Welcome to Don Loper. Curious about the name?

Don Loper is a collection of commentary by Utah SEO firm proprietor Joshua Steimle on the topics of business and entrepreneurship, web design, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and business in Utah.

The most popular feature is "You might be an entrepreneur if..." It started with my post entitled What it Means to be an Entrepreneur and now I'm in the process of adding detail to each of the 75 points I came up with based on my own experiences.

09
Mar

Hauppauge WinTV USB2 and Windows 7

A few years ago I bought the WinTV USB2 device from Hauppauge so that I could connect a DVD player to my laptop. At the time, I was running Windows XP, and it worked beautifully. But when I upgraded a few months ago to Windows 7, this was the one piece of hardware I couldn’t get to work.…

09
Mar

Blendtec – You Need an SEO Overhaul

An open letter to the marketing team at Blendtec:

Dear Blendtec, your website needs a search engine optimization overhaul, and my SEO firm is the one to do it.

I won’t dwell too much on why you need SEO, other than to point out that your site will show up higher in rankings in Google, you’ll get more…

04
Mar

2010 New Year’s Business Resolution – Debt Free

I hate debt. I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been in massive, overwhelming, crippling debt has any clue what it’s like. It’s worse than just having a monkey on your back (sidenote: I held one on my arm once and within 10 seconds he peed all over my arm–I’ve been very…

28
Jan

How Government Hurts Small Business

It has been essentially two weeks since my last post on this Doba + Shopify experiment. Why no posts? Was it because I was busy setting up my website? Was I taking time to make sure I understood the services Doba and Shopify offer? Was I developing a marketing strategy? Nope, I was spending two weeks filling out forms…

26
Jan

Why I don’t call you back.

Those who communicate with me regularly might have noticed something, and depending on your communication preferences it might be annoying and/or frustrating to you. Yes, it’s true, I never call you back.

You call me and leave a voicemail, and then you get an email back from me. You call me, ask me to call you back, but instead of…

20
Jan

I’m Looking for a Mentor. Know Anyone?

I’ve had a number of “mentors” over the years, but for the past few years I’ve been completely on my own. Perhaps that’s been good, in a way, but last week I was talking with a friend who said he was looking for a mentor, and that got me thinking. Then, last night, I kept my 9-month pregnant wife up…

11
Jan

Signing up for Doba…and a State Sales Tax ID

While I’m waiting to be approved by Authorize.net so I can take credit cards directly, rather than just through PayPal and Google Checkout (both of which are already set up) let’s set up a Doba account, shall we?

There are two packages to choose from, one for $50/month and the other for $60/month. I’m the type of guy who often…

08
Jan

Using the Google Keyword Tool and GoDaddy to Choose a Domain

This post isn’t specific to this Shopify + Doba experiment I’m doing, but it’s going to be so relevant to anyone out there trying to follow in my steps that I feel it justifies itself.

Ok, you know what you want to sell. You know how important SEO is, and that choosing the right domain is going to

07
Jan

Signing up for Shopify

I’ve got my domain name, I know what I’ll be selling from Doba, and so now it’s time to start setting up Doba and Shopify accounts. I’m going to start with Shopify, and as I start this post, I have not yet signed up. I’m going to post notes here if I run into issues as I go along.

https://app.shopify.com/services/signup

07
Jan

SEO and Choosing a Domain

When you’re talking about selling a product online, SEO is everything. What’s SEO, you ask? That stands for search engine optimization. What’s all that gobbledygook mean? We’re talking about making sure your website comes up first in Google when someone searches for words related to your product. For example, I decided to sell white gold wedding bands for women,…