The Pros And Cons Of Google Apps
I’ve been accused of being a bit of a Google enthusiast. The first stock I ever bought was Google. I use Google Calendar to manage my personal schedule and Gmail to filter my email. Within the business, we use Google Docs to manage projects, Google Chat to talk...This Week In Business: Gas Station Coffee Edition
I always know I’m going on a big trip when I am drinking terrible gas station coffee. I kind of look forward to it actually! This week, I headed to Social Media FTW in Portland to present about business blogging. Nothing like standing up in front of 150ish...These Two Weeks In Business: The Package Edition
It’s been said that hairdressers have the worst hair and the cobbler’s kids are the last to get their shoes. Growing up in a hardware family, we were often the last to get handy people at our house. Good thing my mom is pretty good with powertools!
Well, with web people, this idea translates to sometimes your web professional having a poorly maintained site (while still doing a pretty good job on yours).
While I do keep things up-to-date on my site, the list of little things to improve it end up stacking up until it reaches a breaking point.
Last week, mostly while I was avoiding creating a presentation, I did a lot of work on my own site. It’s not something you’d necessarily notice but mind if I give a little tour?
I created packages and then a chart to help understand them.
If you got to www.breakingeveninc.com/packages, you’ll notice a bunch of packages for businesses and non-profits starting at $200/month. I’ve asked a few business owners (and maybe they were just too nice to tell me) but they said the prices seemed fair and the packages were easy to understand.That said, if anything with my packages seems off/weird, please comment! If you’ve ever met me (and heck, even if you haven’t), I hope you know I appreciate it when people are honest with me. :^)
Basically, I calculated prices based on my hourly wage, since I know about how long it takes me to do something. Also by pricing monthly, I was hoping to make people understand a lot of this stuff is on-going and is something I am able to maintain/create on a regular basis that’ll add value to the business.
I am all about making things simple to regular people… so I made this handy dandy flow chart.
I was on vacation with my mom, who owns a business, when I showed her my service packages. (Admittedly, this is probably a pretty biased audience to start out with but I thought it was better than nothing!)
“These all look good,” she said, “but how do I know what I need?”
In the hotel room, I immediately began sketching a flow chart. When I got back home to Photoshop, I made the chart below and emailed it to her.
“Oh this is great!” she said.
When my friend Matt told me making an image map is ‘easy’ (i.e. making it so when you click on parts of the chart, it goes to different links), I gave it a shot. And you know what? It was. Now when you click on the package you need, poof!, you are taken to a web page with the package description and, in the future, example clients, testimonials, screenshots, etc.
So you can click on the chart to see it up close… Let me know if you find it easy to follow or if you see any improvements I could make!
I sent out my monthly newsletter, and got tons more subscribes from it than ever before.
I got an email from my sister about a month ago about blogging software and, since I had practically written up a whole thing for her, I thought I would also send the information in my monthly email newsletter. To see my summary of some ‘free’ blogging technology out there, here’s the archive link to it. ‘You should put this on your website’ my friend Chris said. And I did, along with a way to subscribe to the newsletter. So if you want, you can subscribe on the main page of my site or on the Breaking Even Facebook page.
Marketing Monday: Working With Creative People
Every Monday, I profile a business, person, or website doing neat things online. I thought I’d take a little break from the usual format and talk about something I see a lot: business owners working with the creative people they hire: webdesigners, writers, graphic artists, internet marketers, etc.
Admittedly, I’m somewhere in between. I do creative services for people but I feel like I also do a lot of organization of creative people to keep things moving forward too. Here’s what I’ve learned over the last couple years:
1. You might not know exactly what you need but be as specific as you can with what you do know. There is a reason you’re hiring someone to create a logo, a website, a painting, or anything really: You don’t know much about it or you don’t have the time/interest to do it yourself if you do. Creative people understand this.
That said, to get the best quote possible, be up front with what you do know: budgets, other players on the project, and deadlines are all helpful. It’ll keep the person from doing something embarrassing like bring up the name of a rival company or time wasting, like generating a quote for a project four times your actual budget.