This Can Help Cure The Workaholic Habit
Most entrepreneurs I know love what they do. That make sense. Entrepreneurship is a lot of hard work, a lot of believing in things that others don’t see or understand and sometimes, the financial stakes are high. We have to love what we do or we’re plain crazy 
Well… maybe we’re a little bit of both.
The biggest problem with this is, it makes us prone to the workaholic habit. We stay up till odd hours, put in more a week than we’ve ever had being an employee. Yet, I remember telling one of my friends lately, “It doesn’t feel like work, it feels like play”. Not all the time of course, sometimes, we need to do what we don’t like but that pretty much sums up the sentiment of many entrepreneurs I know. In this day and age, working long hours also means we’re on to the computer a long time.
But alas! Getting the will power to turn that computer off is like swimming against the current to say the least. So… why not let the computer do it for us.
Did you know there are programs that can automatically power down your computer at a certain time?
Set the hours you want to work, let the computer safely power down at a certain time therefore forcing you to finish up and go enjoy the fruits of your labor with your family. Of course you have to maintain discipline not to power it up again or power up another gadget. Generally, I think powering down your main computer has a psychological effect – that you’re done for the day. At least it does for me, and often does the trick.
Some people have also told me that if they set themselves a fixed number of hours to work, they’re usually more productive because they know that’s all the time they have and at the end of it, they have to pack up. Automatically shutting down the computer kinda gives you that kick in the you know where.
If you want to break the workaholic habit and give it a try, here are some small software you can try to help and they are from CNET so the download should be clean.
What You Can Do To Solve Tech Issues On Your Own
Unlike larger businesses, most of us are solo entrepreneurs. Which means, we wear many hats throughout the day. Some of us outsource a chunk of that work so we can concentrate on the things we are good at and that is very smart indeed. Trouble is, no matter how large or small your company is, we all have limited budgets or at times, limited people who can work on an issue for us. In order to get things moving we can either hold till those resources are available or attempt to move it along by finding solutions ourselves.
If you do not have a technical person to call upon or have very limited resources to hire help, here’s what you can do.
- Search the support forum. Many software paid or free, have user community forums where you can get help from. In some communities, help can come faster than the official support because of a strong and loyal user base.
- Copy and paste the error verbatim into Google or your favorite search engine. That’s how I find my solutions (and learned new things).
- Look it up on Youtube. Youtube is not just for laughs. There’s a ton of how to material there and this is a great option for those who learn better by visual walk throughs. While you are there, swing by the TechBasedMarketing channel for quick and easy how-to’s to common web tech questions.
- Ask your followers. You’ll be surprised how many smart people are among your social network and customers.
- Ask in relevant forums. Some entrepreneur forums have special sections for tech questions and help.
- Bring your questions and issues to our live helpdesk. Every Thursday night at 9 PM U.S. Eastern time, I hold a helpdesk ‘open house’ where we take questions and help people through Internet business tech issues. Follow me on Twitter or Facebook Page to receive instructions how to join me.
photo credit: fRandi-Shooters
5 Often Overlooked Web Spaces For Presenting Marketing Messages
On any given web site (which includes all the processes that goes on behind the scenes), there are always pages that could be monetized or get a marketing message across. Very often, these are what I call utility pages. Stuff that aren’t part of your regular content like blog posts or product description pages, but they exist because you need to confirm an action that the customer or visitor has taken, like the thank you page after subscribing to your newsletter. Many marketers are already aware of the value of this page and have taken steps to insert a message there. But there are other pages that are also overlooked.
After login screen
If you have a membership site, blog or forum where you require people to log in to participate, the page they land on is really important. I believe in guiding people and making things as clearly laid out as possible, like presenting a ‘dashboard’ page with quick links to all the key areas of your site. Beyond that, this page should also always have a space where news and offers are prominently displayed. Once they wander into the deeper regions, it would be difficult to get their attention.
After logging out
On 99% of the sites I’ve seen, once people log out, there’s a page that tells them they’ve logged out and probably branded with the logo. That’s it? While logging out does indicate someone is ‘done’ with your site for that session, it doesn’t mean you can’t lead them into something else that might interest them. How about adding an affiliate offer or a free download associated with an affiliate product.
Email confirmation page
Depending on your email newsletter service, some allow you to customize or direct people to your own page after someone confirms their subscription to your mailing list. Many of chosen to shift the freebie download to this page instead of getting people to check their emails once again. If you don’t deliver anything right away – maybe an RSS by email subscription. Add a promotional message there.
Recurring subscription email
This will depend a lot on the shopping cart/subscription system you use. On some systems, you can set it to send out an email every month notifying people of an upcoming payment or upon successful re-bill. Take the opportunity to cement your relationship. Edit that message to thank them and update the email every month to include a link to a small gift just for staying a subscribed member. Your free gift should include links or further recommendations that lead customers deeper into the other products and services you offer.
Mailing list unsubscribe page
If your email list service allows you to edit the unsubscribe page, why not enter a little message there? You could say you’re sorry to see them leave, to part on a good note, you’d like them to have a (insert freebie). Once again, the freebie can and should lead people to other areas or offers you may have. If you don’t have this option, you can do it in an unsubscribe confirmation email. Some providers do that. I find this a little annoying though because once someone unsubscribes, they’ll not want to get another email from you confirmation or not so this email will likely not get opened. It could be worth testing.
Hope this short list gets you thinking. There is a reason why these spaces are overlooked because they aren’t in front of you all the time, like your home page or blog may be. So don’t feel bad if you missed them but how do you find other spaces you may have missed? One of the best ways, is to step through the subscription, order process or registration process as a visitor/customer. Better yet, grab a friend and get them to record themselves as they go through the motions. You’ll often see right away where each screen could be improved to make the process clearer, smoother and where is a perfect spot to add a marketing message.
Creating Software To Advertise And Build Value: What You Need To Know
As we all get more Internet and mobile phone-centric, you see more and more software built to either promote or add value to a service or product.
For example:
- Nationwide Insurance created an iPhone app for their customers to help them make the task of filing a claim easier.
- There is Revver who created an official plugin WordPress to make it easier for their users to display videos and earn money.
- Pizza Hut has an iPhone app that includes a game, ability to order food and receive coupons.
- And there are countless Facebook apps created by big name companies.
I love it. On every project I have, I try to figure ways to build in an app or plugin to make people utilize the product more or spread the word about my web site but there are some issues which I’d like to highlight if you have been considering the same thing yourself.
To date, my biggest problem is licensing and distribution. Sometimes the issues occur together, sometimes they don’t. I don’t (or haven’t) yet built software for the iPhone, because I believe that if I were to build a mobile app, I wouldn’t want to piss off the rest of my customers or fans by offering the app *just* for iPhone but that’s a whole other blog post and we won’t go there today.
Building for iPhone or iTouch
Back to iPhone, if you are planning to build for the iPhone platform, you should know that:
All applications must be distributed via Apple iTunes. Your app has to be digitally signed using a system that Apple approves off which is tied to the distribution available only via iTunes. If you try to install an unsigned app, then technically you’ve broken the law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
You are free to give away your software once on iTunes. You just can’t distribute it in any way other than the manner Apple set out.
And if they reject you?
Well… I suppose you can appeal, but good luck! Keep in mind, Apple can do this anytime because they control what Apps are allowed to be sold/given away on iTunes and since you can’t distribute it anyway other than iTunes… you get the picture.
Building for WordPress
This is another hotbed issue and interestingly enough is the opposite side of the pendulum. First of all, no matter what it says on the box, no software is free. It costs thousands and probably millions of man-hours. Similarly, let’s say you want to build a plugin that would make your services more valuable for your existing customers only. I won’t be far from the truth to say you would probably hire a developer to do it correct? So would I but you or your company pays the developer to develop this. So the cost is on you.
Because WordPress uses GPL licensing, plugins also have to be licensed as GPL as well. Which means, if you are going to distribute the plugin, even under limited circumstances say, to your own customers, you must also give them access to the source code. It doesn’t matter whether you sell or give away the plugin but whoever receives or buys the plugin must be able to access the source.
Which means, users of your software can take the plugin, build upon or even not do anything and simply re-distribute it openly. They can even re-brand it as their own and distribute it via channels you may not want.
There are plugin authors who go against this by hiding the code and issuing different licenses. I haven’t heard of any big crackdown but the bottom line is still a violation of WordPress license. Which means if they want to pursue it, they could.
By the way, if you develop it for your own use – no distribution to other parties, you are not required to give away your source code.
Not Scare Tactic
While all this sounds super scary and downright draconian, that is not my intention. I am merely sharing what I’ve encountered while pursuing Technology-Based-Marketing strategies. It has not scared me off from developing these apps. I did spend some of my own money to develop a plugin that is released as GPL on WordPress.org. It is a risk and eventually it will be outdated or eclipsed by someone else. Right now, I am enjoying a some traffic as a direct result of releasing it.
Photo courtesy of Jason Rogers
It’s Not Too Much Data But Whether You Can Find It
This takes me back to the time I was working for someone else. Not long after I joined them, they began re-structuring the IT departments of all their companies world-wide. Up until then, each company had their own system that made is very hard to exchange information between each other and also report back to headquarters. 
On a smaller, everyday level, the re-structuring made perfect sense too because it would allow each department to be able to generate reports that they want and still be able to share information freely. I was working in the marketing department at that time and it was super frustrating when I asked for a specific drill down or a report that turned the data another way and wasn’t able to get it.
They had the data. Lots of it. It just wasn’t accessible. So yeah. They needed better tools.
How does this all factor in to our small business? Well, one of the things that whole episode taught me is you should always collect data on your business lots of it but what’s more important is, being able to find and manipulate it so you can use it to draw a good picture of where you are, where you want to go and having the information when you need it.
Simple things like having a filing system on your computer may seem mundane and pointless but it really does matter. If you constantly throw your downloads into a virtual pile somewhere on your computer, you’re never going find it when you want it and you’ll waste precious time trying. It’s hard to get things done like that.
Maybe you have a desktop search utility installed and figure you’ll be able to find it later using that. But truth is, search is only as good as the organization of it. Remember the good old computing rule – GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out.
If you don’t know where to search, you can’t find it or you can but it’ll take a long time. I don’t know about you but I have hard drive sizes in the Terabytes across the network. I’m not sitting around all day long to wait for the computer to find that one article I wrote.
If you don’t know the name of the file or the file type, all that makes it even harder too. So here’s the challenge for you. If you don’t already have a filing system, create one now. It’s not fun, it’s not sexy and doesn’t make your adrenalin pump but it can be just important to your success.
Photo courtesy of Guillermo Alvarez
Find Ways To Improve Your Product With Technology
In an issue of Popular Science magazine, I read how Cub Cadet who makes lawn mowers, enlisted the help of aeronautical engineers to improve their mower blades. The result was a blade that could cut and also clean up after itself better. Basically, the propellers formed a kind of air vortex that swept more of the cut grass into the bags rather than scattering them on the ground.
I love reading about technology transfer like this and reminds me there’s always some way to use technology from another industry in our own business.
It also reminds me, in order to stand the test of time, that our products need to be constantly improved and very often, new technology can help with that. Maybe it’s a new or better way of delivering your product. Maybe it’s a better more efficient way of fulfilling your orders or creating/manufacturing the product. Maybe it’s a better way of managing your resources and maybe it’s a new way of reaching your target audience.
Or like in Cub Cadet’s case, maybe someone has the technical knowledge to help you design a better product or product delivery method. All you need is a consultation. That’s a big part of what we do at TechBasedMarketing by the way 
You don’t have to be a propeller head and be able to do it all on yourself, you only need to be aware of the technological advancements available and with a little creativity and help, you can improve your product with a little tech transfer too.
Three Tools To Backup Your Email
Why not? After all, modern entrepreneurs like us rely a lot on email. I know I do. Often times, the emails are our only record of a transaction or agreement. So it becomes very important to save them.
For me, I simply include the mailbox folder in Mozy and I also make sure it’s included when I do backups to the network drive. But some of you may want something more direct. These three tools may help.
Mailstore – quite impressive. Backup from any POP or IMAP accounts. Free personal use version available, commercial versions start at $22.90
Windows Mail Backup – they have different versions for Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Incredimail and more.
Outlook Personal Backup Add-in – From Microsoft, available free. Works for Outlook 2007, 2003 and 2002
