Adam Taylor » Business

Entrepreneurial Inspiration

Adam — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:51:30 +0000

I just thought I would share a few books and such that I’ve read or am reading which are providing entrepreneurial inspiration for me at the moment.

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age [aff link] is a book I ordered a couple of weeks ago to read on holiday but I actually started and even finished it before I’d left.

It is a collection of essays related to computing, life and business. All of which are thoroughly readable and, I found at least, rather interesting. Many of them relate to Paul Graham’s experiences starting his own start up. They mostly focus on how to out smart your competitors, and how to out manoeuvre them by using better technologies (Lisp) and other general david vs. goaliathness.

Well worth a read.

Getting Real

Getting Real is an ebook released by 37signals (Basecamp/Ruby on Rails etc.) that you can download for $19. It’s relatively short, so can be read pretty quickly and contains much practical advice around design, marketing, coding and other issues related to startups.

The main takeaway I absorbed was that they strongly believe in a design first then code mentality, which goes against how I would probably work but that is mainly down to my shocking design skills vs. relatively okay coding skills.

They think a startup’s work flow should be as follows:

idea -> sketch -> design -> html -> refine -> code.

They strongly believe in prototyping, getting stuff out quickly, not wasting time on functional specifications etc. etc.

Anyway, it’s interesting, it’s quick, it’s cheap and it’s coming from the people who made Ruby on Rails, Basecamp et. al., well worth a read.

YCombinator Startup Library

Finally, a free collection of articles/blog posts compiled into one HUGE PDF. Containing posts by the aforementioned Paul Graham, the whole YCombinator Startup Library and other selected articles. It is 600 odd pages but almost certainly contains some serious knowledge. Download here, found via Garry Tan.

Startup Failure Disections

Learn from other peoples’ mistakes by reading what they have to say about their failed startups. Somethings are glaringly obvious but other problems will be things you may not have thought of before.

Disection of Lookery.
The number one reason my startup failed.
The last AnNounce(r)ment – this one is really detailed, some of the big problems seemed to be technology choice, which led to speed to market problems.

If anyone has other interesting links or articles I’d love to read them.

In the news – 25/06/07

You can’t hire top SEOs

Adam — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:31:07 +0000

So in my head I’m thinking to myself, sure if you’re a top (I really doing mean top, not just quite good) SEO why on earth would you sell your services to others?

Say, for example, your ranking a few websites top 10 for ‘car insurance’ or ‘credit card’ or any other lucrative term. Why would you do that if it wasn’t your own site?

Even if you’re being paid a shed-load you’re still making less than the company your doing SEO for. Instead of optimising other companies sites for ‘car insurance’ why not make money supermarket 2? Even if you can’t make websites yourself you should be able to team up with others who are capable of making competing websites.

Sure, you might not have the business acumen but with the marketing skills there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be able to successfully compete.

With a quote aggregation website you don’t even have to provide a service really. Just scrape a few other insurance sites and hey presto.

Aggressively market and your earning a lot already. I can’t really see any reason why a top SEO would provide consultancy services to other companies. Unless they have absolutely no confidence in their own business ideas or they really enjoy the interaction with other business.

If I was skilled enough to compete for ‘personal loans’ I wouldn’t do it for other business – I’d do it for myself!

Does that not make sense? What do you think?

Can social media marketing be performed in-house?

Adam — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:44:37 +0000

I assume most people are aware of the fact that many companies perform their SEO in-house with their own search engine marketeers. It’s cheaper, they have more control and they get full time SEO work – whereas with an agency the time available to provide SEO services will be spread over multiple clients.

There’s a good overview of in-house SEO here.

In-house SEO makes sense, you can [try] hire someone really good who can then train someone else/a small team up to take over, or you can probably get away with a couple of mediocre in-house SEOs too. Either way it probably works out quite well, probably wise to take on board advice though.

Is it equally feasible to do social media marketing in-house?

I’ve been asked if I think it’s possible for a company to hire an SEO to help with in-house social media marketing as well as just plain SEO and I’m not honestly sure it is.

There are some high quality social media marketeers around but I think it’s a pretty rare breed at the moment.

It’s not easy to become a power user on a social network, it takes a huge investment of time.

I don’t think it’s something that is as obviously suited to in-house as general SEO. You’re more than like going to have to invest a month or two of stumbling/digging/mixxing aggressively before you will be respected enough to promote your own content successfully.

Likewise, if your social media strategy revolves around blogging you’re initially have to go and invest a substantial amount of time in building up a blog – it won’t happen over night.

Personally, I’d just hire someone to help and consult with the social media marketing and stick to general SEO with the in-house team. Obviously there is no harm with tinkering with social media you just have to be aware that it could be a while before you see any real ROI.

What do you think?

Should SEO copywriter’s jobs be evolving?

Adam — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:15:54 +0000

I was just reading something on Tamar’s SEO blog about copywriting and keyword density and I’m wondering if copywriter’s jobs should be evolving?

Obviously in the past (and probably still true now) a copywriter’s job mostly involves writing articles targeting specific keywords, which hopefully the search engines will index and rank while still being appealing and readable to users.

However, I’d suggest that you’re not going to rank highly just writing targeted articles and that something needs to change. I don’t think this SEO tactic is going to yield many returns especially in competitive markets.

You couldn’t expect to write a keyword dense article about car insurance and then magically rank for the term car insurance!

What should SEO copywriters be doing to add value?

In this day and age of social media, copywriters who can write articles that appeal to the people at digg, stumbleupon, del.iciou.us etc. have a strong competitve advantage over the ‘old-school copywriters’.

Imagine you are a motorbike insurance company. You could start a blog and crack out some articles on the following topics:

Top 10 superbike wipe-outs (this would have embedded videos)
101 great motorbike rides in the UK
What you need to know about motorbike maintenance and tuning

I couldn’t say whether any of these would actually take off – they’re just quick ideas of the top of my head. Try and be creative and experiment.

It’s more valuable to be able to create content that gains major traction in the social media arena. Content that does this is able to gain natural, ‘editorially-vouched-for’ links, a huge spike in traffic – which may not directly increase the bottom line but can increase mind share in the market and increase your brand awareness (alternatively you can just make a few dollars off CPM ads).

Link-bait and social media marketing seem to be one of the few ways which is left to webmasters and SEOs to promote a website without falling foul of the Google Guidelines.

Paid links are a no-no, unless you’re sneaky, directories are pretty pointless. There’s no better way to get your content out there than through social media (as long as it is quality content and you invest the time to interact and engage with the communities).

Summary

It’s still important to have quality content on your website related to specific keywords but…
…Don’t pump out article after article purely for search engines – it’s not going to help much unless you’re targeting an uncompetitive market
Instead try and create link-worthy content that may gain traction in the social spheres – it all helps with your brand-awareness and organic rankings

5 killer tips for starting a search engine optimisation business

Adam — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:48:48 +0000

Earlier today I received an email asking for advice about starting an SEO business:

“I’ve been reading your blog and website a fair bit recently. In April of this year, I set up my own SEO company as a part-time venture whilst still working as an in-house SEO for a British company. I’m looking for this to become a full-time venture shortly and wondered what advice you could give to a young, enthusiastic person who really wants to do things the right way and make the most of this.”

I can only assume that he is yet to check out my about page, where he would discover I am also just a young, enthusiastic person, with no experience running a company (yet). My only experience is experimenting on my own projects with various different business models/monetization ideas.

Nevertheless, always one to provide as much help as possible, I have tapped into the knowledge of some industry contacts and other entrepreneurs, as well as my own advice to hopefully provide a few key points and tips that may help you succeed – it’s actually more than five but you have to try and write catchy headlines right?

5 tips for starting a business

Firstly we have five ‘top tips’ from a successful entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of an SEO/web development agency:

Never give up – resilience/persistence/stubbornness whatever you call it, it’s the most important thing. Even when things are really, really bad you have to believe that you will make it. In my experience the only difference between people who make a success out of their businesses and those who don’t are the ones who DON’T GIVE UP no matter how awful it gets (it can get pretty awful…).
It’s all about the people – you can’t do it on your own, find and keep only the best people and make them part of your ‘family’.
Cash-flow is king – Make everyone pay at least a part up front before you start any work and collect the final money before you hand over the last bit of the job. 90% of businesses fail because they don’t manage their cash-flow and they hate asking customers for money.
Make decisions quickly – don’t agitate over what to do in any situation, choose one of the options you’ve got and go for it. Plenty of people get paralysed by all the things to decide on and end up getting stuck. Martin Sorrell (head of global media company WPP has a great quote “a bad decision on Monday is better than a good decision on Friday” ) – in other words just keep things moving quickly on by being decisive, you can always change your mind if it isn’t working.
Have fun – if you love what you do it isn’t a job, it’s a way of life. And if you love what you do you’re going to be great at it anyway.

Advice from an SEO

The following tips are from the perspective of a pure SEO professional:

Do not to over promise on jobs
Accept only what is achievable according to a detailed project plan
Develop a network of other like minded talented individuals that you can pass off work to in the event that you can’t fulfil yourself

She also finished up with going to an agency but I guess that’s not really what you had in mind!

Thoughts from a freelancer

The following advice comes from someone who has recently branched out into freelance education and training consultancy. While that is obviously very different to search engine optimisation, the general business principles are still relevant:

Don’t ask people for a job or work – it will only embarrass them if they haven’t got anything to offer. Instead, tell them about the service you are able to offer and ask them if they have any contacts who it would be worth speaking to (if they are interested themselves, they will say so).
It’s a pyramid – you have a few contacts, they each have more contacts and so on. The majority of work offers come from second/third-hand contacts. Find out if people are happy for you to give them a call every few months to update them on progress – if they’re not interested they’ll say so.
Be clear about what you do have to offer – provide examples (where
possible) of real products/activities/experience. Don’t over-promise, but make it clear that you have relevant and specialist expertise.
Look at the fees charged by others working in the sector – establish a range of fees depending on the timescale and complexity of the work – don’t overcharge and definitely don’t undercharge to get work.
Develop a business plan – include targets (turnover/profits etc) – be ambitious, but realistically so.

The marketing mix

I want to take a quick look at three of the four ‘P’s of the marketing mix (place isn’t applicable on the web).

Pricing

Do not undersell yourself at the start. It can be easy to think that the only way to successfully compete with other SEOs and agencies will be by charging less than them.

While this may work in the short-term, it will mean you have to work harder for the same money as others. It will also mean if you decide to change your rates in the future some of your initial clients will be unwilling or unable to pay the higher fees and you may be in a position of having to completely rebuild your client base.

If you really feel you do need work on a project for free or cheaply to get your foot in the door, then look at some of the Non-Profit Organisations or charities and see if there is anything you can do to help them out.

This way, you get to feel good about yourself for giving away your services, you won’t feel demotivated due to feeling like your being exploited by large companies, and you’ll [hopefully] have some great recommendations from the project.

If I was just starting an SEO or web development business I’d probably be a bit unsure of how to price myself and I think the best way to solve that would be to conduct some market research. Now I’m not sure how easy this would be but I’d suggest working out who you consider to be you’re competitors and phoning up asking for a quote.

Maybe only a few will give you an actual figure but it’s at least a reference for when you decide on your own rates. Also check out this post from SEOmoz about SEO pricing. It’s pretty thorough and although it’s in $dollars it’s another good reference to use when deciding upon rates.

Product

What are your core competencies? Try and work out what about SEO you most enjoy and are best at. Is it link building, content creation or viral marketing? Once you’ve found out what your core competency is, focus on it as it is going to be your competitive advantage over other SEOs and agencies.

I’m not saying turn down work just because it’s not what you’re best at but do seriously consider if you’re going to be able to provide a level of service that you would want the prospective client to tell other people about. If not, don’t just say no, refer them to someone else who can provide the services.

This means your still adding value to the prospective client and you’re networking with other SEOs and agencies (in the hope that they might throw some work back in your direction).

Promotion

Blogging is a great way to market yourself as a freelancer or small business. It’s an avenue for showing your expertise on certain topics. It’s also a great way to network with other talented individuals in your industry by linking out to relevant articles.

While my blog is not technically a business front, I am using it for brand building and I have had a few business enquiries through the blog. I want people to read this blog and learn from the blog as I learn so that in three years time when I come out of university I’m going to have something else to differentiate myself from all the other graduates with a 2.1 in Computer Science.

The same can be applied to business blogging. It’s a way to differentiate yourself from all the other SEOs and agencies. Blogging can also be a sideline of revenue depending on how well it takes off. There’s a great article on freelanceswitch about the five reasons freelancers should blog.

Final thoughts

You need to be passionate about search engine optimisation, or any other industry you want to start a business around, so that you’re willing to continuously learn about the topic.

I would suggest stuffing your RSS reader with as many relevant blogs as you can handle, I mentioned quite a few SEO blogs here.

Don’t forget to network like crazy!

You should probably focus on ROI as much as possible. I imagine that is where the industry is headed.

Don’t give up and Good Luck!