Approximately a year ago I bought a Macbook Pro and tried to figure out the best way to continue using Quickbooks. My conclusion was that it was best to continue running Quickbooks on my old Windows machine, but there were obvious downsides to this arrangement. One of the commenters on that post suggested using VMWare [...]
Author Archive for admin
Every time I try my hand at a new business everyone thinks I’m shutting MWI down or quitting MWI or something like that, so let me make the disclaimer that nothing is changing with MWI. MWI continues to do high-end SEO work, as ever, but I’ve always got side projects going on here and there, [...]
I’ve been a Comcast Business Internet customer for something going on 5-6 years, but now I’m canceling the service, or rather, I’m trying to. Unfortunately they require 30-day notice, and a 75% fee on what’s left on the term, which doesn’t end until June in 5 months, meaning it will cost me a few hundred [...]
26
Jan
2011 in Review
At the beginning of 2011 I made a resolution to be more social, you know, get out of the dungeon, get some sunlight, and talk to people face to face again. I started inviting a lot of people to lunch for no other reason than that I wanted to engage in the art of speaking, [...]
I’ve never had a formal board or advisory board for my company. But I do have mentors, friends, my wife, and other associates, and from time to time I’ve received input from them that has been of great value to me. One such event happened yesterday. But to give some backstory… 2-3 years ago I [...]
I’m a simple man with simple needs. I assume there are others out there with similar needs. In a free market, one would assume that the needs of a viable consumer base would be met, perhaps even prior to that consumer base being aware of their own need. And yet I have been looking for [...]
Sometimes you come up with a stupid idea that you just can’t let go of, like jumping off the roof of your house with an umbrella, or going back in time to 1940, not to kill Hitler, but just shave off Hitler’s mustache while he’s sleeping and then see how that ends up being recorded [...]
I recently read The Google Story and am currently reading In the Plex, both of which are biographical pieces covering the history of Google, its founders Brin and Page, its employees, business relationships, and so forth. As I’ve read these books I’ve been able to get some insight into Google’s core business model, which is [...]
I had an interesting dream last night. I was wading across a stream when suddenly I got swept away in the water. At first it was kind of fun as the water gently flowed along, and I didn’t fight it. But then I saw rapids up ahead and realized I was in trouble. I started [...]
Having just written this, it got me thinking about the skills I have, or wish I had, that have helped or truly would help me as an entrepreneur. I have a Masters of Information Systems Management, and I happen to run an Internet-related business, so people often assume that my degree has been helpful to [...]
On Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend an event at BYU focused on entrepreneurship. While there, I was able to talk to a few students, including one who was asking for general advice. The more I talked to him, the more I started to ramble and blabber, not because I didn’t have anything substantive [...]
I buy USB hubs so you don’t have to! Not on purpose, that’s just how things have worked out. Allow me to explain… A few years ago I needed more USB ports. So I bought a USB hub for $50. It didn’t work. Ok, it did at first. Then it did sometimes. Then it didn’t. [...]
This post applies to those with Blackberries and Android phones as well. The user of a Windows phone is a fictitious character, like centaurs, fairies, and honest politicians, and therefore I will make no more mention of him. I’m a news/information junkie. News about politics, economics, people lifting burning cars off motorcyclists–it doesn’t matter, I [...]
This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Introducing the Utah Business Book Club. We meet once a month for lunch on the first Thursday of each month. During the month leading up to the meeting, we focus on a topic or theme, as opposed to a specific book. When we meet, [...]
You’ve got a Macbook Pro and an external monitor, possibly a Dell monitor like mine. Ideally, to use your external monitor with your MacBook lid closed you would merely plug the monitor into the MacBook, close the lid, and the external monitor would light up and you go on your merry way. Maybe this is [...]
So…you just got your brand new Macbook Pro, 17 inch, and a brand new Magic Mouse, and you think “Gee, this the best of the best, brand new stuff, of course it will work great, right?” But then you take it home, turn everything on, and although the mouse works, the cursor is skipping all [...]
27
Apr
Apple Magic Mouse
I got Apple’s Magic Mouse along with my new Mac the other day, and I’m about as impressed with it as I’ve been with other wireless mouses (mice?) I’ve tried, which is to say, not very. Problems: 1. Imprecise. I find it difficult to accurately click on what I want to click on. 2. Skipping [...]
Although I’d like to switch to a iPhone, I’m currently using an Android phone, and one of the issues I’ve had to deal with that has been a real pain is managing podcasts. DoubleTwist is no replacement for iTunes, nor is Google Listen, nor mSpot, nor WinAmp. What I want is simply this–an easy way [...]
Last week I switched to a Mac. This meant I had to figure out what I was going to do about Quickbooks. I’ve used Quickbooks on a PC for my business for the past 10+ years, so this was a bit of a switch. Most recently I’ve been using Quickbooks Pro 2009, plus payroll. In [...]
I’ve had it with PCs, and I’m switching to Mac. It might come as a surprise to those who know me that I’m not already on a Mac. After all, I’m a designer, I’m thin, and I’m neat. My history with Macs is fairly one-sided, or rather, nonexistent. I used one when I was in [...]
If you’re in Utah, come to the next LaunchUp on April 7th, 2011 at BYU. I’ll be presenting, along with two other entrepreneurs. Prior to the presentations they have legal, tech, design, and other “workshops”. Basically they have high powered business attorneys, investors, designers, programmers, etc., and you can get advice from them for free [...]
The short answer is you buy this $20 device. Now, for the longer answer. So, you’ve got a CD drive, or a DVD drive, that you’ve taken out of a desktop computer (just like the photo to the right) and you want to connect that CD or DVD drive to a laptop. How do you [...]
Back in 2007 I read The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, and it changed my business and my perspective on life almost overnight. To this day I still consider it the best business book I’ve ever read, with Rework being a close second. One of the recommendations Ferriss went into some depth on [...]
03
Mar
Rework Book Review
I can’t believe I haven’t already written a review of this book. I read Rework months ago, several months ago, in fact. It’s by the guys over at 37signals, who make the Basecamp project management software, which I’ve used for many years and have come to rely on heavily. I’m often surprised I’m only paying [...]
My lean startup DeclareMedia has a problem. Ok, a challenge. Ok, it has several challenges. One of them is getting the word out about what DeclareMedia does. Of course you all know how great it is to have a business that has a viral component, that is, the very use of the product/service spreads the [...]
I’ve been experimenting with running some Facebook ads to promote DeclareMedia’s local business directories. I won’t discuss here whether it’s worth it or not since the data aren’t all in yet, but there are certainly ways to stretch each dollar spent. At the moment, I’m experimenting specifically driving traffic to a national SEO firm directory. [...]
I don’t know why I’m writing this. I don’t need more competition. Maybe I hate to see wasted potential. As I see more and more people losing jobs and waiting around for someone to drop one in their laps, I can’t help wonder why more people don’t go out and create their own jobs. Maybe [...]
I’ve been using Appriver’s hosted Exchange email services for a few years now. I have virtually no complaints. I don’t recall ever having a major problem with uptime. I think they may have had some minor issues but the only reason I knew about them was because they sent me an email telling me so. [...]
If you’re into affiliate marketing, or would like to be, go check out the post about my side-company DeclareMedia’s new affiliate program. We’re looking for 10-20 people to beta test the system. You’ll make real money, and we’re pretty sure you won’t have to deal with any glitches, but there may be some glitches that [...]
I just got off of a phone call with a nice-sounding sales lady from Qwest. The phone call ended with me saying something along the lines of “No, thank you.” Where did this start? It started over 10 years ago, in an apartment on 500 North in Provo, UT, when I was first starting my [...]
I get by with a little help from my friends…I get high (rankings, that is) with a little help from my friends. So…I’m in the midst of a little experiment. You see, I’ve got this new business launching local business directories, and one of the categories is self storage directories, of which we currently have [...]
A key component of lean startup theory is that many, if not most, successful businesses do not end up doing what they started out doing, but rather found their way to where they’re at through a process of trial and error, and perhaps dumb luck. The road to success then becomes one of many small [...]
Eric Ries, Steve Blank, or one of the other gurus of lean startup probably has been using different terms for years, and it’s only that I’m so new to this topic that I don’t know what they are, and so I’m naming them as I see fit. There are two types of customer feedback that [...]
On August 3rd my new company, DeclareMedia, launched its first local business directory at UtahWebDesignFirms.com. At least I think that was the first one…anyway, it doesn’t really matter. In the past three months, we’ve launched 2,759 more directories, have 709 listings, and have brought in a grand total of about $2,000 (I just realized it [...]
It turns out I have a lean startup. I wasn’t aware of this a week ago, because I wasn’t aware of the term “lean startup”. But here’s how it happened… A week ago I started assisting a professor with research as part of my preparation to go back to school for a business PhD. The [...]
I’ll explain in one of my next posts why I’ve created this new category on my blog, but first, let’s get the definition of “lean startup” clear. According to Wikipedia, a lean startup, or the lean startup “methodology” “advocates the creation of rapid prototypes designed to test market assumptions, and uses customer feedback to evolve [...]
If you’re interested in following my posts here on DonLoper.com, you can now do it by becoming a fan of the DonLoper.com page on Facebook. Like the page, share it with your friends, and read the blog and weep. More updates coming soon.
This post is a question, more than an answer. I’m a bit confused as to why, when I’m giving away something for free that has real value, people aren’t going for it as much as I would have suspected they would. My latest venture launched a week or so ago at DeclareMedia.com. We are building [...]
There’s not much use trying to hide it any longer. If you really must know what big secret thing I’ve been working on, the cat’s out of the bag. Go check it out at DeclareMedia.com. There are already 720 live directories, and probably 10,000 more coming online in the next six months. Yes, I am [...]
15 years ago I thought being a successful businessman meant being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. 10 years ago I thought it meant being the CEO of a large advertising agency, providing services to Fortune 500 companies. Either way, I dreamed of big buildings, big revenues, lavish and stylishly modern offices, nice clothes, [...]
Today is one of the most exciting days of my life. It represents the culmination…ok, not the culmination, but the beginning of the culmination of 10 years of work. Today I launched a project which, to the casual observer, may seem like no big deal, but when you understand the numbers in aggregate, then it [...]
As though I need another blog…although if you were following all of those I have you’d notice I haven’t posted on most of them in some time, other than my triathlon blog. My posts come in spurts depending on what I’m interested in at the moment. The new blog is now up and running [...]
08
Jun
I Quit.
I would like to announce my resignation from the Doba + Shopify experiment for one of the following reasons: a. I want to spend more time with my family. b. I want to spend more time hiking the Appalachian trail. c. I want to spend more time with my Argentinian mistress. d. I really, really [...]
Since there is no direct integration between Shopify and Doba you have to copy over everything manually. This isn’t too tough…unless you need to do it for a few hundred products. Adding a single product is fairly straightforward. You download the image from the Doba site (BTW, the “download image” link doesn’t work in FireFox, [...]
It’s been a while since I posted on this experiment. I’ve been sick, had a baby, have been busy with my day job, am training for a marathon, and was just elected a state delegate, amongst other things. I’ve just been busy, and I keep thinking I need to get on this, but then things [...]
Several people have commented on how many books I read, since I’m always updating the WeRead app on Facebook with 2-3 or more books per week. To answer that question once and for all, the answer is triathlons. What do triathlons have to do with reading, you ask? Well, I train for anywhere from 10-15 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I just posted on how to get started choosing what product you want to sell, but what did I choose? I went with white gold wedding bands for women. Why? Because I know jewelry sells online (I actually have a client who sells tungsten rings for men online, so same general product but a different [...]
This can be a tough one, but it gets easier if you ask yourself a few questions: What’s available? You can find this out by browsing through Doba’s products, but since they have 1.5 million or so of them, that might take a while. Still, it’s a good idea to at least look at the [...]
Disclaimer: I met Jeremy Hanks, CEO of Doba, several years ago, and we keep tabs on each other via Facebook, blogs, etc. But in performing this experiment I have not asked Jeremy for any special favors, nor do I expect him to give me any. I know nothing about Shopify or its management team beyond [...]
One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in the 10 years I’ve been running my business, and perhaps the most critical one, has been that I shouldn’t be doing any work. That is, I for sure shouldn’t be doing any production work, and I should constantly be trying to figure out how to [...]
We’re launching a network of directory websites targeting niche industries. The first is going to be one for drug rehab clinics in California. But when you spend a lot of time working on a website, you tend to lose an accurate picture of what the website looks like and how it works for a normal [...]
My firm recently launched a redesigned ecommerce site for a triathlon store using the NSCommerce system from Network Solutions. We didn’t choose that solution, it was already being used by the client. Our work was to apply the new design we had created, and we are now providing ongoing PPC management and SEO services. As [...]
You just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress for your blog, or you just updated a plugin, and all of a sudden your entire site is gone and you’re freaking out because all you get when you try to login, or go to the homepage, or access any page on your blog, is an [...]
12
Nov
The Outrageous Deal
I just sent out a proposal for a deal that could change MWI’s trajectory. It’s not “ridiculous” big, and it’s nothing we can’t handle (trust me, I’ve turned down plenty of “ridiculous” big deals in the past two years because I knew we would just be getting ourselves into trouble and possibly a lawsuit if [...]
Ah, sometimes it’s the little things that get in the way. I use the Twitter Tools plugin on this blog and others so that whenever I create a new post, it automatically posts it to my Twitter account. Twitter Tools also allows you to enter a Bit.ly username and API key so that when your [...]
The vast majority of manuals, of any type, go unread. When’s the last time you read a product manual? When’s the last time you read a manual that your employer produced? If your employer hands you a binder with 200 pages in it spelling out the HR policy at your job, are you really going [...]
10
Nov
The Org Chart
Creating an organizational chart can be fun, but is there a real purpose behind it or is it just “playing business”? I never saw much of a purpose to an org chart before, other than to make people higher up on it feel good, or to make yourself feel like you were organized. But now [...]
Oh good heavens, a mission statement? Do people still use those things? Wasn’t that just one of those business fads created by Stephen R. Covey’s in the 80′s? Well, whatever, I don’t know. I just think it’s good to spell out what the purpose of the business is somewhere, just so people know. Just so [...]
10
Nov
The System
I recently read the E-Myth for the first time. Actually, I read The E-Myth Revisited, which is the updated version of The E-Myth, apparently. Although cheesy in some parts, and I suspect the book was written only partially to generate revenue in and of itself but primarily to generate customers for the author’s business coaching [...]
Some of those who know me think I’m a “techie” type of guy, always first to jump on any new technology. I guess they think this is the case because I work with websites, but I’m actually a laggard. I generally wait for everyone else to test something out before I jump in. I’m usually [...]
09
Nov
Why Start Over?
Why am I starting over? Why would I want to risk give up working short hours from the comfort of home, having time to spend with my wife and daughter, do triathlons, write on this blog, and do many of the other things I enjoy? In answering that question I have to be careful. I [...]
You bought a Canon A620 digital camera a few years ago, installed the software that came with it, and never thought about it again. Until you had to switch to a new computer, or you reformatted, and you realized “Oh yeah, I guess I need to reinstall the software for my camera.” Only you can’t [...]
It’s been a while since I added a new category to this blog, but it’s time, because I’m entering a new phase in my life. I’ve already done the startup thing. In fact, I’ve done it more than once. But I now realize some of my “startup” attempts were really “startovers” and not “startups”. A [...]
Solutions to the “Cannot connect. Call in progress.” error on the Blackberry: 1. Soft reboot (alt + right shift + del) 2. Hard reboot (unseat and reseat battery) Today was the first time I’ve had this problem. I’ve had my new Blackberry Tour with Verizon for about two months now, and today I was on [...]
Used car salesmen, insurance salesmen, financial advisers, lawyers, and…realtors. Why don’t we trust them? For me, it has to do with statements contained in articles like this; “‘Home sales in August were down slightly compared to last year, but with home prices continuing to go down and mortgage interest rates remaining at record lows, there [...]
These are given in the order in which I would read the respective books linked from each lesson. These lessons represent some of the most important things I’ve learned from reading business books and managing my business over the past 10 years. 1. Figure out what you really want to do and who you want [...]
That is, who are Utah’s top 5 SEO professionals as rated by their peers? This is merely an informal survey, but if you’re an SEO professional here in the state of Utah, then who are the other five SEO professionals (other than yourself) who you think are on top of the game or are next [...]
Steimle. How would you say it? All my life I’ve had to deal with people mispronouncing my name when they read it, or spelling my name wrong when I tell it to them and they have to write it down. I probably wasn’t more than four years old when I realized I should always spell [...]
11
Aug
Google Penalty
Well, donloper.com has been penalized by Google, but I’m not sure why. Up until June 16th, 2009 the site would get between 130-300 visitors per day, depending on the day of the week and how frequently I was posting. On June 17th the traffic dropped to 99 visitors, 73 visitors on June 18th, 25 on [...]
This one isn’t on the original list, but I thought it appropriate to add it. Yes, you might be an entrepreneur if you have dreams in which you have dinner with the parents of your contractors. But that’s not even half the story. Yesterday I was thinking about one of my contractors and thinking “You [...]
Maybe radio advertising has a future? I keep hearing these ads for “The UPS Store” that have been intriguing to me because the UPS Store appears to be able to solve a few problems I have: 1. Driving to the post office to check my post office box only find out I didn’t get any [...]
I’ve been using Office XP Professional for several years and haven’t seen any reason to upgrade. Anything that was sent to me in a newer version of Word or Excel could be converted to work with Office XP. That is, until last week when a client sent me an Excel spreadsheet that had drop shadows [...]
Between my own websites and those of my clients I manage about 12 blogs, all of which are running WordPress. Today I’ve been upgrading all of them to WordPress 2.8. I use the automatic upgrade process that WordPress provides because it makes upgrading quick and easy…at least for my clients who aren’t on Mediatemple’s servers. [...]
This is an email I recently wrote to my family: It has come to my attention that some of my nieces and nephews are lacking when it comes to what I feel is one of the most valuable skills a person, especially a young person, can have today. This skill affects how educated you will [...]
I’m not looking for suggestions for myself, but rather for the freelancers and contractors I work with and who send me their invoices. I especially like it when I get an invoice that has a button in it allowing me to pay using PayPal or a credit card. It saves me the effort and inconvenience [...]
The alternate title for this post could be “Today I lost a good friend…” So, if your fax number were accidentally disconnected, how long would it take for you to notice? In my case, five freakin’ months. I guess that shows you how much I depend on fax technology. Here’s how it all happened… MWI [...]
A leader. The simplest definition of the word leader might be “one who is followed”. But I’d wager most of us have more complex definitions than that. I’d suppose that most of us see a leader as someone with some sort of admirable characteristics, even if we may disagree with how those characteristics are used. [...]
For those of you who are regular followers of this blog, this post might come across as pretty random, but allow me to explain. My father is a retired optical engineer who used to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. He worked on the Hubble Space Telescope for a number of [...]
Every year Inc. Magazine publishes its famous ranking of the 5,000 top private companies in America as determined by growth, with certain revenue thresholds, one would assume. The point is there has to be some sort of growth. So what does it mean that I have received upwards of 20 emails inviting me submit my [...]
I used to use Mozy a year or two ago, but the service was too spotty. I got errors all the time and it took forever to create the first backup. That is, I left it on 24/7 and I think it took well over a month. Maybe it’s better today. I then didn’t use [...]
A few years ago I found a radio program playing locally called the Forbes Radio Program. It was business focused and only played in Utah on weekends. The host was Gordon Deal, and I loved the program because it was entirely focused on business and the economy. It was kind of like NPR’s Marketplace show, [...]
Do you want a blog but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you just know that you don’t want one of those whatever.blogspot.com blogs because that’s what everyone uses for their personal blogs, and you want a high-end, professional blog. Something that, when people visit, they look at and say “Wow, that’s a really [...]
A few years ago I was this close (imagine me holding my thumb and finger very close together, but not quite touching) to getting out of the web design and SEO businesses and starting a chain of skate shops. And by “skate” I mean “skateboard”, lest anyone think I’m talking about roller skates or something. [...]
I was trying to think of a title for this post and my mind kept thinking of Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University” course that he provides to help people control their finances and live debt free, and that’s what this post is really about–peace of mind for the entrepreneur when it comes to financial matters. [...]
Like any web marketer I love stats, and that extends to the analytics stats for this blog. I love seeing how many people are reading which posts. Below are the posts that have received the most pageviews over the past 30 days on this blog. Ironically, some of what gets me the most traffic is [...]
I hate progress. I mean, I don’t…but I do. Wouldn’t it just be easier to live on a farm somewhere prior to the invention of the cotton gin and penicillin? We wouldn’t have to worry about cell phones, the Internet, auto repairs, paperwork, Al Gore, or…Twitter, ugh. I admit, I readily jumped on the Linkedin [...]
First of all, if you spell “fluorescent” as “flurorescent” or “flourescent” then you’re not an idiot. At least, not unless I am too. Moving on, this is a product review of one of the most basic products known to American mankind–the light bulb. I say “American” mankind because there are still countries today where most [...]
iStockPhoto.com is a great website. It allows photographers, graphic designers, and other creative types to upload photos and artwork which can then be purchased as “stock” photography or artwork. This is great for aspiring photographers, who learn how to take photos that people want to buy. This is great for print and web designers who [...]
Don’t you hate it when you’re looking at a product on a website and you think “I wish I could see that image a little larger…” and then you notice a “View Larger Image” link and think “Oh! Perfect!” and then you click on it, and the larger image is about 5% larger than the [...]
I’ve listened on and off to Dr. Laura since 1992 or thereabouts. I’ve always enjoyed her frank, no-holds-barred, common sense approach to solving life’s problems, even if I didn’t always agree with her. Recently, she posted on her blog a letter written by a young man who “broke up” with Facebook. The theme seems to [...]
31
Jan
You’ve felt a sense of relief when an employee has quit because now you don’t have to lay them off.
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve felt a sense of relief when an employee has quit because now you don’t have to lay them off. I remember an SNL skit from about 20 years ago that featured two cruel bosses who made a bet as to who could fire the most employees the fastest as [...]
I’ve got a secret way you can get free books, movies, and music, that’s totally legal and totally free. I’m not sure why the RIAA, book publishers, and Hollywood don’t have a problem with this, but apparently they don’t since I’ve never heard a peep from them about it. It’s totally legit, and it’s been [...]
It is entirely possible that someone in management at Starbucks one day thought “You know, our country really needs more people to get out and volunteer to help their communities and the people around them. Wouldn’t that be great if we could encourage that? What if we gave away a free drink to encourage that [...]
Each year vSpring Capital publishes a list of the 100 individuals who are most likely to lead a successful venture as CEO or CTO in the next 5-7 years in IT or Biotech industries. Nominees do not currently need to hold titles of CEO or CTO, need not have current involvement in a startup, should [...]
Are you the type that looks at your competitors as threats or opportunities? Apparently Linkedin sees Facebook as such a threat that they’ve systematically banned use of the word “Facebook” on their site, at least in certain parts. Linkedin recently introduced a feature called “LinkedIn Polls” which allows you to create a simple poll which [...]
I can’t take it any more. The Wall Street Journal, a most highly respected publication offline and on. The homepage. The top of the homepage. The line – “The Illinois House voted overwhelming to impeach Gov. Blagojevich one month after he was arrested on corruption charges, setting up a Senate trial.” Are you kidding me?!!! [...]
Yeah, that’s right, I don’t have a Twitter account. I’ve never even been to the website. And yet I call myself an Internet marketing professional. I was behind the times on blogging, Facebook, I still don’t use MySpace and doubt I ever will, I have a cellphone that is junk and is almost two years [...]
My father is trying to get a bunch of 8mm, Super 8mm, and 16mm film rolls digitized and transferred to DVD. He’s been using Costco‘s service, but so far they’re not doing very well. He’s sent in several rolls, waited a while to get them back, and then when they come back they’re out of [...]
I just bought Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0 and I love it! Or at least I assume I would if it worked the way it’s designed to work. But instead of working, I’m having two major problems: 1. While capturing video from my DV camera, I get frequent errors that say “Unknown Recorder Error” at which [...]
An actual online chat between my wife and a Snapfish customer support representative: Please wait for a site operator to respond. You are now chatting with ‘Sunil’ Sunil: Hi, Sunil: Welcome to Snapfish Live Help. How may I help you please? Brynn: I am about to order a calendar, but it is a gift and [...]
I’ve been working on niche directories since 1999. Geez, you’d think I’d have more to show for it after almost 10 years, but I’m a bit slow. I guess if I were a politician or corrupt CEO of an ailing public company asking for bailout dollars I’d tell you that “I’ve been refining my business [...]
One of my new side businesses is creating niche directories. It’s a simple business model with ever-expanding opportunities for revenue growth. But I’ll get into that in another post. The thing is that I’ve got a few hundred domains, but I’m looking for more. I’ve got plenty of ideas, but I figured perhaps you could [...]
05
Dec
My PayPal Dilemma
My first dilemma was how to spell “dilemma” but having figured that out, my real dilemma is whether to pay $650 to re-activate my PayPal account, or live with a second PayPal account that forces me to live life in the shadows. It all started in 2003. The sun was shining, birds were singing, I [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…when someone asks you what you’re doing this weekend you say “Working, of course, just like any other day.” To weekends you can add holidays, vacations, family reunions, nights, and any other time period, regardless of the location or time of day–I’ve worked them all. Heck, I’ve worked at night [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…without trying you’ve succeeded in convincing all your employees to never try to start their own business. This isn’t a 100% true statement. I actually do have employees who have left my company to start their own businesses. However, if you include those employees who ran their own businesses prior [...]
Ladies and gentlemen, check it out – MyFreeWebsiteDesign.com. Why is MWI giving away free websites? It’s an experiment, based on the hypothesis that if we give away a few websites, we’ll get more in return than what we give up. And if it fails, it’s not like we’re out much. Of course there’s a catch [...]
Rick Wagoner, Chairman and CEO of General Motors, has given his opinion on why GM and the other three major US automakers should be bailed out. The gist of it is that GM is too big to fail. That is, the consequences of GM failing would be disastrous for the nation, not just the auto [...]
What is link baiting, you ask? It’s when you develop content on your website that is intended to get other people to link to it, therefore boosting the number of inbound links pointing at your website, which will boost your website’s rankings in the search engines. Generally the best link baiting comes naturally. I wouldn’t [...]
CNN and Careerbuilder just published an article on ten jobs that pay around $80,000 per year, such as attorneys, economists, associate actuaries, marketing managers, pharmacists, and veterinarians. The trouble with all of these jobs is that with rare exceptions they require a four-year college degree or more than that. But there is an 11th job [...]
GM Goodwrench has been running a series of radio ads that have gotten progressively more and more annoying until I can’t contain myself anymore and have to vent. They’ve all featured a rock song in the background with the lyrics “I can’t stop thinking about it”. The song is annoying enough, as though I and [...]
Ever since I figured out how to do this I’ve had a mountain of people asking me how, so here it is–how to add your blog feed to your Facebook profile, so that every time you publish a post on your blog, it will show up as a posted item on your Facebook Wall, and [...]
My SEO firm has had a blog dedicated to SEO up at TheOrganicSEO.com for some time, but we’ve let it languish this year. We’re interested in getting it back up and running and turning it into a valuable resource, and if you’re an SEO professional with a penchant for writing we’d like to invite you [...]
If you’re considering upgrading to Quickbooks Pro 2009 and you use the Online Banking feature, I have some advice for you–DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT DO IT!!! I just upgraded from Quickbooks 2006 because you have to upgrade every three years–they force you to by not supporting versions that are more than three years [...]
In no way is this an attack on anyone…well, maybe it is, but if it is, I’m attacking myself as much as anyone else. This is for all you designers. You creative types. You who work with branding. You people at the advertising, marketing, and design firms and who, in the 80s and 90s, wore [...]
In 2002 I was running MWI’s predecessor, Mindwire Interactive, but I had made mistakes and was ready to walk away and start over. Another business offered to buy us out. We started negotiating to try and come to a deal. And then I made a mistake. I assumed we would get a deal done…soon. The [...]
One of our SEO clients is an eating disorder treatment center. We also manage their Google Adwords account, which I’ll refer to as search engine marketing for the remainder of this post. With both SEO and SEM there are two components to a successful campaign; the first is getting traffic to the site, and the [...]
Having just given 10 reasons to not use Facebook I figured I’d try to come up with 10 reasons why to use Facebook. I’ve divided these up into categories. Business Reasons 1. Fill a job position or find one. 2. Because more and more of your business peers are and you don’t want to be [...]
I’ve come up with ten reasons to not use Facebook (see below), but I want to know why you aren’t on Facebook. No, I’m not trying to convince you to use it, I’m just curious about the different reasons people are not using it. I have my own theories, but I’d like to hear it [...]
http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/fed_bailout/ It takes only five minutes to read it. It takes only another five minutes to act upon it. But those ten minutes you spend, combined with those others will spend, might just save this country from making a mistake we will be paying for decades from now. Doing nothing is not the answer, but [...]
Google’s terms of service states: 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 [...]
I tried out Mozy as a solution for online backups about a year ago. Perhaps it’s improved since then but at the time it stunk. It would error out all the time, it took me almost 2 months to create the first backup (even though I had it on all the time and my connection [...]
What’s interesting about the current economic woes is that it’s all about credit, or in other words, debt. Businesses large and small can’t get the debt financing they need to stay in business. Obviously there’s little or nothing an individual business owner can do to save the broader economy, but they are in control of [...]
12
Sep
My Other Blogs
When I first started blogging it was all here on Don Loper. But I really enjoy writing, and so over time I’ve expanded the number of blogs I write on to match my interests. Here’s a comprehensive list: The Organic SEO. This blog is focused on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. It’s actually [...]
10
Sep
College is Overrated
Yeah, you heard me. College is overrated. I’ve been to seven years of college. I have a Masters of Information Systems Management. Does having the degree help me? No, I run my own company, so nobody gave me a raise just because I had a graduate degree. Does what I learned while obtaining my degree [...]
10
Sep
WordPress SEO Tips
A week or so ago I stated that I thought some of my blogs had been hammered in the search engine results pages (SERPs) because of the theme I was using and so I was looking for a new and SEO friendly WordPress theme. While perhaps true that my theme wasn’t the best for SEO, [...]
I can understand why WordPress doesn’t build in this functionality, after all, they can only do so much and they rely on the community to created plugins for this kind of thing, but I don’t understand why nobody has created a simple plugin to allow WordPress users to specify that they want a different number [...]
I need a completely virtual solution to an office phone system. Even though my current system is a vast improvement over what I had before, it’s still too much. Too much hardware, too much money every month. What I’m looking for is an online solution that allows me to manage multiple phone numbers (i.e. MWI’s [...]
I haven’t been paying attention to donloper.com rankings lately as I’ve been busy with other things, but apparently it has gotten absolutely hammered. Whereas anything I posted on donloper used to end up at the top of search engines for whatever the topic was, now even a search for “donloper” has it coming up on [...]
If you sell or are privy to sales data for SEO services in Utah are you noticing any decline in lead flow? At MWI we have been, but I figured it was because we haven’t been maintaining our rankings lately, but I just talked with a friend at another firm and he said they’ve been [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you live in an apartment that is smaller than the apartment you lived in when you were a student and had just gotten married. In the days of our parents the accepted standard of living was quite different than it is today. A couple got married and rented while saving [...]
We recently ported MWI’s official blog from weloveblue.com to mwi.com/blog and switched from MovableType to WordPress (as we’re doing with all our blogs). The blog feed address is the same, so if you’re subscribed to the old blog you don’t have to change anything to maintain your RSS subscription to the new blog. One new [...]
If you’re a web designer or even just interested in web design, and you have some sort of tie to Utah, please join the new Utah Web Designers group on Linkedin.com.
If you’re in any way involved with search engine optimization / SEO and you have any sort of tie to Utah, please join the newly created Utah SEO group on Linkedin.com.
Recently I’ve created “LDS Entrepreneurs” groups on both Facebook and Linkedin. To join the Facebook group go here and to join the Linkedin group go here. As of this post the Facebook group has 42 members and the Linkedin group, which is growing at the rate of about 10 members per day, has 51 members. [...]
A few years ago a my father told me that he had been asked by an businessman friend of his how I was keep my business going in light of the competition from India that was going to be able to provide web development services for 1/20 the cost I was charging. That was several [...]
I wrote a week or two ago about how a simple and straightforward cancellation process makes it easier to acquire customers, not to mention leaving people with a feeling of goodwill. I suppose you could add that when companies have a reasonable cancellation policy then their customers also won’t post about their negative experience on [...]
I’ve been working from home for over a year now and it is absolutely wonderful. Amongst the myriad benefits are: 1. My four-month old daughter. This might become a challenge when she’s three and banging on my door. 2. Lunch with my wife. Not to mention being able to see her several times a day, [...]
Let’s say I own a house-painting company (I don’t, but let’s pretend) and you work for me. I charge my customers $100 per room to paint their house, and because I want your incentives as an employee to be aligned with the company’s incentives I pay you a per-room fee, just like the company gets [...]
On Monday congress will hold hearings on speculation in oil markets. Politicians hope this will boost their image with voters as it creates the impression that they’re doing something to bring the price of gas down, but as usual, the government has found a convenient scapegoat who they have no real intention of going after, [...]
I’m not sure why there is even a debate on this. Sure, I took economics classes in college, but I think I failed some of them and I still get this. I’m not surprised to hear Democrats coming up with strange explanations, but why Republicans can’t explain it or are failing to explain it is [...]
My wife’s family has these major family reunions every other year. The last two times we’ve had the reunion at the Hidden Springs Ranch in Altamont, UT. It’s a great place, really, except that it’s three hours from Salt Lake City and some of us drive Audis with cruise control modules that have burned out [...]
About a year ago I got into doing triathlons and in March I did a half-Ironman (I was hoping when I finished the race the announcer would yell out “Joshua Steimle…you are half an Ironman!” but they said something else). Apparently I’m not one of the only new triathletes around and the sport is growing [...]
I just canceled my membership at 24 Hour Fitness, but it wasn’t easy, and that makes me hesitant to sign up with them again the next time I’m shopping for a gym. It used to be that you could just call the main number on the website and cancel quickly. But this time I got [...]
18
Jun
Laundromat Marketing
Unless you’re a laundromat owner or know somebody who is, you can entirely ignore this post. If you’re a laundromat owner, then it’s likely you’ve got some sort of budget for marketing your laundromat, and most of that marketing budget probably goes towards yellow pages and coupons in Money Mailer. That is, if you do [...]
18
Jun
The Future of SEO
I think search engine optimization is going to follow the same path as web design, just 10 years behind it. When I started my web design firm in 1999 I thought I was on the cusp of being wildly rich and amazingly successful. After all, I knew other people who had started web development firms, [...]
One of our search engine optimization clients is an eating disorder treatment center located near Logan, Utah. They’ve been with us for years, and one of the reasons we work extra hard to keep them happy is that they pay us so darn fast. Case in point, we invoiced them yesterday, and we received the [...]
It’s easy to say I’m not going to vote for McCain until you read something like this. From the WSJ:“Globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers,” he said, and a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably. I don’t know about you, but that’s one [...]
It’s funny how you get an idea of how something could be done better, only to find out you’re completely wrong. A few years ago I started working on the idea for The SEO Consultants. The idea was fairly simple–a lot of small businesses can’t afford search engine optimization services at a price tag of [...]
If you’re a fan of the concept of results-oriented work environments (ROWE) then come join the Results-Oriented Work Environment Association group over at Facebook. The idea is to get people together who are in favor of companies being run in what is ultimately the only logical way to run a business–based on results.
I recently created groups on both Facebook and Linkedin for LDS entrepreneurs. The Facebook group already has 37 members but the Linkedin group is languishing a bit with a total of 2 members. Probably because Facebook makes it easier for someone to find a group and join (just go to Facebook and do a search [...]
John McCain, who apparently is qualified to be President because he was a prisoner of war, recently said in response to a question about whether he would enact a windfall profits tax on oil companies “Um, I don’t like obscene profits being made anywhere…” Let’s assume that oil execs are horrible, horrible people. Let’s assume [...]
I haven’t been posting much lately because I’ve been in the process of moving this and other blogs over to WordPress, which I’ve found over time to be vastly superior to MovableType (sorry guys). I’ve also been busy working on The SEO Consultants. The blog will function more or less the same with the same [...]
Unless you’re living in a cave or have taken the Four Hour Work Week to heart and have abandoned reading any news then you’ve heard about the new iPhone coming out July 11th. I have been interested in the next version of the iPhone not because it would be a 3G phone (i.e. faster Internet [...]
My web design firm has been using the project management tool Basecamp for a few years now, and I’m not sure a better tool could be created, at least not for our needs. We primarily use it for centralizing communications, as a file repository, and for storing contact information. It has many other features such [...]
Every year it seems that I switch cell phone companies and plans in an effort to get a better phone and better service at a cheaper price, and yet somehow I end up with lame phones and expensive plans with no real improvement in service. Well, let’s do it again. What would you recommend?
I just became aware of a trademark/branding issue that affects someone I know. I don’t know the guy well, by any means, but I know who he is, and I figured “Hey, I should probably let this guy know about this, just in case he’s interested.” So I went to his website, clicked through to [...]
Remember how a few week ago I set up temporary mail forwarding so that I could receive my mail in Ohio while I was out of Utah for a month? Well, it was easy enough to set up, but the experience afterwards has been less than ideal, which is a shame, because the post office [...]
Barack Obama has come under fire by the Clinton’s for being able to speak well but offer little in the way of actual ideas or policies. Rush Limbaugh this week claimed that liberals hate George Bush because he lacks talent when it comes to public speaking. At first blush, the idea that a great leader [...]
Now honestly, who would create an ad like this and honestly think “Yes, this is the type of woman who needs to lose 25 lbs.” Not that this topic is new. The controversy over marketing, its effects on young women, the apparent rise in diseases like anorexia and bulimia and the subsequent need for eating [...]
I was just turned on to Earth Class Mail, a service that scans your postal mail and shows you images of it online and then allows you to shred it or forward it to the location of your choice, by Chris Knudsen. I haven’t signed up yet, due to the lack of a Salt Lake [...]
Alright folks, laundromatic.com is just about ready to launch. It just needs a little testing by some people who haven’t been looking at it for several hours each week, which means I’m disqualified. As an incentive, I’ll award two prizes: 1. Best list of bugs – Whoever finds the most bugs in the system (either [...]
Over the past few months since I read The 4-Hour Workweek I’ve been experimenting with bits and pieces of it. At Thanksgiving I took my laptop and left “headquarters” for two weeks. I got my work done while a four hour-drive away and none of my clients or employees noticed. But seeing as how it [...]
Floridians are voting today in a primary battle that could play a crucial role in deciding the Republican presidential nominee. If Sen. John McCain wins, his status as the national front-runner will be cemented. If former Gov. Mitt Romney comes out on top, the battle for the GOP presidential nomination will be up in the [...]
1. Not updating your copyright. Nothing says “Our website isn’t very important to us” like having © 2007 well into February 2008. Changing it on January 1st says just the opposite. If you want to make life easy, get a script that automatically updates your copyright so you don’t have to. 2. Neglecting to update [...]
Contrary to past tech-support posts, I’m asking you a question, rather than answering one. I have Comcast high-speed Internet service at my home. We recently moved, and so I called Comcast to transfer the service to the new address, which happens to be about 100 feet away from the old one. Of course Comcast wasn’t [...]
Rush Limbaugh didn’t say they lack leadership experience, he said none of them were showing any particular leadership at the moment, and that if one of them were to step up and show some true leadership then the Republican primaries would quickly become a foregone conclusion. But he didn’t say anything about what that leadership [...]
Some say a recession (two quarters of negative growth) is coming. Some say it’s already here. And every time a recession comes around politicians start talking about how to “stimulate” the economy. I’m sure Ben Bernanke is a smarter guy than I am, but since when has that stopped me from spouting my opinions? So [...]
MWI just launched a few more of our simple directories, namely Boston web design firms, Boston SEO Firms, and Utah SEO Firms.
This is what I love about the government. Seriously, I’m not the greatest business owner, but compared to the government I’m the photo of fiscal responsibility.
So Arizona just passed a law that punishes employers who “knowingly” employ illegal immigrants or the “undocumented” as we now call them, as though all that separates legal immigrants and illegals is that the illegals misplaced their paperwork somewhere.
This post is purely an experiment in search engine optimization. Yes, I’ve talked about moving my business to Boston before, but it’s starting to get more and more serious and I think we might actually make it this year. And if’n I do, that means optimizing my SEO firm’s site for a new group of [...]
If you’re an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, what kind of entrepreneur would you want to be, given the following three choices, and assuming your financial compensation would be the same regardless of your choice?
A wise man once said “He who is offended when offense is not intended, is a fool; he who is offended when offense is intended, is also a fool.” I’ve had a number of experiences with various “business leaders” who, although successful financially, seemed to have limited capacity to receive criticism constructively.
Since reading The 4-Hour Work Week, which to me is a decent manual on creating a personal results-oriented work environment, I’ve been trying to implement more and more of it in my life. During the Thanksgiving holiday I spent two weeks away from my home office with nothing more than my phone and laptop. Most [...]
One of our clients, Parvus Corporation, is looking to hire a technical writer for $50-60K. “The job description would include working with both Engineering and Marketing to write product user manuals, customer case studies, application notes, datasheets, and maybe some Web content.” If interested, shoot an email to Mike (info below):
I’ll put this bluntly–you and your spouse should try this place out. MWI did the website for the Johnson Mill, a Utah bed and breakfast in Midway, which is right next door to Heber and just a few minutes from Park City, back around 2003. We’ve recently started providing SEO services for them as well. [...]
Gore has revamped the mansion he’s gotten so much flak about and has reduced his power consumption a whopping 11 percent. Is it just me or does that number seem rather insubstantial? But aside from that, this merely gives me a segue into addressing an issue I’ve been wanting to say something about for years, [...]
Perhaps you’re as surprised as I am that CompUSA is going out of business, and perhaps, like me, you become less and less surprised the more you think about it. Here are some of the more obvious reasons: 1. Competition. Everything at CompUSA can be bought somewhere else, and probably for cheaper. Local computer stores, [...]
I’m writing an article for Connect Magazine on results-oriented workplaces or “results only work environments.” Have you had any experience with one, or have you seen examples of workplaces where a results-focused approach is sorely needed? Post your experiences and you might get quoted in the article.
You might be an entrepreneur if…without trying you’ve succeeded in convincing all your employees to never try to start their own business. After all, for some of you this list along is enough to dissuade you of your entrepreneurial aspirations. But imagine if you had been a first-party witness to such going-ons.
I have Comcast’s business Internet service, and I love it. I can’t remember ever having an issue with it. I have 8-10 mbps down, and 1 mbps up for $160 per month. The problem is I’m not supposed to have that. You see, I called in two months ago and downgraded to their 6-8 mbps [...]
Yeah, I got a loan to start my business. Not just one, either. Lots of them. Looking back it makes me wonder if having a good credit score is all it’s cracked up to be.
Have you used StumbleUpon in ways that have helped your business? If so, I’m collecting StumbleUpon success stories.
I’m voting yes on Referendum 1 for school vouchers in the upcoming Utah elections. Yes, I actually have read and studied the full text of Referendum 1, or House Bill 148, unlike many other commenting on it, and that has only strengthened my support of it. Here are my reasons for voting yes: 1. The [...]
I’m a fan of sitting back every once in a while, looking at my life, and asking myself “If I could change one thing that would make a greater positive difference in my life than anything else I could change, what would it be?” But then I was thinking about how often it is easier [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…when a life coach tell everyone in the room “Think about what you would do if you had a million dollars in the bank–now go out and do that and don’t worry about the money” you get the impression you’re the only person in history who has actually done this [...]
29
Oct
Laundromatic.com
As I was saying, laundromatic.com is the second best domain I ever got a hold of, after mwi.com. Not that you, dear blog reader, would see it as I do, since you lack the glorious vision I have long held for what this domain name would become. Dare I share it? Promise not to steal [...]
I once owned radiohead.org. I sold it for $200 in 1999, thinking I had made a killing, seeing as how I had bought it just months before for $35. But alas, I was a fool.
A few weeks ago I said “Never has a book had more of an effect on me prior to reading it.” with regards to Timothy Ferriss‘ book The Four Hour Work Week. But now I’ve read it, and I still think it’s pretty good. Granted, it’s not for everyone, and there’s more swearing in it [...]
Hey Utah, be careful what you search for on Google because thanks to Google Trends we, and the Deseret News, can see exactly what you’re looking for, and it’s ain’t pretty. Apparently Utah is #1 in the nation when it comes to searches for things like “pornography,” “naked girls,” “striptease,” “topless,” “nude,” “strip poker,” “lingerie,” [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve told politicians that you’ll vote for them if they campaign for a 36-hour day. I really have, but I don’t think he took me seriously.
Apparently Utah SEO firm Vizad is setting up various blogs with “fake” content as part of their SEO methodology. That is, they set up a blog, make it look as thought it’s some person, post all sorts of content related to their clients along with contextual links, and in this way build up incoming links [...]
Sadly, it’s often tempting as a business owner to try and do too many things. The thought process tends to go like this–Well, we’re good at this, and this, and this, and this, and we’re not so good at this but we can do it so we’ll tell people we do it, and we can [...]
It’s official, for now…people trust newspaper ads more than they trust the ads they see in search engines courtesy of Google Adwords and the like, according to a study of marketing and advertising by Nielsen. At first I thought “Man, that’s surprising…and it stinks” but now that I think about it, yeah, I also trust [...]
I’m always looking for excuses to use the word “sundry” and this time it came as a result of an email from Kenny who asked me some questions regarding my previous posts on why SEO is a better business model than web development, why doing web hosting in-house was a nightmare, raising capital, and going [...]
As MWI does more and more search engine optimization work I’m starting to see distinct advantages to SEO over web dev.
04
Oct
The 4-Hour Work Week
Never has a book had more of an effect on me prior to reading it. Thanks Blake. It’s on hold in the library system, but there are 18 holds in front of me as of yesterday, so it might be a little while before I read it. But just the tidbits I’ve gathered here and [...]
As of today I’ve seen in happen in five days. It’s a brand new website on a brand new URL. The website has just a few pages of content. And yet if you search for “shoulder pain pump litigation” in Google you’ll see it there, smiling away in the #1 organic search result. I’ve covered [...]
The last time I wrote about the state of the Utah SEO industry was in May of 2006, so it’s probably time for an update, especially after all the activity going on just within the last month or two. There have been a number of Utah SEO firms that have popped up, along with a [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve slept in your office chair, or possibly a lobby chair (they’re generally more comfortable) overnight. As an entrepreneur you become an expert on what is the most comfortable object or surface to fall asleep on, other than a bed.
I just logged into my Linkedin.com account and noticed I have exactly 500 connections, which is something of a milestone for me, I suppose. Do I get to join some sort of special club or get an award or anything?
I bank at Zions Bank. I know, I know, they’re a monster. But it’s easier to stick with them and put up with the hassle than to switch, and I think they know who keeps them in business. My most recent frustration with Zions has to do with what happens if you make a deposit [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’re not sure why any of your employees continue working for you. One of the things I’ve been blessed with over the years, or cursed with depending on how you look at it, is a chain of highly loyal employees. A lot of them have stuck around a lot longer [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…your business has brought in more than a million dollars of revenue but you have nothing to show for it personally. When I was 21 I had a goal to make a million dollars by the time I was 30. I made that goal in a way, in that I [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve slept on the floor of your office more than once. Heck, I’ve slept on the floor more times than I can remember, although thankfully it’s been a while, plus I work from home now and I’m not so lazy that I can’t make it to the bed.
You might be an entrepreneur if…your wife feels guilty about buying a $9 pair of shoes at Payless even though her shoes are cracked on the bottom and you can see her foot through them. This happened last winter. I know it was winter because I remember thinking “Her feet have got to be getting [...]
You might be a shame-faced entrepreneur if…you’ve invited someone to lunch and then asked them to pay for it. Geez, this is so embarrassing I think I’m repressing the memory and forgetting the details of how it all came about. Kids, don’t do this. I mean, it’s one thing if you forget your wallet, but [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve taken out loans on both of your cars. Here’s how it works. “Sweetie, I need to make payroll in two days, and I’m $10K short. Can I make a cash advance on the credit cards?” “No, they’re all maxed out.” “What about our personal bank account’s overdraft account?” “You [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…your wife generally attends family functions by herself, even when it’s your family. Before I dive in, allow me to explain why I haven’t continued writing about this “you might be an entrepreneur if…” topic for a few months. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m a new man, and as such [...]
I’m looking for a web-based upload/download tool if anyone has any recommendations. Essentially I need someone I can easily integrate into a client’s website so that their site visitors can upload large files and then also download those files. Typical FTP is too cumbersome and confuses some of this client’s visitors, so I’m looking for [...]
13
Aug
I Tri Hard
Some of you have had the chance to sit down and talk with me about my recent transformation whereby I admit that up until recently I have been a blind idiot and now I’m just an idiot. Or something like that. Or to put it in Jack Handy’s words, I just figured out that “I’d [...]
Many of you have expressed interest as to how the move to a virtual office has gone. Now that I have completed the move and have been able to experience it for a full week or two here are my thoughts: Pros 1. The bathroom is closer. 2. If anything I’m getting more work done. [...]
The folks over at London Market (563 South 700 East in Salt Lake City) have rented an entire theater for the 12:01 AM Wednesday (that means you go Tuesday night and leave on Wednesday morning) premiere of the new Harry Potter movie at Jordan Commons. You want tickets? You can get them for $5 apiece [...]
I’m part of a group called My Troop Letters that creates opportunities for people to write letters to Utah soldiers who are overseas. We take care of collecting the letters and getting them to the troops at no cost to the letter writers. We had a booth at the Taylorsville Dayzz event last weekend and [...]
I’ve had our office’s Internet connectivity provided by Comcast’s business services division for about a year now and I love it. It’s less than $200 per month and speeds average between 6-8mbps down and are always 1mbps up. It’s hard to beat. However, I recently tried to change my billing address, and that was a [...]
Does anyone have any contacts with Utah Audi dealerships? I’m not looking for sales staff, I mean administrative types, marketing type, dealership owners, etc. If so, shoot me an email. I’ll explain why later.
If you could enter a contest for $500 simply by putting a link from your website to another website, and your chances of winning were roughly one in a hundred, would you take 30 seconds and do it? That’s my latest experiment in linkbaiting (see My Web Design Company Contest on the MWI blog for [...]
I bet that title has been used for some other article already, but I promise I came up with it myself. It’s official, MWI is going virtual. After seven years of having an office we have decided to leave it. Though we love it, there are a number of reasons why having an office doesn’t [...]
Dear Connect Reader, We are conducting a survey to determine the Connect Reader’s Choice Awards for the 2007 Connectory, Utah’s Premier Book of Lists. Your response would be appreciated. Here is a link to the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?A=196093830E75094 Thanks for your participation, Connect Magazine ——————— Now the real question is, who’s your dadd…? I mean, who’s [...]
Want a free lunch with yours truly? Now’s your chance. But not everyone will qualify. In order to qualify for the free lunch you must: 1. Be a complete stranger to me. That means we’ve never met, I don’t know who you are, and preferably I have never heard your name. However, if you do [...]
10
May
Walls
There’s the Great Wall of China, but there are bigger walls that do more to hold us back from achieving our goals and those are the walls we create in our own minds. You know how it works. You’re exposed to new information, and you get this feeling in your head that says “This is [...]
** UPDATE ** – The space has been leased. Windows open, windows close. Sorry folks. No, MWI is not going out of business. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me announce that I am moving the MWI to a virtual office setup. I’ve put it off for a long time, but [...]
We’ve got a few things over here at MWI that we don’t use anymore, most of which is in great shape but doesn’t do anything around here but clutter up the office. If you’re interested in any of it let me know. Office desks Miscellaneous filing cabinets Matching short black filing cabinets on rollers Folding [...]
Need some advice here…does anyone know of a phone system that works like a PBX system but can be plugged into an Internet connection? Yes, I know about Alianza, but they don’t deal with small companies any more. If you’ve used something or know of something I’d appreciate your input.
27
Apr
I’m a New Man
Sure, you’ve heard it before “I used to be that way, but I’m different now.” But seriously, I’ve been through some life-changing events that started in December of ’06. Not the kind of life-changing events one normally thinks of, like getting cancer, losing a loved one, or being publicly humiliated on national TV, but life-changing [...]
If you’re a designer, this song is for you.
We recently switched our corporate email to a hosted Exchange solution from AppRiver. It happens to be down right now (which is why I have time to blog), but this is still a positive review. Frankly, getting this Exchange server from AppRiver and having their spam filtering is one of the best things we’ve ever [...]
Well, I finally did it. I got neither a Treo nor a Blackberry but the Motorola Q. It’s been about two weeks ago and I’m liking it more every day, as opposed to other smartphones I’ve had in the past, the allure of which wore off as time went on.
I started my first blog, this one, with MovableType. To be honest it was kind of a pain to learn all the ins and outs of how to customize MT and get it to work the way I wanted, but once I learned, it was easy to set up other blogs on the same platform. [...]
Richard Dutcher, the guy who more or less created the LDS film genre, thinks Mormon cinema “has gotten too safe for its own good.” Filmmaker Mark Hale thinks the market for LDS films may be tapped out. Sorry guys, you’re both wrong. The reason LDS movies aren’t successful is because they stink.
MWI turns away approximately 75% or more of the web design requests we receive through our RFP form due to pricing issues. Since MWI’s pricing for a static, basic, corporate site starts at $15K (and we’ll probably raise it to $20K soon) that puts us out of reach of all but those clients with the [...]
21
Mar
I’m Moving to Boston
Well, maybe. With this type of thing nothing’s sure until it happens. If any of you are familiar with the area and have recommendations as to where to live, where my wife can find a job as a project manager, what the local gang signs are, etc., I’d appreciate your input. My wife and I [...]
Just a small matter of business here. When you post comments on this blog there is no need to include HTML code for line breaks. MovableType puts those in automatically, and therefore if you put in HTML code your comment will be spaced out twice as much as you intended. MovableType also automatically adds the [...]
You know, it’s interesting enough when your site gets ripped off, but when the very people ripping it off make extra efforts to bring it to your attention then you have to wonder if the ripoff artists are a few cigars short of a Cuban dictator. Below, you see the graphic for Ion Micro’s website, [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…every time your credit card works in a public place you feel an overwhelming sense of relief. Of course I’m talking about business credit cards, not personal credit cards. My wife manages our personal finances so those are always in good order. I, however, being of a somewhat riskier nature [...]
Warren Buffet says when he’s evalutating a business he looks at the cash. How much cash is coming in, how much is going out, how much cash is in the bank. Just knowing that much about the man might tell you why he didn’t get caught up in the dot-com mania. In a different way, [...]
You’re probably not like me, but if you are, you wonder how people are able to spend thousands of dollars per month on a billboard that can’t be read by anyone in a moving car or which is so ugly as to make customers less likely to buy the advertiser’s products. For those of you [...]
Just for the sake of variety, and the people who complain about the dark background, I switched things up a bit. Same colors, but in different places. Let me know what you think.
You might be an entrepreneur if…you pay all your bills on the last possible day you can, and you know all those dates by heart for each bill. Here’s a little test, just off the top of my head: Rent, due on the 1st of each month, but the landlord is pretty lenient and I [...]
I don’t usually beg, but please, please go listen to the brief Marketplace piece on what fonts to avoid using. Comic Sans might look fun and quirky to you, but it’s painful to the rest of us who have a smidgen of design sense.
I was invited to participate in the Entrepreneur Story 100 Profiles over at The Hundred Dollar Business, so here goes. I’m going to take the easy route and just answer the suggested questions. 1. What happened to make you start a business? It was a combination of experiences I had growing up and while in [...]
Somebody is finally making a movie spoofing the multi-level marketing industry, aka network marketing, aka get rick quick scheme, aka pyramid scheme, aka etc. Sure, it looks cheesy, overdone, and low budget, but still, I feel obligated to support the cause. I’d recommend going straight to the trailers.
I just posted a question regarding whether Salt Lake needs its own group similar to the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum on the Connect blog. If this is a topic of interest to you please head over there and read the post and leave your comments.
Marketplace, bless their hearts, ran a story a few weeks ago by Sarah Gardner about Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd proposing to make employers guarantee at least partial family-leave pay for mother’s who have a baby while working. Like most legislation pushed by the Democrats, it sounds nice if you don’t look too deep.
What happens when a locally-owned ISP / hosting company has a problem and 3,000 of their customers lose access to their websites and/or email? Trouble, that’s what. Customer’s websites are down. They can’t get email. They can’t access the Internet. Two of my web design firm‘s clients have called up and expressed emotions of panic [...]
This post is a question, not a statement. The question is how does one go about marketing a high-quality B2B product or service to customers who are at best price-sensitive, and at worst just plain cheap? Add to the situation that the product/service is a new offering, and the marketplace is already crowded with offerings [...]
To be honest, over the past few years I’ve gotten a bit lazy. In fact, I’ve always been lazy. That might not make much sense to those of you who know me as the guy who has worked 60-80 hr work weeks for the past four years while not taking a paycheck, but trust me, [...]
The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs is the title of a Q&A session with Rakesh Khurana, author of a new book titled Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs. Had I the time I’d like the read the book, but I barely have time to read the article, but read it [...]
I’m thrilled that lawmakers seem to finally be dealing with, or talking about dealing with, or at least planning on talking about dealing with the issue of healthcare costs and separating them from employment. Utah’s own Mike Leavitt spoke last Wednesday on the White House’s new ideas about healthcare. While I’m not sure I like [...]
Linkbaiting, linkbait, link bait, or whatever your term of choice, is pretty much what it sounds like–putting out bait in the hopes of getting links. Here’s an example: I just created a post on another blog called “If the 2008 Elections Were Based on SEO.” While perhaps not the most fascinating piece of literature you’ve [...]
I got my hair cut at Great Clips a month ago. While there, I heard somebody talking about a “touch up” policy I had never heard about before that allowed a customer to come back within a limited time period and get things touched up for any reason. I thought the time period that was [...]
I just started going to the gym after…man, how long has it been? I think the last time I was in a gym I was living on-campus at BYU, so this was probably around 2001 or so. In high-school I went to the gym for at least an hour per day, plus I was skateboarding [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you keep working on your business despite everyone around you telling you it’s a failure and you should just get a real job. “Have you ever thought about just shutting everything down and going and working for someone else?” That’s the way people usually phrase it. Oh they mean well, [...]
You’re here because you’ve heard one of the following terms–RSS, RSS feeds, subscribing to RSS, subscribing to feeds, subscribing to blogs, blogs, blog feeds, etc.–and you’re interested but don’t know where to begin. Well, you’ve come to the right place and we’re going to help you out. Useless Lesson #1 – RSS stands for “really [...]
For those who have asked whether DonLoper.com is the MWI blog or why I don’t just turn it into the official MWI blog, my response has been that I post about a lot of things on DonLoper.com, and much of it has virtually nothing to do with MWI other than a lot of my experiences [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you cut your own hair. I was going to say I don’t think my dad has paid for a haircut since 1949, but I’m not altogether sure he has ever paid for a haircut. I’m positive he hasn’t since I was born. He even installed a large mirror in his [...]
Dear Mr. Steimle, I come from a creative marketing/media background and recently went back to school to get my MBA degree. The final project involves creating and implementing a business plan for an integrated creative marketing agency such as MWI. I was hoping, if you have time (if not I understand) to give me some [...]
Rather than burying my thoughts in the comments of last week’s post on MWI’s 2006 financials I decided to create a new post because I think there are some things that may be of interest to other entrepreneurs. As I’ve had a chance to reflect on the MWI experience of 2006 there are a few [...]
Len Burman of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center spoke on the Marketplace Morning Show regarding the idea of indexing the minimum wage for inflation. That is, add a provision to the minimum wage law to make sure it adjust with inflation each year. After all, if we’re going to raise it anyway, why not have [...]
I’ve been inspired once again by SEOmoz’s open attitude and I too feel like sharing. Rand does it because “it fits with our philosophy and with our goals – to be as open as possible about everything that we do” but that’s not necessarily my reasoning. I figure it will be interesting to do, I’d [...]
Free presentation open to all attendees On January 18th MWI founder Joshua Steimle will give 20-minute presentation entitled “10 Search Engine Optimization Tips Anyone Can Implement” at the Corporate Alliance Hub in Provo, Utah (see http://carma.corporatealliance.net/contact.aspx for address). A question and answer session will follow the presentation. There is no need to RSVP and all [...]
Believe it or not, I like to use outdated technology. Why? Because it’s good enough for what I do. My cellphone is a free Nokia giveaway that I’ve had for three years. I’ve been using Outlook Express for years rather than converting to Outlook. But enough is no longer enough, and I’m converting. This week [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve wondered if there’s any way to rationalize picking up a tobacco company as a client. There are many types of companies I will never work with, and a tobacco company is just one of them. You can add alcohol, gambling/gaming/lottery, and porn companies as those I would rather than [...]
I am blogging on Connect magazine’s blog in the Web Marketing and SEO category and would welcome anyone’s requests or suggestions for content. After all, I can write stuff all day, but in addition to writing about what I think is important for people to know I want to write about what people are curious [...]
Two articles came out in the Deseret News this morning regarding a potential hike in Utah’s minimum wage. The first takes on the issue from the perspective of employers with the usual griping about how raising the minimum wage will hurt business owners, cause prices to go up, and result in layoffs, while the second [...]
And I quote… Ogden – December 28, 2006 – Ogden based Wadman Corporation has been awarded a 1st Place Marketing Communications Award by Society of Marketing Professional Services, Utah Chapter, for outstanding electronic general for their newly redesigned website. Criteria used to judge the entries included research and planning; implementation practices; budget and cost data; [...]
If you’re not into SEO you won’t be interested in this post. But if you are, then well, you’re in for a treat. The long-awaited SEO forums are finally up and running at http://forum.theorganicseo.com/. We’ve got tips, tools, and techniques forums on keyword research, link building, linkbait, and SEO tools. We’ve got forums on other [...]
I like to think that most of those who have met me think I’m a decent enough guy. I try to smile, I’m generally not very sarcastic, and I refrain from spitting, swearing, and burning flags. But I’m sure there are a few people out there who think I’m an absolute crook. I’ve come to [...]
26
Dec
All your friends tell you they wish they had your job, and you tell them you wish you had their’s
You might be an entrepreneur if…all your friends tell you they wish they had your job, and you tell them you wish you had their’s. I was visiting with a friend of mine a year or two ago. He had a six or near-six-figure salary, a $650K house that was half paid off, nice cars, [...]
Connect Magazine has launched a blog at ConnectBlogs.com. At the moment of this post it’s just barely getting started, so there aren’t a lot of authors on it yet, but I would look for it to have quite a few within the next month. Chris Knudsen already has his blog being syndicated throught the Connect [...]
You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve at least considered asking your life insurance agent whether the policy you just took out is still valid if you commit suicide. You know, Jimmy Stewart syndrome. Ok, first of all, I’m not suicidal. Man, everyone takes things so seriously these days. That’s why I put the line in [...]
I am not a professional copywriter, but I know when I don’t understand something. I respect those companies that can clearly and concisely communicate what it is they do and I admire the skills of the copywriter or marketer who creates good messaging. Getting your message across to the majority of recipients shouldn’t be a [...]
Here’s why I will soon be switching from T Mobile to another cell phone service provider, any provider, after being with them since 1999. I just listened to my wife cry, unable to continue speaking to the T Mobile sales rep, after spending an hour trying to get her phone replaced. We have both been [...]
18
Dec
Roll Call
There are at least 62 people who have subscribed to DonLoper.com since I switched to using FeedBurner to publish my feed. I probably don’t have a clue who more than 10 of those people are, but here’s your chance to let me and all those other subscribers know who you are. I’m inviting anyone reading [...]