My Private Hire by: Kelli, 10:24:00 AM
This interesting website offers a new concept to offer individuals the ability to hire out their personal items for cash and to make money. Owned and operated from the United Kingdom, the Website acts as a classifieds advertising portal, providing details about items that individuals have for hire… not for sale – ranging from motorbikes, computers, golf clubs, holiday villas to garages or lockups - in fact users could hire out absolutely anything!!!
The website offers an alternative to sites like eBay where you just sell your items. Why sell your items when you can hire them out and make money, all while keeping them for your own future use.
“This is not seen as being a competitor to eBay, but another outlet for individuals to make money from their personal items with the backing of pre-prepared hire agreements from the website.†~ Philip Locke, owner and operator of the website
MyPrivateHire.com is always adding new items for "hire" so check it out often. It may be operated out of the United Kingdom, but that offers a great opportunity for for those in the U.S. looking for a vacation rentals that wouldn't be seen elsewhere.
November 24, 2006
Tapeworm at the Toilet Bowl by: Steve, 7:58:00 PM
This website tells the story of one guy's attempt at killing a tapeworm inside of his intestines.
http://www.fray.com/drugs/worm/
As sickening as it might sound, he crafts his story in a very amusing and entertaining way, with cartoonish-graphics, and very creative writing.
I dropped everything and held my breath. This could not be happening. This was not my life. I began panting, all alone in a locked cubicle in a half-decent restaurant with a dead tapeworm hanging out my ass.
If you have a funny story to share, consider building a website around the story, much like this one. Consider that this particular website is getting blogged and shared with people all over the Internet.
November 18, 2006
The Flyer Wall by: Kelli, 6:56:00 PM
Everyone has seen a flyer wall covered with flyers for everything from rooms for rent to great local businesses. Paul Dixon, a web desginer in the UK has taken a new approach to this old form of advertising with his new website. The home page of the website serves as the "flyer wall" and is covered with "flyers" from a variety of businesses. Flyers start at 62x62 pixels for £25 ($45) and go up from there.
In addition to the Flyer Wall, Dixon has a blog where he discusses features of the site. Be sure to stop by and take a look at The Flyer Wall at www.theflyerwall.co.uk.
February 10, 2006
Medication Prompt by: Steve, 12:38:00 PM
Medication Prompt is a text messaging service reminding people to take their pills.
You enter your phone number, and the times you need to take your pills, and it sends you a cellphone reminder to take your pills.
It's currently a free service, and you can set up as many reminders as you want.
February 08, 2006
LunchSpark by: Steve, 2:43:00 PM
LunchSpark helps people find new lunch buddies.
Tired of eating lunch alone? LunchSpark lets you define your preferences, such as favorite food, restaurants, and what city(ies) you're close to. Then you can run a search for a buddy, or wait for someone to contact you.
Obviously, it's a great way for guys and gals to meet each other. But because it's focused on lunch, it doesn't have a "romance" feel. Poking around the site, it's very much open to just finding a friend to chow down with.
For guys like me, who work out of their homes, and don't have co-workers to interact with, it's a great idea.
January 10, 2006
Build Your Own Chair Online by: Steve, 11:39:00 AM
BioFit Engineered Products has a website allowing people to build their own customized office chair online.
Customers can see how different chair components and options would look and perform in their particular applications. After a new chair is configured online, the customer can email the result to BioFit for a price quote within one working day.
You can customize the upholstery, the base, the style, the back rest, the seat, arm rest, seat controls, color, just about everything.
January 09, 2006
Smash My Dodge Viper by: Steve, 11:13:00 AM
SmashMyViper.com is one of those pixel advertising sites with a giant board of pixel ads.
Pixel ad sites are a dime-a-dozen these days. So to help sell pixels, the owners of SmashMyViper have set up a gimmick where you can smash their Dodge Viper car.
You don't really get to smash it in person (Ah shucks!). But when you purchase a pixel ad, you get to watch a video where you (or a make-believe person of you) renders some level of damage.
The more pixels you buy, the more damage you get to do, ranging from a keying the paint job, to whacking the car with a baseball bat, to drilling holes in it. If you throw in $100.00 you get to watch hot sexy girl do the damage.
Get Entrepreneurial
Cool Web Ideas
How to Become a PR6
by Steve
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Adrienne posted an article last Friday about how the secrets to gaining higher search engine rankings...
http://adwordsandseoservices.com/....ranking-secrets.aspx
Reading it over, I tend to agree with most of what she wrote, though she says her blog increased from a PR0 to a PR1, and I'm still seeing it as a PR0. But I guess even your PR goes up and down over time!
Here's my two cents worth on SEO...
By this time, there's no way to boost yourself to the top of Google; the guys at Google have pretty much seen it all.
Google is a "popularity-based search engine", it always has been, and it will probably always be one. That is, it ranks websites based on how popular they are. So, if you're website is not popular, then it won't show up anywhere on Google. If there are ways to get an unpopular website to show up #1 on Google, it's because you fooled it into thinking it's popular.
Google's definition of popularity is "page rank", which is a value several digits long. It's the not the same "PR" value you see on Google Toolbar; that's an abbreviated form of page rank. Page rank is largely based on incoming links to your site, but these links carry lesser or greater value depending on their own page rank, abd their "authority". Page rank is also based on on-page optimization too.
Even if you managed to fool Google into thinking your website is popular, you're still living on borrowed time. Google will eventually figure out what you've done, and make amends.
Bottom Line
To get a webpage to rank high for a certain search term, you have to have the most popular webpage for that search term. You do that by getting other websites to link to it. More importantly, get other "authority" websites to link to it.
The best way to do that is simply to create an awesome website and ask other bloggers to blog about it. Look for bloggers in your genre. Do a search on Technorati or Google Blog Search to find these blogs. Don't offer a return link. Just ask them to blog about you. Bloggers always want stuff to write about. People ask me of the same request all the time, and half the time I do it, just because I need to keep writing new material for my readers.
Another idea on the same note, is to write an article about a very cool new product. Find something new and strange. Then, find other bloggers that you think might be interested, and let them know about it. In your e-mail, request to give you a "credit link".
If you're having trouble finding bloggers to blog about you, try "paid blogging" networks like PayPerPost or ReviewMe. It's not that expensive to get a related blog to write about you.
Labels: Page Rank
How Private Life Impacts Business by Steve
Thursday, August 30, 2007
This month, my productivity took a dive in the middle of the month after a change in my private life.
For the past few years, I've been pretty active in a local motorcycle riding club, holding a leadership position. But I ended up quitting the club. The actions (and non-actions) some of the other club leaders were such that I was left feeling betrayed and angry. Instead of venting my anger at them, I kept quiet, tried to preserve some dignity, and walked away.
But that anger was in me, boiling away. Since writing encompasses much of my daily work, it was tough to find creativity. There just wasn't any creativity, only disgust. So, I just didn't do much.
I can see that traffic to many of my blogs have dipped down as a result. Menifee 24/7, which has been on a month-after-month rise in readership, took a hit this month. I was supposed to spend some time this month on Interment.net, my flagship website, changing out many of the affiliate marketing links for Ancestry.com, but found myself thinking and reflecting instead.
When you find that the people you thought were friends, were just using you all along, it eats away at you. I put a lot of faith and trust in people; other people tell me that it's because I'm gullible or naive. That's not really true, I had suspicions for a long time, but I held on to Trust.
I guess the good part of it is that this event is showing me who my friends are, the ones who are still calling me on the phone, and still riding motorcycles with me.
Labels: Private Life
Are Newspapers Threatened By Blogs? by Steve
Monday, August 27, 2007
National Public Radio aired a segment exploring the question that newspapers are being threatened by blogs...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=13873047
The people talking in the segment seemed to conclude that, yes, newspapers are in danger of going out of business because of blogs. Specifically, blogs are not limited to a local audience, they can reach everywhere on the Earth. Whereas newspapers are stuck with readers in a small geographic locale.
Moreover, they attempted to extract tears from their liberal audience that minority-owned newspapers, specifically "black newspapers" are going to be hardest hit. I'm not sure why they would be harder hit than opposed to "white newspapers", but that's liberal banter for you.
Now for my take...
It's not the blogs that are threatening to put newspapers out of business, it's the newspapers themselves.
There are already several newspapers that publish blogs of their own columnists, and even editors. Several also operate discussion forums, where the general public talk freely. Some newspapers even allow the general public to post comments on their web articles.
There's no reason why a newspaper can't reproduce what a "Joe Blow" American can do with a blog.
But the biggest crock of sh** is NPR saying that black-owned newspapers are specifically going to suffer because of blogs. Is that not an attempt at crass-liberalism? Is that not playing the "victim" card again?
Bottom line is that anyone can publish a blog, that goes for newspapers, corporate America, and black-owned entrepreneurs.
So if I could speak out to all the liberals there, what should the federal government do about this? Impose a "blog tax"? Force bloggers to get a license and register each blog? Or should it do nothing about it?
Labels: Blog Publishing Business
Biker News Online Soaring by Steve
Monday, August 20, 2007
My motorcycle blog, Biker News Online, appears to be soaring on two fronts: traffic and earnings.
The increase in traffic seems to have occurred from mainly two things, one is the fact that it now ranks #1 on Google for the term, "biker news". We've been sitting at #2 and #3 for several months previously. The other thing is that I've boosted the number of tags on the blog, producing another couple hundred category pages, all of which get indexed on Google.
Thus far, traffic today seems to be three times higher than at the start of this year.
The increase in earnings is largely with Google AdSense. Naturally, the increase in traffic affects the earnings. But it is in fact earning a higher effective CPM than in past months. I think this has to do with the new page design that I implemented a month ago. The page design is wider than the previous design, optimized for screen resolutions at 1024 pixels wide, as opposed to the 800 pixels design I had before. This allows me to run the 160x600 skyscraper AdSense creative, instead of the previous 120x600 skyscraper.
The effective CPM is higher than before, at about $6.00 CPM versus about $5.00 CPM before.
I've also added graphical ad banners from Adify.com, one is a skyscraper located below the AdSense creative, while the other is a 300x250 panel located at the bottom of every article page. I've had some "decent" earnings from Adify on Junk Food Blog and DoggieNews. These are all CPM buys.
The reason for utlizing CPM buys is because my blogs are getting a lot of referrals from Google Image search. When people peruse the images on Google, it has the effect of generating a page view for me whenever they click on an image. So, by throwing in a couple CPM ads, I can monetize those views.
If the CPM ads on Biker News Online do well, I'll be really happy with the earnings performance, and as such, reduces my concerns down to just getting more traffic.
Labels: Adify, Google AdSense, Monetization
Starting a Meetup Group by Steve
Thursday, August 09, 2007
I just launched a meetup group called, "Menifee Internet Professionals Meetup Group" on Meetup.com...
http://internetpro.meetup.com/31/
My short term goal is to get several of the website publishers here in my local community to meet in person and start a regularly occuring social event. The long term goal is to establish trust between all of us, and rely on each other for tips, partnerships, and business referrals.
Besides myself, there are at least four others that publish websites offering news and information on Menifee Valley, CA. I'm pretty much doing all the local and hyperlocal blogging. The others are publishing web portals. One of my hopes, is to create a "braintrust" on generating business from local advertisers.
I've managed to get all of us five signed up on this meetup group. Now, I need to find a date and time to hold our first meeting.
But it's not easy. At least two of us are very flexible. One gal can only meet on Mondays. Another guy says Tuesday work best. And another gal wants to meet only at night, because she says she's a vampire (I'm not kidding).
So, I have to make a decision on Monday or Tuesday. I think 7:00pm is a good time, though right now the sun is just setting at that time, but I think our vampire will be safe. As it stands now, our first meeting may not happen until beginning of September.
So far so good, as I've already had talks with others in this small group, and there have already been discussions of partnerships. I'm not necessarily interested in selling or merging my Menifee 24/7 blog with anyone. But I am open to partnerships. I mean, I know I need all the help I can get.
I'll give you updates on how this Meetup group does.
And yes, I'll let you know if the vampire sinks her teeth into anyone. I'll remember to eat some garlic that day.
Labels: Meetup Group
Doubling Your Traffic Propaganda by Steve
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
I was just reading a blog post from George Manty entitled, "My Blog Traffic Challenge - What I Learned When I Doubled My Traffic"...
http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/....when-i-doubled-my-traffic/
Basically, three months ago, he embarked on a quest to double the volume of visitors to his blog. At the time, he was getting 503 visitors a day, and after three months, he was getting 1,042 visitors per day.
Success right?
Are you kidding me!
Adding another 500 daily visitors to your site is peanuts. You can do that just by publishing plenty of blog content each day, which has the effect of peppering hundreds of pages into Google's search engine index. And when you've got a domain name like, "canimakebigmoneyonline", you're certain to rank bunches of those pages pretty high for several highly-targeted keyphrases.
Ok George, how about doubling your traffic from 10,000 visitors a day to 20,000 in three months? Not so easy isn't it?
But I'll give George his props. He appears to have built a great website, built around a blog, and no doubt, pulling in a decent audience.
I also like the links he has on the upper-left corner under the heading of "Must Have Products For Making Money Online". I'm going to have to try some variants of that on my other blogs.
I just want to end this on one more point. The key isn't how much traffic you get, but how well you convert it. It's always good to have lots of traffic, but monetizing that traffic is the real talent.
Labels: Increasing Your Traffic
Bloggers Labor Union - What For? by Steve
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
This is probably the most stupidest thing I ever heard of ... today...
In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070806/unionized_bloggers.html?.v=2
I'll admit that blogging can be a profession, because there are indeed people earning money from blogging, including this blogger.
First of all, there are already several professional organizations for bloggers, ranging from small local meetup groups, to large national organizations. They exist to serve bloggers by educating them, providing them with opportunities, and promoting blogging as an respected form of journalism.
But these organizations don't provide health insurance, nor do they twist anyone's arm into paying bloggers more money.
If a blogger wants health insurance, then go buy it. That's what I did. I bought individual plans from Blue Cross for myself and my wife. And I pay for it with the money I make from writing blogs. If I can do it, why can't others?
Ah! There's the magical question!
While there are indeed millions of bloggers, only a fraction of them are capable of supporting themselves completely. Most of them need to supplement their incomes by working other jobs, or be supported by someone else.
I think the reason why I'm more successful than other bloggers is because I work harder, I work smarter, and I've got the talent for it. If other bloggers can't support themselves completely, then they shouldn't be bloggers. Choose a profession that you can actually support yourself from.
But here's what these collective-bargaining bloggers don't understand about economics: what goes around, comes around. In other words, if an employer is forced to pay a blogger more money and more benefits, then the employer won't be able to hire as many bloggers. And next thing we know, blog publishing networks will have to offshore their blogging labor to India.
You think $5.00 for a vente frappuccino at Starbucks is already too much money, wait until they unionize the baristas there; you'll be paying $12.00 for that bad boy. ¿Comprende?
Labels: Labor Unions
0 comments | Post a Comment | Perma Link
Riding on Hell's Kitchen
by Steve
Monday, August 06, 2007
Several months ago this year, I agreed to build a website for a local biker bar here in Southern California named, "Hells Kitchen". I mentioned it in an earlier blog post here...
http://www.inyourweb.com/2007/02/building-another-client-website.htm
I built into a blog, though up front, it doesn't have a "classic" blog form. I used the blog model because it creates an elegant means for publishing news and events, and also because blogs lend themselves to additional SEO value that other websites don't get.
Well, just a week-and-a-half ago, I started tracking its statistics through StatCounter, and was intrigued to notice an interesting trend. Every Monday, traffic spiked heavily as high as 1,000 unique visitors. Then it just fell dramatically through the rest of the week all the way down to about 100 unique visitors. And then on Monday, BOOM, another big traffic spike.
After some searching around, I found that the website would vary between #1, #2, or #3 for the phrase, "Hells Kitchen" on Yahoo Search. Then I realized that another site was also competing for the same positions, this one was from the FOX Television show, "Hell's Kitchen".
And it so happens that the TV show appears every Monday night.
Ah, there you have it. On Monday, people search the Internet to find the TV show's official website, and end up finding the site I built for the biker bar.
In a sense, my client's website is riding on the popularity of the television show. I happened to mention this to the owner of the biker bar, and he said that he knew all about the television show, and went on to talk about trademark infringement. He's been operating under the name "Hells Kitchen" years before the television show was around.
Either way, there's success to be had building a website that share's the same name as a popular television show.
Labels: Trademarks
0 comments | Post a Comment | Perma Link
Products You Need
by Steve
Friday, July 20, 2007
I attended a small affiliate marketing meeting a week ago, and found it very enlightening. The guy who organized this is working his way to become one of those "internet marketing gurus" who sell ebooks teaching people how to get rich on the Internet.
But since he wasn't charging anything to attend this meeting, I figure there's no harm in going.
The one thing he said to me that made this meeting worth attending, is that there are products that people buy for leisure purposes, and products people buy because they need them.
That's probably a no-brainer to most of us, but somehow, he was able to express this in a way that really lit a lightbulb in my head. It made me see things in a new way.
One of the websites I publish is "CousinConnect". It's a database of queries. In the genealogy world, a "query" is a request for help. It's like posting a classified ad in the newspaper searching for someone who shares a distant family connection to you in hopes that person can provide some clues to your family's history. All we did is move that concept to the Internet where such queries can be searched and indexed.
The important part of this is that our demographic has a specific need. They need to find other people related to them. And if you've ever spent some serious time researching your family's history, you'll understand how small tidbits of information can be like gold to a genealogist. In other words, genealogists end up getting a sense of urgency to find such information.
So, I've identified the fact that CousinConnect's primary demographic is there because they have an urgent need. Not just a "need", but an urgent need. That's why they come to CousinConnect.
However, all this time I haven't played into this need when it came to monetizing my traffic. Instead of leveraging this need, I simply showed them other links of interest. What I need to do is rethink the design of CousinConnect, and somehow weave some affiliate marketing links into design. That is, make monetization part of the overall CousinConnect structure.
I haven't figured out how to do that yet. When I figure it out, I'll tell you about it here.
Labels: Affiliate Marketing
0 comments | Post a Comment | Perma Link
Public Apology to Ancestry.com
by Steve
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
I wrote a commentary a while back entitled, "It's the Simple Things Stupid", where I described my feelings in working with The Generations Network and their Ancestry.com affiliate marketing program, and said some bad things about them.
I'm very sorry to the fine folks at The Generations Network for those inappropriate comments.
(don't look for that commentary, because I removed it)
The truth is that the people at The Generations Network are trying very hard to do a very good job. I said things out of frustration and emotion, and probably should have counted to twenty before writing them.
I realize at this time, other bloggers have quoted me, and that article still exists on their blogs. I hope those bloggers will blog this article as well, so that this apology can reach those audiences as well.
Ancestry.com's affiliate marketing program provides the funding that allows independent folks like me create awesome websites. RootsWeb, for example, would not be around today if not for the success of Ancestry.com. Interment.net, the website that I publish, would not be possible either. These websites costs a lot of money, not just in server costs, but in man-power, to keep them going.
I think most of you already know that.
I said in that earlier article that TGN is moving in the wrong direction with respect to their service offerings, hence the reference to the "simple things". But in fact, I'm not necessarily a genius qualified to make this observation, I'm just a guy who publishes cemetery transcriptions. The people at TGN are there because they know their business, and deserve respect.
I don't want to be remembered as a bitter old computer geek, which is probably what many of you are thinking. I just want to be respected like anyone else. I hope the people at TGN and everyone else following this blog can still afford me that chance.
Labels: Keep It Simple
1 comments | Post a Comment | Perma Link
Free AdWords, Again
by Steve
Friday, June 01, 2007
They're back at it again.
Someone has bought me free AdWords, for my Menifee 24/7 blog.
Just run a search for "menifee" on Google, and look at the right. You can also see an example of the ad below...
As I theorized in an earlier article, my guess is that Google is intentionally doing this to pad the keyword bid for the word "menifee". They realize that city names are popular keywords for real estate marketers.
Notice how they worded the ad to leverage the real estate angle.
The truth is that's only my theory. I know this has happened before with other website publishers, and I've yet to see any explanation.
I do know that Google issues vouchers for free AdWords, but I assure you I haven't received any. I don't ever buy AdWords! Someone is doing this for me.
Maybe the truth will come out some day.
Labels: Google AdWords
0 comments | Post a Comment | Perma Link
Importance of Narrow Focus
by Steve
Friday, June 01, 2007
In my last post, I wrote about "the simple things". I wanted to go further into this, but without the ranting and raving...
Just about every website I build these days is built for a very narrow audience. This is because websites designed to attract large audiences are too diverse in their purchasing desires. In order to satisfy a large audience, I'd have to spread myself thin. So, if I want to market biker t-shirts, then I need to create a site like my newest one, Cool Biker T-Shirts.
This new site is actually leveraging the affiliate program for Cafepress. Each t-shirt I blog about, is one that I found on Cafepress, and is one that I think bikers might find wearable.
Narrow audiences have very narrow interests. That's why you have to narrow your website's focus down to the most desired content. If there is a group of people out there wanting to look for some cool biker t-shirts, then focus the site solely on that. Don't add in other bells and whistles, games, or jokes; that stuff only diverts their attention away from the sales links.
Design the site around the content. Include category links, an on-site search engine, site maps. Make the content the focus of your website, by putting it exactly where peoples' eyeballs will rest.
If you build a site designed to market biker t-shirts, and you decide that you really have to have some other content on there, such as motorcycle news, or photos of biker babes, then create a different website for it, on a different domain name. You might also trying creating it on a subdomain (tshirts.bikerwebsite.com). You can then just link each site to each other. This way, each site remains focused on itself, but the interlinking leverages page rank value.
The reason why narrow focus is so important is because it narrows your audience down to those people most likely to buy whatever you're marketing. Small focused traffic is much better than large diverse traffic, when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Labels: Narrow Focus
0 comments | Post a Comment | Perma Link
Hiding Behind Your Contact Page
by Steve
Thursday, May 24, 2007
One of the things I've learned to hate are "Contact Us" pages that have no contact information.
Ever click on a link for a "Contact Us" page, and find that the only thing there is an e-mail web form?
Take at look at this "Contact Us" page, from a guy who consults on public speaking...
http://www.dseconsultinginc.com/contactus.html
You can browse around the rest of his website and discover that he doesn't provide any other means for contact. Either he doesn't want more business, or he's getting way too much business.
Why is that business owners don't want to give out their phone number or mailing address on their "Contact Us" pages? Don't they want to be contacted?
I think it's absurd that a business person would deprive potential customers with traditional means of communication. If you wanted customers to reach you, wouldn't you give them your phone number and mailing address?
Take a look at the "Contact Us" page that I created for my blog...
http://www.inyourweb.com/2004/12/contact-me.htm
If you're going to create a "Contact Us", then for crying out loud, give out your contact info!
Labels: Customer Contact
Hyperlocal Buzzword by Steve
Thursday, May 17, 2007
I'm getting the sense that the word "hyperlocal" is the buzzword these days.
The word basically refers to a type of journalism that focuses on a local level, such as a city or county, but reports on stuff that the local newspapers usually consider too trivial to deal with.
My local blog, Menifee 24/7, I suppose is an example of hyperlocal journalism.
I decided to add the word "hyperlocal" to the TITLE tag of my site, as well as into the META keyword and description tags. I'm figuring someone out there with VC funding is going to start a directory or search engine focusing on hyperlocal content, and I want to make sure Menifee 24/7 gets sucked into there.
I suppose the reason why hyperlocal journalism (or blogging) is making buzz because it's another realm of blogging that's beginning to take off. There are already blogs that focus on what's going on within a specific locale (city blogs or met blogs). But these blogs often write about larger topics, often the same stuff getting coverage in the newspapers. Hyperlocal covers the smaller stuff, such as the chef at a popular restaurant admitting to flicking a booger into the meat sauce on his MySpace site. A hyperlocal site will bring attention to that kind of controversy.
Newspapers often don't touch that stuff because they don't want to be the ones to create controversy. Creating this controversy is what hyperlocal blogs often do, and is why hyperlocal journalism is creating buzz.
But how do you monetize a hyperlocal blog? Tough call. If a hyperlocal blog is always publishing the controversial stuff, would local advertisers want to buy space on that site? Probably not. On the other hand, if you can build up a large loyal following of readers, you could set up a t-shirt shop on CafePress.
My "hyperlocal" blog, Menifee 24/7 doesn't really publish much in terms of controversy. I don't look to create controversy. For the most part, I write nice stuff. I want advertisers. But the t-shirt idea is something I'm throwing around.
Labels: Hyperlocal Blogs
Married to my Cell Phone by Steve
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Anyone running a home-based business will find themselves married to their cell phones. Since such businesses don't really have a true "store-front", the cell phone becomes a virtual store-front, receptionist, support center, human resources, and everything else.
Aside from the usual places of keeping my cell phone, such as at my desk, in my car, or hanging my from my belt, I take it everywhere else, including walking the dog, barbecuing steaks, brushing my teeth, and sitting on the toilet. And yes, I've actually conducted business while "doing business" on the john.
One feature I've come to rely on a lot is the alarm clock function. While my wife and I have a regular alarm clock, I prefer to use the alarm in my cell phone now. I even like the calendar function where I can have the phone beep at me when I'm close to an appointment.
I'm not really into text-messaging however. I can't seem to type out letters and numbers on a phone keypad. It takes too much time. Though, Verizon's website has a neat utility that let's you compose the message online, and have it delivered to several phones numbers at once. What would be cool is to have an interface in Microsoft Outlook, where I can compose an e-mail, and send it via text-messaging instead of the Internet.
We have a landline phone as well, but I'm not sure why anymore. We don't give out the phone number to anyone. We only use it to send out faxes. But as it turns out, we don't need to fax stuff that often. I'm thinking of cancelling the landline phone, and just taking our faxes to the local office supply store.
As far as business expenses goes, our cell phone bills go on our company charge card, and is completely a business expense. There are some personal calls that get made of course, but I never exceed my alloted minutes, so my bill is always the same amount every month, with or without personal calls.
As far as phones go, mine is not very advanced. It's one of the cheaper, basic models. The only extras I need are the address book, calendar, and alarm clock. I hardly ever use the camera.
I once wondered why the cell phone manufacturers haven't included a small knife blade that folds out from the phone. Or maybe a nail file, or flat-head screwdriver. Then it dawned on me, the airports would have to confiscate everyone's cell phones!
Labels: Cell Phones
