of any kind.

For example, when I began selling my web land site designing business, it was indispensable for me to have a solid portfolio before I could anticipate company’s who ran across me through conventional advertisement or hunt engines to swear me enough to set their company’s online mental image in my hands. So after contacting friends and household and completing a few undertakings for them, I took it a measure further.

I reached out to little concerns and enterprisers locally. By specifically approaching that group, I had at least two things in common with these new contacts: location and the battle of starting out. I establish this extremely effectual and made some great connexions by being completely honorable and unfastened with them about what I was doing and what I was hoping to accomplish. And of course, I always included information about how a website could assist them in their selling efforts.

Once I had pretty much exhausted those possibilities, I racked my encephalon for another grouping of prospects I could approach. I thought of what groupings of people I would have got some kind of natural resonance with and whom I would be fairly comfy contacting out of nowhere. For me, this mark marketplace came to mind on a Saturday afternoon while at a Equus caballus show. I grew up riding Equus caballuses and still bask my Equus caballus time! I then realized that there was a big per centum of barns I was familiar with that didn’t have got websites. So from there, I began contacting each and every barn that had an address, telephone figure or e-mail computer address listed! I got a nice amount of concern out of my attempts and managed to construct a solid portfolio to boot.

Starting out in the concern human race is always a challenge. When it come ups to little concern success, repute and mentions are key. Don’t acquire discouraged, just happen your ain grouping of “friendly” prospects and leap in!

Feel free to check out the real article here.

So is that what those software programs they sell that change articles enough so that they’re not identical to the other copies out there? It’s like Mad Libs on crack! Dear God, I’m glad my name isn’t on that! I also apologize to Saint George for even having his quote trashed…but hey, at least he gained sainthood!

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I just found this great old post on Software is too expensive to build cheaply  It’s funny cause it’s true!

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I am please to announce the launch of our latest website.  KKM Stables is a full service dressage training and instruction facility located in Bellville, OH.

Knowing the need to continue building a strong website design portfolio, I have offered a limited number of stables and other horse related businesses an exclusive website design package.

Since I have been a rider all my life, working on these sites is most definitely a labor of love!

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I read China Loses 10,000 Domains to Quake, an interesting article from last week on Yahoo News.  Apparently…

Chinese domain owners lost about 10,000 domain names because of the earthquake that cut undersea cables off the coast of Taiwan last month

They also quoted a source as saying:

“Because the domain names are lost due to an act of God, enterprises and individuals involved may be appropriately compensated by the domain name server, but the scheme is still under discussion,”

First of all, I can’t begin to imagine the kind of headaches caused by something like this.  How awful to all of a sudden lost your own website’s domain due to something completely out of your control, but I really wouldn’t want to have this happen to my clients’ addresses!!!

I suppose the story also caught my attention because of the consideration being given to remedy the situation because the cause was “an act of God.”  That phrase always gets a rather visceral reaction from me for a completely unrelated reason.  I drove around for several years in a car that was as close to totalled as possible due to a deer-car incident on the highway here in Kansas.  I was told over and over again that insurance could not be held responsible or help me in any way because a deer running into the well-travelled highway on which I was going 70 miles an hour was “an act of God.”

So I guess instead of being bitter, I will just hope for the sake of these people that some compensation does come their way, if it’s not possible to restore their domains!

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Well, if you check out the date of my last post, I guess you could assume that tops on my list is stop making excuses and BLOG MORE!

But that aside, I came across an interesting list of resolutions for webmasters from the Small Business Software Blog.

My favorites on the list were:

2. Update Copyright Notices
Make an effort to update the copyright notice on your website. A current date will reassure customers that your online storefront is active.

3. Update Meta Tags
Each and every web page on a website should contain a unique title and description. Update and optimize meta tags to avoid excessive use of keywords. Meta tags should be accurate and concise without redundancy and recurring words.

4. House Cleaning
Update old links and remove any links that are no longer valid. HTML is a markup language and without constant maintenance it is easy to have a page with an unclosed tag. While some web browsers make allowances for poorly formed HTML, it is important to realize that not all do. Therefore, it is crucial that you take a look at the HTML behind the web page and make sure that it is properly formed.

There are some great ideas on their list.  These three are going to join my priorities list just under blog more and probably a bit above get more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night…who needs sleep anyway!

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No, I haven’t had too much eggnog, yet.  Just winding down this evening with a bit of my usual StumbleUpon stumbling.  Just came across this page…check it out if you have a minute, it made me chuckle.

It gives you a very entertaining error message…I didn’t tell you though, cause I’m sure if I did I’d have to kill you!

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Just when I was starting to get a handle on my StumbleUpon addiction, I learned today that the folks over there have just launched StumbleVideo. Along the same concept as the original, you pick a category or “channel” and then stumble through clips in that category from YouTube, Myspace and Google Video. And just like it’s predecessor, you are given the opportunity to give each a clip a thumbs up or thumbs down. Over time, the system will learn from your rankings and send you video clips that based on your previous votes it thinks you will enjoy.

Who knows, this might just bring an influx of videos to the DW Web Solutions blog!

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I just came across an interesting story about Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.  This story on Yahoo News reports that:

Wikia, a commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, will go even further to provide customers — bloggers or other operators who meet its criteria for popular Web sites — 100 percent of any advertising revenue from the sites they build.

Interesting idea.  They are willing to give you the software platform, free hosting and storage space AND you get to keep 100% of any advertising revenue generated from your wiki site…all for a simple link back to Wikia.

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As a fairly new blogger, I had been warned by many of the comment spammers. After the first two weeks of blogging, I got my first spam comments and started to check out the options available to cut down on those pesky commenters.

Shortly thereafter, I was made aware of the Akismet plug-in which comes standard in Wordpress. I immediately activated it on all of my blogs. Now, I’ve read a lot of reviews of Akismet. Some say it’s great, many say it’s not exactly complete protection.

As I said, I was only a few weeks into blogging when I activated Akismet, but up to that point I literally had 2 spam comments. As soon as I got the plug-in working for me, I noticed that I was getting at least 5 spam comments per day in my Akismet spam tab.

Here’s my question: Does Akismet really block spam or is it attracting some spam?

I don’t know if there’s any correlation there or not. Perhaps, I would have naturally received this sudden influx of spammy comments within a few weeks anyway. Have you experienced anything similar?

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Well, maybe not yet…but it does seem that we may be heading there.  I have always preached the importance of a web presence to small businesses.  In fact, I use the yellow pages comparison in “Why Your Small Business Needs A Website,” an article I wrote a few months back.

I firmly believe that having a website and online marketing plan is essential to all businesses today, so you can imagine how intrigued I was to come across “Yellow Page Usage Drops By Half” on at the Online Legal Marketing Blog.  Check it out for some interesting statistics on yellow page usage and advertising versus their online counterparts!

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