"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." -- Theodore Roosevelt As a business owner, there's nothing like a hard day's work doing something you love. But while that inner sense of accomplishment is great, it often can cause stress to invade your daily routine in many different ways. Let's go over some things you can incorporate easily into your daily routine to alleviate your stress load: 1. Be an Early Bird! Let's think about this logically. What time of day is always the quietest and most calming of all? Early morning: from 4:30am-6:00am. Your neighbor's ...read full entry

Having a website developed without an outline is like building a house without a blueprint. You will end up spending more time, money, and energy if you fail to give your web developer the proper creative direction. For your next web project, make sure you put your brainstorming to paper. It will save a few headaches, keep your developer on task and help you stay within your budget. Here's an outline style that I like to use personally for many of my clients (sections are just examples): 1. Home a. section b. section c. section d. section 2. Services a. Listing of the services by category b. Each service page will feature: i. sub-section ii. sub-section iii. sub-section iv. sub-section 3. Portfolio a. section i. sub-section ii. sub-section b. section i. sub-section ii. sub-section: 1. super-sub-section a. super-duper-sub-section This is a very rough outline so ...read full entry

The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry is guilty of over-complicating the process of attaining good rankings. While ranking well with Google is no walk in the park, the concepts are very easy to grasp; even for novices. Here's a few tips and tricks for the aspiring optimizer in you: 1. Lay a solid foundation Make sure your web developer is well-versed in current W3C/SEO practices. If your website is standing on shaky ground from the get-go (bad navigational structure, duplicate content, links from bad sites, static TITLE tags, etc.) you will never give yourself a fair shot at taking over your key market(s). 2. Stay in the loop You can ...read full entry

By investing in a Content Management System, small business owners are now realizing just how easy it can be to cut out the middle-man and take care of routine website updates themselves. So what happens next? You've got this really cool system that's hungry for information and unless you got straight A's in college composition, it's probably most wise to hire out the writing on your site to a professional writer or someone with a natural knack for words. Ordinarily, small businesses may find it difficult to shell out extra money for a writer but when you cut out the need for a webmaster...you can then ...read full entry

All Bus Exchange of Winter Garden, Florida does a whole lot of business locally buying and selling motor coaches. They were seeking to expand their market share onto the internet but they didn't want a cookie-cutter brochure site. ABE needed a system that would grow along with them as their inventory grew on a daily basis. The ability to conduct updates on-site, 24 hours a day was a must. With some clever tinkering and re-programming of Wordpress' custom field modules, we were able to present ABE with an inventory system that they now fully operate. In fact, their secretary (who is in charge of ...read full entry

The web is littered with outdated and stale brochure-style websites that haven't offered their target audience any content in years. A blog can help you relieve your business of this dilemma, or if you're taking part in a brand new venture, avoid it altogether. Even huge web-based corporations like Google & Yahoo have gotten into the action -- and you can too! What's a Blog? Blogs are platforms that serve as a publicly-accessible journal for an individual or business. Typically, blogs are updated daily and are utilized to keep an audience up-to-date on a particular subject. Static vs. Dynamic During the PC boom of the late 90's, the world of ...read full entry