Archive for July, 2010

What the Fax?

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

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Boy and Fax In this day and age, faxes are still surprisingly widely used.  Should you have a fax machine to run your business?  Not necessarily.  I’ve got the solution to all your faxing needs and it’s not expensive.

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Public Business Hours for Your Fake Business

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

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Closed It’s been a while since I’ve posted under the “stealth” tag.  If you’re unaware, these stealth posts are for businesses made up of just one or two people that try to give the illusion of a thriving office environment, instead of just a living room/office.

Most businesses have 9-5 business hours.  It’s not necessary that you post business hours on your site.  And responding to customers during business hours may be difficult, depending on your day job, service or technology.

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Rasmus Lerdorf joins Earndit as Advisor

Monday, July 12th, 2010

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Rasmus Lerdorf On June 30th, Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of the PHP programming language, joined Earndit as advisor.

You may remember my interview with Earndit back on April 7th.  The free service tracks members’ exercise (jogs, runs, walking) and offers rewards in the form of discounts on great products.

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Professional Design at a Bargain

Friday, July 9th, 2010

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Don’t use photos of people pointing at computers Don’t use photos of people pointing at computers

You’ve come up with a brilliant startup idea, and perhaps have even completed the site, but at this point it’s just working wireframes.  It’s ugly.  It’s time to employ your design skills to make it appeal to people.  But if you’re like me, your design skills are not up to the task?  So what do you do?  Hire a design firm at thousands of dollars?  That could work but it kind of goes against the cheapskate theme I have going here.  What you need are some attractive, ready-made site designs!

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Don’t Let Your Startup Get You Sued

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

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Come to Order! As I mentioned a few months back in I’m a Startup Rancher, I tend to create startups, let them run for a while, and see if they have any traction.  Some flop due to difficulties in the business model, or in the marketing, or just because I didn’t solve a problem that many people had.  So the failed startups get taken offline and are heaped onto the compost pile.  But once you have paying customers, turning off a service that people depend on can have big consequences.

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Email Marketing and Newsletters, Part II

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

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My last post covered getting your email campaigns out on your own.  Today will cover all-in-one email services.  These services will handle subscribes/unsubscribes, email composition, CAN-SPAM compliance, will keep your email looking consistent across many email clients, send email for you, and keep analytics on opens, bounces, and clicks.

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