The RankSpank: What a skank!
March 13, 2008 | Posted by Kenneth | Be the first to leave a comment
If you have been following the RankSpank Story on this and other blogs, then you should enjoy this wonderful video created by staff at PayPerPost in their own time! It’s enjoyable, light-hearted but very pointed!
Tri-Cities Real Estate: buying and selling great houses
May 6, 2007 | Posted by Kenneth | Read this comment
In early April, Colleen Lane contacted me and asked to me to review the Tri-Cities Real Estate website, which you can see at the top of the blog, and in the sidebar.
After visiting such a beautifully crafted website, rich in visual media, careful coloring, and pleasing welcome page, I have to say that this website is perhaps the most visually attractive website that I’ve had to review, and I believe it surely reflects the natural beauty of its home state.
Tri-Cities Real Estate, based in Washington State (one of the loveliest states with its low population density, extensive reservations and wonderful scenery), provides Real Estate services in Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland.
I like the URL which is simple and easy to remember. The only problem with the URL is it doesn’t tell you what the website is… but then you likely already know when you visit it. Theirblog is updated regularly, but uses a different theme, so it looks out of character with the rest of the website.
One of the reasons a book like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” has succeeded is by personalizing the story, by creating characters, and events, and narrating the story. People are drawn to a story, rather than to cold, dry facts, lists and explanations; it would be nice if this website could play up this angle of the ’story’ and show us how Tri-Cities Real Estate really does make a difference in the life of its customers! That would help to show their customers how they actually solve problems.
As a resource, the website is literally stuffed with articles on ALL aspects of moving house, including fixer-uppers, real estate lawyers, and even Debt Ratios. You could spend quite some time just reading around the articles. In fact, all the content is unique as well, and there are some interesting things to play with such as the Google Locator Map, and the search function which had me searching for a lot of nice houses in my (ideal) price range. So 
Colleen, do you have any good property for a British expat with not much cash?! Well, I found that there are quite a few bungalows (single floor houses), which would appeal to my wife. Why don’t you head on over and check out the fine houses of Washington State. I was also surprised to find that Kennewick’s sister city is YingKo, Taiwan. It’s like a stone’s throw from my wife’s home, and is the home of pottery in Taiwan.
So search away on their website, you can search and register for looking at properties on their website easily and quickly using their search engine. The images, information and website are all responsive and tidy, making it easy to thumb through many properties in your price range. Since their servers are quick, you’ll find it a pleasure, not a drag.
So if you are thinking of Washington State as a place to move to, check out the real estate first, courtesy of Long Term Capital Growth !
Sponsored by Tri-Cities Real Estate.
Review: CardGuide.co.uk - fresh, responsive and useful
April 10, 2007 | Posted by Kenneth | Be the first to leave a comment
Credit Cards provide a convenience, a record and many valuable services for their members, not including the actual revolving loan features. When you consider the loan facilities typically provided, it is easy to see why credit cards have replaced checks and debit cards have not been as popular. In fact, credit cards have replaced even cash on most larger purchases. I daresay there are even people who bought a cappuccino on a credit card! So credit cards are perhaps the most convenient way to keep up with the demands of the modern society and as anyone who likes shopping knows, it’s much easier to sign a credit card voucher than fumble for coins and notes in your wallet or purse!
With so many different types of credit cards available,CardGuide offers a website that helps UK users find good credit card deals. CardGuide recently purchased a link on this website, and in return, I promised a review of their website as a way to say ‘thank you’. As you know, this is a good deal for them: they get a year’s link plus a permanent entry on my blog. Blog entries really do help backlinks and PR rankings.
CardGuide’s Raison-d’etre is the list of credit cards that they offer 
as you will see from the graphic below. In fact, the database allows viewers to rank and sort the available choices by the type of features that they are looking, say, 0% offers , cashback, etc. It works quickly and intuitively just and the page seems to reload quickly, too, so visitors will find that this tool simple and natural. The results are laid out in a table below, with information about each of the offers and an apply now button on the right. Of the four offers that I clicked, I was taken to application forms as promised in each case. This might seem a dumb thing to say, but in a recent review, a similar website advertising loans couldn’t keep their information uptodate. In fact, many of the loans were withdrawn. It’s important to keep information timely for this kind of business, otherwise potential clients will simply walk. In addition, to the offers, there are a number of credit card articles that are worth reading, and unique to the site. A google search revealed that several of the articles were in fact unique to this site.
Challenges
There are three challenges, some of which are easy to remedy, but the first one is perhaps not so easy.
Perhaps the UK Credit Market is smaller, but there weren’t that many credit card offers, and once ranking by feature was introduced, the number of choices was further limited. Also, I noted that there were quite a few major banks not represented in the list, including HSBC. Obviously, part of the problem is that credit card offers aren’t always available, as they are special offers! The counterbalance is that the information seems very fresh, although choice is more restricted. If your customers aren’t attached to a particular provider then for the webmaster, this shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t know if the webmaster is working with one or more affiliate programs, like Commission Junction, but it would be a good idea to look at others, too.
I noted that the website has a newsletter feature that users can subscribe to, as well as RSS feeds. Both of these really will help to bring back users to the website but please give these prominence. Both of them are tucked away at the bottom of the page. Can these go at or near the top of the page? I think subscribers are more likely to find them there than elsewhere!
Your Google Ads could be better placed. Obviously, the Google Ads could be seen as competitors in some respects to your affiliate links. Larger google boxes like the square or rectangle boxes placed alongside the text (like the graphics in this review) would result in more click-throughs for Adsense, and higher Adsense Revenue. Also, you should place the Ads (whichever form) above the crease. In many cases, this will lead to a higher CPC ratio. Google Ads seem to ‘know’ where they are on a page.
Lastly, and most importantly, get a Privacy Policy on your website. A link next to your sitemap will suffice, but a clear statement of your privacy terms will increase the confidence levels of your visitors, even if they don’t visit it. Also, as I found out from Commission Junction, not having a privacy policy on my websites limits the offers that I can receive from financial institutions, many such institutions are restricted by their own rules from dealing with sites that do not offer a privacy policy. My own blog really needs one, too. In fact, if you collect any kind of personal information, including names, email addresses, etc., you really should have one. I’m working on mine at the moment.
Summary
Overall, this is a nicely laid out website, very responsive with fresh offers and unique articles. For the webmaster, finding more juicy offers and improving your ads/rss/subscriptions placements on the site should result in much higher traffic, returns and click throughs on both ads and applications.
Sponsored Post.
SEO: Where does your traffic come from?
April 4, 2007 | Posted by Kenneth | Read this comment
I just did an analysis of my traffic over the past 30 days to see where it was coming from. Interesting reading. I discovered that nearly 88% of my traffic occurs from just these six types of sources. Let me explain what these types are.
1. Forum traffic provides about 13% of my total traffic. Forums are communities of people who share like interests. I’m a member of quite a few communities but I don’t always check in. Forumosa, Digital Point, Payperpost, Adsensechat, TESOLTeachers, Steve Pavlina’s forum, among others. I’ve joined other communities, too, but I can’t remember what they are! Typically, I include my web address in the profile section, but recently I started including the most recent postings as part of my signature file to generate interest.
2. Blogs of course provide a lot of traffic, too. About 13% but much of this comes from links in articles, blogrolls, and comment traffic. Backtracks also help. The blogging community is too big to really point to any significant blog traffic from one particular blog.
3. Direct traffic accounts for 20%, but I’m still trying to find out what that means exactly. Anyone?
4. Traffic Generators are sites like Blogmad and Blogsoldiers type websites which aggregate information about blogs and direct traffic in different ways. These account for 14% of the traffic to this blog. But Blogmad and Blogsoldiers also use a surfbar type method which displays the blog for a short period of time. They do generate traffic, and some visitors, but the quality of the traffic is poor. Typically, visitors only see the first page in the rotator script, and that’s it. Views per Visit are typically little over 1. I foresee shortly ending the website’s relationship with these types of website.
5. Technorati on the other hand is a blog directory and search engine website that really does generate better quality traffic. In addition, they help rank the blogs according to how many people have also linked to your blog. Technorati brought about 7% of the traffic to the blog.
6. Surprisingly, or not, search engine traffic brought large shares of the traffic, with the lion’s share going to Google search traffic. Nearly 20% of the traffic came from Google Search alone. Wow! I hadn’t done much to improve those rankings except the obvious stuff: linking, blogrolls, directories and postings. For the term “investorblogger.com” Google produces 16,100 hits… Mmm.
What activities do you use to generate traffic? Have you tried any of these? What worked for you? What didn’t?
Fixed Asset Software: Not as taxing as it could be!
April 4, 2007 | Posted by Kenneth | Be the first to leave a comment
Today when I went shopping, I found myself looking at fire extinguishers in the supermarket. Not the ones that you buy but the ones set aside as emergency equipment by the store. As I looked, I noted that each of the four extinguishers in my vicinity had a label with a number on it. Each number was different, yet the numbers contained a regular pattern.
So I got to thinking: how does a large supermarket chain, like Safeways or Carrefour or TESCO, or indeed any large company, create and administer inventory labels across hundreds of stores, in dozens of states or countries, for equipment like fire extinguishers, etc.? My own business is quite small, so we can pretty much recall everything in the business by memory down to the dusters and markers. But that’s because we literally bought everything ourselves, item by item.
In essence, our heads contained an ‘unofficial’ database of the fixed assets. In a larger business, a solution like fixed asset software would be the most appropriate way to handle the situation.
With IMSolutions.Net, you wouldn’t just get the software though. If you have a large inventory, they will do an actual inventory for you as they did for Ben & Jerry’s St.Albans plant when they provided on-the-factory-floor support in the planning and execution of their asset tagging project. The kind of support they can extend for physical inventories included software, training, scanners and barcoding equipment. In fact, the supporting staffing required for the project ensured that Ben & Jerry’s manufacturing team could focus on their own job while the entire process was conducted.
Now you are wondering why you might need to do an inventory at all. In fact, for all business, keeping an accurate track of the fixed assets is essential. It will allow the business owner enough depreciation on equipment and assets purchased, thereby creating an accurate assessment for tax purposes. Also, it will help you control your business costs more accurately when you purchase business insurance to cover your business assets. Lastly, and not least, you will know much more clearly the assets that your business has, thereby allowing you to make better decisions on purchasing, maintenance and administration of your fixed assets. A good example of how such information helps directly would be the annual insurance premiums that you pay: you would be able to avoid spending money on excess premiums, allowing the saved cash to go straight to the bottom line. Now that’s bound to bring a smile to your shareholders’ faces.
A good inventory therefore can help you save money in at least three ways: from taxes, insurance costs, and administration costs over the life of the business. Do you know where your fixed asset inventory is? If not, why not?
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