John Murch | Daily Growth for the Everyday Entrepreneur » Website Updates

Become an Expert and Create Your Next Job

John — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:00:58 +0000

Thinking back on my past experiences in the working world I have started to realize that many of the jobs or tasks that I got involved in shaped what I did next.

Back at the University of Vermont I worked as a TechCAT (Technology Collaborative Action Teams Program) who worked with teachers and students on various web projects and support for things like WebCT and Blackboard. I got the chance to work on Moveable Type working on getting teachers to use it but also with WordPress, setting up teachers blogs. This was back in 2005-2006! I even created a campus wide blogroll for UVM, imagine that a campus wide blogroll with students & teachers. This opportunity allowed me to get involved with building custom wordpress and movable type themes. Fast forward after college, I was working for Ziff Davis creating and building out 23 blogs using moveable type. With this early experience I was not only becoming an expert in the field of blogging building themes, plugins, etc. but improving my skills while at Ziff Davis. These skills also came in hand a few years later. I got into working freelance on various wordpress blogs and sadly still get caught into doing that every now and again! Talk about creating a job for myself from the experience and opportunity from another one.

Now I left out a couple of other examples that I want to dive into a bit. While working on these blogs for Ziff Davis, I got to research search engine optimization, web metrics and online media marketing. Much of this work was just best practices, but would later evolve into things I used on a daily basis as a product manager for Screensavers.com. While working as a product manager my goal was to increase traffic and revamp the website. I accomplished this by focusing on the on-page SEO elements for the revamped Screensavers.com. Leveraging clean urls, heading tags, and proper link structure I was able to see a massive growth in organic traffic allowing us to have a lower CPA on the spend side but still maintain the same download level.

Continuing on my career path, I actually got let go from my position during the great layout period of Fall 2008. With this knowledge of SEO and NEED for various tools that I wanted to have while rebuildilng Screensavers.com, I decided to take what I know about SEO and work on building a SEO tools company from it. I not only had the technology/development side of building websites but now I had plenty of knowledge in the SEO space. Working with a former College roommate we launched and built up a site full of various SEO tools (rank checking, competitor tracking, keyword tracking, and SEO standings). Although we started and built out a freemium model, aquiring paying customers took too long as with a bootstrapped business cashflow became a problem, especially when it took so long to get a yes/no from a big deal. One lesson I learned is I really HATED having to explain SEO and sales/marketing can be done in many ways so choose which way works for you and hammer it as much as possible. I also found it hard to educate about SEO, even for free. The problem really came down to time/money, we were a bootstrapped business, time was money!

Okay, back to the story, now with SEO and blogs in my toolbelt I have taken on the next big thing: T-Shirt Blankets. I know it’s a bit of a jump, but hear me out. It’s a business that requires hardware/software and almost everyone I talk to understands it. My business partner does the hardware/process and I do the software/process and we are able to build a system and product a product of high quality even as a bootstrapped startup. The greatest thing that I have learned and seen with uBlanket is pitching it. Customers are pitching us ideas rather than having to explain what we do like I was in the SEO space. So much easier and enjoyable from a sales/marketing side.

So what jobs have you created or moved towards after becoming an expert of something?

Becoming an expert is just doing it longer than anyone else, seriously. So with that take a look at what you are doing in life and how you can leverage it as a hobby or business. If your not there yet, then go out and learn all that you can about a specific niche or market and become the expert!

Why Agencies Suck at SEO

John — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:00:52 +0000

I still haven’t seen an agency that can do SEO well. Most agencies not only suck, but they consider SEO dead like Steve Rubel is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman – the world’s largest public relations firm.

What an Epic fail!

Seeing how Agencies just slap a site together and get $H!T out the door, why not, right? I haven’t see any agency take a look at development, design, content, and SEO in a holistic manner. If you are building a site that is targeted for a niche, you need to. As for Steve, maybe he is trying to be smart and linkbait the SEO community or rank for SEO is dead as there seems to be a lot of competition? Google bombing yourself? Anyway…

For agencies building new sites, especially on WordPress or Drupal, it should be VERY easy to get your on-page SEO correct. Here are the simple 5 things you should focus on.

1. Page Titles
2. URLs
3. H1′s
4. Sitemap (both XML and HTML)
5. Meta Keywords & Descriptions – Not very important, but if your going to do it right, at least have them.

Get those 5 done right and a few backlinks later, you are ranking for long-tail terms. If you are using an agency to build your site, most likely you have some funds in the bank and most likely you already have a high authority domain/website to get links from.

Be sure to create some inlinks with anchor text that use KEYWORDS YOU WANT TO RANK FOR and NOT “LEARN MORE” or “READ MORE”! Seriously, it’s all outlined in Google’s SEO Starter’s Guide. Now please be sure to remember that these 5 things should all be focused around a Keyword or Keyword Phrase to help make the most out of your SEO efforts.

As for off-page optimization, focus on 5 branded and 5 non branded keywords. Create 100 links from top properties within you own niche such as forums/blogs where you are creating unique profiles, posts or comment that are do-followed. Stop focusing on highly competitive keywords, first focus on ranking for a longtail or branded term, then work your way up the ladder.

Full disclaimer, these are MY VIEWS and no one elses – EVERYTHING on JohnMurch.com is expressed by John Murch

If there is an Agency that does SEO well or better than most, please reach out to me or post in the comments below as I am always looking for a company that does high-quality work I can trust and direct leads to them. I get a LOT of lead and really am looking for an agency I can send them. Seriously, please pitch me a REAL site that has some interesting on-page SEO as well as off-page SEO tactics.

White Hat is just building a site – Black Hat is ranking for keywords

John — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:00:53 +0000

I have been in the SEO game for a bit. I even built a SEO tools company a while back. I recently attend a SXSW Q&A with Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, and Duane Forrester. I was shocked at how many people have such basic questions, like WTF, read Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide! What a waste…until someone started to get smarter, thanks Conductor!

The questions were focused on ranking… and Ranking Reports. Basically, how can a company deal with ranking as a KPI.

Good Question I thought, but then I was shocked, Danny got pretty angry at the guy about how a SERP for a keyword done in Austin, TX and one done in NYC produce 2 different results. How ranking is something SEO should NOT be focusing on and how converting is a KPI, not rank. This is very true and I completely agree, but there is a large asterisk that is not being mentioned.

If ranking is not the KPI and conversion is; how do you test conversion and track what is working or not when it comes to local search for your nationwide plumbing company? You would think you would want to do a search for every major city and find where you rank or pull what keywords (city, state) is bringing in the traffic. So you would WANT to know where you rank for all the metros in the US, no? (I’m being serious.) Don’t you want to run a LOT more ranking reports to mimic all of these variations?

Okay, to give them some break in terms of ranking, I raise the question: Why not open up an API much like adwords where you could hit the server and get the ranking result. You could even throttle it in terms of how many per day/etc. Let’s say 1,000 which is what is in place now until they start showing a captaca (what?) (cough cough google). So there are ways to break the system and get around (proxies anyone?), but just think how many resources, cpu, energy, and $$$ is being dropped just to get a rank. I recently attended SES and could list at least 5 companies who are all pulling the same SERP keywords in multiple locations. Talk about wasted resource! Google could easily save millions in server cost as well as save the environment in terms of power costs by opening this up, oh that’s right you killed the SOAP API which could have solved this. Don’t Be Evil, right? Well when you make up your own rules, I have to just call you out Matt.
Google’s TOS 5.3

5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services
by any means other than through the interface that is provided by
Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a
separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access
(or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means
(including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you
comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on
the Services.

A while back Matt posted up about Google 2000 vs Google 2011. I read it and knew that Matt ran those 40,000 queries BEFORE he was at Google. Matt Cutts even TWEETED back to me to showcase that he broke Google’s TOS 5.3 in terms of an automated script.

So with that, WTF @Google! Since the head of Webspam at Google breaks
Google’s TOS, talk about breaking your own rules! I give up…well kinda.

So with that I think it’s game on! It’s time to open up the flood gates with creativity and give power to build millions of pages in seconds to the marketers (Yea, I said it!) There is no white hat, only black hat. If you build a site on wordpress and write solid content, then it’s white hat. If you focus on optimizing your content for high volume keywords for ranking, and conversion; Congrats! You are heading toward the black hat wannabes, which is what Google WANTS. Hrm, well maybe Google wants blackhats…err maybe more greyhats as blackhat is more when you are working at a LARGE SCALE implementation, right Demand Media? Then again, maybe I am too late with that and the Demand Media’s of the world have already open the flood gates, which is WHY Google launched Panda update during the IPO of Demand Media!

Just think about it. Any site that is trying to improve SEO is black hat, you are trying to game the system. Google wants you to optimize your site, it helps their search, but Google will pull back and slap in the face (Right Jason?) if you try and do this on a larger scale.

Google, are you scared how people might break your SEO algo if you open it up? Seriously, talk about the worst game of cat and mouse. Remember you want to provide the BEST results and BEST experience. If it’s in OUR best interest to GAME YOUR system, you will ALWAYS get caught in this cat/mouse game with the Demand Media’s of the world if you contain down this path.

Seriously, can’t Google be more like Blekko.com, or walk the talk and Don’t Be Evil!

Your Ideas and My Ideas – the perfect niche market

John — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:35:47 +0000

I have recently been asked by a few passionate readers to make a post and teach them a thing or two. Well to start off, I need your help. I am always trying to think of different directs to write some interesting content in and wanted some feedback on topics, etc. I wanted to post up a brainstorming post, where we can discuss ideas that you want to learn more about (that I may or may not already know a ton about). Over the past year I have been a sponge, soaking up information from building a business with $100 to managing a team of developers in India. I find myself talking and discussing ideas, but not taking action. I have tried in the past, but seem to fail by not continuing the project when it’s not the “cool” thing yet, (ie. Hippy Green).

So to get some feedback and comments going I wanted to post up some subjects that I feel more then adequate about discussing as well as interesting, fun, exciting, things that have to do with the online world and making money. To get started here are some ideas and concepts that I have not launched and figure if someone was interested in starting with me to please contact me

SEO eMagazine – Create weekly/monthly ebooks
WordPress – I have created over 50 themes and have even built a few plugins
CSS/Design Mashup – Need to create a better way to showcase sections of websites and offer a tool for showing the code (html/js/css).
Networking – How to work a crowd of 100 people in 5 minutes and get them to remember your name
Financial Education
Coworking
Personal Development
What books I should be reading – Updates to the Geek Guru Book club
A better process for developing products
Online Marketing/Network Marketing

Okay that’s a good a start to get the ball rolling and thinking caps on. I want to hear from you, my readers!

Bucket List 2010

John — Tue, 11 May 2010 04:04:06 +0000

So it’s May 2010, how are those new years resolutions coming along? Most likely you have canceled your gym membership since you are still over weight and that diet is none existent, right? So with that, I propose a different strategy, a bucket list.

I am sure you have seen the movie and maybe even created a master goals list yourself, but why not JFDI and take some action with this years bucket list for 2010. My biggest goal in the past year has been launching a new company and closing another. I have learned a ton from launching SEO Drop and even more by closing it down. What it could have been, what ifs, etc. With uBlanket I am realizing that a new wave is a coming. After recently presenting to some VCs our model and financials, it is clear uBlanket is going to be big, but that’s for another post.

Bucket List 2010
Now imagine for a second that you WILL die on December 31, 2010. How would that change what you are doing now? Think about it for a bit, would you change what you are doing or what you plan to do tomorrow? Would priority change of what you REALLY want to accomplish in 2010?

It’s a big first step in JFDI and yes, you can say well I would just live on an island racking up debt and then who cares cause I am dying. True, but expand your context and open your eyes.

There is a bigger problem here. The problem is that you are afraid of success. Yes, success, not failure. I am guessing you AREN’T driving that new Ferrari, right? So that Ford is yours right? So your failing and with that not a success… yet.

So with that, let’s jump into some ideas for a 2010 bucket list and some of my own to help and myself get started.

Start a new company
Travel – Where? Europe, Asia, Road Trip
Learn how to Surfing, Skiing, Hiking
Spend 30 minutes more a day with my family

I think you get the point. Be sure to focus on actionable items with a specific time. Remember, giving up that 1 hour of LOST or American Idol gives you 1 hour to focus on this bucket list.

For my own use and to kick my own @$$ into JFDI, here is a snippet from my 2010 Bucket List.

Spend $50,000 in paid-online marketing by end of year
Create 10 episodes of a video podcast
Launch another successful side profitable company
Learn to wakeboard
Finish my 2008 goals except not relaunching Hippy Green

If you do post a 2010 Bucket List please trackback or post a link in the comments.

Getting Started with iPhone Applications

John — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:00:03 +0000

So you have that idea for an iPhone application, now what? Well if you are developer, I would suggest checking out the iPhone Dev Center and start building it, but if you are a non-geek, well where does that leave you…it’s time to outsource.

Functional Requirement Document

A functional requirements document is a document that defines a list of inputs, outputs, and behaviors of a program. Now there are books written specifically on this topic, so rather then bore you to death about this process, I posted an example below using the weather app to help you get an idea of what you should be listing out to help with the function, usability, and use cases.

Now building any project that you outsource either to a firm, freelancer, or some person half way around the world, you need to layout a game plan. To get you moving in the right direction, start to think of some of the functions you will want your application to accomplish and list them out as a task. Also list out some of the use cases, like validation such as what is a zipcode (ie. 5 digital numeric number which references a specific cit/state in the USA) as well as some edge cases such as do you want to support world users (ie. What’s the weather in Akihabara, Japan?)

So to help with you wanting to build your own app, let’s take a look at the current weather app. I started to list out some of the common tasks this app accomplishes as well as some uses cases. Now FRD can become a heavy undertaking, so keep it simple and direct to help clarifying what you are imagine the application does or displays and list in this document. Remember this document is suppose to help bridge the gap of communication between you and the person/team/whoever building the iPhone App.

Display Weather Page

Display City Name
Display Current Temp
Display Current High and Low Temp
Display a picture showing the type of weather (ie. Rain, Sun, etc.)
Display the current day (ie. Wednesday) and the next 5 days
Display the high and low for each day listed
Display a link to configure page, when clicked the user processed to the configure page
Display a link to Yahoo weather, which opens Yahoo Weather in safari for the current city
Allow sliding between different cities
Display the number of cities as a series of dots, highlighting the current city being displayed as list

Configure Page

List Cities that were added to display weather
Allow user to remove a city listed individually
Allow for adding a new City
Button (F to C) which changes the temperature from fahrenheit to Celsius
Allow user to return to displaying weather

Add City Page

Allow user to type in city name or zipcode
Display a list of validate city names based on user input
Allow user to select city to be added to display weather list
Allow user to clear city input box
Allow user to cancel inputing a city name

Okay, so that was a quick FRD for the weather app. Now hopefully that hasn’t scared you away from building your idea. You just want to lay the ground work for your idea so that when you do work with a developer you can both be on the same page. Another way to help improve this list is to build it, visual. Complimenting the FRD should be some wireframes.

WireFrames

Wireframes are a visual model of the application. One way to get your point across of what your application does or looks like is to create a simple mockup of each screen. If you are a designer, you may just want to download a iPhone GUI and create all of your application pages. Once this is done, you can easily hire a developer to go and build the code around your design. This also fills in those gaps like, what happens if user…. or how do you get to this page.

Outsourcing

I am just posted a list of companies that I have found that do iPhone development. I do not endorse any of these companies, just wanted to help anyone with an idea get it built.

List of Companies you may want to contact

For those of you who may not have the money to fund build an iphone app. Why not enter a contest with your idea and try and get it built and get 25% of the cut!

App Incubator

I posted a tweet looking for an iPhone app developer for a project I am doing and was contacted by Dave (@42DOH). The company (I am guessing he works for) is medlmobile who operatesAppIncubator.

It’s a place for crowd-sourcing iPhone applications where you submit your idea and if it’s good enough, the guys at Medlmobile will develop the iPhone app. So start submitting your idea to get a chance at have your idea become an iPhone app and get paid 25%! Not a bad way to make money just by signing up and submitting your idea. A great alternative for those entrepreneurs who aren’t developers or have a large bank roll. So get out there and start building your iPhone App!

Pimp Your Website with CSS Galleries

John — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:50:54 +0000

Did you finally go from Idea to Prototype and build a great website but stuck on the how do I get some traffic? Looking for a cheap and easy way to drive traffic to your website and build some backlinks? CSS gallery submissions is a great way to accomplish both traffic and on a budget. Although there are many things to consider when submitted your website to popular CSS galleries.

For starters you can checkout the CSS Gallery List which includes some major CSS galleries. I highly suggest you submit your site to a couple of them. Now please don’t abuse them and just sit down one day submitting your site to all of them. Space it out, submit your site to a couple a week, and space out those traffic spikes and test/learn from them. Some of these css galleries are also a great place to get picked up by other sites.

For example, I did not submit SEO Drop to KillerStartups, but rather to a CSS Gallery site which featured SEO Drop and then got picked up by KillerStartup. The goal with any PR or link building campaign is organic growth.

Have a Purpose when Submitting

Almost all of the CSS gallery websites that I have submited a URL to also ask for a short description. Make it worth your time and effort by taking the time and focus on what you are trying to get out of the submission. Backlinks, Traffic, PR of a new 3.0 widget? Focus on some goals and leverage the fact that some of these galleries even offer tags, so why not use those to help with backlinks and various keywords you want to rank higher on. Remember some sites will also take a while to actually go from submission to displaying on their website so take your time and have a purpose.

Levering CSS Galleries as a Freelancer

Did you recently build up that portfolio to showcase to new clients as a freelance because you are in “transition” from your recent “let go from job”. Why not work on building your personal brand and portfolio by showcasing it on CSS galleries. Maybe you even created a cool looking twitter mashup, but have only a few followers using it. CSS Galleries is a great way to not only show off your skills, but also build a name for yourself. One of my favorite CSS galleries is CSS Remix. If you visit the website often, you will see the same common websites. If you can reach this popularity, you can drive a TON of traffic to your site as well as new leads and gigs as a freelancer.

So if you are looking for a cheap and easy way to build some backlinks as well as some traffic, build a well designed website and start posting it up on some CSS galleries today!

Ultra Light Startups

John — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:31:57 +0000

Every entrepreneur has an idea, but it’s the entrepreneur’s determination or lack their of that determines their true value, which will make them or break them. I recently posted about how ideas are a dime a dozen and how the “take action” multiplier is what makes an idea a product.

I recently attended an Ultra Light Startups meeting. I must say that I was blown away and amazed at what was going on here. The main focus is getting those ideas into action with little to no cost and as fast as possible. In todays fast pace world ideas can be created online and with little to no cost. You CAN start a company with $100 and make it into a viable buisiness.

Let’s walk through the basic structure of the meeting:

Networking (meet and greet for 30 minutes)
1 minute pitches (Entrepreneurs who paid $5)
Pizza (although it was late so we subsituted for networking)
Discussion Panel of guest speakers (Topic: Outsourcing)
Networking (although subsittued for pizza)
Bar (Wasn’t able to attend, had to leave to finish some work)

Most meetups like this tend to be just a passing around of business cards, but this was a bit different and much more focused (at least for this specific meetup).

Okay, the concept of 1 minute pitches is great. It’s a way for entrepers to help with explaing their product. Their are normally 1 to 2 questions asked at the end of each pitch. The timer was done via an iPhone (awesomeness). So at this event you got a chance to listen to a bunch of startups via their 1 minute pitch. The interesting part with Ultra Light Startups is your fee for the event is based on if you pitch or not. If you are just there to watch, its $20, but if your there to pitch its $5, best idea ever!

Seriously, this creates more of a 100% participation group because it’s cheaper to pitch. Although this disencourages your “steath mode”, but you can pitch your idea with or without a 1 page or more website. So say you have this amazing dating website that uses iPhone users, you could create a simple 1 page website and pitch how it plans to be and ask for advice, and/or just pitch it and sees what comes of it. This can also be great for an idea that you know is awesome, but still have doubts when you explain it to someone. You can get instant feedback and only for $5 and 2 hours of your time!

The discussion panel was very interesting and inspiring. The topic was outsourcing and had a wide range of panelists with various backgrounds with outsource. This was an interesting topic for myself because I am realizing that I need to outsource more of my life. I have plenty of ideas, but taking action is something I have been working on. One thing I have learned is you need to give up the idea that you can do everything. You are limiting yourself by doing it all, although I can code/build/design/whatever with a computer, I should be focusing on a big picture model and breaking out an idea into parts. Then taking these parts and outsourcing them to execute the idea. Listing to the panelist I heard various positives and negatives they have had in the past with outsourcing.

For those of you who are interested in outsourcing here are a few websites to checkout, which were discussed by some of the panelists.

This meetup was just amazing and I encourage any reader in the NYC area to attend the next Ultra Light Startups on Thursday, November 6, 2008.

Here is a quick list of those entrepreneurs who gave a 60 second pitch.

Rock the Vote this Year!

John — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:10:01 +0000

If you missed the democratic or republican national conventions, I am sorry to hear. There is so much “drama” with todays politics it’s the best comedy on television. I just can not believe what is going on. I can not way for the soon to be Shot Gun wedding possibly followed by self proclaimed “rednecks” invading Washington DC. (It’s like a reality show on MTV or VH1)

I do not want to get political on this blog, but I do have to say, you NEED to VOTE! I don’t care if your a republican, democrat, independent, or even part of the green party, you need to vote this year. The government controls much of your life and as for us younger generation (including myself) what will happen with Social Security, people should be UP IN ARMS! Seriously, WTF is going on!

Anyway, I want to say that the clock is ticking on registering for voting this year. I know since I have moved back from Arizona to New Jersey, I have had to update my voter registration. In New Jersey, you can register to vote up to 21 days before the election. Be sure to Rock the Vote to register in time for your state and VOTE!

Solar Power Bike with Video

John — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:27:10 +0000

So at lunch today I had yet another craving for chinese. I had gone to grand sichuan yesterday and thought I would just call and pickup. I tried to call, but their phone number was asking for a pin and was having some service issue (strange, yea I know).

Anyway, so on my walk from work to grand sichuan, I saw a purple biked mounted to a pole, see below.

I didn’t find this odd and almost walked right by it without even noticing, but I saw some solar panels attached. I took some quick pictures.

I also noticed a Yahoo logo on the bike. I am not sure if this is some Yahoo experincement or photo of lunch crowd on Varick or what.

You can see their are 3 small size solar panels on what looked like a locked container. Their was a small wire running from this container to the front of the bike to what looked like a video camera mount.

Although all of this was sealed shut, it got me thinking about ideas and what it could be and/or what you could do with something like this. So with that I wanted to post up some idea as well as possible projects for you Makezine lovers.

Solar Power recording system. Basic Nokia n95 streaming via Qik that is being charged by battery/solar panels (the container box)
Embedded honeypot project. This could be a simple video camera taking pictures and streaming it to a website with GPS (Maps) showing the location of the bike, in hopes that a theif steals the bike and you can track down the bike with the thief.
Bike Recording System – create video (or stream video) of you biking in NYC

What do you think about this bike, guerilla marketing from Yahoo, next big thing?