Chat Clussman » Business

Reader Question About Online Businesses

Chat — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:05:51 +0000

Okay, this isn’t actually a reader question. It’s a question from a friend of mine and I thought it would be worthwhile to share my reply:

Chat, do you know anyone who consults with small businesses on how to make their website make more money for them?

Sorry, I don’t. It sounds like they need at least two people:

A business consultant or business coach to help them figure out their business model and different monetization opportunities.
A web expert to wear several hats: content strategist, SEO guy, site optimization, etc. Ideally this person would be able to conduct A/B and multivariate tests on their landing pages to maximize conversion rates. I do this sort of thing but I work 60 hour work weeks and simply can’t take on any extracurricular projects.

Realistically they probably want to partner with a savvy web company. But, also realistically, said company will charge a lot up front and won’t be interested in revenue sharing or anything like that. So they should probably start with the business consultant. And in lieu of spending a bunch of cash on a web expert, I’d recommend starting off with a book like the Website Owner’s Manual:

http://boagworld.com/websiteownersmanual/

It covers the “secrets to a successful website”, evaluating objects, planning and measuring success, creating killer content, website promotion, techniques for engaging visitors, and more. It’s specifically written for people who own and operate websites rather than being written for people like me who help the people who own and operate websites.

This answer barely scratches the surface of such a broad topic, but hopefully it provides a place for people to start. I’ll write more about this in the future so if you have specific questions feel free to post them in the comments section.

Helping Passionate Users

Chat — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:30:14 +0000

The key to viral (or social) marketing is to make it easy for your users to help you. To do that, you need to give them the tools to help you. And to do that, you probably have to put a little bit of thought into what the best tools are.

Over at Spiceworks we have a user group called Spread Spiceworks. It’s grown organically over time and I thought I’d share some of the tools we’ve created to help our users evangelize us.

Spread Spiceworks Widget

Email an IT Pro

An email form to let people instantly tell their friends about us. You have to be careful about spammers trying to abuse things like this. To keep things simple the body of the email is actually hardcoded on the back-end. If they want to send a custom message, the same text can be copied to their clipboard.

Post a Button

This section has buttons and screenshots to post on their blogs, on forums, or pretty much anywhere that allows HTML. Clicking on a button or screenshot opens a modal box with the HTML code. (I added syntax highlighting because, well, I’m a nerd.) If a user is logged in the HTML code will include their referral ID. That way, if anybody clicks on one of their buttons and downloads the app, they get credit for it in the form of points. I’ll talk more about the points a bit later.

This section also has wallpapers for desktops, PDAs and mobiles. While those things don’t actively help people to “spread Spiceworks” they do help passively. And, more importantly, they help our passionate users to stay passionate.

Be Social

This links to our various social networks so users can stay up-to-date on what we’re doing. Elsewhere we incorporate buttons to let people share our content on their social networks.

Meet-Up

You want to know how to create a really passionate user? Get him or her together with other passionate users. Our meet-ups are user created and user run. We facilitate things by helping them organize the group, publicizing the events, and providing them with topic materials.

Speak

This goes hand-in-hand with the meet-ups. We’ve provided users with an “Introduce to Spiceworks” slide deck they can use to give presentations… if that’s their thing. In fact, we’ve provided almost 50 slide decks! And we’ve bundled them together with custom business cards that they can print. The cards use the same referral code that the buttons use.

Get Gear

This is where users can go to buy hats, t-shirts, messenger bags, onesies, wall clocks, etc., all adorned with the Spiceworks brand. They look stylish and we get free advertising wherever they are.

Points

I mentioned that the buttons and business cards have referral IDs attached to them. Actually, so do the emails and screenshots. Whenever someone downloads Spiceworks from a link that includes a referral code, the referrer gets credit and that credit takes the form of points in our community. The more points you have, the higher your “level” is in the community. Attaining higher levels is purely a point of pride amongst users and yet it’s a powerful motivational tool.

So these are some of the tools we use. What are you doing to help your passionate users?

Design & Developer Jobs in Austin

Chat — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:08:33 +0000

Looking to hire a web designer or developer in the Austin area? Are you a web designer or developer looking for work in the Austin area? Here are a few helpful resources:

AIGA Austin Job Board

Be sure to read the AIGA Standards of Professional Practice. To post a job, go here.

Refresh Austin job board

Before posting a job, be sure to read their job posting guidelines. The Refresh Austin guys also run the Austin Web Design & Develop Meetup, which is a great place to meet designers and developers in the area.

Door 64

This one is geared primarily towards developers. Anybody can view jobs but you have to become a member to post jobs. Membership is free.

CraigsList

I’ve listed this one last for reason. As a job seeker you can expect to find a lot of crap job offers that pay either a fast food wage or a stake in the company (read: work for free). If you’re looking to hire someone, either know what you’re doing or avoid this option. Roughly 80% of your applicants will not be qualified. You can find good people and good jobs there though so I wouldn’t totally dismiss the site.

Of course there are non-local boards you can check out too:

And there are a few staffing agencies worth talking to:

I’ve had the best luck, again on both sides of the fence, with Aquent. If you’re going to a talent agency, I’d start with them.

Quick Tip: Pay Attention

Chat — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:02:15 +0000

If you have a website you should be keeping track of who’s visiting it and what they’re doing while they’re there. Google Analytics is a great tool for doing just that. If your site is built with WordPress, like mine is, you can also install a plugin like Site Stats, which will create a new page for your dashboard full of useful information like:

Who is sending you traffic (referrers)
Which posts and pages are the most popular
What search engine terms are leading people to your site
What sites are linking to you

If you want to grow your audience this is essential information to have.

Organizing Your Job Search

Chat — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:01:29 +0000

If you’re being smart about your job search, you’re tailoring your resume and cover letter for each company you are applying at. If you’re really smart, you’re not making that obvious to the person receiving the resume and cover letter. This is a simple matter of how your organize your files on your computer.

Bad:

/jobsearch/cover_letter.pdf
/jobsearch/resume.pdf

One resume. One cover letter. If you’re only applying for one job, having one resume isn’t too bad, especially if it is a well designed resume. But your cover letter should be tailored to each company you are applying at and you should have an archived version of each as well.

The other big mistake here is that the person’s name isn’t included in the filename for either document, which gives it a very good chance of getting lost in the shuffle. Especially if the reviewer organizes things electronically.

Okay:

/jobsearch/john_doe_cover_letter_design.pdf
/jobsearch/john_doe_cover_letter_webdesign.pdf
/jobsearch/john_doe_cover_letter_marketing.pdf
/jobsearch/john_doe_resume_design.pdf
/jobsearch/john_doe_resume_webdesign.pdf
/jobsearch/john_doe_resume_marketing.pdf

This is actually much better. John’s full name is included in the filename for both resume and cover letter and he is creating multiple versions of each file based on the different jobs he is applying for.

Better:

/jobsearch/design/john_doe_resume.pdf
/jobsearch/design/john_doe_cover_letter.pdf
/jobsearch/marketing/john_doe_resume.pdf
/jobsearch/marketing/john_doe_cover_letter.pdf
/jobsearch/webdesign/john_doe_resume.pdf
/jobsearch/webdesign/john_doe_cover_letter.pdf

Here is where a simple change in the way John organizes his files can start to payoff. It’s the same set of files as in the last list but its no longer obvious to the person receiving the files that he is applying for different positions. Why does that matter? It’s the difference between hiring someone who does something well and is passionate about it versus hiring someone who does lots of different things and, well, they really need the job.

Best:

/jobsearch/company-a/john_doe_resume.pdf
/jobsearch/company-a/john_doe_cover_letter.pdf
/jobsearch/company-b/john_doe_resume.pdf
/jobsearch/company-b/john_doe_cover_letter.pdf
/jobsearch/company-c/john_doe_resume.pdf
/jobsearch/company-c/john_doe_cover_letter.pdf

This is the cream of the crop because it works whether he wants to specialize in something as specific as Interface Design or he is just looking for something creative. It also reflects the high level of detail he is putting into his job search. Because he should be paying a high level of detail. He should be researching each company he applies at so that he can tailor his resume and cover letter to them. He should be dropping one or two relevant facts about each company in their respective cover letters to demonstrate that knowledge.

Designers: Design Your Resumes!

Chat — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:03:17 +0000

I’m reading through resumes and cover letters, looking for freelancers to add to our pool of talent at Spiceworks. And most of the resumes suck. They are horribly designed. (Two pages in all caps, seriously? And you call yourself a designer?) As a whole they have terrible leading, headers, use of white space, suffer from poor font choices, and are riddled with typos, misspellings, grammatical errors, missing punctuation, inconsistent punctuation on lists, and on and on.

With any given design in your portfolio you can at least fob off poorly designed elements on the client/boss/committee. But you can’t do that with your resume. That’s all on you. At the absolute minimum it should be free of errors and use a good font. That’s not setting the bar very high.

Bonus tip: if the only thing you have listed under accolades is that time you participated in a civil war reenactment eight years ago, considering leaving that section off of the resume altogether. I’m just sayin’.