Look in your browser’s address bar. See that “C”? That’s a favicon. The purpose of the favicon is to replace the default icon displayed by your browser of choice in the address bar, tabs and in your bookmarks. The advantage of having a favicon is that it is a good way to highlight your site. It helps it stand out in bookmarks making it easier to identify by those who might wish to visit your site or to find by those who bookmarked it awhile ago.
A favicon is a 16×16 pixel image. You can fire up your image editor and create one on your own or you can use a free service like favicon.cc to generate an icon you design. They have a really simple and effective browser-based tool for you to use to easily create your very own favicon. Check out some of the icons that others have produced with the tool to see what’s possible (or even to get some ideas).
Once you’ve created your favicon, put it in the root folder of your website and you’re all set. Go ahead and clear your browser’s cache to see it in your own browser.
In internet marketing, every edge you can get is worth it.
I don’t know about you, but I have a few extra domains laying around. Since most of them had never been a Website, I thought it would be interesting to park them at Sedo.com to see how many visits they get via direct navigation (i.e. typing the domain name into the address bar). After a few months, I was able to identify several domains that get enough direct traffic for me to warrant investing the time to set up microsites for the niches they represent.
I’ll be working on doing just that this week. Initially, I will attempt to monetize using AdSense, but will likely look at other affiliate offers and potentially setting up a campaign or two to drive traffic after I have calculated organic performance.
The interesting (and frustrating) part of using a parking service such as Sedo, is to see roughly how much you are making on a CPC basis. Sedo and every other direct CPC platform does not disclose what your share of the click is. When you use a third party to park, you diminish the total value you can receive. If you have some basic subject matter expertise, you can go direct to AdSense or Yahoo! Publisher Network and increase your revenue. However, using a parking service is a good first step to see if it’s even worth your time.
Due diligence, in the M&A world, refers to the process of examining all of a company’s metrics and records. For a Website, this will include everything from your financials to your web metrics and all of your legal documents. As a startup, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to keep good records and stay organized. Most startups are looking for an exit. An exit can be an acquisition, a merger or even an IPO.
However, no matter what your exit might be, you can’t avoid the due diligence process. It pays to plan ahead. The more you can anticipate what might be asked of you, the easier the diligence process will be and the quicker you can negotiate your exit.
Here are just a few of the things on the legal, financial and HR side to have handy (and you can always Google up a comprehensive due diligence checklist):
- Articles of incorporation
- Bylaws and any amendments
- Minutes of any corporate meeting
- Lists of subsidiaries and other entities in which the company has an equity interest
- Copies of employment contracts
- Employee handbooks and policy and procedure manuals
- Employee benefit program info
- Property leases
- Equipment leases
- Documentation of all intellectual property
- Financing or line of credit agreements
- List of all outside counsel and purposes
- Outside counsel billing statements
- Any consent decrees or memorandi of understanding with any government agency
- Settlement agreements or judgements as a result of litigation
- 3 years of general ledger level financials
- Current budgets and 3 year projection
Again, this is by no means a comprehensive list. Rather, it’s simply meant to give you an idea of the items you will find presented to you on such a checklist.
When it comes to performance metrics relative to a Website, be prepared to throw in everything including the kitchen sink. Things such as:
- Visitors
- Unique Visits
- Keywords used to find your site
- Ranking reports for the most important keywords in your industry
- Page views
- Time on site
- Bounce rate
- Traffic sources segmented by paid, organic search, direct and referring sites
- Registrations
- Registration rate
- Data points captured
- Any meaningful data analysis based on the data captured
- PPC and PPA campaign performance and spending levels segmented by source
Items such as those derived from your own data analysis will be specific to your business. Build and maintain well thought out reports that memorialize every important operating metric you can think of.
I’ve been on both sides of the due diligence process and can tell you for certain you will be well served to start off on the right foot by both thoroughly documenting your performance metrics as well as keeping great records of everything that your business does. You never know when the right person may come knocking.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found .htaccess files a bit confusing. What with their regular expressions and all they can be a pain to research, create or edit. Well, not anymore.
The folks over at htaccesseditor.com have made it much easier for the uninitiated to create and edit .htaccess files. Common uses of an .htaccess file such as denying access to files, redirection, access restriction and default page directives are a snap using their handy web-based interface.
If .htaccess files confuse you as much as they do me, give their tool a try.
Aaron over at SEO Book.com released a free Firefox extension to check your keyword rankings on Google, international Google search results, Yahoo! and Microsoft. I have to say after giving it a test spin, it’s pretty slick!
The extension offers lots of configuration options and you can even export your report to CSV. Check one keyword at a time or a whole list of keywords. You can also track historical rankings for your keywords over time to see where you’ve gained (or lost) ground on the SERPs.
If you’ve ever spent time manually checking your ranking, I’m sure you will find this too to be a Godsend. Plus, like the title of this post states — it’s absolutely free!
Thanks SEO Book!
For the past 12 years, I’ve been employed by six different companies. The last time I needed a resume? 1996. I’ve had the enviable position of being a “brand name” within my industry. My reputation has preceded me and a resume just wasn’t really necessary.
Now, as I look to the next several months and navigate my impending transition, I’m starting to get requests for my resume. Well, truth is, it’s a little out of date. So, I’ve spent the last few hours updating it and trying to reconcile all of my experiences, challenges and accomplishments while doing so.
What’s interesting is that going through these motions has only made me more resolute to never need a resume again. Sure, I’ll jump through the hoops and do what needs being done — including getting professional help — but I just really don’t want to have to sell myself anymore. Pick up the phone, give me a call and in fifteen minutes you will know what I’m all about. In twenty minutes, you’ll be reallocating your budget to try and figure out how you can hire me.
Another job? i don’t need another stinking job!
One of the problems I’ve come across as I continue to create my business plan is formulating a pitch that can be absorbed and understood in a short amount of time. It’s the classic elevator pitch that we’ve all come to know and love (hate?). My feeling is that I should be able to express the value proposition of my business in a ten second soundbite.
I know a lot of you might think that’s pretty short, but I tend to disagree. Think about commercial advertising. The thirty second television commercial is the industry standard. Products are the easiest to pitch. Currently, one of my favorites is ShamWow. It’s a simple product that’s easy to demonstrate. Its value proposition is clear, “you’ll spend $20 a month on paper towels, buy ShamWow for $20 and we’ll guarantee the product for 10 years.” Pitching services based businesses is a different story altogether. This is especially true when the value proposition is difficult to convey.
And, that’s where I am today. I’m making progress in this area and am actually pretty close to that ten second pitch. The trick, I’ve learned, is to keep trying. Pitch everyone who will listen and see how they react. Take what you learn and re-factor your pitch to make it tighter and tighter. We all know that time is money so the better you can deliver on the short, the better.
How have you pitched your product or service and what have you learned? Let me know!
About a year ago I stumbled upon LinkedIn. I thought it was an interesting resource and decided to sign up. At first, I didn’t think it was all that great. That is, until I had about 50 connections.
You see, LinkedIn can serve simply as a business curiosity or become a powerful way to maintain connections with the people you know, connect people you think might like to meet one another or connect you to people that can help you in some way.
Now that I’m over 150 connections (mind you, I know every single connection I have), it’s been interesting to see who others know and find people that are interested in or doing the things I’m contemplating or currently working on. Best of all, it’s a great ice breaker.
Lots of people choose to be open networkers (LIONs as LinkedIn users call it). I can see positives and negatives to this approach. On the positive side, you can meet A LOT of people you wouldn’t otherwise connect with. On the negative side, it doesn’t accurately represent your true network and you are essentially vouching for strangers.
If you haven’t given it a try, I strongly suggest you do. It never hurts to grow your network and you never know who you might meet.
Let me know if you’ve had a positive experience with LinkedIn, I’d love to hear your story.
Let’s face it, we’ve all been taken in by a practical joke or two. Me? I love dishing them out. However, no one does it better than the Interwebs on April Fool’s Day. Here’s what I’ve found so far:
And, of course Wikipedia has a very comprehensive list of today’s pranks. If you need even more, here are the Top 100 of all time courtesy of Museum of Hoaxes.
Also, don’t click on those emails you might have received today wishing you a Happy April Fool’s Day. The link is malware known as the Storm Worm.
Happy April Fool’s fools!
Last year I was looking for a quality live chat feature to add to one of my sites. Mostly, this would be used for customer service. I looked at a number of commercial products such as LivePerson. LivePerson is very robust and complete. It’s also crazy expensive. After running it through the evaluation period, we found that it simply was not utilized enough by our visitors to justify the expense. It was a “nice to have”, but not an absolute necessity.
So, I tucked it in the back of my mind until I came across Plugoo. The main thrust behind Plugoo is to add chat functionality for bloggers by IM. Once you create a Plugoo account and add the link/widget to your page, visitors can send you messages through the Plugoo interface. On your end, you simply add a Plugoo buddy to your IM. Visitors do not see your IM address when you respond.
You can customize the look of Plugoo to fit your site’s design. You can even customize the initial message visitors see when they open a chat with you. Slick!
How do you interact with your visitors?
