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Welcome to building your own business. How do you feel? Are you excited? Are you nervous? Are you ready to be the next Wal-Mart? There is so much out there and now you have the opportunity to tap in to it. I’ve coached hundreds of people on how to build their own eCommerce Business; I’ve learned a lot about the keys to success. One of the most important factors that all successful business owners have is not knowledge. It’s not money or advanced education. It’s not computer experience or programming and design strategy. The simple key to success with eCommerce, or anything, is self motivation!

As an entrepreneur, you are now your own boss. You’re completely in charge of what you do or don’t do everyday with your business. Some of you may be still working the JOB (just over broke) while getting this business started. That’s ok. Time Management and Goal Setting will be important parts of your progress and future success.

Famous coach Lou Holtz once said:

“If you’re bored with life - you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things - you don’t have enough goals.”

Why is this important? To me, goals are a self motivation indicator. If you don’t know where you want to go, you’ll probably not going to get there. If you don’t have the self motivation to stick with the task, how can you really expect success? Making changes to enhance the quality of your life doesn’t need to be slow or difficult. Unfortunately most people are still struggling because they continue to rely on ineffective approaches. Here are a few suggestions.

Write down one small action you’ve been putting off and answer the following questions:

What am I missing out on of importance by not doing this?

What will I gain most by doing this?

Why is it important to me to get this done?

How is not doing this inconsistent with who I really am? (more…)

Last week I started my new full-time position with Yahoo’s Entertainment division. I’ll be working with a crack team of designers and developers, prototyping new features and interfaces to showcase Yahoo’s entertainment content (movies, music, TV, celebrities, games). One of the great things about working at Yahoo is the huge traffic they enjoy, which guarantees plenty of eyeballs on your work. Also, there is a great vibe to the place - everyone seems very cool and psyched about working here.

This job has meant a move to Santa Monica, California. It’s a big change from my previous home in Cambridge, MA. So far it’s been 72° and blue skies every day. I’ll have to brush up on my surfing skills

As if that wasn’t enough change, I’ve also switched my work machine to a Mac. Wish me luck as I fumble around looking for the right-click button and trying to get the ‘End’ key to work.

It’s back. The rules are simple. Find a website with a shot of an attractive person on the homepage even though there appears to be no reason as to why (s)he is there.

For example, 123 Reg is sporting a blonde lady who obviously aids you in thinking up good domain names.

As a bonus, I’ll email the winning site (of my choice) and ask them why the image is there and share the results (with permission) here if all goes well.

Over to you. Please keep it clean fun.

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- This one’s kinda fun. Rand Fishkin was in town, so we invited him over to the Googleplex. We arranged on a simple trade: we’d feed him if he’d give a talk about search/SEO from his perspective. I think everyone benefited. You can read his trip write-up.

- Mitchell Baker is asking for suggestions on how Thunderbird should be organized going forward. It’s true that Firefox gets a lot more attention/3rd party development than Thunderbird. I’m torn, because on one hand I think I’ll be using web mail from now on. The idea of locking my data/email into one computer is too fraught with problems for me now. On the other hand, I still think email is nowhere near where it should be. There are so many archival formats (qmail/maildir, mbox and all its many flavors), yet I haven’t seen that many tools that let you distill email into insights. I can look at my server log traffic in an easy graphical view; why can’t I graph my email volume by day-of-the-week? Or take my history of routing emails and auto-suggest “This email should be routed to this team” or “Historically, this other person is an expert on this subject”?

- It looks like Steve from Feedburner is jumping in with both feet at Google:

So far, it’s been a blast. I’ve always kind of been a tech junkie and Google is tech junkie’s heaven, so there you go. More than that, it’s hard to find a work environment anywhere with such a collection of intelligent, talented people. It’s a big company, so of course there are elements of a big company creeping into the culture, but I have to say it’s less like a bigco than any other bigco at which I’ve ever worked.
….

Part of that has been a full dive into using Google tools. Personally, I don’t know how I lived without Apps before this. Anyone with a small company should definitely look at using this internally.

I’m really excited that Feedburner has joined Google. Feedburner is one of those rare companies where I emailed a bizdev person to say “I don’t know if we’re talking to this company, but every experience I’ve had with them has been really positive, they make a great product, and they seem very cool to boot.” (I harbor absolutely no illusions that my email made any difference, but I felt like I needed to chime in because I was actually paying Feedburner money each month and felt like I was getting a great service.)

- My wife has just handed me Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after finishing it herself, so I may be scarce for a few days.

Disclosure: This is a paid review. Saying that, all our reviews are honest. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

What is it?

XHTML/CSS offer a service involving the coding of a submitted design. Essentially, Joe Bloggs would submit a psd/jpg/ai file to XHTML/CSS and they would code the design into XHTML and CSS with a three day turnaround. In their words:

How It Works

1. You send us the design that you want turned into XHTML/CSS.
2. Once payment is received we begin coding your design.
3. Within 3 days we send you your design as valid XHTML/CSS.

Who it is for?

The service is primarily aimed at designers; designers that have the talent to create ‘design mockups‘ but without the ability to transform those designs into XHTML/CSS. Maybe even designers that can code to some extent, but wish to have their design coded according to web standards, as is part of the service. The service is unlikely to appeal to other folks in the industry and may not be a wise decision for the average person that think they can design. The service is perfect for those with fantastic graphical skills but little/no knowledge of web design.

The Quality of Service

What would we look for from a company that codes other people’s designs? I’d personally look for the following two things:

• The similarity and attention to detail between the mockup and the final output. This is the cornerstone of services like XHTML/CSS. The customer expects this. That said, we know that coding in XHTML and CSS is not a pixel-perfect art. Attention to detail is key, but the odd pixel difference between browsers and platforms is expected.
• Quality code. Simple enough - but a three day turnaround adds extra pressure into the equation. Let’s see how the XHTML and CSS holds up.

It’s one thing describing the service, now let’s look under the surface at the portfolio.

1. Sales Manage Solutions Blog

View Screenshot

The first case study of two is the Sales Manage Solutions Blog. Comparing the screenshot that the designer submitted and the coded version from portfolio, we can see that it has reproduced faithfully. Graphically, the output is sound. Criticisms with the look (what little there are) would lie in three areas:

1. Shadows around some elements are a little harsh.
2. The logo seems to differ in type setting. (This may have been to the clients request. That’s what I assume.)
3. The typography seems to differ slightly between the original and the final design. I’m assuming again that this could have been at the client’s request.

So the front-end design has passed the test - let’s view-source and take a gander at the code.

• XHTML: Technically (ignoring character compatibility), the document passes validation tests at XHTML Transitional. A good thing for any service in this market. It would be easy to rush and ignore standards to meet the tight deadline. Applause for XHTML/CSS. What puzzles me though is the fact that it validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict. Why not use that Doctype? A look through the source shows that it is in most cases semantic and efficient. There is a small case of divitis but this may be expected when coding other people’s designs.
• CSS: Most of the CSS seems to be efficient. It may not be perfect but it is clean and understandable for the end user. I’d have no problem editing it. Often, short hand is used where it can be so that’s a plus. There is one validation error, but this is due to the png fix for IE. I’ll let that slide. (I tend to be of the opinion that XHTML should be perfect but CSS can be invalid if there’s good reason and it is tested.)

So, on the whole, I’d be very pleased if I were the client. Next case study…

2. Music Snob

View Screenshot

The second case study is Music Snob. Comparing the screenshot that the designer submitted and the coded version from portfolio, we can see that it has also been reproduced faithfully. Points of criticism include:

1. The spacing on the main header (H1) seems to have changed. For the better though in my view.
2. The logo seems a little blurred as a result of optimising for the web, although a decent version may not have been supplied.

And the code?

• XHTML: Valid XHTML Transitional again. Thumbs up. But not valid at XHTML Strict. It wouldn’t be hard to get this valid to strict as the errors are trivial. (For the record, I know it’s not quoted as Strict XHTML on their site - just an observation.) The occasional superfluous div and br is present but this doesn’t let down the quality of the coding too much. It’s good, again.
• CSS: CSS is valid, efficient and easy understand. No criticisms here at all.

Conclusions

Looking through other designs in the portfolio, I can see that on most occasions the designs are reproduced in XHTML and CSS with accuracy. There are occasional differences but not enough to shout about. The changes may have also been requested by the client - I cannot be sure. The markup is fairly good - semantics, standards and general coding practices are followed where possible. It is not of the same high quality as the standards gurus out there - but not too far off. That said, for the cost and turnaround I don’t think that would be humanly possible. Without using this service, I could happily recommend it to someone with a low budget and some design skills.

To get the most out of this, a good design talent is needed to create the design in the first place. If you’re a designer without coding knowledge then this service (or a competitor’s - they happily list them on their site) could be for you. It’s also worth me pointing out that these types of services span two categories; the professional, code-loving type in this review and the slicing monkeys that don’t help anyone (read my comment to find the difference). If you’re a designer looking for this type of service then ask someone to look over code samples - it’s worth it. It’s also better than buying a template from Templates R Us. It’s the difference between buying mass produced cheap food and the organic stuff. Don’t expect the moon on a stick, but do expect good code and a site that looks almost identical to your design. I’m sure XHTML/CSS will provide it.

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When most people hear anything about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising they immediately think that it isn’t a good idea. The fact is that running a PPC campaign can be a great way to get some additional traffic to your website.

So why do people cringe at the mention of PPC? Probably because the blindly threw some words at Google AdWords and didn’t make it back. So let’s go over a few things you should consider before getting started in a PPC campaign.

1. Set a Daily Budget
   This is one of the biggest mistakes that people will make. They underestimate how much traffic they could get from doing PPC advertising and it comes back to bite them. Decide how much you could spend on PPC and then stick to that budget!
2. Decide How Much You Can Bid
   Do some math and find out what your average profit margin is. Then, assume that you only get a 3% conversion rate and that will help you figure out how much you could reasonably bid. For example, if you make $20 a sale and plan on a 3% conversion rate, then your break even point should be $0.60 a click. A 3% conversion rate is a modest expectation, so it’s a good place to start.
3. Use Different Keyword Match Types
   In most PPC programs you can do different keyword match types. For example, with Google AdWords they have broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match keywords. Learn the difference between these keyword match and do some testing to see which ones give you the best results.
4. Test Different Ad Copies
   Rarely is your first ad the best one. If possible, try running several different ads for the same keywords in a rotation so you can see which ad will actually perform the best for you. As a side note, a good format to follow for writing your ads is to use a keyword phrase in the title, then for the body have the first line be a benefit and the second line be a feature. You can reverse these to see if one format does better than another, but this is a good general guideline to follow.
5. Test, Test, Test!
   Doing well with a PPC campaign will take some testing. Sometimes what will happen is 2-3 of your keyword phrases will take most of your clicks and you won’t see many sales from them. Don’t throw the campaign out the window! Try turning these words off and test some of the other phrases without these ‘popular’ phrases getting in the way. You most likely have a few phrases on your list that will convert, but you’ll have to do plenty of testing to find them.

Too many people are afraid of PPC advertising because it’s going to cost money. Well, so does radio adverting, TV adverting, print ads, and any other type of advertising that you’ve seen. It is not always best to just stick with the free methods because you are limiting your reach. Running a PPC campaign as part of your overall marketing strategy can help you reach people that you might not reach through the natural search engine rankings.

by Dan Patterson

Sorry if this is in the right category, but I couldn't find a better one to post it in...

Is there any reason why 9rules has no RSS feeds available at all? I've looked around and can't find a single feed for the site. It would be nice to have one for notes and new submissions from the rulers. I tried using Yahoo Pipes to create one but it's not possible to grab data from a web page. Anyone else find that this could possibly be useful?