Category Archives: blogs

Using Web Tools and Services to Expand Your Capacity on the Web

: Image via CrunchBase

by Gretchen Glasscock

In many ways, today’s web is all about moving beyond our own websites, getting out of our own skins and connecting with others. At the same time, you are connecting on Facebook and tweeting out your 140 characters on Twitter, you also will be checking Twitter or geolocation apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Loopt to see where your friends are and what they’re up to. You will be frequenting sites like Yelp to check the reviews that folks in your ‘hood are giving to local restaurant and services. It will be a connected world and, to stay in the loop, you have to do your part. You have to be churning out tweets like the rest of us.

By now, those who work on the web, or are dependent on the Web for their business, understand twittering is no idle pastime. For some of us, it is an essential business activity. And probably for most of us, it should be.

All of us who are web savvy know we should be twittering and building our social media profile, 24/7. We should be working our Facebook connections, polishing our LinkedIn profile, or writing our blog and building our following on a continuous basis. Unfortunately, we can’t. There are only 24 hours in a day and we can’t be working all of them. Even if we could, we couldn’t use all those hours to enhance our social media standing. Here’s the bare minimum of social media we should be constantly expanding and enhancing:

Twitter – for real-time news, trend spotting, shout outs, communication, and learning via TweetDeck and search.twitter.com
Facebook – for keeping up with old friends, meeting many new ones, knowing what’s going on and trending and learning more about your favorite brands ( who knew Coca Cola was so creative & how about that Starbucks?)
LinkedIn – the number one resource for executives on a talent hunt, so a good place to network. Bait for the big fish. Your LinkedIn Profile should be as fresh and up to date as fresh squeezed orange juice. And packed with Vitamin C.
WordPress – to deploy attractive websites loaded with plug ins and widgets to enable them to do heavy lifting on their own, with occasional but diligent monitoring and supervision

So , what to do?

Given the enormous commitment of time and energy it takes to maintain an interesting and robust website or blog , I’ll take all the sophisticated, tech-savvy help I can get. I’m a big believer in automating as many tasks as possible on a website. That’s what plugins and widgets are for: to free you up for the big thoughts, the hot trends, the strategic processes. And for me, that’s where Twitterfeed comes in.

When you start with Twitter I think you have to learn the pace , the quick tempo, trending topics and how to retweet, ie. pass on someone else’s interesting tweet, perhaps adding your own thought to it. Long ago, I used to wonder what was up with Twitter. But, once I got into Twitter, I found it addictive for several reasons. #1: Thought leaders in the Internet space were constantly telling me what they were thinking and what was the newest and the coolest. And #2. I didn’t need a ton of bricks to fall on my head to see what an incredibly powerful marketing tool Twitter could be.

Once I got started, I realized the need for constantly updated information. I also realized one could automate this process, using my blog to feed my twitter account. You just go to Twitterfeed, set up an account, then paste your blog’s feed URL into the text box provided to set up a new feed. You can also set up feeds for thought leaders in your field.

I keep a keen eye out for those “widgets” or “gadgets” as Google calls them, those tiny pieces of automated code that you can install on your page to work tirelessly behind the scenes. If you create and install a Twitter widget on your home page, you will constantly have a stream of fresh and updated content to draw users to your site.

But even if you tweet ceaselessly, which you can now do by following the steps above, it is still important to find time to post to your own website or blog and to develop the right mix between blogging and tweeting.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t put out a blog ( or in my case, several blogs), manage several websites, keep up with the social media and work with clients if I didn’t have lots of help from fast, efficient online tools and services which speed up the process and make it more effective. One of my favorite services is Zemanta which is co-pilot of my blog, offering relevant links, suggesting keywords, providing related articles, in case I want to poke around the blogosphere a bit, and, usually, providing a pretty good graphic I can append to give a little pop to the story.

Adam Singer of TheFutureBuzz.com reminds us “ you’re essentially contributing to someone else’s network on Twitter” rather than building your own website or blog following. And , on your blog, “Old articles are valuable and still read years later, given infinite life by the engines. Old Tweets live in archive purgatory where a majority will never be seen again.”

So do both: Twitter, Facebook, social media and your own Blog, which you are building for yourself and for the future. Just find the right balance. And all the tools you can find to help you along the way.

How to Use TwitterFeed: Consistent Twitter Presence (growmap.com)
How to Make Money on Twitter (thesocialmediaguide.com.au)
20 Easy Ways to Promote Your Blog Across the Social Web (performancing.com)

How To Create A Website Using Brains Instead of Money

: Image via CrunchBase

By Gretchen Glasscock

A while back, in By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09, web guru, Guy Kawasaki, details how he built a website on the cheap. That is, for Guy Kawasaki $12,107.09 is cheap. And it is cheap for a top ranking, major website. But if you’re not in Guy Kawasaki’s league yet…. and most of us aren’t …. you can build an attractive website that captures eyeballs, brings in revenue and turns a profit for $100 to $250.00. I know. I’ve done it. Many times.

Let’s look at how, working off Kawasaki’s list ( in italics). Actually Kawasaki only had four expense items, and you can pare those down dramatically.

As Kawasaki says, “Here’s a quick overview by the numbers:”

0. I wrote 0 business plans for it. The plan is simple: Get a site launched in a few months, see if people like it, and sell ads and sponsorships (or not).
0. I pitched 0 venture capitalists to fund it. Life is simple when you can launch a company with a credit-card level debt.

Times have changed since people on the web spent weeks or months laboring over business plans. The web is fast, fast, fast and you have a built in, real world focus group. Start from where you are with what you have. Put it out and see if people like it. Or, as they say in advertising, see if the dogs will eat the dog food. If they do, then keep leveraging up. You can and should leverage up for the life of the site to keep it fresh, interesting, constantly evolving and compelling.

As for money, I agree with Mark Cuban who said: “Rule #1: Sweat Equity is the best start up capital. There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customer’s pockets. You shouldn’t have to take money from anyone. Businesses don’t have to start big. The best ones start small enough to suit the circumstances of their founders, As much as you want to think that all things would change if you only had more cash available, they probably won’t. The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.”

Kawasaki has plenty of brains and, if you follow his moves, you will be using and improving yours. On to Kawasaki’s next point :

3. “7.5. 7.5 weeks went by from the time I registered the domain truemors.com to the site going live. Life is also good because of open source and Word Press.

I couldn’t agree more. WordPress has revolutionized ordinary people’s ability to rapidly deploy an attractive, sophisticated website which can then be updated in plain text. According to Wikipedia, “WordPress is a free, open source Content Management System (CMS), often used as a blog publishing application, powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is the most popular CMS in use today.” Being open source, it has thousands of man hours of coding and is constantly being refreshed and updated. It is powerful and elegant, plus it offers many plug ins and widgets, automated pieces of software which work in the background doing essential tasks it used to take programmers many hours to do. These tasks include search engine optimization, providing Google with a sitemap and a constant stream of updates and a thousand more functions, all of which work together to make your site a success.

As for design, WordPress has a huge array of free themes you can select. There are also some premium themes for which you pay a small price. A lot of professionals prefer the Thesis theme, at $87, because it is simple, elegant and endlessly customizable without having to code. Thesis is, right off the bat, an expertly-coded HTML + CSS + PHP framework. Thesis is known for the quality of its design and search engine optimization, SEO, which is critical because it is SEO traffic which drives the success of a website. There are also many free or inexpensive”skins” or looks available that overlay the Thesis framework. But to keep it simple, and for your own look, go to Istockphoto.com, put in your keywords to search for suitable photos then pay a buck or so each for a half dozen photos to go in your rotator or media box and you’re ready to go. Add your Twitter.com widget on the sidebar to drive more traffic.

At BlueHost.com, you can get great web hosting, features and service, 24/7 for $6.95 a month, payable a year in advance and only slightly more by the month. Among the many features they offer, to make life really simple for a webmaster, is the ability to install a WordPress platform to your site with one click.

· $4,500. The total software development cost was $4,500. The guys at Electric Pulp did the work. Honestly, I wasn’t a believer in remote teams trying to work together on version 1 of a product, but Electric Pulp changed my mind.

These guys at at Electric Pulp are top notch talent who’ve developed a well deserved reputation and consequently are well known. You pay top dollar for well known. I am a believer in remote teams and, trust me, a lot of remote techs aren’t well known and their prices are correspondingly much lower. Last week-end, I had an issue with a website and, through eLance.com, I located a Canadian demon coder who worked through the night and all the next day to fix it. I paid him $150 including a $60 bonus. I also brought on a certified IT Security Expert from Ireland who handled all the IT security for a global firm. He did a review of my site security for $125. You don’t have to be expensive to be good. You just have to know what you’re doing.

· $4,824.14. The total cost of the legal fees was $4,824.14. I could have used my uncle the divorce lawyer and saved a few bucks, but that would have been short sighted if Truemors ever becomes worth something. Here’s a breakdown of what I got for this amount of money.

I agree with some of Kawasaki’s thoughts on this. With lawyers you can pay now or pay later. And, if you get very successful and are negotiating an investment or liquidity event, you definitely want top notch lawyers “not only for her expertise but to show opposing counsel that you’re not clueless.” Agreed. But, if you’re bootstrapping, you can defer this expense until you are bringing in those bucks. Yes, your lawyers may cost more then, but you will be making more, so, in my judgment, it evens out. If money is an issue, which it usually is, I’d go with later.

· $399. I paid LogoWorks $399 to design the logo. Of course, this was before HP bought the company. Not sure what it would charge now.

It still charges $399. In fact, you can get a package for $299. But there’s a larger array of choices all the way up to $2999. I paid $299 for my latest logo from LogoWorks. But there are other choices. When I started out on the Web in 1996, I used a royalty free Matisse painting of people joining hands around the world as my logo. As I got established and began to see revenue, I paid $2, 000 for a custom logo. But now, I’ve learned, you can find a logo designer on eLance.com for $125 for a static logo and $150 for an animated logo. Either LogoWorks, another logo specialty shop which you can Google, or one you find on eLance.com is suitable. However, what I particularly like and I think you will like about LogoWorks is that you go down a decision funnel selecting the look and feel you want and have a lot of control over the process and the look and feel of the final product.

· $1,115.05. I spent $1,115.05 registering domains. I could have used GoDaddy and done it a lot cheaper, but I was too stupid and lazy. I registered 55 domains (for example, truemors.net, .de, .biz, truemours, etc, etc). I had no idea that one had to buy so many domains to truly “surround” the one you use.

A domain name should cost about $10. I don’t want to quibble but I like to wait until a site is a proven success and bringing in revenue before spending a thousand dollars “surrounding it.”

Kawasaki goes on to say:

“· $0. I spent $0 on marketing to launch Truemors.

· 24. However, I did spend 24 years of schmoozing and “paying it forward” to get to the point where I could spend $0 to launch a company. Many bloggers got bent out of shape: “The only reason Truemors is getting so much coverage is that it’s Guy’s site.” To which my response is, “You have a firm grasp of the obvious.”

I do understand he’s Guy Kawasaki. And, as he points out, it takes a lot of experience to get to the point where you could spend $0 to launch a company. But it will never be sooner than today, so you might as well start. If you’re known a bit around the web or in your specific field and you put up a good site, you will find your niche and get traffic also.

In concluding, Guy says, in part:

4. I learned four lessons launching Truemors:

1. There’s really no such thing as bad PR.

2. $12,000 goes a very long way these days.

3. You can work with a team that is thousands of miles away.

4. Life is good for entrepreneurs these days.

I agree. You can do it for much, much less, a couple of hundred bucks perhaps. And definitely, “Life is good for entrepreneurs these days.

5 Reasons WordPress Makes it Super Simple to Have a Headache-Free Site (communicatevalue.com)
10 Killer Ways for Startups To Use WordPress (wpjedi.com)
Book review: Head First WordPress (forthelose.org)

Help! My Web Developer Fell Off The Face of the Earth!

My Web Developer Fell Off The Face of the Earth!.

Has this happened to you? It happens all the time. Web developers move on to new opportunities and desert their old clients quite frequently.

There are a number of ways to deal with this, but forethought is probably the best.

Understand that you will want to update your website.

Often when people build their first website they think of it as a one-shot job. They don’t look ahead enough to realize that one day they are going to want to change information on the site.

You will want to change the information, and sooner than you think. You’ll want to add new information. You’ll want to remove obsolete information. And, you will think of new features that you want to add after the site has been up for a little while.

So, what do you do? There are a few options.

Get Back in Touch with the Web Designer

This often works, however it probably won’t work forever. Web developers and designers do tend to drop off the face of the earth for a number of reasons. They might have moved on to new opportunities. They might only be interested in generating new, large jobs and not interested in little maintenance jobs. They could simply be too busy to respond.

There are other problems with this approach. You’re going to pay top dollar for these changes. Web Developers make their money on new business and maintenance contracts. They don’t depend on, nor want, little jobs where they just update a paragraph here or there. To discourage this, they charge their highest prices for these types of changes.

In addition to paying top dollar, you’re also probably going to wait a while for these changes to happen. You will be on the back burner. You might want the change made right away, but your web designer is probably busy with projects which came in prior to your request. He or she has an obligation to those clients as well, and must prioritize his or her work according to the greater commitment.

Maintenance Contracts

Web Developers and Designers usually offer some sort of maintenance package in which they charge a monthly fee which insures that they will perform updates when needed. The fee usually isn’t very high, but it is often extra money that the client doesn’t want to spend.

Think about what you will want. If you want changes made in a timely manner and you want to rest assured that your web designer is available, a maintenance contract is the way to go. It’s very possible that the monthly fee will work out to be about what you would have paid for piece-meal updates.

Learn to Update it Yourself

If you’re used to software this might be a way to go. There are a number of web packages out there that can enable you to update the pages.

There is a learning curve and if you don’t have time to do this, this will be a royal pain in the neck. You will have to learn to update the page and upload it to you server.

If you aren’t comfortable around software then this is not an option for you.

Have a Content Management System Built into Your Website.

This actually makes the most sense. Content management systems empower you to make necessary updates easily. WordPress as a Content Management System – a state-of-the-art publishing platform which is feature rich, continuously updated, with thousands of man hours in development time and a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Think about using this and you will be able to update it yourself. SeeHow To Build An Attractive, User-Friendly Website Any Non-Techie Can Update And Maintain
Now I Know what I SHOULD have done, but what do I do now?

If your web developer fell off the face the earth you need to find a new one. GGWebGroup. We will help you get past this little pothole in the road. We will also convert your website to use a content management system, if you like. Just call us at (210) 369-8203 or email gretchen@ggwebgroup.com

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What Should My Website contain?

AWJ2 Website Information Articles-What should My Website contain?.

If you’re thinking of launching your first website….. or updating the one you have… one of the first questions you’ll have to confront is what should my website contain?

Think about your message

Websites are communication tools. One of the primary services they perform is to introduce you to the world. Think about what you want to say in that introducton. Also, think about how you want to say it (text, images, animaton – there are many ways to get your point across).

Consider what your Clients or Customers need

Websites are also information tools for your existing client base. Think about what information or services you can provide to your clients through your website which will make them return again and again.

Your clients’ and customers’ needs could be as simple as a good contact page, and FAQ page or directions to your place of business. Then again, you might find that an on-line store, reservaton system or onlne document archive is necessary to satisfy your client/ customer base.

Make a Wishlist

Now that you’ve decided what you want on your site make a list of all the components you wish to see. Prioritize that list. This list is the beginniing of your website.

Determine your Budget

Now comes the hard part. You need to figure out how much you can spend or want to spend. A small website (4 or 5 pages) will cost at least $800 if you use a web design company and the cost is usually much higher ($1800 to and up). The longer your wish list, the more you will have to pay. That’s just the way is. If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on a website, you will have to toss out some of the things on your wishlist.

If you really want flash, user interactivity or content management you should expect to pay more. Just keep that in mind.

Want some help?

If you want to visit by phone or email, just to get some feedback on what you might consider or general guidelines or what is the difference between Joomla and jello… call us at (210) 369-820, or email us at gretchen@ggwebgroup.com . We’ll be glad to give you some battle scarred advice from many years of experience.

From The Mouth Of A Guru: What The 2010 Web Will Look Like

: Image via CrunchBase

Robert Scoble is a one of the thought leaders and innovators on the web today. He is a smart, engaging guy who gets around to listen and exchange ideas with many of the other web leaders. Scoble’s a great favorite of mine and when he speaks, I listen. And so do a lot of other people.

On his blog today ,Scobleizer — Exploring the 2010 Web Scoble talks about going back to basics and refocusing on his blog. He talks about what some have called his obsession with Twitter and Facebook, where he has, in fact, been a major player. Scoble explains this by saying “All my fun experiments were over on Twitter, Facebook, or friendfeed. You could see that. Mike Arrington even tried to do a friendfeed intervention last December.” So now, Scoble is trying to bring that sense of fun, experimentation and real time zest into his newly re-invented blog. He is also trying to show the rest of us now to do the same, in real time.

(About a week ago I posted From The Mouth of A Guru: Why You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet which has many of the same caveats about the value of focusing your work on your own blog and letting Twitter be your outpost.)

In that vein Scoble lays out what he thinks the future of the web will look like:

“1. It’s real time. Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed are all moving toward architectures and displays that refresh in real time, or let you see what’s happening right now. We are at the extreme beginnings of that trend. You really should watch the video of the panel discussion I moderated on the state of real time search to get a sense of where this is going. That panel discussion will be remembered for years as a key point. One of the panel members runs Facebook search team. Yes, Facebook is working on real time search. (That video is in two parts since the meeting ran almost two hours long. I really do recommend watching it. Part I is here. Part II is here.).
2. It’s mobile. You’ll see this more next week when the Where 2.0 conference rolls into town, but if 40,000 iPhone apps hasn’t convinced you yet, nothing will. On Monday I’m meeting with Nokia to find out the latest.
3. It’s decentralized. Look at my behaviors. I’m all over the place. Six years ago I did only one thing: blog. Now I Flickr. YouTube. Seesmic. Friendfeed. Facebook. Twitter. And many more. Go to Retaggr and see all the places I’m at.
4. Pages now built out of premade blocks. You build these pages by copying a line of Javascript code to your template. This is very simple once you see how to do it, but for someone who doesn’t know code, or where in the template to go, this is VERY daunting. Silicon Valley has NOT made it simple enough yet for the mainstream to build highly useful pages. See the friendfeed block to the right of my words? I added that by copying and pasting from the friendfeed widget page. If you know where to look a TON of cool pre-built blocks like this are available for you to put on your website or blog.
5. It’s social. This seems obvious to anyone on Twitter or Facebook, but how many businesses add their customers to their pages? Not many. Silicon Valley has done a horrible job so far of explaining why adding people to your websites matters.
6. It’s smart. We’re seeing more and more smarts added to the web every day. Tonight Wolfram’s new search engine turned on. Have you played with it? That’s the 2010 web and check out what you can do with it.
7. Hybrid infrastructure. When I visited 12seconds.tv in Santa Cruz they told me they were using a hybrid approach: they own a rack of servers but they also use Amazon’s S3 to “cloud burst” or take up the slack for files that are popular…

PR People: I even made a place you can pitch me on 2010 web ideas. It’s interesting that a bunch of people are subscribed to that room — probably lots of tech bloggers looking for ideas.”

I put in that last link so those of you who are bloggers could go fishing there for ideas.

I’m certainly going to watching the evolution of Scobles newlly updated blog and trying some of the same tools and strategies myself. Are you? If you do, please leave a comment and tell us what works for you and what doesn’t. We all in this giant web conversation together, now that Web 3.o and the interconnections of social media and dynamic linking have arrived

Web 3.0, Breaking Out Of Our Silos, Getting Smarter

If you happen to be an entrepreneur on the web, like me, whether you’re
building your own blogs and websites or building them for others, you need to keep your eye on the web’s future. That’s where we’ll be competing for eyeballs, relevance and revenue.

Some distilled insight is offered by Richard MacManus in Understanding the New Web Era: Web 3.0, Linked Data, Semantic Web. He analyzes and sets out to distill “a fascinating 3-part series of posts this week by Greg Boutin, founder of Growthroute Ventures. The series aimed to tie together 3 big trends, all based around structured data: 1) the still nascent “Web 3.0″ concept, 2) the relatively new kid on the structured Web block, Linked Data, and 3) the long-running saga that is the Semantic Web.”

It might be a tall order to understand all of that in one gulp, but let’s look for a second at Web 3.0, then gently peek over the horizon to see a tiny preview of what lies ahead. ( Some of it might be a little techie, but for most of us it will work behind the scenes, and we will have simple tools which help us take advantage of the Net’s increasingly intelligent structural and linking dynamics.)

“Web 3.0: What Comes After 2.0 (!)

Last year Greg Boutin loosely defined web 3.0 as “the Web of Openness. A web that breaks the old siloes, links everyone everything everywhere, and makes the whole thing potentially smarter.”

There is a lot of debate about what Web 3.0 is and the term itself is open to derision. In my view Web 3.0 is an unoriginal name for the next evolution of the Web. What’s important to note though, is that there is a difference in the products we’re seeing in 2009 compared to the ones we saw at the height of ‘Web 2.0‘ (2005-08). If Web 2.0 was about user generated content and social applications such as YouTube and Wikipedia, then Web 3.0 is about open and more structured data – which essentially makes the Web more ‘intelligent’.

The smarter the data, the more things we can do with it. The current trends we’re seeing today – filtering content, real-time data, personalization – are evidence that ‘Web 3.0′ is upon us, if not well defined yet. We actually saw a great example of Web 3.0 this week, with Google’s release of Search Options and Rich Snippets. Those features added real-time search, structured data, and more to Google’s core search.”

: Image via Wikipedia

Macmanus goes on to discus “linked data” which is interesting, if pretty techie. There is a fascinating, if mind blowing, graphic of a Linking Open Data (LOD) project. He also notes that Google will be a big player in all of this.

: Image via Wikipedia

The bottom line is that, ultimately, we will have a more intelligent web and entreneurs would do well, to position themselves for the future by keeping an eye on linkages. To dive into the complexity of it all, go to Understanding the New Web Era: Web 3.0, Linked Data, Semantic Web – ReadWriteWeb.

Google’s Rich Snippets and the Semantic Web (radar.oreilly.com)
Linked Data is not owl:sameAs Semantic Web (semantic-web.at)

From The Mouth of A Guru: Why You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet

I have discovered Adam Singer, and I’m glad I did. I like the way he thinks. Self described as a PR/marketing director, blogger, electronic music producer, tech geek, Adam writes at TheFutureBuzz.com.

In 19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet, Adam gives his thoughts of this subject which I found to ring true. It certainly puts in perspective how much time and effort one should be devoting to which activities, Tweeting or Blogging? Here’s what Adam has to say on the subject and his first 4 reasons:

“Here’s why you should make a blog your home base and consider Twitter an outpost:

1. Blogging demonstrates true commitment and passion to your industry that you really can’t fake long-term. Most won’t be able to sustain it over long periods of time with frequency, but those who do so are rewarded in spades and stand out from the crowd.

2. Old articles are valuable and still read years later, given infinite life by the engines. Old Tweets live in archive purgatory where a majority will never be seen again.

3. Remember, you’re essentially contributing to someone else’s network on Twitter – certainly there are returns, but make no mistake they profit from your attention. I know you might not have a problem with that because you gain something too, but it’s good to be conscious of that fact.

4. A compelling link in a blog entry will be clicked; links in Twitter are noise that in aggregate make up signal, but the reality is links in your stream aren’t the same as a post with a compelling link.”

For more, read the whole post at 19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet.

And let me know what you think. Tweet? Or Blog? And what’s the right mix?

How To Gain Insulation From Competition: Foster A Tribe

: Image by Alex Osterwalder via Flickr

Not sure what the hardest thing is in business is because so much of it is challenging. But one of the hardest things to achieve has to be “insulation from competition”. Even if you are great at doing whatever you do, someone can always come along and replicate it. Seth Godin, marketing guru, makes the point in Seth’s Blog: Thinking about business models

that building a “tribe”, insulates you from competition. I can think of some examples of this. Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. After all it’s only ice cream. Volkswagon, when it brought out the Beetle. After all it was only a car. Apple when it introduced everything from the Mac to the Iphone. After all, there were competing products, but for those who fell in love with the meticulous design, ease of use and the sheer enjoyment of using the product, there was only Apple. Here’s how Seth makes that point when thinking about business models”

“A business model is the architecture of a business or project. It has four elements:

What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? (or votes or donations)
How do you acquire what you’re selling for less than it costs to sell it?
What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and a price war?
How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers?

The internet 1.0 was a fascinating place because business models were in flux. Suddenly, it was possible to have costless transactions, which meant that doing something at a huge scale was very cheap. That means that #2 was really cheap, so #1 didn’t have to be very big at all.

Some people got way out of hand and decided that costs were so low, they didn’t have to worry about revenue at all. There are still some internet hotshot companies that are operating under this scenario, which means that it’s fair to say that they don’t actually have a business model.

The idea of connecting people, of building tribes, of the natural monopoly provided by online communities means that the internet is the best friend of people focusing on the third element, insulation from competition. Once you build a network, it’s extremely difficult for someone else to disrupt it.

As the internet has spread into all aspects of our culture, it is affecting business models offline as well. Your t-shirt shop or consulting firm or political campaign has a different business model than it did ten years ago, largely because viral marketing and the growth of cash-free marketing means that you can spread an idea farther and faster than ever before. It also makes it far cheaper for a competitor to enter the market (#3) putting existing players under significant pressure from newcomers.

This business model revolution is just getting started. It’s’ not too late to invent a better one.”

The Secret To Building A Popular Blog

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Jon Morrow , Associate Editor of Copyblogger, who should know, shares with us this pearl of wisdom:

The Oldest Blogging Myth

“Content is king.”

Well, that is pretty discouraging to those of us who focus on producing or discovering great content. But then Jon explains what, in our hearts, we already know. In Why No One Links to Your Best Posts And What to Do About It , Jon points out that this is no longer even Web 2.0. It’s moved beyond that. The era of social media has arrived and that means Friends: Facebook, FriendFeed, the Twitterati. If you want to be popular, you need to start getting hooked up with very popular friends/fellow bloggers. Or , as he puts it:

“If you want links now, you need to be more than great. You need to be connected.

The Secret to Building a Popular Blog

Remember the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know?”

Well, it’s kind of true. A mediocre writer that’s friends with every member of the Technorati 100 will become a popular blogger faster than a brilliant writer with no friends at all.

Why? Because bloggers link more often to their friends than anyone else. If you write a reasonably good piece of content that interests their audience, they’ll link to you, mainly because they like you.

The secret to building a popular blog isn’t just writing tons of brilliant content. It’s also having tons of well-connected friends.

How to Make Friends with Popular Bloggers

So… how are you supposed to make friends with all of these popular bloggers and get them to link to your best posts?

Traditional wisdom says you should link to their posts, hoping they’ll notice you and start reading your blog. Sometimes it works, but in my experience, you need to be a little more creative. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Write a guest post that gets lots of traffic and adoring comments
Attend conferences that all of the “Who’s Who” of your niche go to and network your tail off
Volunteer to “vote” for any posts that they’re pushing on social media sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon
Email them an irresistible question, hoping to spark a discussion
Leave lots of truly memorable comments
Interview them in either a post or a podcast, making sure to ask lots of intelligent questions
Join their private membership program (like Teaching Sells) and make lots of smart posts in the forums

Give and Ye Shall Receive

We’re not talking about anything new here. Really, it comes down to one of the oldest principles of persuasion: reciprocity.

Contrary to what many people think, A-list bloggers aren’t islands, separate and self-sufficient. They deal with problems and annoyances, just as much as anyone else. If you can help alleviate them, they’ll thank and remember you for it.

The key is finding ways that you can be genuinely useful to them. Make yourself relevant and then use that opportunity to start building a relationship.

Give it a few months, and then start pointing them to your best and most relevant content. They’ll probably link to you anytime you do anything interesting, bringing you lots of readers. They’ll also introduce you to other popular bloggers, giving you a chance to do more favors and expand your network.

It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. If you put as much effort into building relationships as you do writing great content, you’ll have a popular blog in no time.

And better yet, you’ll have made friends with some of the most interesting people on the web. That’s a reward in and of itself.”

Power Marketing By Building A Blogging Team (steven-sanders.com)

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