Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • On Developing Our Professional Email Signature Product

    Recently, like Seth Godin suggested, we started looking for way to “redefine a service as a product”.

    We’ve found that custom HTML email signatures was a way to use our web design and email management skills to create  an introductory product that’s great for a wide variety of clients. Our typical clients are independent business owners or non-profits who can make their own marketing decisions, but now we have a product that can help franchisees or real estate agents who don’t or can’t have their own web site, but do have control over their email signature.

    Email signatures provide a way to offer increased interaction, coupons, calls to action, and integration with review sites, business directories, social media sites, and home pages. They can be inserted into many of the major web based email programs as well as traditional email clients. The images can be hosted on your web server or ours.

    We’ve considered branding for the email signatures can range from “mini-web sites at the end of your email” or “custom HTML email signatures”. When we do keyword research for doing our SEO, keyword terms like, “professional email signatures,” “email signatures for business”, and others come up so we might use those.

    On our home page, we currently have a huge image of the email signatures product with a giant button that says, “Learn More”. This is in response to feedback we got about our old page design which lacked a central call to action. In the future, we’d like to have that central image and text swap out in what’s called a “content slider”.

    This is a new product for us and we’re still doing customer development and looking for feedback. We’ve done many customer interviews and implemented a lot of what we heard in order to continue to iterate the product. The end product may change from where it is now, but so far, it’s shaping up to be something people really like.

  • Virtual Assistants

    When you’re a new or growing business, when you’re ready to add employees, it may be better to hire temporary employees or what are called “virtual assistants”. Virtual assistants are workers who work by the hour on things you would have had to do yourself.

    Depending on the firm, virtual assistants can help you with everything from checking your email and making appointments to web design or other web services. This is similar to the term, “long hallway”, which means a distributed company. I’ve provided a couple of different types here:

    American Virtual Assistants:

    eaHELP is the leader in sourcing busy professionals with high-quality American executive virtual assistants.

    Longer Days provides a single point of contact called a team lead that enables customers to accomplish a wide variety of work that would traditionally require a half a dozen employees.

    Overseas Virtual Assistants:

    GetFriday is your personal virtual assistant. GetFriday can undertake any task, business or personal, that does not require our physical presence.

    Brick Work India created a unique business solution, the virtual office, to cater to the specific needs of such companies and CXOs.

    Other Types of eWorkers:

    Elance allows you to post a job with a bid to get proposals from multiple freelance workers across the globe. Also consider Odesk, Guru and vWorker.

  • The Harvest: A Simple, Step by Step Strategy for Making $300 Per Week Trading the Foreign Exchange

    A simple, step by step strategy for making $300 per week trading the Forex.

    Most people believe that it is our natural right as human beings to benefit from our hard work. In days past, farmers would till the soil, sew the seed, wait for rain, weed and tend their crops and then late in the fall when the time was just right, harvest what was hopefully a bountiful crop.

    Believe it or not the Foreign Exchange, as with any market, can operate the same way. If we prepare correctly, sew properly, tend our crops and then harvest in a timely fashion, every week we can enjoy a small bounty of what has become an almost four trillion dollar a day currency market.

    Here’s what one reviewer had to say, “I am new to the Forex market and read eleven books on the subject over the past two months. This book is great!!! The advice, the content and the step by step instructions are clear and to the point. I did not apply the techniques to a live account yet but in my demo account I am 11-4 with a total profit 320 pips(10 trading days).
    As great as the book is the real value for me was the author. Cecil responded to my every email (3 or 4) within two hours.
    I cannot believe the book is only $0.99. Talk about an undervalued commodity!”

    Here’s what another reviewer had to say, “I am very pleased I bought this book. There is so much phoney material in Forex and you never know what you are going to get. This book is short but has real substance. The trading method Cecil Selkirk describes is easy to understand and truly helped me. His strategy is simple and straight forward, I was able to make exactly $300 the first week, just as promised. I recommend this book to anyone who is tired of all the hyperbole out there in the Forex world. Its true he does offer an indicator package for sale at the end of the book, but its only $3.00! And it includes three great indicators and an excel calculator for position sizing. When I wrote him a question about his strategy he wrote me back within 24 hours AND he sent me the indicator package for free. No up selling, he really is just an intelligent guy trying to help others. Really a great strategy and a great, easy to read book.”

  • Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude

    Mark Douglas uncovers the underlying reasons for lack of consistency and helps traders overcome the ingrained mental habits that cost them money. He takes on the myths of the market and exposes them one by one teaching traders to look beyond random outcomes, to understand the true realities of risk, and to be comfortable with the “probabilities” of market movement that governs all market speculation.

    Mark began coaching traders in 1982, and has continued to develop seminar and training programs on trading psychology for the investment industry, as well as individual traders. He has been a frequent speaker at seminars across the world, as well as in the U.S., teaching traders how to become consistently successful.

    If you are like most people, after your first few losing trades you set about to learn better market analysis. After your next string of losers you learned about risk management. But there’s still one more challenge to conquer&emdash;yourself.

    That is the major premise of this book. If it sounds like wishy-washy psycho-babble to you, I’ll only say that I would have agreed — four months ago, before I quit my 20-year technology career, obtained a Series/7 license and joined a professional day-trading firm. I now believe most people would lose money if you gave them 50/50 odds on whether or not it was going to rain tomorrow.

    In other words, successfully forecasting the market is not enough. Why not? Well, this book explains why not. It has to do with one’s sense of self-worth, one’s moral judgment of money, one’s work-ethic, one’s tendency to focus on good news while ignoring bad, and other things.

    “Zone” was recommended to a friend of mine by a professional floor trader who told him, “I wish I had read it before starting two years ago. Don’t place another trade until you do.” Well said. Does this apply to investors as well as traders? Oh, absolutely! If you have ever said to yourself, “I’m not selling that stock while it’s down, I’ll wait until I have a profit in it,” then for the love of money, read this book.

    Finally, read “Zone” before Douglas’ earlier work. If you still want more then read “Disciplined Trader” for a general review plus a deeper exploration into the author’s philosophical and meta-physical theories.

  • Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management

    Trading for a Living Successful trading is based on three M’s: Mind, Method, and Money.

    An eminent futures trader explores crucial factors in the markets that most experts overlook–time, volume and open interest–and describes little-known indicators to profitably track them. Covers all the popular technical approaches to futures, options and stock markets including Elliott Wave, oscillators, moving averages, Market Logic, point-and-figure charting. Explains why most traders sabotage themselves and how to avoid doing the same.

    Alexander Elder, M.D., is a professional trader, based in New York. He is the author of several best-selling books: Trading for a Living, Come into My Trading Room, Entries & Exits, and Sell and Sell Short (all with Study Guides). He also wrote Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand. Dr. Elder taught psychiatry at Columbia University. His experience provides him with unique insight into psychology of trading.

    Here’s what one reviewer had to say, “Despite the over-promise of the book title and the second half of it discussing mostly technical tools, the book is quite well written. There are plenty of bright ideas, some with originality that can be attributed to the author’s M.D. and psychiatrist background.”

    Elder begins with a chapter on psychology. Mind as he refers to it. In my experience, success in trading has less to do with understanding “the madness of crowds” and more to do with developing discipline. Read Mark Douglas instead.
    Next, Elder spends a lot of pages giving the reader a rundown of the most common price patterns and technical indicators. Which is fine if you don’t know them, but has all but the most neophyte readers skipping over great gobs of the book.

    Next, Elder trots out his two pet indicators and tells you about them. I have used them and they’re about as good as any others that you probably already know about and have already used. In other words, I wouldn’t buy the book just to get a peek at them.

    Lastly, he goes into money management. Elder has said himself that he wishes he had devoted more time to this section. Once again, unless you are a complete beginner, you won’t find much meat here either.

    Elder likes trading off moving averages and looking for divergences in certain indicators. Well, I have been trading a fair number of years and am here to tell you, you can do better than that. Much better.

    If you’re a beginner, try reading Nison and DiNapoli/Boroden. Their material is far more effective and will have a much greater impact on your bottom line.

  • Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource for Financial Market Technicians, Second Edition

    Already the field’s most comprehensive, reliable, and objective guidebook, Technical Analysis, Second Edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect the field’s latest advances. Selected by the Market Technicians Association as the official companion to its prestigious Chartered Market Technician (CMT) program, this book systematically explains the theory of technical analysis, presenting academic evidence both for and against it.

    Using hundreds of fully updated illustrations, the authors explain the analysis of both markets and individual issues, and present complete investment systems and portfolio management plans. They present authoritative, up-to-date coverage of tested sentiment, momentum indicators, seasonal affects, flow of funds, testing systems, risk mitigation strategies, and many other topics. This edition thoroughly covers the latest advances in pattern recognition, market analysis, and systems management.

    The authors (Charles D. Kirkpatrick II and Julie R. Dahlquist) introduce new confidence tests; cover increasingly popular methods such as Kagi, Renko, Kase, Ichimoku, Clouds, and DeMark indicators; present innovations in exit stops, portfolio selection, and testing; and discuss the implications of behavioral bias for technical analysis. They also reassess old formulas and methods, such as intermarket relationships, identifying pitfalls that emerged during the recent market decline. For traders, researchers, and serious investors alike, this is the definitive book on technical analysis.

    About the Authors

    Mr. Kirkpatrick has been a hedge fund manager, investment advisor, advisor to floor and desk traders and portfolio managers, institutional stock broker, options trader, desk and large-block trader, lecturer and speaker on aspects of technical analysis to professional and academic groups, expert legal witness on the stock market, owner of several small businesses, owner of an institutional brokerage firm, and part owner of a CBOE options trading firm. His research has been published in Barron’s and elsewhere. In 1993 and 2001, he won the Charles H. Dow Award for excellence in technical research, and in 2009, he won the MTA award for his contributions to technical analysis. Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College (A.B.) and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (M.B.A.), he was also a decorated combat officer with the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam. He currently resides in Maine with his wife, Ellie, and their various domestic animals.

    Julie R. Dahlquist, Ph.D., received her B.B.A. in economics from University of Louisiana at Monroe, her M.A. in Theology from St. Mary’s University, and her Ph.D. in economics from Texas A&M University. Currently, she is a senior lecturer, Department of Finance, at the University of Texas at San Antonio College of Business. Dr. Dahlquist is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences. She is the coauthor (with Richard Bauer) of Technical Market Indicators: Analysis and Performance (John Wiley & Sons). Her research has appeared in Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Technical Analysis, Managerial Finance, Applied Economics, Working Money, Financial Practices and Education, Active Trader, and in the Journal of Financial Education. She serves on the Board of the Market Technicians Association Educational Foundation, on the editorial board of the Southwestern Business Administration Journal, and as a reviewer for a number of journals, including the Journal of Technical Analysis. She resides in San Antonio with her husband, Richard Bauer, and their two children, Katherine and Sepp.

    Reviews of the Book

    This is probably the best book on technical analysis in the market. It takes you through all the indicators and oscillators you ever heard, plus some you may not be aware that exists, it talks about every pattern you know about (head and shoulder, rising wedge, symmetrical triangle, double top, and so on), it also talks about candlestick charting. Not even that but it gives you the percentage of being on the winning side if you use one indicator or the other so you can understand what are the most reliable indicators and oscillators. You will find a chapter in Fibonacci sequence and Elliott’s Wave Theory and it will give you an unbiased opinion about their rate of success.

    The book it’s extremely comprehensive, I found information here that I didn’t find in any other book in technical analysis. It’s also very long, over 600 pages so it will take you a while to read it and a few good months if not years to experiment with these indicators and apply the information for your day to day trading. I think this book it’s a very good investment and I highly recommend it to anybody interested in technical analysis. If you want a “shortcut”, if you want to see the opinion of a guy who red and “digested” this book and many others over years I recommend a website you can access for free on internet. I don’t think I am allowed to put a link here but you can google “babaro22” and you will be directed to this guy website that gives you amazing buy and sell signals in real time. He’s not a day trader, no penny stocks, no individual stocks actually, ETFs only, you’ll get a buy or sell signal every 3-8 weeks. I may be biased since I made a killing using his system but I think it’s worth giving a try.

  • Forex Made Easy: 6 Ways to Trade the Dollar

    This Book is a Good Introduction To Forex

    It was a nice introduction and isn’t portrayed anywhere in between it’s covers as being anything else. It has information to expose you to the forex market since so many are not familar with it. Much more detail and specifics are learned through forex sites, brokers etc etc but it was a good book for one interested in learning about what it is and it touches on the ways that it can be done.

    Anything worth doing is worth doing well and there will always be those that “don’t get it” and those that “don’t want to get it” and those that “don’t want other’s to get it” so don’t let the reviews here keep you from reading this book or taking control of your destiny.

    No book, system, software or package of any kind for any subject will meet the expectations or the needs of all the people all the time but if you read, study, practice, listen, and expose yourself with time, patience, persistence and positive thoughts then you will get something out of it. My entire family will be retired within the next 2 or so years as long as the written plan and goals continue on track.

    The foreign currency market is the largest financial market in the world, and foreign exchange trading is quickly becoming one of today’s most high-profile, potentially lucrative markets. One problem is that books on the topic are complex, technically dense, and difficult for Forex novices to grasp.

    FOREX Made Easy is the first book to approach the topic in a detailed yet accessible style, gradually and deliberately moving from simple to complex in easy and natural language. Author James Dicks–founder of the popular trading software 4X Made Easy–draws upon his trading knowledge to give readers only the information they need, from setting up a workstation to trading electronically.

  • Indianapolis Marketing

    Indianapolis marketing firm, Erich Stauffer, offers web design, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, online advertising services to help you get more exposure, gain new customers, and grow your business.

    Erich Stauffer is in the business of helping your business and Erich Stauffer will help you every step of the way. He’s helped businesses from startups to established businesses grow using the multiplying power of the Internet.

    We believe that sharing, transparency, and engagement with current and potential clients is one of the best ways to reduce barriers to using your products and services. We use web technology to get your message across to those seeking it.

    While the Internet is an open playing field, you may be unfamiliar with the terms or all of the new sites, techniques, or jargon. That’s okay. We keep up with that stuff and can explain it all to you when you’re ready. We’re nice like that.

    We know how to market businesses online in Indianapolis. We’ve got clients who rank highly on Google in some of the most competitive categories including dentists, landscapers, and retail. If you’re a local business in Indianapolis, Erich Stauffer can help.

    Our Process

    If you’re interested in learning how Erich Stauffer can help use the power of the Internet to grow your business in the Indianapolis market, call or email us to setup a time to discuss your goals. The first hour of consultation is free at which time we’ll be able to provide a no-obligation, up-front quote on what we believe it would take to achieve your goals.

    Indianapolis marketing projects start at $200 and vary according to your needs. If you’re looking for an outsourced marketing team member who can help you get organized and move in the path of growth, Erich Stauffer is a nice guy who’s been there. He’s led successful projects of varying sizes and would love to help you get started with your project soon.

  • How’s it Going?

    It’s been a wild ride, scary some times, highly enjoyable at others. I’m not sure how long it/I will last though. It always seems like I’m on the brink of going out of business and so I start applying for jobs, then more work comes in. Right now is like that.

    I may have to start selling some of my affiliate sites to make ends meet. I’m developing some new products (like custom email signatures) as a way to get people ‘in the door’ and have had some success with those, but they don’t pay the bills.

    I’ve invested in BNI and considered Rainmakers, but referrals from that are slow, far between, and lower-dollar than I’m used to getting on my own. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining – I get to sleep in, spend more time with my kids, and have a loose schedule, but I’m afraid I’ve kept it too loose. I may have not worked ‘hard enough’ and now am in a bit of a pickle. Here’s what I’m doing to dig myself out:

    Creating Work Habits

    • Waking up at the same time everyday
    • Eating breakfast everyday
    • Shaving and showering at night
    • Exercising during breaks between computer work

    Focusing on Revenue

    • Making sure all client requests are processed
    • Proactively looking for opportunities to help clients and asking them for their business
    • Working on affiliate marketing as a valid revenue source
    • Applying for jobs that use my skill set

    PS. I got all of my monthly client reports out today AND mowed my yard. Next I have a phone interview with a guy to discuss online marketing in Indianapolis.