That never did produce rain, but they clung to the ritual. "
Entries in Business Blogging (23)
Allan Young’s Incoherence: Actually quite coherent.
If you're among the RSS subscribers of this blog, Allan Young's blog, Incoherence, is one you might think about adding.
I know Allan. I like Allan. He's smart and a very critical thinker.
I've recently been editing me RSS feeds down to what I consider something of a manageable level. (I had over 300 and it was not manageable.) Allan's blog is one of only two I've added to my feed reader in the last four months.
Jeff Barson
1 Comment
Simple Curiosity? Blog for the uber-intelligent.
I'd sometimes like to post interesting snippets of knowledge that are somewhat funny and viral and wouldn't fit on my other blogs... So I decided to make a new one where I could write a post or so a week on 'why?'.
SimpleCuriosity.com
I've been blogging for around three years and have learned much. (about 45,000 unique readers a month cross my blogs) One of the thinks I've learned is that groups of smart people are valuable. So, with the thought that all the readers of my blogs must be inherently uber-intelligent... I offer you this.
Simple Curiosity is a site offering uber-intelligent posts from yours truly on: History, Science, Religion, Philosophy, Literature, The Arts, Business, Technology, Music, & Politics.
The idea will be to provide small, interesting, two minute read posts that my mother will want to get in her email and forward and is perfect for Stumble Upon. Mental Floss could be considered something close to the direction I'm taking except that instead of linking out to other articles, Simple Curiosity will be all content and little commentary. You know, Dictionary word of the day stuff and heavy linkbait.
Here are a few:
- Why time slows down when you approach the speed of light.
- Why was Gigi abandoned? A not so simple explanation
- The Black Death.
- The Spread of Islam
- Cogito, Ergo Sum: Why you think you are?
- Why we have Wisdom Teeth.
- Untouchability & the Caste System of India
- Pablo Picasso's Guernica
- The Torah
- Who is Beowulf & why is Grendel dead?
- Why the Sky is Blue?
- Micro-organisims & You
- Motion Sickness
I'm looking to grow Simple Curiosity? and I'll be putting some time towards it. I'm also looking for interested blog partners who are willing to commit 2-3 quality posts a month on an area that is of interest to you personally an might not fit on your current blog. I don't care what area it is as long as it's interesting. In fact, the more unknown the subject the better. Funny is needed as long as the topic isn't the Holocaust or something else touchy.
If you can write an intelligent post on:
- How your eyeball works (well, that's one of mine so skip this first one)
- Why plants are green.
- How the Great Wall of China was built.
- Romanticism
- How a microwave oven works.
- Egyptian war tactics
- The rise of modern fashion.
- A timeline of Paris Hilton's formal education. (maybe not)
- How oral traditions were passed down among Native American tribes.
- Footwear in the ancient world.
- Musical Genres
- How credit card transactions work.
- etc.etc.etc.
I'll handle all of the technical aspects. There will be plenty of opportunities for backlinks, networking, and income will be shared equally based on contribution. You'll be able to back link to your sites, have an author page, use affiliate links, etc. You can read more here.
This is a fantastic opportunity for the right blogger(s). I you think this is you, please contact me via this form and include the fact that you read this post. I'll also be actively soliciting individual subject authorities from around the web.
If you think the site, the content, or the start of this as a potential business is worth blogging about, linking to, digging, stumbling, or whatever, I'd welcome a link or post, or subscription to Simple Curiosity's RSS Feed.
Blog Mastermind Master List
I signed up for Yaro Starak's Blog Mastermind course and have found it to be much better than I expected.
The quality of the bloggers involved ranges from first timers to ole' grizzled vets like yours truly. Here's a somewhat comprehensive list of the bloggers involved:
- Simple Curiosity? - Tickle your thinking bone.
- Nutshell Journal
- Medical Spa MD - Information for physicians in retail medicine
- Nimble Theory - Startups & Angel Investing
- Pony Tail Club - A girl & her horse
- Propaganda MD - Grow your medical practice
- Animal Career Secrets
- Desty Online -- Turning Bloggers Into Businessmen and Businesswomen
- I Calls It As I Sees It -- Reviews Galore! (under construction)
- Wuv -- Romance, love, passion, poetry, dating tips
- EmpowerWomenNow.com
- uglymailbox.com - pictures of unusual and unsightly mailboxes
- Slight Risk - storm chasing information blog
- Wine Solo - home winemaking blog
- A Pile Of Blog - multi-category mostly personal blog
- DamnaBlog - Theology/Atheism blog
- The Dixons - family and genealogy site/blog
- Tea Party Girl
- Fil-Am Forum Report
- Project Armannd
- tarakachaturoff.com
- michiganentrepreneurtv.com
- Blog Mastermind Project
- Baby's Diary
- Getting Hitched
- The Sports Journal
- Creative Inspiration
- The Journey
- Just Keep The Change
- Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant
- Personal Money Tips
- Home » AutoPitStop.net
- All Things Presented
- $7 Dollar Books Blog
- My Houston DJ Blog
- Aiming for Independence
- Affordable Internet Marketing
- TechSavvyMarketer.com
- MMO Explorer
- Warhammer Army
- GoddessCarlie.com
- dsd-professionals.com - Digital Scrapbook Design Professionals
- Achieve-IT! goal setting blog
- All for Women+crazy meezer
- littlemummy.com
- Deepest Health
- Sea Change Massage
- Deepest Health
- Sea Change Massage
- Solo Signal - Demystifying the Web Development Process for Business-Minded People
- Empower Women Now - Women Entrepreneurs Online Resource Center
- thevinogirl.com
- Journey to Financial Freedom - Helping People Financial Freedom
Review: Squarespace.com vs. Wordpress
You can find a list of other reviews I have completed and links to the products and resources I use to run my businesses in the Resources Section of this website.
Squarespace.com Review - Dynamic web sites.
Name: SquareSpace
URL: www.squarespace.com
Purpose: Dynamic web sites, blogs, content management for laymen.
Let me start by saying that my personal experience to date with Squarespace has been 100% satisfactory. I have never had a complaint the system has always done what I wanted it to do. I’ve been blogging for the last four years and have switched all of my blogs from hosting systems like Wordpress or Blogger, and my static sites (I still have one) to squarespace.com.
Your web site is the most important part of your online presence. How it looks. How it acts. And more importantly, how easy it is to change, are of prime importance in making a decision on what kind of system to use.
What are your options?
Static HTML Sites:
By far the most common choice are static sites. Of course it's not really by choice, they were simply the only available choice until recently. If you have a site, it's probably static, meaning that it's not easily updatable and you can't to it yourself unless your pretty technically inclined.
Pros: You already have one.
Cons: Hard to build. Expensive. Search engines hate them. No traffic.
Cost: Expensive to build and host.
Blogging Software: Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad
Extremely uncommon for medical businesses in the current market. Wordpress , Blogger, Typepad... these were the first attempts at making dynamic sites that are easily updatable and they work as far as they go. Their somewhat technical and again you'll have to hire someone if you'd like to customize your site and offer more than a standard template.
Pros: Relatively easy to set up. Inexpensive or free. Search engines love them if regularly updated.
Cons: Hard to customize. Limited function. Still need some tech savvy to implement.
Cost: Cheap. From little to free depending on configuration.
Dynamic Content Management Sites:
Squarespace.com is the next generation of content management systems that go far beyond what's previously been available. Squarespace has built a system that takes absolutely no knowledge of html, css, or other geek speak and it's built from the ground up for ease of use. If you can use Word, you can use squarespace.
Pros: Easiest to use and setup. Completely functional with advanced features like built in RSS feeds. You can try it for free.
Cons: None, if you don't mind the price tag.
Cost: About what a static site costs: From $7 to $25 a month.
The Bad.
I always like to get the bad news out of the way so here it is... I used to have here that I couldn't think of anything but I've since stumbled across some shortcomings. Here it is:
How I found Squarespace.
As usual I conducted extensive due diligence before deciding to use squarespace. (As a guy the definition of horror is finding out later that there was a better choice I could have made.). I read forums and surfed around the web. I talked to my geek coder friends. I quickly came to realize that squarespace different from everything else available. It was clean, it was customizable, and most of all, it just worked perfectly and had everything I could want and nothing I didn't. The fact that they were charging actually made it an easier decision for me since it convinced me that they were going to make money and actually stay in business, making it easier to get help and service rather than have to research and do everything on my own with a 'free' service.
Now I'm inherently nervous about putting all of my eggs in one basket, so I started a new site in order to test squarespace and find out if it was as good as I hoped.
To be honest I have very little confidence that squarespace would live up to my expectations. I've been more than pleasantly surprised. In fact, every site but one (Surface Medical Spas) has been built or switched to squarespace. Here's the list:
- Simple Curiosity? - Daily posts to tickle your thinking bone.
- Medical Spa MD: Information for physicians in retail medicine.
- Nimble Theory: My other business blog about technology startups & angel investing.
- Pony tail Club: My daughters blog about her riding academy and horses.
- Kid Agent: My sisters site as a child agent in Hollywood.
- Fight Club: A networking blog for entrepreneurs. (Since rolled into Nimble Theory)
There are some others that I've helped my friends set up as well but I don't own them.
Why choose Squarespace over a free blog site?
You can get a blog up and running for free as on Wordpress or Blogger. It's a valid solution and I've done just that in the past. (Squarespace also has a 30 day trial period that's free.) There are a number of things to take into account:
- I've found the 'free services' to be something of a misnomer since there is either:
- Significant time involved that could better be spent elsewhere so you're, in effect, paying yourself 50cents an hour.
- You end up having to pay someone to do it for you anyway.
- Significant time involved that could better be spent elsewhere so you're, in effect, paying yourself 50cents an hour.
- Starting at $7 a month squarespace is a steal. In most cases if you're really running a site you're going to be responsible for hosting it anyway. (My virtual server for Surface Medical Spas runs about $49 a month.)
- Since Squarespace is a paid service, they offer a host of support features and technical support. Since switching all of the blogs I run to Squarespace I've opened up around 35 support tickets. In every case the problem has been resolved and the tech support has been phenomenal with same day turnaround.
- Squarespace comes with some really great features standard:
- Search: Where Google's site search works great, Squarespace blows the doors off.
- FAQ builder: If you've ever tried to build a FAQ (as I first did here: Medspa FAQ) The new FAQ feature stomps any other solution I've seen.
- Drag & Drop: Moving stuff around on a whim.
- RSS: No longer any need to configure your RSS feeds. It's already done.
- SEO: Snap. Everything is valild and optimized so people can find you.
- Build forms and capture information from your visitors. You've truly got to see this in action to believe it.
- I could go on ad nauseum but here's the Squarespace feature set.
Building a dynamic business site that actually works the way it's supposed to.
If you're building a business site these day's it's easier than every. You no longer need to know HTML or CSS or any geek speak. However, and this is important, building a site that no one goes to is a waste of time. There are literally billions of web pages and your tiny spot on the web had better be easy to find.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of using Squarespace is the ease of use. While I'm writing this on the site, I've got spellcheck and the rest of the editing tools that everyone takes for granted. If my front desk needs to offer a special at a certain location, they just log in and do it... The don't have to call me, get the IT guys involved, or shed a tear. It's so easy that my daughters site at Pony Tail Club is run completely by my wife and daughter who have zero, zilch, nada, snake-eyes, by way of geek training.
If that isn't the tipping point I don't know what is.
How to get 500+ comments on your blog post.
Since I gave up the Fight Club blog to Matthew Prestwich, I've been blogging infrequently here, and more often at my blog for physicians in cosmetic medicine, Medical Spa MD. Three blogs was just too much, especially since I've still got to make all of the links on my daughters blog at Pony Tail Club. She's on a Mac and can't pull up the WYSIWYG on squarespace.
Even with the infrequent postings, this blog is now at 5000 unique readers a month. But the real surprise is that Medical Spa MD is going to go over 16,000 uniques and 1,200 RSS feed subscribers, most of which are physicians. Yowza. It's growing at about 25% month over month.
But the interesting thing is the content. Medspa MD gets between 5 and 35 comments a day.
Take a look at this post on Dermacare Medspa Franchises and Laser Clinics which currently stands at 500+ comments. It's become a watering hole for that whole business and the corporation under discussion, Dermacare, sent me a cease and desist letter. That blog has prompted a flurry of corporate emails. Interestingly, the Dermacare franchisees forward them to me.
American Laser Clinics, Sona and Radiance Medspas are other medical spa business I've discussed that didn't fare too well. I've been contacted by a number of lawyers who wish me ill and send me nasty writings. But there are others, Thermage for example, who want to get in front of those doctors in a positive way.
But the real reason that the readership has grown so fast is that I'm posting information on medical spas that you just can't get anywhere else.
Almost all the information available to people interested in vertical niche markets is advertising or promotion that comes from companies with an interest in 'spinning' the information. Then along comes someone on the inside. That has real appeal for those seeking real info and not advertisements. It's like Al Reis says, "If you can't be first in a market, create a new market so you can be first in that one."
Perhaps I'll be able to figure out how to monitize the traffic. 10,000 physicians in cosmetic medicine a month ought to be worth something.
Ain't technology great.
Fight Club Blog: Free to the right person.
Take over the Fight Club Blog. To the tune from Oliver: "Blog. Blog for sale. It's going cheap. Only seven guineas."
I was going to close the account where I keep the Fight Club Blog since I've moved that discourse over here onto this blog for the most part. Of course my mind was muddled with thoughts of saving the $7 a month that that blog costs me to run.
When out of the blue.. an epiphany. Why not give that blog to the under-served wannabe blogger who can benefit from it. After all, it has a pagerank of 4, has 125 subscribers, 82 back links, and has been up and running for a year or more. And people say nice things about it like this myspace entry:
"I don't know why, but I got on a kick about Billy Barty. No one has dedicated a blog to him, but there is a Fight Club blog entry that features him. Apparently, Barty, post-humously, took on a kid named Ryan Coombs. http://www.fightclub.squarespace.com/the-blog/2006/4/1/fight-club-recap-0306.html"
See, everyone loves it. No need to shut it down. Recycle.
So, I offer my offspring to the world lest it wither and fade away.
If you'd like to take over the Fight Club Blog, email me at jeffbarson at gmail . I'll happily sign the adoption papers for a deserving parent. Besides getting the blog I'll promise to say nice things about you here as well as teach you everything you need to know if you're blogging challenged. You start paying the $7 a month. That's the deal.
Keep in mind that this is not first come, first serve. I'd prefer that the acquiring home have at least one of the following attributes:
- A local (meaning Utah) entrepreneur.
- A Fight Club Member.
- A technology startup in need of a voice.
- Bigger than a bread box.
Blogito, ergo sum.
Blogaholics linked to this nifty Blogito Tshirt at TinkGeek.
Blogito Ergo Sum. "I Blog, therefore I am" for those of you who aren't big Descartes fans or weren't required to study Latin as a child as was I. ( I never really found much use for Latin in everyday discourse and have dropped much of my use of it.)
This t-shirt is charcoal with a blogger-brown button dead-center on the chest with "Blogito, ergo sum" in white. Beneath, a small reminder that you might not be as popular as you think: "Comments (0)."
It's great to see some old Latin usage taking over the blogosphere. Monty Python has been trying to educate the masses alone for long enough.
Oh, and by the way, thanks to those who keep my comment count and embarrassment level above 0.
- In the Monty Python sketch "Bruces' Philosophers Song" from Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Descartes is misquoted as saying "I drink, therefore I am." which would in Latin be "poto, ergo sum".
- In the Terry Gilliam film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen the King of the Moon (Robin Williams), claiming that he is the creator of everything, says "Cogito ergo es" translating it himself as "I think, therefore you is." (The actual translation being "I think, therefore you are")
Connect Blogs needs an overhaul.
First, I love the boys over at Connect Magazine so don't take this the wrong way.
The Connect Network Blog needs some serious work.
I blog for Small Business Branding which is exactly the same idea; get a bunch of guys to provide the content and build traffic. Good idea.
But Small Business Branding has a much better setup than Connect. (I emailed Colin about this already.) Take a look at them both and you'll immediately see what I mean. Author pages, images, yada... Still, I'm going to start posting there too. I can't be worse than Colins test posts.
My guess is that Connect is going to make some improvements. And why is no one posting any images on Connect? Type only goes so far.
Cool Science Facts: A feed worth having.
I have about 250 rss feeds that I subscribe to. Some I skim or glance at, but some I actually take the time to read every post that comes out because the content's always that good. I'll have to go through and pick out a best of to post later.
One of the 'always reads' is Cool Science Facts from Drew Olbrich. It's the kind of info that's perfect for blogging. Short, extremely well written, accurate, and funny.
Cool Science Facts: Binary Neutron Stars
The astronomers who discovered this binary neutron star system gave it the name PSR J0737-3039. I wonder what these guys name their pets.
Every day, the two neutron stars in PSR J0737-3039 get a quarter of an inch closer together, because of energy loss due to gravitational waves. 85 million years from now, they'll merge together. One minute before this happens, the neutron stars will be only a few hundred miles apart, and orbit around each other 30 times per second. In the final few moments, they'll get much closer together, and extremely angry, and the orbital frequency will increase to 1000 times per second.
This is totally insane. Two city-sized objects, each with the mass of the sun, whirling around each other 1000 times per second. If you don't think this is impressive, you might as well go back to bed now.
When the neutron stars in PSR J0737-3039 merge, they will probably form a black hole, which is an exotic astronomical object whose gravity is so strong that even humor cannot escape it.
Video Hosting Comparison: Youtube, Google Video, Metacafe, Soapbox, MyHeavy, Vimeo...
Video Comparison
Life Goggles has created a page where the same video is hosted on all of the leading sites.
Personally I've been using YouTube but I'd like to have a little slicker interface and player. The Soapbox player is pretty sweet with the little info popup.