Reviewed a small business web site

Just finished reviewing a small business website. It was pretty fun giving recommendations and not having to do the actual work. I think I'm going to do a lot more of these. There are a lot of small businesses out there that have created sites with no way of how to get traffic to them. Early in my days I wasted a lot of money paying for banner ads and clicks without a return on my investment. I don't recommend this type of marketing for any small business getting started on the web.


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General Morning Thoughts

Everything that I know how to currently do in my life is wrong when it comes to finances. It's so important for people to get the right teacher/mentor if you want to reach a place you've never been. I've always wanted to have a lot of money but it always seemed to be non-achievable. Now I understand why I couldn't get there. It's all about how you think about money and the life we live in. I wish I would have found mentors a lot earlier. I learned some tough lessons but I have to admit I learned a lot from these lessons.

General Thoughts

Had a pretty good talk with the two neighborhood boys yesterday. I hope they understood what I was trying to tell them. It's hard to sit back and watch kids make the wrong decisions without them understanding the consequences. Hopefully I got through to them.

Had a pretty good conversation last night with a small business owner. Explained to him some things he could do on his website. I'm going to review his site and let him know how to improve it. Pretty excited about this web stuff these days - it's actually pretty fun.

The difference

I've been thinking about what I will say this weekend when I give a small talk to some young people. I've narrowed it down to something very simple. The topic is keeping life simple and setting out in the world to make a difference in someones life. Each day you come into contact with many people. Out of all those people did you touch their life in some way that makes them want to do the same for someone else? If you can answer yes you did your job. If you answer no you need to try hard because their are plenty of people in the world today that need something positive in their life in this exact moment.


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Things going wrong

Have you noticed when you're on the path to making a difference it seems like everything starts going wrong? I must b making someone nervous - I'm about to get a break through.


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Time for change

It's time for me to change up this blog a little bit. I've been doing a lot of thinking about what have I done to give back to society. I've been blessed and have learned a lot of lessons that only life can give. Starting today this blog will be geared toward a dream I've had all my life. I've always been interested in helping people reach their dreams. Most people don't know that I actually did some personal coaching for about a year. I had to stop because I had a lot going on my life for while. While I was away from coaching I learned a lot of things and found myself in the process. The road that I have travelled has prepared me for some of the most difficult things that anyone could imagine. I realize being a web strategist is my job but personal coaching is my life. I feel like I let some people down when I stopped coaching but now I'm back and more prepared than ever. It's game time...


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Location:Cessna Blvd,Wichita,United States

Hmmm

People are always afraid on social media about what others are saying about them. It shouldn't matter as long as your doing your best and treating others the way you want to be treated. I know that's the lesson that my mother told me way before social media ever existed.

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Location:S Breckenridge Ct,Wichita,United States

Working away

I've been spending a lot of time working on my site and writing communications. Saturday was a great night at Riverside Perk checking out Elliot Road. Even though I was working I had a lot of fun. I've been wondering what it would feel like to be passionate about something - I believe I've found it.


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Location:S Breckenridge Ct,Wichita,United States

Daytime General Thought

Today I was home from work - wasn't feeling to well. After doing some reflection I had some time to really think. How can an outside web consultant really give you advice without knowing anything about your client/customer. How can they give you a really good recommendation without knowing anything about the customer base of the company they are designing a website for?

Sunday Morning Listening

I've been up for a while this morning listening to Elliot Road. I had to check them out on Itunes to understand completely the group that I'm writing about. To be a good writer my thoughts are that you must experience completely the subject you are writing about. How could I write about a group that I hadn't listened to their complete CD? So I went out and purchased it this morning and have been listening to it ever since. I've never really been a fan of folk music until now. The music is very relaxing and calms my soul. Tonight I should be ready to sit down and begin to write the web communications for this group so make sure to check them out on my facebook fan page or jhasmal.com this week. The "Dust Covered Man" is a wonderful CD and I'm appreciative to have the opportunity to write about it.

Is Twitter really worth it?

I still don't completely understand Twitter. I'll probably get some nasty messages for saying it but it still doesn't make much sense to me. Who is the audience on Twitter? Do people really pay attention to Twitter feeds or they just follow people with the intent of trying to trick someone to follow them. If everyone is Tweeting who is actually reading the stuff. I do have a Twitter account and I'm following 6 people but no one is following me. I don't blame anyone for not following me because I have some boring post and really no posts for months. I've been keeping an eye on Twitter assuming they will make a change for me to completely see its value.

Apple communicates the best

I always look for companies that are doing their communications better than anyone else. Apple is doing a really good job of getting individuals to dream about their product. They do this on the web by giving you a video and presenting the glamour of the product and what it would feel like to own it.

Apple is not only using its technology to challenge the norm but their efforts in marketing and communications support the vibe of its technology.

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

Wikinomics - Kind of deep

So I just started reading a new book. I probably read a new book every two months. This time the book on my list is WIKINOMICS by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. This books is pretty deep so if you don't like talking about technology it's not for you. Considering of fascinated with communications and sites such as Twitter and Facebook this book is heaven. It's interesting to get real life example of how companies have used social media type sites to get answers to problems. The collaberation of individuals is very interesting. Even though some companies have figured out the benefits of social media there are other companies that are lagging behind. It seems like very large companies havent figured out that this is something that must be embraced. The question is how do you use these new outlets for communication. For individuals like me it's exciting and scary at the same time. As an employee for a large company it's scary because your job could be at stake for introducing these tools to management if it fails. From an individual entrepreneur perspective it evens the playing field for me to be competitive at a great cost - free.

It's hard...

It takes a lot of hard work and patience to build something that you're proud of. I remember rushing to build websites in the past that weren't something I was proud of. Many of the sites looked like a second grader built them. Now I finally have started putting my heart and soul into my website (www.jhasmal.com). This site is a part of me and I'm proud to put my name on it. It's the flagship to my future and I can vision big things coming from it.

I try to do something at least twice a week on the site. It's kind of hard to keep up so I find myself on some weekends staying up pretty late to work on it. I have my first client that I'm doing a communications campaign for. It's a small business going under the name of River Park Studios. They make wonderful blankets for babies.

Well, I guess it's time for me to stop blogging and get back to building my site.

Saturday Thought

It's not all about the fancy terms such as SEO, HTML, Flash that get people interested in a website. People come to websites for information. What is it that your site has that another doesn't. Is it a particular item for sale or news that can't be found anywhere else. If you are thinking about building a website make your site unique.

Making moves and helping small businesses

So now I've started to really working on creating a brand. It's a brand not only for my website but for other sites that I want to help create their own brand. I've approached a couple of small businesses that are just starting off. They have their own sites but have no communication plan for these sites. I'm going to create a plan to help them start building a brand presence online.

Phase one of the approach is using facebook to get my current followers aware of a new product. I don't count on any of my friends buying their product. What is more important is to get my friends talking about my clients product or thinking about it. I need them to start talking about the product - that's free advertising. This is why communications is very crucial to any small business just starting off. Many small businesses will use all of their financial resources paying for marketing campaigns that won't get them any results. Communications is a minimal investment with ability to provide a large return.

Phase two is to write news about clients on the website www.jhasmal.com. I need to get as much as exposure as possible to the small business. I'm also trying to pace myself when writing about each client not overwhelming the audience.

Making Moves

It has been a little while since my last post. A lot has changed sine the last posting as well. Google has finally come around to take a look at my home page. Now if someone goes to Google and types in "Jhasmal" in the search box my website is the first listing they will see. I need my website to be first because my name is going to be my brand. I have also spent a little bit of money by going to flashden.com and purchasing a pre-made template and making changes where I see necessary. I want to spend more on the writing of content instead of the design.

Sitemap Submitted

I hadn't had a lot of time to write on my blog but I have been working on www.jhasmal.com

Now that I have three pages created on the site I submitted a sitemap to Google. This allows you to tell Google what pages you have on your website just in case it doesn't find them all. Considering I only have three pages for the entire site I'm not concerned about it not finding a page. The reason that I submitted a sitemap is to let Google know that my site is out there.

An example of the sitemap can be viewed by clicking the link below.
http://www.jhasmal.com/sitemap.xml

Let's Talk Site Numbers

If I didn't share any numbers this wouldn't be a valuable project. So www.jhasmal.com has been up for about three days now. On the first day I'm going to make the assumption there was probably one visitor which would have been myself. On day two I'm still not sure because I was just getting the analytics piece in place. On day three it reported there was 17 visitors. These are small numbers for what I'm used to dealing with. I know there is plenty of room for me to grow this site into a power house of traffic. I'm just getting started... Keep in mind that I have traffic without using Pay per click which many sites are doing. I'm still waiting for Google to come around and index the page for the search engine. Once Google comes around the number of traffic will increase.

Don't worry about a fancy site with bells and whistles

I'm on a budget and as you can see www.jhasmal.com is nothing fancy. I chose to keep it like that because most people won't be able to have a high quality site once they begin. I want to focus on the value of the content on the page. I'll go back and make it look pretty once I can justify the extra cost. I have about $20 invested in this site so far and have made about $3 in return.

Don't get caught up with hiring a graphic designer and having a $1,000 website. Right now your focus should be how do you generate the outcome that you want. If you are selling a product how do you get your niche market to come to your site and purchase your product. The answer is building a relationship with your customer prior to them coming to your site. If the customer trusts you they will already have their mind made up that they want to purchase before they get to your site. You don't believe me? Think about how many times you purchased something on the web or in a store. You already know what you want before you get there - you are just trying to get it for the right price.

I sent out a link to a couple of selected individuals. Some found nothing while others found typos. I did this to help me get some feedback. I needed them to recognize the issues that I couldn't see so I could have a chance to fix them before everyone else had a chance to see them.

Recommended Reading

I do a lot of reading and research. Occasionally I like to share the books that I believe are very valuable to the internet marketing industry. The New Rules of Marketing and PR is a book that I have a lot of respect for.

Late Night Wrap Up

So it's a little late but I needed to do a step before I would forget. I went to Google and registered my site so it would get indexed. You can do this by signing up in Google and then choose the Webmaster Tools. Since my site is fairly new I need all of the help I can get with Google. For sites that have been around for a while with a strong brand and a volume of link backs this step isn't as important.

I also went and set up Google Analytics so I can see what type of traffic I'm dealing with. These two items are absolutely free so they are a must.

Seth Godin on blogging

Are you still trying to figure out whether you should blog or not? Maybe this little clip will help you come to a conclusion.

Step Two

I'm in the process of writing my page to be shown on www.jhasmal.com. I'm not waiting for that to be completely done before I take another step. I had a minute and I went over Twitter and took the URL twitter.com/jhasmal and now we are making some progress. Remember, it's all about the brand. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the Twitter URL yet but I want to make sure no one else grabbed it as they see www.jhasmal.com start to gain exposure. There are a lot of people who try to make money off other people's brand so it's important that you protect yourself early.

Step One

The first thing I'm going to do is use a URL I've had for a while. The URL I'm going to use is www.jhasmal.com. The first thing I'm going to do is setup up an HTML page for myself. My goal is to get this web page in the top 3 search results at least in the next 6 months. I don't really care how pretty the page is I'm focusing on the text. The text on the main page will focus directly on "Jhasmal" the brand. Who is "Jhasmal", the internet business strategist and social media expert.

Why is this URL and page so important? This is the beginning of brand creation. Brand is something that you won't find is SEO books but it's so important. If you don't remember anything else from this blog keep in mind that BRAND is everything. If your BRAND is solid your website links pointing back to your site will be solid as well. You can try to do what those other books tell you to do but it's not easy to get a webmaster to link back to your site by sending him/her an email. In the real world a respectable website or company isn't going to give you a free link just because you asked.

The Project Begins

It seems like the same discussion happens over and over again with websites. How do you do SEO and how do you get people to your website. I've purchased many books over my career and many of them weren't really of any value. There were a few books that helped me tremendously. After many years of honing my craft I've figured out a system. As part of a project I will build a site using a system step by step to get the traffic and show how I did it. I'll explain on the way why to do certain things and why it's important. What makes my project different than the other SEO websites out there? My background gives me an advantage that most professionals don't have. I'm trained to be and Information Technology expert but I've transitioned to be a communications expert. Communications is the key to getting traffic - trust me. It's one thing to have cool tools like social media but you have to know how to communicate in a manner to get other people to use the tools on your behalf. I'm going to show you - stay tuned...

So, here are a couple of my tools. You don't have to use these tools but these are what I call my secret weapons. I'm going to use a Macbook, iPad, and Windows 2003 server. These are what I use to keep me on track. The server is used to keep my data safe that I'm writing. Content is the key and it must be worth while for your audience. The iPad is used so I can blog anywhere at anytime over the AT&T 3G wireless. When I have a thought I don't have to wait until I get home I can instantly communicate with my audience. The Macbook is my main tool - the device that is the window into my reality. I'm using Microsoft Word to type my thoughts and get them out. I'm not typing out HTML but working on a strategy. How to get from step A to step Z.

So I've been thinking a lot about my degree the last couple of days. I've always thought it was just a piece of paper. Now that I'm older I understand that it's more than that. A degree has the ability to open the door to opportunities that you may would never experience. To all the young readers I encourage you to go to college and get your degree.

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Location:S Breckenridge Ct,Wichita,United States

SEO Trickster

I love websites and search engines and I love to eat. So I'm sitting here searching for cookies on Google to see what will come up. Near the top of the list is Mrs. Fields (www.mrsfields.com). What makes this website rank higher than any other website using the term cookies? I'm starting to be convinced that it's more than using the right keywords to get a high position on a search engine. I'm thinking that your brand loyalty has a lot to do with it as well. Cookies is such a generic term it's hard to figure out how a search engine can go through a site and know to rank it higher than another site without a little help or a hint.

Playing to win

Life is a game... Is your strategy strong enough to beat life at its own game? This question I had to ask myself after a lot of things that happened to me in the last couple of years. I started to really change the way I've been playing the game. I'm no longer playing the game to maintain because now I'm playing to win. I'm also trying to coach my dearest friends to win as well. Stop waiting to win the lottery and start using those dollars to buy more assets. The more assets you have the stronger your game will be. Get in the zone now and start being a contender and not a chump on the bench. This was a very hard lesson for me to learn and I don't want to have a repeat of what got me here. The rule that I have for myself is build, build, build and the return on investment will begin to show itself. If you don't believe me dust out the old monopoly game and see what you learn.

Application Coming

It's been a while since my last post. Things have been a little busy with my job and building my own application. I'm in the the middle of building an application to compliment my workbook. The application will be an interactive version of the workbook on www.Jhasmal.com

I've never been a strong programmer. Time is very important so I needed to figure out a way to build this app quickly and easily. I'm very excited to launch this app very soon.
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Are you really social

So you've jumped on the band wagon of your favorite site such as Facebook or Twitter. You spend all day posting but never reading anyone else's postings. If you are doing this your missing the point. As an Internet Strategist I use postings from other people to understand their wants and needs. If you understand their needs you can understand how your product or service may help them. Take the time to be a better listener on the Internet and you'll see things you've never seen before.

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Location:S Breckenridge Ct,Wichita,United States

Communicate with your site

In 2000 I was completely engulfed by technology. I dreamed about being the best web developer for the company that I worked for. HTML was the only thing on my mind. In 2010 my focus is more on understanding how to use websites to reflect the brand and using them to communicate with the customer. It's amazing how many companies still haven't figured out that communication is what's important in their web strategy. It's not about how pretty your site is that's old school thinking.


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Location:S Webb Rd,Wichita,United States

Start to Compete

So you want to be able to compete in this world and build your wealth. The first thing you need to do is get in touch witht the things around you. You need to understand what's going on around the world. Pick up trade journals and review information such as the Wall Street Journal. Issues in the world have the tendancy to effect everything that you are doing. For me to put it into a simple form, "Issues effect your money".

Mad Money

It's all about the Mad Money... The fast talking and loud and crazy stock expert. Check out the website and view his show.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15838459

You have a choice

There's always a choice in everything that you do. Everyday you make a choice to go to work or not go. You make a choice to brush your teeth or not brush them. So if you don't believe that you have a choice to be financially stable you are wrong.

What's your choice? Decide today to be financially healthy.

How to Be a Savvy Cheapskate

I like to read yahoo finance and came across a good article. The article is, "How to Be a Savvy Cheapskate" by Katey Marquardt. I really enjoyed these tips on thinking about about money.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-to-Be-a-Savvy-usnews-3454225752.html?x=0

Don't be like everyone else

When you try to keep up with the Jones's you'll end up in the same place as the Jones's.

In debt...

Your dream is your happiness

What's your dream? Your dream should be a representation of where you want your life to end. What do you see yourself doing and the things that you will have? Dreams are powerful - when you stop dreaming this is a sign that your life has stopped. Your life should always be filled with dreams of things that you wish to achieve. A dream is the starting point to something that you would like to build or do. As long as you continue to dream about something you will continue to find a way to achieve your dream.

Quick Thought

Life is like a sports game, there is the first half and the second half. In the first half you try to get a feel of the situation. During this time you make a lot of mistakes and do some crazy things. The second half you try to come out and minimize your mistakes and take the things you learned in the first half and capitalize on them.

In your life are you in the first half or the second half?

Invest in yourself

To get on the path to success you must always invest in yourself first.  Give yourself a chance to be able to produce the most income as possible.  The way that you do this is by receiving an education whether it's a trade or college.  Education will put you on the path to receiving a high wage for the service that you provide.


Another way to invest in yourself is to read books.  Read as many books as you possibly can on other people who are successful.  Look to see how they became successful and if you can use part or all of their technique to do the same thing.

New cars are only cute for a season

When I was in my early twenties I made a mistake that I didn't understand until it was years later.  I went out and purchased a brand new car on credit.  I loved the car but realized by year two the car wouldn't be worth near what the loan total was.  It was too late, I was locked into a car payment that I really didn't need.  Remember, the name of the game is to build your money army to be strong.  If your army is strong enough you don't need credit to purchase a car.  CASH IS POWERFUL If you decide to use credit it's only to increase your credit score which should be part of your long term strategy.  If you don't believe me go to the mall and drop your credit application on the floor and see if anybody takes it.  Turn around and drop $100 on the ground and see how quickly someone will pick it up.

Think about it like this - how often do you see people buy cars and as soon as they are paid for end up trading them in on another one?  They've purchased a car that depreciates in value - pay it off and then turn around and get rid of it to start the whole process over again.  That's a path for failure...  Your car is NOT an asset but more of an expense.  How often do you put gas in your car?  How often does your car break down?  How often do you make a car payment? A car creates many casualties in your army.  If you are going to purchase a car figure out how to minimize your casualties. STRATEGY STRATEGY STRATEGY

*An asset is something that will make money for you and preferably with no effort on your part.

Rule 1: Every month take a percentage of your money to invest in your army first.
Rule 2: Create a strategy
Rule 3: Improve strategy
Rule 4: Repeat steps 1 and 3

Going beyond your job - build an army - Part 1

Jobs are a good starting point to create a living.  For a person who wants to build wealth you have to push yourself to think beyond a job.  Look at a pay check as a building block to something bigger.  Determine how to invest your money into something that can grow.  Each dollar in your paycheck is what I like to call a recruit in your money army.  It's your job to figure out how to grow your army to be large and very powerful.  Most people do the opposite and spend a money recruit every chance they get.  When you spend a recruit look at it as a casualty.

Do you ever think ahead determining how long you will need to continue to work?  Do you consider what would happen to your lifestyle if you lost your job?  These questions will help you to understand why you must increase your money army. 

Money should be thought of as a tool to conquer a situation not as a reward to buy things.  There are simple things that can be done to increase your money army.  What if you took $20 per pay check and put it in a savings account in another state?  How much money would that accumulate in 10 years?  Start off simple and work your way up to bigger things.  Does uncle Sam hold your tax refund for you every year?  If he does how about taking the refund and put it into a mutual fund or Certificate of Deposit (CD) every year?  Since you are letting uncle Sam have your money for free with no interest you should figure out something to do that will benefit you in the long run.  IF IT DOESN'T MAKE A RETURN IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

Something to think about...
"A person with a large army doesn't waste time worrying about things a person with no army or a small army does." - Jhasmal Hardyway

Is Failure due to your inability?

We tend to believe failure is due to our inability to do something well.  In many cases this isn't true...  Failure depends on whether you are willing to take the initial action to start.  There are times that if a person would make an attempt and repeat until success is achieved they would be better off.