…helping lifestyle entrepreneurs succeed
With more than 300,000,000 users worldwide, Skype has revolutionized - or is that shook up - the way that we communicate.
Traditional telcos have been hit hard because gone are the days of high cost of making telephone calls - with Skype you either go free via a skype-to-skype call or pay literally pennies for skype-to-landline calls.
And it gets even better…
Hey all,
Just a quick roundup post of what’s going on here at HomeOfficeVoice and some little insights and thoughts on what’s been capturing my attention.
I’m having a full on redesign of HomeOfficeVoice. This is being done behind the scenes. In days past, I would do such a thing on another “dead” blog to get everything right and then migrate it over to the blog that was being redesigned - which usually meant lots of little bugs and bad links that needed to be cleaned up.
Well not anymore!
I recently came across a beauty of a plugin called Theme Test Drive which allows me to tweak a new blog design (on the same blog) while you guys still see the current design - ie: no messed up messes :-) and css butchering. Very Cool.
Wendy Piersall - of sparkplugging, formerly eMoms at Home, has done an outstanding job (imo) of answering a bunch of questions that go straight to the heart of what she’s been up to these last few weeks and months - both professionally and emotionally. This is going to be a must read - but then again, I’m biased. ;-)
Of course, no week can go by without a little bit of a rant. Well it can, but not this week. ScribeFire. An excellent Firefox addon that is near perfect as a blog editor. I love it and have used it on and off since it came out when it was created by the original guys over at Performancing.
My rant, and it’s not just against ScribeFire, is this one: If It Ain’t Broke, Then Don’t Fix It. That post will come to you on Thursday.
Someone alerted me to the new 9rules… not interested. They’ve been off my radar for so long that I even thought they had folded up or something. For me it’s about the blogs not the “me too” walled-in community and ego-driven individuals behind it. But for the uninitiated, I have had my run-ins with them folks over at 9Rules over the years - but those days are long gone. Next…
I’ve had a love/hate/puzzlement affair with LinkedIn for so long now that I get a headache just thinking about it. The foundations are solid. It’s clear-cut what it’s all about. But, and there’s always been a but… It never seems to live up to its expectations - well, for me anyhow.
Even so, it came as somewhat of a surprise and shock reading Scott Allen’s post about the future of LinkedIn Intelligence (especially point #3). Scott has been THE evangelist for LinkedIn for so long now that everytime I think of LinkedIn I automatically think of Scott Allen as a leading (independent) authority figure.
I’m really looking into whether LinkedIn is an ideal place for us lifestyle entrepreneurs to network. My research continues and yes, Scott’s announcement does have an impact. Obviously, I’ll be trying to get Scott over here for an interview. Scott! Hello! :-)
It’s been three weeks in the making, but I have completed a thorough post on Twitter. It’s obviously geared to an audience of lifestyle entrepreneurs and basically asks, and sometimes answers, the question of whether it’s a “must have” tool, a waste of time or just one more thing in the web 2.0 bag of cool apps.
Have a good week, enjoy your business but more importantly enjoy life.
Cheers,
Martin
PS. Happy Birthday to my little girl - already 7! Your Daddy’s proud of you.
One of my major pet loves is interviewing people … especially those I respect. I like to get into the nitty-gritty of an issue or issues and delve deep into the minds of successful people.
I come from a freelance journalism background and I have interviewed hundreds of individuals from all walks of life involved in small business. It’s become second nature to me and nothing pleases me more when I can establish a rapport with a subject where juicy tidbits of useful business insights comes to light.
I learn as much from interviewing people as reading any “how to” books out there … and I’m hoping you’ll learn a thing or three as well.
So … I plan to continue this right here at HomeOfficeVoice with an “Interview Series”.
Basically, I plan on interviewing selected individuals that affect the home business entrepreneur. I’ll start it off with a monthly interview and see where we head from there - my ideal would be a fortnightly interview.
And I stake my credibility on the fact that these ‘interviews’ will be no fluff pieces or pr devices.
So stay tuned because Interview Number One is coming in a few short days. I’m going to interview … :-)
A quick note to let everyone know that part two of my guest post over at Home Office Warrior has been published.
What is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur (Part 2) follows on from part one.
My thanks to Grant over at Home Office Warrior for the opportunity to reach a wider audience.
Striking headline, sure … but it’s honest.
I came into blogging in late-2004 when it was still a little niche industry. Actually, it was this very blog that started it all. It wasn’t too long before I got heavily into meta blogging - which would be blogging about blogging, blogging about bloggers and generally blogging, blogging and some more blogging.
The echo chamber was still an infant but was growing fast.
2005 was pretty much a wasted, but fun-filled, year. It was spent totally immersed in the blogging scene. There was an innocence there but nothing stands still.
And as blogging moved from its growing pains and into adolescence, blogging about blogging started to put a drain on me. I lost my passion for it. I, like many others, spent way too many hours in our own little ’sphere probably to the detriment of our businesses, our jobs and our family lives. Something had to give.
Once I finished my short stint as a columnist at The Blog Herald, I had pretty much made the decision to step back from this scene - going cold turkey. And that’s what I did in 2007. And surprisingly, that very year was my most successful on a number of fronts. So I have no regrets.
But lately, via my rss reader, I’ve noticed that items are getting through to me that I just don’t want to know about.
How many times do I have to see another post about THAT New York Times article about blogging being a killer of a job! One, two, three …No! Eight times.
I didn’t unsubscribe from those blogs because I value their views. It was just a stark reminder of how much the echo chamber is still among us.
So be warned, all you wide-eyed newbie bloggers: if you’re not careful, the “blogosphere” can drag you in and chew you out and before you know it you’ve wasted month and months of your life.
In my planned mentoring program, I talk about such issues and how to deal with them. In fact, I’m doing a module on this very topic this week. I’ve just finished a 20 minute audio on the topic and later this week I’ll be doing a detailed screencast.
Okay, enough of the plug :-) just be careful not to get too attached to meta blogging to the detriment of your business.
Most people working in the Internet industry would have heard of Joel Comm. He is most famous as being the AdSense “Guru.”
Well that guru credibility took a mighty battering this past week and left many affiliates red-faced.
$9.95 for the 4th Edition of a top-selling ebook on AdSense was just too good to be true.
It was later revealed that once you purchased the book, you were automatically subscribed to his newsletter. Yeah, that’s not bad, but … he’s the bite: it’s a $29.95 a month newsletter!!!
And that’s when the ‘you know what’ hit the fan.
Such negative option selling is rarely used online because it simply screams of sneakiness. Negative option being when you are subscribed or purchase something that you didn’t necessarily asked for - you are signed up without knowing and you were never given the option.
In other words, the normal way to make any up-sell would be to ask at the time of purchase.
What this means is that to get off it you have to actually request it after finding out after-the-fact … and possibly only finding out after the money starts coming out of your account. Pretty obvious to see the negative connotations in that!
Such a tactic is a big no-no on the internet, and I always advise my clients to steer clear of it.
Which brings into question the credibility of Joel Comm, a seasoned internet marketer. I find it very hard to believe it was a mistake because it takes planning to implement such a marketing technique.
The problem lies in the fact that the option - or non-option to be precise - was buried deep in the long sales letter. I don’t know if this was a planned tactic or just poor marketing communications. If it was planned - lets say for publicity sakes - then Joel Comm might as well hang up his online boots.
Because in the end, Joel Comm takes a massive hit in credibility, the many affiliates promoting this are red-faced and have learned the valuable lesson to read first before pushing products and the whole internet marketing industry is embarrassed once again.
Joel Comm has gone into quick damage control with an apology and offer to send all proceeds to charity and so on but …
… as I will be telling my mentoring clients (how’s that for an announcement! - HomeOfficeMentor.com is coming soon) the real lesson to be learnt from this is to stay away from such tactics in the first place.
Wendy Peirsall had a problem.
The problem was, in fact, that she had become too popular.
You might know Wendy as the founder of eMoms at Home.
Ever since launching the little blog called eMoms at Home, Wendy’s star has been growing at an amazing rate.
And leveraging that amazing growth she re-launched her blog into an “internet magazine” with a handful of new blogs or channels.
But there remained one small problem. The eMoms at Home name and brand simply outgrew what she was now doing. A change was in the making.
And so Sparkplugging was born. eMoms at Home is no more.
My first reaction to the new name was, well - Hmmm… And after a few days it’s still the same.
To be honest, I raised an eyebrow upon hearing about it. I know Wendy worked long and hard on finding a name, remembering that as well as finding a name she had to also make sure the domain was available.
Here’s why I have some reservations about the name:
Go out on the street and ask a hundred people what they associate the term “sparkplugging” with and I’ll bet you 99% will say cars.
To me that’s poor branding. It’s confusing branding. I see no association between “sparkplugging” and home business, or the home office. Yes, you can cleverly explain the meaning behind the name but if you have to do so in your header - as Wendy has done - then, I’m sorry to say, you’re behind the eight ball right from the start.
For my liking, the name does not come even close to what her site is all about. In fact, there was nothing wrong with eMoms at Home. It’s a niche in itself, and it was going strong.
With the new name, advertisers won’t have a clue. The lay person won’t have a clue. To me, it just doesn’t make sense.
The tagline is another one. “Thinking Big in the New Work-at-Home Generation.”
It’s simply too long, too clever and needs some fine tuning.
Although, I must say that it did spark in me an idea for a book proposal that’s been swimming around in my head for a while now that needed a working title (but that’s another post).
As for the new site, it’s still early days, so it’s hard to tell. But for my liking it’s a bit clunky and cluttered. But I’m sure Wendy and her team are fine tuning it on a daily basis.
I am drawn to the Lifestyle Channel she has put in place - as that is in my area of interest - so it’ll be good to see the sort of topics covered.
But back to Sparkplugging.
It is worth pondering why Wendy came to such a decision. Why the rush? Did she take on some advice from seasoned marketers and branding specialist? If you’re looking at this for the long term, why not take your time, seek advice and get it right.
I invite Wendy to an interview here to try and get some reasoning behind this new direction - as this is not personal - but something I’m standing back from and seeing with fresh eyes from a purely business perspective and someone that is heavily involved in the home business sector.
Sorry Wendy - but ‘Sparkplugging’, I just don’t get it.
~ ~ ~ ~
You can read the initial launch announcement and interview Darren Rowse recently conducted with Wendy over at ProBlogger…