Zion, IL
By A.B. Dada
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I’ve always loved working in the United States, but lately there is a great fear I hear about from other consultants, employees and business owners: will be enter a heavy recession?

The games that the Federal Reserve has played with money supply growth and interest rate mangling is leading us in the direction of a bad recession. Historically, recessions were staved off artificially with an increase in available credit and a lowering of interest rates to instill consumer confidence in spending. Easy money, at low price, gives people a reason to buy today and pay tomorrow. This cycle might push off small recessions, but the piper eventually has to be paid. As the dollar’s value is destroyed slowly over time, foreign competitors are able to produce goods cheaper than we can at home, which gives us more reason to buy foreign than locally. Manufacturing and industrial labor in the U.S. is dying faster than ever, and even health care services are being outsource to foreigners (MRIs being read by Indian doctors at a fraction of the price of local doctors, for example).

For me, the best thing to do is to present your services internationally, even at a discount rate over your local rate. If you value your time at $35 an hour here, you might only command $10 or $15 an hour internationally, but it builds your client base and your portfolio. I worked for a foreign company for close to 6 months at an 85% discount over my local rate, but I was able to build on that opportunity to get myself to a place where I can work internationally at a 40% haircut. Over time, as the dollar devalues, I believe I’ll find myself able to work at a profit over my local rate, only because of the falling value of the dollar versus the international currency I bill in. It may take 10 more years, but the progress is good.

The biggest step you have to take before presenting yourself internationally is to have good reason to work internationally. The first good reason to make an international submittal for your services is to have a good savings and a low debt. When you’re sitting on dollars in the bank (not invested, just savings or money market), you have to protect those dollars from inflationary concerns. Ridding yourself of debt makes those dollars even more valuable to protect against inflation. If we should see deflation (the falling of prices with the dollar being progressively more valuable), you’re in good shape as a saver because your dollars will grow in true value. But if we should see inflation, you have to protect yourself by finding what you can do to have a marketable product or service that is worth more over time, not less.

In an inflationary economy, you may see a 3-4% raise annual, but inflation might rob value by 5-10% or more annually, meaning your “raise” is really a pay cut versus what you can purchase. By providing services in an international currency, one that is rising in value versus the dollar, you will protect yourself from inflation by being paid in a currency that you can convert to dollars and secure your value by taking in more dollar-value than you can by selling your services, or products, locally.

People with strong English skills (grammar, spelling, communication, etc) are VERY marketable internationally. I’ve seen an increased demand for workers in the elite travel industry to communicate with elite Americans, English, South Africans and Europeans who primarily speak English. The job is mostly “home based” meaning you do most of your work on a PC and over the phone rather than in an office. It isn’t work I would particularly like doing, but the market is there — and growing.

I’ve also found a huge amount of work available to help translate products sold internationally into English. I contacted 45 eBay sellers who sell more than US$20,000 a month online to English speakers but use horrible English to explain their listing. 5 of the sellers contacted me back asking for help in redesigning their massacred English, at a rate that I would almost accept. For them, having their marketing and advertising material make sense to English readers is a HUGE benefit, that can increase their sales significantly. I also contacted a few foreign cell phone and electronics manufacturers who also had badly designed websites, marketing material and advertisements, and I was suprised at the 7-9% response I received showing interest in English translations.

Finding foreign employers is not an easy task, and requires a lot of time and investment to contact and follow through with interested parties, but the Internet makes this job easier. Contract work might be short lived, and at a significantly lower rate than you can find today, but you definitely will build a portofolio over time that increases your value especially to employers who will have a currency that is stronger than the dollar, meaning you are cheap to them, but they are profitable to you. Ignoring the international service market is a big mistake — we’re globalizing every day, and to miss this opportunity ahead can place you at the back of the pack, after all the intelligent consultants, service providers and laborers are already in the game and way ahead of the pack.

Sponsored Post:

GURNEE, IL

By A.B. Dada
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The Global Unanimocracy Network was accepted into a new advertising/review co-op called ReviewMe.com today, and I’m looking into it as a way to combine realistic reviews (of sites and products) as an additional income source for the network.

I’ve battled the debate as to how to produce an income that is equitable for the time I spend, but not be annoying to the visitors and regular readers. While I’ve been happy with Google’s AdSense and Text-Link-Ads’s system, I’ve always considered that the best profit is the information I get from people who share their opinions on the blog posts over at the Unanimocracy forums. Your views (agreements and disagreements) help format future opinions and help me challenge debates better — this is the best form of profit for the network. Yet every site also needs a financial income just to stay afloat, and I’ve looked at various ways to reduce the “spamminess” of our network. Things will be changing a lot in the coming year as the network ventures into the second year of writing.

Over the years, I have been paid often to review products and campaigns for various large and medium-sized corporations. My reviews have not always been positive, but it has helped manufacturers rewrite campaigns or redesign certain aspects of their products. The difficult task of being paid for reviews is one that has hounded the print media for years — can a paid reviewer be neutral? More often than not, the answer is no. Reviewers who give positive reviews often get rehired for future reviews: in the history of the printed tech journal, more than one journal has collapsed after it was found to be biased towards those who buy advertising.

This isn’t the case at the Global Unanimocracy Network. I prefer to give reviews as unbiased as possible — even if it means giving negative reviews and possibly losing the ability to get paid for future work from the same advertiser group. Yet I also feel that this gives the advertisers or manufacturers better insight into how their product or campaign will fair with the tech/nerd entrepreneur, a group that is growing in the States as people switch from hardware-oriented businesses to more service-oriented ones. My history has always revolved around community building online — my first venture was in building a large multi-node BBS back in the late 80s when I was a teenager. That was a huge success, and I was able to sell off the business for a good profit just before the Internet boom. My only mistake was not venturing into the ISP arena (mostly due to my parents talking me out of it).

In my late teens and early 20s, I spent a lot of time in various review groups helping to determine if a product or advertising campaign is worthy of the market it was penetrating. More often than not I reviewed products that were edgy or new to the industry (the Apple Newton, the first portable inkjet printer, the first line of inexpensive switching hubs, early LCD monitors, car stereos that went beyond the knob and the tape cassette, and portable business projectors, to list just a few). I know that some of my negative reviews were concerning enough that changes were made, and the cash that I was paid for reviewing these products often times didn’t cease because I made a negative review.

That being said, I also gave many positive reviews from the perspective of the self-employed entrepreneur. Many times a product may not get good penetration into the market for people who were “just” employees of a big machine, but I found ways to use the product or service within my own businesses. This usually gave the manufacturer a more vertical channel to sell or advertise in, and I know it made a difference as my reviewing income grew when my name was associated with that growing new market.

I’ll be trying ReviewMe.com in coming months to see if i can challenge the average boring review with one that gives some notably differences of opinion — both good and bad. I will definitely mention if a review I am doing is one procured through ReviewMe.com’s website, and I hope that other bloggers who read the Global Unanimocracy Network blogs regularly signs up their own blogs for the service (it only took 5 minutes) at ReviewMe.com. I’d also appreciate your own opinion on the reviews, and even the idea of ReviewMe.com, over at our discussion forum. This will give me better insight into whether or not I am being unbiased, as well as what you think of the product.

The idea behind ReviewMe.com is that advertisers can take advantage of the blogging community by offering their website or product for paid review by different blogs that cover their subject. Bloggers review the product on their blogs, and get paid from the advertiser for doing so. Of course this may seem to lead to biased posts, but since bloggers are required to tell their readers that it is a sponsored post, we will see how blog readers challenge biased posts in the comments sections in the future.

I’m excited to try something new — especially something that can expand the power of the blogosphere and balance the power of the mainstream media and talking heads. Maybe this will drive more readers here to start their own blogs!

Discuss this over at the enterpreneurship forum.

WAUKEGAN, IL

By A.B. Dada
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In a Slashdot article titled (Mis)Tracking Web Traffic, I made this post titled General traffic figures are useless.:

I’m not sure it matters. I advertise my own businesses on the web, and I accept advertising on my sites. I’ve sold numerous ads just for my site for repeat customers who realize I give them more than they pay out of supporting my site. I support some sites repeatedly because those sites make me a profit for what I invest.

If you’re a big company, you gauge your profits NOT on what others say but what you actually witness through numbers paid and profits made. If you don’t make a profit, the traffic reports mean NOTHING. If you make MORE profits than you were expecting, the traffic reports mean NOTHING.

Most advertisers already know this. If they’re complaining about false traffic statements, they’re not working hard enough. They basically are trying to automate something that still needs human intervention — for now.

Facebook and MySpace and YouTube are terrible places to advertise, in my experience. The visitors you get are completely worthless (in my businesses) because they don’t convert to sales. On the other hand, that whole “long tail” idea works for me — I advertise on the smallest blogs, the tiniest forums, the most niche communities, and those consumers thank me for supporting their communities by buying my products and services. I look at the traffic figures of the largest sites and realize “These numbers do not tell the truth about convertibility.”

My link below takes you to my sites, and some slashdot readers say I am a spamming troll. I’m not. MOST slashdot readers who come back to my sites already block my ads (as I request that they do!). I post my links for a different kind of profit — the profit of gained information my my readers and sharers, including those who oppose my views. The ads on my sites are for people who find me via search engines, who are looking for products, and who get those products from the advertisers. The advertisers who target me directly aren’t concerned that I only have an Alexa rank of 200,000-400,000 and a PageRank of 5-6. They care about my targetted market, people who are interested in what I talk about, and what my ads sell.

My advertisers (and readers) are also free to look at my site statistics (sitemeter is open on my sites). This tells them who is coming — google searches, not MySpace losers. This makes my sites more valuable to products that are in-line with what I “preach” daily.

General traffic figures are useless.

Discuss this article at the Be The Boss forum.

I tried something a little over a month ago just as a test — I had about 500% more business cards printed than I usually do. I like to carry 10 cards with me at all times (3 for my websites, and 7 for my main business). I usually give business cards out to people who are interested in my work (they’ll ask for my information). In the past 6 weeks I’ve handed out over 700 cards to family, friends and people I just randomly meet while out and about. Even when people didn’t ask me for information or even what I do for a living, I ended the conversation with a card and a one sentence rundown: “I own this business, if you need my services or know anyone who does, please consider giving me a call or passing on my name.” Most people I know already know my business, but not all my friends and family have been good referrals for work. Some probably never even mention me when problems for other arise.

In the 6 weeks that I’ve passed out, on average, 20 cards a day, the response was greater than I had expected: I received 12 phone calls and 19 e-mails from people I never met and had no connection to. They all received my card from people I mostly didn’t know: “My friend Gus gave me your card the other day when I told him I was having a problem. He thought you could help me.” I have no idea who Gus is, unfortunately, but I thank him nonetheless. Out of the 31 responses I received, I’m sure to gain at least 3 customers. If I’m lucky, responsible and productive on bringing in more customers, I might double that number. This is free business for me, I spent only a nickel or so on the advertisement, and used word of mouth as the force behind the marketing.

I keep hearing from other friends of mine on how slow business is right now. Many of them are doing nothing to change that, they’re waiting for yellow pages listing to be found, or waiting for old customer to remember their numbers. I never look at a past customer as a future customer unless I take a step to help them refind me. Even my monthly contracts are not set in stone: when they expire, I have to propose to them to bring me back. This is how life is — humans are focused on themselves, and it is very easy to forget others. We even tend to forget our own families that live with us.

I was relatively shocked that every response (but 2) came from people I don’t even know. One person I met while leaving my favorite tobacco shop gave my card to another person who gave it to the person who called me! That’s networking, even though not a single person in the chain actually knew if I was any good or if I knew what I was doing. My card worked hard for me, and so did people down the line.

The cards that failed the most were cards I gave to business clients — they already get so many cards from suppliers and customers that they tend to end up in a cardfile and become forgotten. They weren’t good marketing tools, yet. The cards I’ve given to friends and family have always brought me in a few customers over the years, but I don’t have high expectations. Once someone is familiar with you, their tendency to talk about you actually goes down. The best time to get word-of-mouth referrals is usually right after someone meets you, hires you, or has you do something “miraculous” for them. The rest of the time you’re put on the backburner of the stove that’s being tossed at the side of the road. Expect this to happen, and continue to work to get your name and card out.

Even my website cards have brought an increase of traffic, some of which have returned more than once. While I can’t verify that this is necessary the case, it is easy to see when someone finds my sites without a search engine (no referrer) and they’re local. I have to assume someone either told them about me verbally, or they gave them my card. It’s a win either way.

Don’t ignore those who you don’t know, they can be your best assets. They haven’t known you long enough to know your negative side, and they may run into someone who needs your services soon after you first met them. Ignoring these potential advocates of your business is a very unwise thing to do — whether you run a real brick and mortar business, a consulting company or a website.

Discus this article at the Be The Boss forum.

In all my years of being a businessman, I have always had unique and memorable business cards. I think that the uniqueness of the cards has been a benefit when even those who didn’t do business with me kept my cards handy just to show them off. Before cards were available so cheaply online, I focused on cards that weren’t flashy or outrageous — they were just appealing. Rarely did I design them myself or print them myself, though, I paid professionals to do their jobs.

A good business card design is not something I would recommend the average new business owner try to create on their own. If you don’t have a background in colors, fonts and layouts, you’ll likely make something that you think looks good, but customers will get ill from looking at. I’ve seen some outrageous ones that ended up in the circular file (the trash bin) before I even looked over them. Too many colors, too many fonts, terrible placement of text and an overwhelming amount of information. Some were so complicated that they folded up more than once, and the text was so tiny that there was no way I’d understand what the person was selling or promoting.

The business card is not just for realtors or sales people, it can be very handy for computer techs, writers and even blog owners. I use the standard business card size, which is 3.5″ inches by 2 inches, for promoting events in my life as well — church outing, concerts I’m producing, even new websites or e-books that I wrote and released. A good business card is small enough to be convenient, but large enough to cover the basics and build interest.

I believe the business card should cover only a few important pieces of information:
1. Your name and your business or website title
2. Your phone number and e-mail address
3. Your domain name or business address (not both)
4. A very simple description of what you’re selling, offering or providing

That’s it. An overwhelming card that tries to cover everything will likely be ignored. A card that reminds a possible customer about you is perfect as it won’t be tossed right away, and if it is interesting enough, it might be kept a long time and go through many hands. My best business cards get the ultimate response from people I give them to: “Can I get a few more of these?” The only reason someone will ask for more cards is because they’d like to pass them out for you. Free marketing is better than the most expensive Super Bowl commercial.

A business card has even helped my businesses by forcing me to think about what my businesses mean. By having to cut back to a tiny sentence as a description of my business, I am able to see if I am trying to provide too much, and also try to work on a slogan that is memorable and to the point.

You’ll notice that I left out “position” from the list of items your card needs. If you run a small business of 10 employees or less, your position is not really needed. Every small business has people who do a number of jobs, so leaving it open will leave room for questions from your possible customer. I love it when people ask me what I do (I don’t write it on my card). It opens the door to explain what the entire company does — and that is how I can work to close a sale and gain a customer. I don’t write too many specific services down, either. By leaving a generic (but memorable) description, people might ask you “Do you do _____?” Again, opening the door to questions is a perfect card.

My cards always have a specific color scheme and font style — something that I carry over to my letterhead, my envelopes, my brochures and newsletters and usually my website. A simple logo can make sense, but for most businesses it is just something to take up space. I’ve seen terrible stock logos on many business cards, and it just makes the person unremarkable and forgettable. If you’re going to have a logo, make sure that it is unique, easy to remember and something that actually makes sense on your card. Egotism on a card is not what you want — you want people to want to keep the card, show it to others, and request more.

Another place a good business card works is in what I call “the parent test.” Parents love to pass out business cards of their kids, and if the card is designed properly, it can open a door to calls about your work. The cards my mom has of mine give just enough information for my market to know what I do, but when people ask my mom what it is that I do, all she can say is “I have no idea, something with _____. Give him a call.” I actually get about 2-3 calls a month from those encounters.

Overdoing a card with color is terrible though — think of the old websites of the late 90s. Loud colors, eye-straining fonts all over the place, and photos will kill your card. A simple color scheme (1 color, maybe 2 for highlighting) is perfect. Leave the photos for your website, or throw them out all together. Don’t put your own photo on there, no one cares.

Once you have an idea for a card, hire a professional designer. You’ll find numerous designers in your area that can create a great business card (and maybe even stationary) for under US$200. The good designers will focus on a simple but memorable design, but also help you make a choice of paperstock and printing companies. I’ve looked over most of the cheap business card companies online, and most of them do a good job but don’t follow the rules. They focus on Wow! factor, which is not what we want to promote. We want facts and we want to drive questions from our possible clients. While the online print shops are cheap, they don’t necessarily offer you the skills you might want in a good designer. My local designer actually has my cards printed at a little bit more than the online companies, but they also check to make sure the cards are to spec when they arrive, and they also have fixed problems at no charge when the print job was done improperly (bad alignment, missing text, rough cuts, etc).

If you’re going into your own business — even an online blog — you’ll want the best promotional tool available — a great business card. Don’t skip spending a little cash on this step, and you’ll find that the best market is word of mouth. By giving your customers and fans the ability to promote for you with a few extra cards, you might be surprised at how easy it is to open the door to new customers.

Discuss this article at the Be the Boss forum.