All posts in Advice to Businesses

My Suggestion to Dropbox

by Ades on July 15, 2009 in Advice to Businesses with 25 Comments

First of all, if you are not already using Dropbox, go get it here.

It’s one of the best free backup and PC synchronizing services on the net. It’s simple and it works.

How it works:

Dropbox offers you free 2GB space online that you can use to backup your files. In order to simplify your backup activities, they provide a client software which you can install on your PC. This software creates a “My Dropbox” folder in your PC (you can specify the location). After it’s done, you just drop all the files and folders into your “My Dropbox” folder and that’s it.

After that, your job is done, the software will now start to automatically upload all the files to your online 2GB account. And every time there is a change in your “My Dropbox” folder, it will automatically synch it with your online account.

Additionally you can install the software on more than one PC (at work, at office) and it will keep all of them in synch. No more file transfers through pen drives from office to work!

The small issue:

I am a long time user of dropbox and one thing I would like to see changed in the service is the small improvement in their software. Currently the software creates one folder (My Dropbox) in your PC and only backs up things inside this particular folder. Any other folder or files outside this folder cannot be backed up unless you put them inside your “My Dropbox” folder. Continue reading →

PDF: Know your UpTime

by Ades on March 30, 2009 in Advice to Businesses, e-books with 14 Comments

What does it really mean when a hosting company says they provide 99% uptime guarantee?! It means they guarantee not more than 7 hours (seven hours!!!) of downtime a month or not more than 3.5 days of downtime a year.

So if your business can’t afford to lose downtime of 10 minutes, don’t ever get close to those companies who offer 99% uptime! Rather go for companies who guarantee not more than 10-20 minutes of downtime per year.

Below is a cheat-sheet on uptime calculation provided by guys over at pingdom.

Download PDF: click here

Why including “daily” is not a good idea for blog domain name

by Ades on January 9, 2009 in Advice to Businesses, Blogging Tips with 14 Comments

Choosing a domain name for your blog can be quite difficult (unless you do like me… put your name first (ades) and then the word “blog” after it ;)

But one of the things to consider when choosing a domain name is, try to avoid using the word “daily” in the domain name (unless it’s absolutely necessary). Especially if you are going to run the blog alone. Because as a human being you are going to miss a day or two, and it won’t be good (on your part) if your domain says “daily” but you do not provide posts on a daily basis. Or you resort to publishing low quality posts just to have a new post everyday.

Also when you run a niche blog on a particular topic, it would be really difficult to churn out daily posts on a regular basis non-stop. Therefore you have to be careful in defining your niche. It should be something that grows everyday, changes everyday, gives you room to write new stuff…etc. Otherwise, after few months of blogging there would be nothing left to talk about, and you would be off the blogging race soon after.

I think DailyBlogTips is an exception. Daniel Scocco has been doing some great job for some time. But even he, lately has shifted to answering one question per day instead of posting a normal post. Does that mean his blog url will change to DailyBlogFAQs now? ;) But you know where I am getting right?

Having a “daily” word in the domain name defines a certain mental image and expectation in the users’ minds. If you say “daily cartoon” then the users would expect from you daily cartoons… So, when you do not fulfill that expectation, then that mental image is destroyed. As a result your “brand” (or reputation) will be affected negatively.

Summary

To wrap up the post, think twice if you want to have “daily” word in your domain name, unless it’s something like “daily ramblings etc” in that case it wouldn’t matter. Also make sure that the niche that you have chosen to blog about is not a static topic, something that can’t be written (i.e finished) in 200 posts.

Brian Gardner’s New Project – StudioPress

by Ades on January 2, 2009 in Advice to Businesses, Make Money, WP Themes with 28 Comments

Brian Gardner, the person who revolutionized premium wordpress themes by his first project RevolutionTheme, has came up with a new project – StudioPress.com

Since it’s a newly launched project, currently there is only one wp theme available. However, more themes expected to be added very soon. The first theme is for real estate sites.

If it works, don’t fix it

As you all know, RevolutionTheme project had been replaced with R2 (RevolutionTwo), and became Open Source. That meant, as I predicted ~~no more~~ less income for both affiliates and Brian Gardner himself. Brian wanted to change his business model from selling themes to selling support.

Before revolution themes were open source, they were selling like hot cakes. Obviously after they became “free”, no one wanted to pay for the support. Because most bloggers are very familiar with wordpress and most of them wouldn’t need a paid support to customize their themes.

Revolution2 was a huge misstep for Brian (from financial point of view). In order to correct this business decision, he had two choices; to bring back the old revolution themes or to launch a new project. Brian has chosen the second option. And I think that was a wise decision. Otherwise it would have been even more confusing for his existing customers from revolution-1 project. Because they are already confused with the whole discontinuation of revolution-1 project and revolution2/open source thing and how it affects them.

Making Money for Bloggers

StudioPress.com is a great news for bloggers. Because it means “back to making money” for most bloggers. Brian Gardner is a great designer, and his themes are one of the best wp themes on the net. Therefore, I have no doubt that this project will be a success.

His affiliates are paid 25% of the sales, that means if you sell one template worth $79.95 you will get $20.00. And if you sell all-inclusive package ($299.95) then you will get $75.00 of commission.

Are you ready to make money?

URL: StudioPress.com

Make Money with Mahalo Answers

by Ades on December 27, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Make Money with 18 Comments

Mahalo Answers is the new extension (service) for the “Human powered Search Engine” – Mahalo. The idea is the same like Yahoo! Answers, people post and answer questions. But with Mahalo Answers, you can actually get paid for your answers, that is when your answer is chosen as the best answer.

The amount paid per question is set by the person who asks the question. He can either make it “free” (i.e best answer is not paid) or provide some money for the best answer. It’s up to the questioner to determine the price, minimum amount is $1 and there is no maximum price.

mahalo answers

How do I earn money?

If your answer to a question offering a tip is selected as the best answer, we will deposit the tip into your Mahalo account. All tips are in Mahalo Dollars. Each Mahalo Dollar is currently worth $0.75 when paid out via PayPal. If you answer a direct question offering a tip and the asker doesn’t request a refund, we will deposit the tip into your Mahalo account.

How will I get paid?

Once you earn more than 40 Mahalo Dollars, you can request to be paid via PayPal on your tips settings page. Each Mahalo Dollar is currently worth $0.75 when paid out via PayPal. When you submit your request, we’ll transfer the full balance, or the portion of the balance you choose, to your PayPal account on the 15th of the following month. (source)

There are plenty of categories of topics available on the site. So, if you are good in any one of the topics, you have a pretty good chance of making some money while helping others.

One Advantage

Paid systems such as this, is a good platform for getting speedy and professional answers for your questions. Obviously, the more money you pay, the faster and the more informative answers you will get.

Otherwise, often times in similar free platforms or discussion forums when you post difficult questions which needs some research (and maybe some testing) on the respondent’s part, usually you get only partial answers.

Challenges

One of the challenges for Jason Calacanis (founder) now is to get people on board, and get them to use the system. And perhaps the real challenge will be to persuade them to use the system regularly.

He also needs to make some targeted buzz to attract certain group of professionals who can answer the questions in their own field best. Because, while he sent out email saying that the buzz generation was successful, I don’t think it’s there yet.

It hardly generated any buzz in the blogosphere, at the moment there are exactly 141 results in the Technorati for the keyword “Mahalo Answers“. And currently, the “Blog” section at Mahalo Answers itself (http://www.mahalo.com/answers/blogs) has no questions about blogging; neither free nor paid.

Given the fact that it is relatively easy to generate buzz with these kind of service in the blogosphere, I don’t know why Jason has chosen to concentrate on media tours instead. He could easily capitalize on “make money online” theme with bloggers and internet users in general. Since the system already has its own currency, they could have come up with effective affiliate program to let members refer other people and earn money too.

Summary

Well, let’s hope that it’s just the beginning for Mahalo Anwsers. After all, it’s still in Beta. Good luck to Mahalo team on the project!

P.S Here is what I asked on Mahalo Answers to drive some traffic and awareness to my blog. Got over 100 views on the question and some traffic to the blog, and paid the best answerer $1. Pay attention to Jason Calacanis’ comment on my question ;)

Forrester: Company blogs are the least trusted source of info

by Ades on December 16, 2008 in Advice to Businesses with 10 Comments

Forrester has an interesting report on “sources of information” and how much people trust them. You can see the results in the diagram below. As you can see, the least trusted source of information is the corporate blogs. With all the “corporate blogging” taking off… at least among Fortune 500 companies, this is a huge information to swallow for the corporate bloggers.

However, on the positive side, now that the companies know people do not trust their blog posts, they can start working on various solutions to make their corporate blogging work.

How can they make it work?

Well, perhaps they could use the blog not only to communicate but also to get feedback from their customers and to start building strong community.
To genuinely listen to the comments, and provide quick solutions to the problems.
Instead of just re-posting press releases on the blogs (i.e too formal), maybe they could choose an informal approach and be closer to their blog readers.
Top management should be actively involved in blogging as well. This has many advantages; one – it would make the posts more authoritative. two- people would be more willing to listen to and believe CEO than any other executive. and three – it would have a multiplier effect on the company, because if CEO replies a commenter and says “we will do it”, this would actually turn into an action. So, by just replying to comments CEO would actually be improving company’s products.
…etc.

Companies should definitely try to get this report and study it if they can.

Gmail has themes now

by Ades on November 21, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Gmail with 14 Comments

Gmail has introduced themes yesterday. Not everyone has it though, if you have it you should see it under Settings in your Gmail.

Google said it will be rolling out this feature to everyone next couple of days.

My suggestion…

In my opinion, allowing users to set their own theme (or at least background) would be a much better feature than this pre-set 30 themes. Because even with simple custom backgrounds, people can be so creative. As we have seen with twitter users like this. Let’s hope that it’s the beginning of Gmail customization/personalization.

Source: gmail blog

FixYa.com – Community Generated Tech Support

by Ades on November 13, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Links with 10 Comments

FixYa.com – this is what you call a Tech Support 2.0, it’s Web2.0 (less registration forms, no need to login to post a ticket… etc), it’s Social (people post problems and others provide solutions), and best of all it’s FREE (unlike sites like http://www.experts-exchange.com).

I had a problem with my Maxtor OneTouch4 external drive and was able to find a solution at this site. Found my way to the solution page from Google actually.

Advice to IT Companies

If companies are smart, they should dedicate some of their tech support staff on such sites. Because most multinational companies have a support system that is dysfunctional – it’s like they need “support” themselves to improve their overly complicated support system ;) Why can’t it be like the above site? Easy, usable, fast!

URL: http://www.fixya.com/

YouTube’s new feature “deep link” fails usability

by Ades on November 2, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Google, Usability with 16 Comments

YouTube has introduced a great feature called “deep link”. It’s a feature that lets you link directly to a specific time-frame within the video. For example, if the video is 5 minutes long and you want to show your friend from 2nd minute 15 seconds onwards, you can do that with this new feature.

How to do it?

This is how it is done – you need to add (manually) at the end of the URL, this code – #t=2m15s. It means the video will start playing from the frame 2minute 15 seconds (#t is for passing the time variables to the video, in this case 2min, 15sec).

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI54UauUtSk#t=0m46s

Usability issue…

But as usual, YouTube (Google) seems to be thinking from programmer’s point of view and not from end-user point. Because,

It’s (nearly) impossible for general public to remember this code. It looks easy for you and me but believe me for a non-IT person it will be quite difficult to remember the code structure, symbols, letters…etc
It’s not user-friendly i.e not usable – you need to add the code manually yourself at the end of the link. There is also no instructions on the video pages. So, someone who haven’t heard about this new feature wouldn’t know how to do it.
It’s prone to typo-error. Since users have to type the minutes and seconds into the code themselves, they might put in the wrong numerals or make a wrong structured URL due to Point1 above.

…all in all, it’s not usable!

What I suggest!

I suggest that YouTube make this feature more usable, and make it available on each video page. This can be done easily. It can also be integrated into the video pages seamlessly. Here is my suggestion:

1. Add a small icon (clock?) at the end of the URL field, similar to the generate code icon (see image 3). When you click on the clock, it would enable “deep link” feature.
youtube deep link

2. Once the feature is enabled, you simply drag the slider to the position you want.

youtube deep link

3. The video URL automatically reflects the position of the slider that you are moving. Once you are done, it’s ready for you to copy!

youtube deep link

This would make it much more usable and reduce typo-errors!

Would YouTube heed my recommendation? Who knows. But I hope they will, because it would make people’s lives a lot easier.

Ping: http://uk.youtube.com/blog?entry=EoZa0dlFRao

Entrecard Black Market

by Ades on June 4, 2008 in Advice to Businesses with 12 Comments

Today Entrecard announced that members now can purchase entrecard credits. Currently 1000 credits are going for $9.50 inside the members section at Entrecard website. But I think they are quite over-priced. Because there are very attractive offers in eBay if you want to buy Entrecard credits. (see below)

Creation of Black Market?

As you can see, at eBay 7500 Entrecard credits are going for $17 only. And of course there are some even better offers too, like this one 20,000 credits with starting price of $0.41 cents only. I am sure it will catch high price before the auction ends in 4 days, but it will definitely be better offer than what Entrecard is offering.

It’s like the money market, where Government says our money is equivalent to this much USD. But in actual case, the value of the local currency is much lower (rarely higher) in the black markets.

So what is the solution?

So, what could Entrecard do to establish the real price of Entrecard credits? How much does 1000 Entrecard credits really worth? I think Entrecard could come up with their own bidding system, where users could bid for it. Moreover, this kind of system would allow other members to sell their credits too. Otherwise, at the moment only Entrecard is making money. And those high earning members do not know what to do with their credits. Of course, only solution would be to sell their credits at eBay for a very cheap price. Almost like getting rid of them.

What do you think Entrecard should do? Your thoughts on this…

Ping: http://entrecard.com/blog/

Update: Entrecard purchases credits from high earning members and sells back to the community.

Levi’s next strategic move?

by Ades on May 29, 2008 in Advice to Businesses with 11 Comments

Few days back I bought a new pair of jeans from Levi’s to replace my old one. Today I see this graph and I am thinking to myself “man I have wasted 2866 gallons of water“.

I do feel bad about it since there are more than 2 billion people who do not have access to clean water.

The World Bank reports that 80 countries now have water shortages that threaten health and economies while 40 percent of the world — more than 2 billion people — have no access to clean water or sanitation. source

Water shortages are likely to be trigger for wars, says UN chief Ban Ki Moon source

Since the future holds more water related problems, and since more and more people are becoming environmentally aware. Do you think jeans industry will have a major crisis like the diamond industry had?

And since Levi’s is the major player in the jeans industry and since it’s well known for its high quality jeans (and not for any of its other products) I think the firm will have a tough time dealing with this problem. Because as you can see, in order to produce a pair of jeans you need 2866 gallons of water!

What is your thoughts on this issue in general? As for Levi’s, I am sure the company will try not to abandon their jeans line. So what could be Levi’s next strategic moves regarding this issue?

Update: here is how the jeans are produced (and water spent/wasted) click here

Use Microsoft’s Search Engine and get Cash Rebates

by Ades on May 23, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Make Money with 11 Comments

US citizens now have a better deal when it comes to purchasing things online. People now can use Microsoft Live to find products, and get cash rebates when they purchase products through Microsoft’s Live Search Engine.

Under the cash program revealed Wednesday, Web shoppers who sign up for an account and buy items found using Microsoft’s Live Search cashback site will receive a percentage of the purchase price deposited into their account.

When the total reaches $5 (euro3.17), the shoppers can redeem their “cold, hard cash” via eBay Inc.’s PayPal. Microsoft said the rebates are funded with a portion of the money it collects from advertisers.

So far, more than 700 merchants, including Home Depot and Zappos.com, have listed products on the site reports AFP.

What it means to bloggers?

It means Microsoft is skipping the middlemen (like you and me) and working directly with the product sellers. So, now consumers can go directly to live.com and buy stuff, instead of going through other third-party referrers. Therefore, from consumers’ point of view it’s a great service. Google Product Search (previously froogle) has been around for some time already, but they have failed to come up with this idea. And I personally think, Microsoft’s cashback might actually work!

As for bloggers, I think it’s a matter of time before Microsoft involves bloggers in this program and comes up with a publisher program. Probably bloggers will be able to use Live’s “search form” on their blog and sites. When someone searches for a product from your blog and if the search results in a sale, then the blogger will be paid some percentage.

If Microsoft comes up with publisher program, then it will be competing directly with other publisher programs like WidgetBucks and Chitika. When this happens I wouldn’t wish to be in Chitika’s position ;)

http://search.live.com/cashback