Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • Are You Overwhelmed?

    I thought I’d answer these questions Michael Hyatt asked of himself about being overwhelmed and I encourage you to as well. My name is Erich Stauffer and my answers are below the questions.

    1. Are you ready for a change?

    2. What is it that only I can do? Where do I add the most value? What is really important as opposed to merely urgent?

    3. What are your three biggest productivity sinkholes?

    4. Record your most common activities and tasks into categorized lists and determine what can be eliminated, automated, or delegated.

    5. What do you make an hour (inside and outside of your 8-5 job)? Could you be more financially productive (and a better steward of your time) if you delegated to a paid assistant or service? Have you ever considered a VA?

    6. How much of your calendar this week is dedicated to high payoff activities/important tasks? Are you putting the big rocks in your metaphorical jar before putting in the sand and water?

    (more…)

  • Are You on Fire?

    Do you love what you do? Are you passionate about it? If not, why are you doing it?

    Most people, if you ask them these questions will respond with excuses which on the surface sound very good:

    “I’m just doing this until I can find something better.”

    “I’m just holding out until I retire in a couple of years.”

    “If I didn’t have my family so early in life, I could have done it, maybe, but that’s in the past now.”

    “I can’t take a risk now. I’m too old and my family depends on me.”

    What they are really saying is, “What if I fail and someone gets hurt along the way – someone like my ego and my family’s lifestyle?”

    No one can predict the future, but you can take calculated risks. A planned move into an area where you are better suited is actually less risky than staying in a precarious, but ‘secure’ position at the job you think you ‘have to have’ to get by.

    It may sound flippant, but you do only have one life to live and all of this is temporary. What are you doing with your life? Do you ever wish there was something better or more rewarding you could be doing? What if you could provide for yourself and/or your family AND be doing your passion? Are you even looking?

    The first step is to decide that the current path you are on isn’t working for you. As the old metaphor goes, you’ve got your ladder leaning on the wrong building – that’s all. Just move it to another building and go. Take action and be prepared for others, but primarily yourself to tell you it won’t work and that you will fail. Overcome these thoughts and you’ll be well on your way to doing what you are passionate about.

    Need help finding out what you are passionate about? Sir Ken Robinson has written a book that might help titled, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. It’s less than $10 on Amazon and it could change your life – for the better.

  • WordPress Plugins

    I use WordPress for all of my blogs and mini-sites. Here are the plugins I recommend:

    • Add to Any – It’s important to turn off the annoying hover feature by clicking the box “Only show the menu when the user clicks the Share/Save button” under Menu options.
    • All in One SEO – be sure and fill it out for the whole site and for each page/post you create
    • Akismet – prevents spam comments so use it
    • Cbnet Ping Optimizer – prevents you from getting banned from blog directories by refreshing a post too often
    • Cforms – best email form plugin
    • Google Sitemap Generator – keeps google updated with pages as you make them-builds google a map
    • Related Posts Plugin – gives options for displaying other posts at the bottom of a post, based on tags
    • NEW – Enhanced Recent Posts – include or exclude categories from listings of recent posts.
    • Redirection
    • Yoast Breadcrumbs
    • WP-Page Navi
    • Robots Meta
    • Image Widget – add images to widgets from within the widget.

    Please write your favorite WordPress plugins in the comments below. Contact me if you need help with WordPress in Indianapolis.

    Tools for Listening and/or Monitoring

  • Affiliate Marketing with Mini-Sites

    Andrew Hansen says he maintains 20 mini-sites that make anywhere from $300 to $3000 a month and together they make him “5 figures a month”. Lets assume that one site is making $300 and one is making $3000 and “5 figures” means $10K a month. That would mean that the other 18 sites would be making $373 on average a month or to put it another way, all 20 sites are averaging $500 a month (this is where averages really skew things).

    In order to do this, Andrew follows a fairly easy process:

    1. Find high traffic keywords with low competition that is something he can sell – this is a ‘go with the flow’ method where you go where everyone already is searching for something they want, but they can’t find it – and then sell it to them.
    A. Use Wordtracker’s keyword tool and search for “does work” to find things that people say works or other phrases like this
    B. Determine if any of the keyword results are products that you could sell as an affiliate
    C. Use the normal due diligence to vett a keyword and competition.
    2. Write 5-10 pages of original content and then build up to 10-20 pages AND backlink OVER TIME.
    A. The 5-10 pages includes the home page (1), which should have no ads ‘above the fold’, the about page (2) – which should be a sales page as well, and 3 to 8 articles to begin (3-10). They should all contain original content and each page should be backlinked to, not just the home page.
    B. Post one more article a week and backlink to the new article each week until you have 5 to 10 more articles (5 to 10 weeks). This does two things: matches what Google expects as far as backlink growth and site growth AND shows Google that your site is growing and therefore can be trusted.
    Ideas for the about page: use this area to write about things like “how [your product] works” – stuff that isn’t sales keywords, but can grab traffic. You can also write about secondary (cousin) keywords here by saying how your product is like this other product and if you monitor your analytics you might see a desire for one of those other products, which could become another site for you.

    Ideas for Blog Posts

    If you have multiple affiliate vendors then you could make a post for each such as “Top 10 [Products] at Wal-Mart.com” and “Top 10 [Products] at Amazon” and on down the line. For products that overlap, you could compare affiliates and get paid either way, for example, “Compare [Product] at Wal-Mart.com to Amazon – Which is Cheaper, Faster, and Has a better Refund”. Basically what you want to do is mix and match, compare and contrast. Another example is to make categories that Amazon or Wal-Mart aren’t willing to do. For example, the retailer might just have a category for flashlights, but you run a flashlight mini-site so you have posts about LED flash lights, camping lights, pocket lights, and hand-crank lights.

    Oh, I forgot to mention that Andrew’s goal is not to just earn money – he says there are easier ways to make more money. What he’s interested in is the amount of money he can make for the least amount of work because what he is interested in is traveling. Affiliate marketing allows him to travel one week a month so in essence he makes at least $10K a month by only working 3 of those weeks finding good keyword, low competition niches, developing original content, and backlinking it. That’s essentially what I’d like to do both with product marketing and app development. I like the freedom and the work-to-income ratio it has the possiblity to provide.

    I believe that I can do this by pursuing a profession in Internet marketing and app development, which is a field of digital content creation and marketing that I call “niche publishing.”

    Niche publishing has a lifestyle that can free me from the burdens (security) of a 8-5, office job and a traditional ‘boss’. Even self-employed service businesses like computer repair or web design involve bosses – the customer. Although niche publishing has customers, they are much more passive.

    Digital content has the advantage of ‘build it and forget it’, ‘asset building’, and ‘multiple streams of income’, which service industries and typical 8-5 jobs do not provide. Imagine if every report or function you built at your 8-5 job would continue to pay you money over time and the more things you made for your job, the more money you made over time. That’s how Internet marketing and app development can work.

  • Affiliate Marketing in Indianapolis

    I’ve written about my meetup experiences here in the past so those who read my website may know I’m a member of the Indianapolis Affiliate Meetup hosted by Affiliate Summit. In the last meeting, I spoke about how to get started in affiliate marketing, but I was feeling bad because my site about nook covers was not doing so hot. Now part of this because demand in general was down, but part of it was because of duplication of content, Google put me in the sandbox for three months. The good news is I’m out now and the site is performing better, which makes me feel better about being an Indianapolis web designer and Internet marketer.

    This morning I met a lady at the Carmel, Indiana BNI chapter who was interested in creating affiliate marketing relationships with local vendors so I invited her to the Indianapolis Affiliate Summit meeting. She didn’t know about it and was excited to come. The group has a good mix of seasoned affiliate marketers, those learning about it for the first time, and those with other related skill sets like copyrighting, authors, and web designers. There was also interest from a printing company out of Kokomo that has recently opened up an Indianapolis office in Fletcher Park near the old Indianapolis airport.

    The last Affiliate Summit meeting was about how to start an Internet marketing business where I went through the 6 steps to making money online, but I didn’t go into how to find a niche or keyword metrics for success.  The next meeting will be about the Internet tax looming in Indiana and what we can do to stop it. We’re meeting at Buca di Beppo in Castleton and although most meetups don’t require you to buy food, the arrangement we made with the restaurant requires each person to pay $12 for a meal. This is not the norm, but if you’re coming for the first time this month, know what to expect.

    Thanks to Affiliate Summit for the free pass to Affiliate Summit West 2012 in Las Vegas. I can’t wait to learn more about Affiliate Marketing, but in the mean time, I’m watching Affiliate Summit videos with Blake from Blaze Communications in Carmel, Indiana. Blake runs Blaze Communications as a creative marketing firm and BS&T as a business strategy and technology forum in Carmel. The BS&T forum has a sub-group of member who also attend the affiliate marketing group in Indianapolis, which is how I first met Blake. Thanks to Blake for sharing the DVDs he won from Affiliate Summit.

  • Post No Signs

    Why do it for the lulz?

    “Sign Lulz” was a web site dedicated to capturing funny signs wherever they may be. The term “lulz” refers to the plural form of “lol”, which stands for “laugh out loud”. Sign Lulz was published by Cost Publishing, a division of Watershawl, Inc.. I’ve since moved all of the funny signs to a category of The SDN.

    The logo was from a a sign that hung on the Wan Shi Da Bakery across from the Pui Tak Center in The Armour Square area of southern Chicago, otherwise know as Chinatown, Chicago. The picture in the logo was taken in 1997, but you can see a more recent version of the sign on Flickr, which was taken on April 8, 2006.  However, according to what we can see on Google Street View, the sign has been removed (but no signs have been posted!).

    Across from the Wan Shi Da Bakery to the north is the Pui Tak Center on South Wentworth Avenue, which is a great community center. It is run by the Chinese Christian Union Church and have lots of programs to offer. Many student fellowships are held in this center. Volunteers tutor reading and math after school and on the weekends in addition to the English as a second language classes for adults.

    Further south on South Wentworth Avenue is the actual Chinese Christian Union Church, which is one of the few Christian churches in the Chinatown area. The church serves as a preschool center as well. The children there love to play with the toy Godzilla. It is their favorite toy.

  • Lean Startups

    Indianapolis Lean Startup Circle

    James Paden, VP at Compendium and Mentor at Indianapolis Startup Weekend, spoke at last night’s Indy Lean Meetup about the difference between bootstrapping and lean startups. While both conserve cash whenever possible, their goals are different. Lean startups aren’t opposed to accepting funding, they just shouldn’t take it until after some customer validation has occurred.

    From Iteration to Execution

    As you can see from this chart, in lean startups, the process starts with customer discovery, then goes to customer validation. The arrow back to customer discovery indicates revisions until a product/market fit is established and the process can move over to customer creation and eventually company building. While the goal of bootstrapping is to build without incurring debt, the goal of lean is to learn from short, iterative processes (the discover and validation phases) AND to build the company as fast as possible.

    The Lean Startup

    As Matthew pointed out on my book recommendations page, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a great book to help your startup get started right. But what I didn’t realize until attending last night’s Indy Lean Meetup was that lean was a part of the agile method.

    The premise of The Lean Startup is to, “Apply lean thinking to the process of innovation.” After reading this book, the next time you go to make a new product or start a new company, you’ll be asking yourself, “Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?” and you’ll start to look at customer requests/desires differently than you may view them today. Using innovation experiments explained in the book, you’ll be able to determine whether a new product or service is required or simply a tweak to any existing product, but Ries warns, “Stated customer feedback is not always an accurate reflection of actual need/desire.”

  • Facebook Book Printing Companies Review and Analysis

    Back in June, Mashable wrote an article on 7 Facebook book printing companies. As Christmas is now approaching I remembered that article and wondered if any of the companies let you print other people’s Facebook walls. Not everyone wants a book about themselves for themself, but if someone else gives it to them – hey, that’s a gift.

    Facebook Friend’s Wall Book

    Out of the seven Facebook book printing companies, only two let you print a friend’s Facebook information: Book of Fame and Ego Book. I also added Social Print Studio, which doesn’t print books, but does make posters and photo albums of your or one of your friend’s Facebook pictures. Between Book of Fame and Ego Book, the biggest difference is not price, but layout. Book of Fame will print one status message per page, essentially making a customized notebook for someone, while Ego Book is more of what you would expect in a Facebook book: pictures, wall posts, and comments of you and your friends. You’ll pay more for Ego Book, but you get what you pay for.

    Ego Book – Choose who you want the book to be about.

    Your Facebook Wall Book

    For those interested only in printing their own Facebook wall, Ego Book is still a good choice, but you might want to compare it with Jot Journal and Year Bound. Jot Journal is less expensive, but offers fewer options. Year Bound had more options, but it’s software seemed buggy. I had to try it several times before it would stop ‘blueing out’ the screen.

    Jot Journal

    Life Tracking Stats

    For those interested in printing their stats for the past year, Social Memories is the only choice on the list. Even if you don’t choose to buy it, you can still create the book and post it to your wall as an album for free. To print the 25 page book it costs $27 US.

    Social Memories

    Here’s a link to the Facebook Book Printing Chart I created in Google Docs.

  • Agile Indy

    Last night at the Agile Indy meeting I learned a little bit about what Agile is. At it’s core it’s a focus on people and teams power to get things done by communicating. Agile facilitates that movement from the individual to the team and from idea to implementation. It’s similar to lean principals when it comes to short, iterative product development cycles.

    Retrospectives

    We did what they call a “retrospective” which involves these steps:

    • Brainstorm
    • Cluster
    • Prioritize
    • Action
    • Commit

    For the brainstorming session, we were looking for topics the group wanted to discuss or cared about. We used the default star-pattern of, “What do you want to…

    • = Stay the same
    • > Do more of
    • < Do less of
    • – Stop doing (it’s hurting us)
    • + Start doing

    The brainstorming is done with a “one-in-hand” post-it note process where everyone writes one thing, then puts it on a wall or board. The “Cluster” process then uses the team to sort the post-it notes into categories using the same “one-in-hand” method. Seven random people are then asked to assign the clusters into seven different categories. The group then is allowed two dots each to assign importance to the categories. One dot on two categories or two dots on one is allowed. The two most popular categories then go into discussion and from that discussion, 5 action items are created. The last step is to commit these action items to being done and completed.

    This is just one part of Agile. There are terms like SCRUM and SPRINT, neither of which I know what they mean (yet). I recently wrote about the Agile meetup as part of the broader category of what meetups mean to me, but I felt there was enough material from last night’s meeting that it deserved it’s own post.

    The most popular book on Agile in Amazon doesn’t even mention Agile in the title. Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, is a book about achieving breakthrough results by, “methodically taking small, experimental steps in order to discover and develop new ideas.” The author, Peter Sims, researched what went on behind the scenes of some of the great achievements and innovations we witness in today’s world. He said, “Most of them weren’t the epiphanies of geniuses, but instead the result of masters of a specific type of experimentation. To find out the common elements of their experimental approach, I reviewed empirical and neuroscience research about creativity and innovation, and interviewed or observed dozens of people about their approach, including Army counterinsurgency strategists, architect Frank Gehry, agile software development teams, stand-up comedians, entrepreneurs who had self-financed billion dollar businesses, the rapidly growing field of design thinking, and musicians like John Legend, as well as executives inside a range of organizations such as Amazon, Pixar, Procter & Gamble, Google, 3M, General Motors, and Hewlett Packard.” As one reviewer wrote, “Constant experimentation (‘learn by doing’) is fundamental to this approach – and I would add, fundamental to Agile.