Blogging can be an important part of any online business strategy. I’ve blogged here for 7 1/2 years, creating over 2,500 posts and getting as many as 100,000 Unique Visits per month at one point. I learned a lot during that time, but earlier this year I tossed it all out and started over.

Why? Because I didn’t start out with a plan. Conditions have changed a lot since I started in 2002 and a lot of the advice you get today is still based on the old reality. Can blogging contribute to your success? Sure. Will it? Not necessarily. Continue reading

blog-viewer-statsRecently I had a conversation with a friend who has a small consultancy. Over the years we have had a number of thoughtful, helpful conversations and we tend to feed off each other’s futuristic tendencies. During the conversation I was encouraging more product development to capture his methodologies and to use as promotional tools.

The conversation turned to resource constraints — time, effort, money, etc. – and the need to spend some portion of time on futuristic efforts as well. He estimated that he needs to spend 5%-10% of his time on long-term futures thinking and planning. I think that’s realistic – 100-200 hours per year. I asked if he was spending an equal amount of time on product development. His answer was that he spent about 200 hours this year on developing new seminar materials, and 300-500 hours on his blog.

I was surprised by this, as the ratio seemed upside down to me. So I asked another question, “Do you track leads/sales generated from the blog?” His response, paraphrased, was that he only tracks it loosely, but it helps. Continue reading

NO_iconThe internet is awash with get-rich-quick schemes, scams, and outrageous claims about making money. Almost all of it untrue in one way or another. We sometimes think this is a phenomena limited to the internet. But it’s much the same as advertising was at the turn of the last century, when outrageous claims filled the pages of newspapers. The internet is just the latest incarnation.

We are now in the second generation of internet advertising and if one thing has become clear, it is that internet marketing works. This was not clear in the first generation, where billions of dollars were squandered in attempts at selling dollar bills for 95¢ and other poorly thought out schemes. The lack of testing and fundamental misunderstanding of trying to do image advertising in the first-generation led to the great bubble and burst of 2000. Today we are seeing much smarter, much better strategies put to use by large and small companies alike. Continue reading