Blog

Self Taught Vs. Taking A Class

This blog posts, as many do, started with an interaction on Facebook. Below (orange) is a woman who needs help and in blue is one of my friends responding to her: So I am teaching a website class in my hometown (Fort Kent Maine) in January. Later on in the thread (I...

How To Strategically Pay For Attention

How To Strategically Pay For Attention

People often ask me what I think about paid ads. Honestly, I hardly ever use them but I have some rules when I do: 1) It's short term. Ex: Running a contest, the first few days of a new website launch, etc. 2) It's never more than 10% of any budget I am working with....

How Affirmations Have Actually Helped Me

How Affirmations Have Actually Helped Me

Those of you who have met me know I am the least mumbo-jumbo hippy-dippy person you will ever meet. I'm only touchy-feeling with the amount of people I can count on one hand. I rolled my eyes when everyone was reading 'The Secret' and 'Who Stole My Cheese'. OK you get...

Why You Should Run Screaming When Someone Mentions A Custom CMS

I am all for paying for a great product. But I am a big believer of using open source (free) content management systems (CMSes) to build websites. I think this for a few good reasons. I thought of this analogy story to illustrate my point. Once upon a time, there was...

What Your ‘About’ Picture Says About You

One of the first unsolicited pieces of advice I ever got was from Meg Wolff, a big deal author and food expert who lives in Maine. I had sent her something in my early internet days (I wanted to be like her, still do.) and she wrote back something to the effect of:...

Why Directory Websites Are Probably A Waste Of Your Time

When I started my blog in 2007, I took any free listing I could get. This did a couple of things: 1) Connect me with people who were looking for blogs to read about certain topics. 2) Put my link on a new domain. Did I really think posting my blog link on...

How We Improved Our Site Load Time By Almost 100%

After Wordcamp Boston, it was clear. We have to get our (and our clients') websites loading in 3 seconds or less. It is natural to think about our website for a few reasons: 1) If we messed anything up, we could easily restore a backup (and have no one really mad at...

Why Your Customer Can’t Be Everyone

When I ask business owners who their typical customer is, about half of them say 'everyone'. Really? So then I try another question. "Who is your best customer?" and I start pressing for details, like income, interests, age, and other details, it turns out that they...

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