Rugged Entrepreneur

Not many people know this—and many who have heard may not fully understand what it means—but on February 18th, 2009 all US TV stations will cease analog broadcasts. Old rabbit ears will finally retire.

Basically, this means everyone watching TV with an antenna (not satellite or cable) on an older analog TV will not be able to see anything after that date.

This shouldn’t affect many people since most people get their TV via cable or satellite, but for those relying on over the air broadcasts, a digital converter box will need to be purchased.  Because the government is requiring this change, it (really you, the taxpayer) is offering a coupon toward the purchase of a converter box.

You may ask why did Congress mandate a switch to digital?  While it should be good for the consumer in the long run (quality wise), but the greatest gain will be all the frequencies it frees up.  This will enable wireless phone companies to expand with other new technologies.

To learn more about this see the FCC’s website on the all digital shift.

Many bloggers try to write tons of content with pertinent keywords to get into search engines. While this is important, it is more important to remember the blogger is ultimately writing for humans!

To keep the aesthetic interest of the reader up, I think every post should have:

1. Lots of white space—break up paragraphs into small, bite-sized pieces of 1-3 sentences each even if in normal writing they should be one big paragraph.
2. Add small graphics to spruce up the page

It’s the second item I want to talk about. Doing simple text graphics like the one above (Today’s Tip) really brings attention to your post. Most any image editors should have the ability to play with text and different fonts.

If you don’t have a good image editor, I wrote a little about Gimp here. Gimp isn’t great for text, but for the price it can do a lot! I made the following image using Gimp:

To make this simply:

• Start with the rectangle tool
• Next click on the icon on the left as in the image below. This turns on the options for the Rectangle Select
• To get the rounded edges as in the above WordPress Tip image, just click on ‘Rounded Corners’ and adjust the Radius.
• Then create a new image and make a rectangle by dragging and hold the mouse click to the right rectangle size
• Next I use the gradient tool to create a nicer background effect than just a flat color
• Lastly, I add the text. I usually play around with different fonts and colors to find something that works.

Gimp doesn’t have as many nice text effects as PhotoShop, but if you don’t have $500 to spend, Gimp is awesome.

Blogging can be a lot of fun. Sometimes it is so much fun you find yourself overloaded with ideas for posts. On the rare occasion this has happened to me, I have been reluctant to post because I didn’t want to flood the blog with new posts that would bury the previous post I just wrote a few minutes before.

–Of course most of the time you may be begging for ideas, but there are times when the posts seem to pour in–

Wordpress has an excellent feature that allows you to write a post now and have it automatically appear at any given hour or time—even years in the future!

When writing your next post, look over to the right for a series of expandable options. The bottommost (should be) is the Post Timestamp. Expand it and you should see the picture to the left here.

Checkmark the ‘Edit Timestamp’ and set the time/date. When you publish your post it will automatically post at the time you give it. Give it a try!

If I have a few posts ready, I like to space out my posts 3-6 hours. This gives earlier posts a chance to be seen before being buried. I don’t have to worry about that on this website yet since it isn’t popular but it is certainly helpful for blogs with some traffic!

Bank of America is offering an ad-free and free of charge resource for small business owners (and future small business owners!) to share information, read success stories and get expert advice on subjects dealing with business.  I am pretty sure even those without BOA accounts can join.

The site has four sections: Forums, Expert Articles, Success Stories and Member Profiles.

It just started in October but BOA has been advertising it heavily so expect it to become a greater resource.

Check out BOA’s Small Business Online Community.

When making banners to advertise your site or product, a common question is what banner size should I use?

If you are making a banner for a specific website, ask them what sizes and format they would like. But in general, here are the standard banner sizes:

Boxes:

Feel free to copy the images to use as a base for your ads. It is easier than trying to remember the pixel sizes!

Also check out this page for more on standard sizes.

There is a lot of talk about the new-fangled Web 2.0. The ‘2.0′ doesn’t mean a physical upgrade of the Internet’s architecture, but a new way of using the Internet as a social tool. Usually YouTube and MySpace are given as examples, but it is pretty easy to make your website a little Web 2.0 friendly.

People love audio and video. A few years back the rage was all about Podcasting. Then as more and more people got broadband, it was video. Both are excellent ways to enhance your website and draw in a slew of new visitors.

If you make a video, upload it to Youtube and embed the video in your blog or website. You will not only enhance your website but will also get some (and later a landslide of) traffic from Youtube.

If you start a podcast and submit it to iTunes, again you will be enhancing your own website while also gaining a totally new group of visitors from that source.

The advantages of creating videos or podcasts are:

• You can add your branded website URL on the video (or mention the site as the sponsor of the podcast); people will hear or see your URL and check it out.
• You can embed the Youtube video in your website thus adding video content and embed the audio podcast too; people love audio and visual breaks from simple text.
• Youtube displays link backs to sites that embed the video. I have noticed people visiting my sites this way.

Making videos or podcasts is much easier than you may think. In later posts, I will discuss some of the simple things I have done with both video and audio. A little bit of extra work can reap a heap of new traffic for your site.

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Please visit (and subscribe to) our Youtube Channel.

In the latest Forbes magazine Rich Karlgaard has an excellent article about giving speeches. I’ve given a few talks on e-Commerce or language and love it when I’m well prepared and enthusiastic about the subject matter.  It has been a challenge though.

I’ll let you read Mr Karlgaard’s advice yourself but here are a few super tips for the Rugged Entrepreneur gleaned from the article:

• Tell stories and don’t hide behind a PowerPoint presentation.
• Leave the podium, walk the stage and engage your audience—this requires knowing your material well!
• Start speeches with questions from the audience; this creates a bond and keeps the audience interest up.
• Wear a white shirt—it looks best live
• Use humor, but keep it relevant and free from lewdness.
• Let your energy build—and I love this line, “Wave your arms.  Shout.  Whisper.  Be animated.”
• “Send handwritten thank-you notes and small gifts to the hosts of your speaking engagement.”

Read the full column here (and don’t forget to subscribe to Forbes—it’s a great magazine and you don’t have to be a member of the Forbe’s 400 to enjoy it!)

e-Commerce, the practice of buying, selling and marketing of goods or services over an electronic medium, has been around a lot longer then simply since the internet. Ever since the invention of computers and computer networking, e-commerce has been around in one form or another.

In the early days, e-commerce was conducted over private networks called Value Added Networks (or VANs) in the form of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Technically EDI wasn’t true e-commerce as we know it today. EDI was basically limited to being used as a form to pass information between two or more companies. There were drawbacks to this format too; both companies needed to subscribe to the same VAN, the format of messages that could be sent was heavily regulated, and the exchange of money took place outside of the VAN/EDI arena. However EDI was an important step in realizing e-commerce.

It wouldn’t be until the early to mid-90’s that e-commerce as we have come to understand it came into existence. To get to e-commerce, the public first needed a reliable public network they could use for transactions; this was of course the internet. With the internet it became possible to market, sell and purchase goods and services electronically. Initially e-commerce was a small portion of the type of interactions conducted over the internet, but as technology and reliability of the internet improved it became more common and economical.

Soon e-commerce began to be seen as the ultimate way to make money on the internet. Companies went on a frenzy developing ways to make money on the internet. Unfortunately most of these ideas were not built upon sound business models and this led to the internet bust of early 2001.

Today more and more people are spending an increasing percentage of their budget online. This trend seems to have no end in sight. Even though the internet appears to be saturated with e-stores, I am certain we are still at its infancy. New never-before-thought-of niches will be discovered; more people will come online; more people will make online shopping a preference. Now is a great time to jump into e-commerce.

One simple but often overlooked way to improve your site is to add a Favicon. What’s a favicon? It is the tiny square image that appear next to URLs on the address bar and in your Favorites/Bookmarks. This little graphic can make your site stand out against all the other links since most people don’t create them.

But it is easy!

• Simply open your image editor, set the size to 16 x 16 pixels.*
• Save as png or gif
• rename to favicon.ico
• Upload to the top directory of your website

This may be enough for the browser to automatically sense it, but if not add the following between the <head></head> of your front page.

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.YourSite.com/favicon.ico” />

Again, very few websites have one so adding yours will instantly help your site stand out.

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* If you don’t have an image editor, try Gimp. It is free and almost as powerful as software that costs hundreds of dollars. See my review here.

If you’ve done some looking around for ways to make money on the internet, I am sure you have found e-books or online courses that will tell all the secrets. Of course they go for the unbelievable low price of $97 or perhaps $249.  The fact is, there are very few true secrets that cannot be found freely on the internet.  My advice is—just don’t buy any thing. 

Of course many of these e-books or video courses will be beneficial and would certainly be packed with useful information, but unless you have money to burn, it is usually worth spending the time searching for information rather than simply buying it prepackaged.

If you find a $97 e-book selling Search Engine Optimization secrets, try reading forums by SEO experts such as http://forums.seochat.com or http://forums.searchenginewatch.com.

If you find a $249 e-book telling how to making a killing with Google Adsense, read Darren Rowse’s Adsense Tips for Bloggers series.

I have been guilty of impulse e-course buying myself; very rarely have I not felt immediate buyer’s remorse.  Today’s Tip is simply look around.  You may be surprised what you can find absolutely free.