Posted by Jason on July 11th, 2006 — in Online Business
I often farm out some of the work for my business using freelance services such as Get a Freelancer and Rent a Coder. I find that by doing that with some of the more time consuming or mundane jobs, it frees me up for the ones which I can’t have done out of house, such as customer service and marketing. I do hear many times from people when I tell them what I farm out, that you get what you pay for, indicating that the service is substandard. I couldn’t disagree more.
I decided to prove this to a point in the last job I listed. I always write a VERY descriptive accounting of what needs to be done, almost to the point of discouraging bidders. I would much rather get 5 bidders who know what they are bidding for then 100 who have no idea. It saves both time and money in the long run. I find sometimes that with such a long description some people don’t bother to read it and then disagreements arise later in the process. I decided this time to add a single line at the end and request that people reference it in their bid so that I can be sure they read the entire description.
What followed surprised me quite a bit. I should first state that the “bid range” for this job was set at $100-$300. There was a clear division right away where around 15 providers bid $300 and another 15 bid $100. Out of the high end bidders, only 3 out of the 15 referenced my code phrase proving they had actually read the entire description while 14 out of 15 of the low end did reference it.
I was amazed to see how many high end bidders didn’t even read my requirements. Now you can analyse that all kinds of ways, for example, that they probably bid high and a lot knowing that they will definitely be able to do it and once they get it can dedicate the resources to it. I have another suspicion though and that is that they bid high and if they aren’t able to do it, farm it out themselves to the $100 bidders and keep the profit just for acting as the middleman.
Personally, although I agree to the You Get What You Pay For philosophy, it has not been the case when it comes to freelancers. In fact, many of the people I have hired through a service to do one job, have continued to work for me on other projects. To me its about communication and as long as I can get my point across easily, my experience has been positive so I will continue to judge people on their work and communication, not the price they charge.
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Posted by Jason on July 7th, 2006 — in Forums
I have seen a growing trend lately of forums acquiring other forums and unlike the old days where they would redirect to the new one or just call it a sister forum, they are just merging the posts and members. One that has been using this technique with a great deal of success is Admin Fusion. They have been acquiring similar forums like mad and it has really expanded their market share and livened up their forum. I witnessed the original merger firsthand and I really was amazed how fluid it was. I think there was one issue with any active polls not working but that was quite minor. Here is the the notification from their most recent acquisition around a week ago:
yfs1,
We have done it again, AdminFusion is merging with another forum admin community! We wanted to notify you in case you have an account at both forums, www.whichbb.com and www.adminfusion.com. If you do have an account at both forums, check these accounts to make sure that the email addresses are the same. If they are not, change them so that they are. Please do this by this Sunday, June 9th at the latest.
If you have not yet heard about the merger, you may read this thread for more information:
http://www.adminfusion.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8363
We are really looking forward to this and hope you are as well. Stop by and let us know what you think 
Regards,
AdminFusion Staff
I really like this strategy and I think its the future. Right now you can pick just about any niche and there are hundreds if not thousands of forums on the subject. God forbid you take a look at the SEO/Webmaster world where there are hundreds of thousands active forums.
The old trend of successful forums buying little ones to try to get their members to migrate was one that just couldn’t last in today’s market. By almost merging the forum by force, you breathe a lot of life into the existing forum. On the technical side, merging two forums couldn’t be easier these days especially if you are using vBulletin. There are even a growing number of merging option for phpBB now emerging. It has prompted me to make up a short list of related forums to make offers on as I see it money well spent. After all, the real value in a forum is not it’s PR or number of pages indexed but its member base.
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Posted by Jason on July 5th, 2006 — in Online Business
If you have visited any SEO forum which allows people to announce new directories, you may have noticed there is a new one created approximately every 1.3 seconds. This has been the case for a couple of years and I don’t anticipate it slowing down any time soon. As many directories as there are popping up each day, there are still forum posters asking if it’s worth it to start one. Usually if you have to ask, then the answer is no but for those of us that have decided to take the plunge, there are a few things you can do to distinguish yourself.
The following is my checklist. It has changed since the days I started Kwik Goblin which was really a toe in the water for me. I later sold that site on and the new owner has done a great job developing it. I started my Business Directory a few months ago using the following guidelines and it is doing quite well getting around 120 submissions a day.
Make your Directory SE Friendly
There is some disagreement on what aspects truly make it SE friendly but one of the biggest is to make sure submitters get a direct link to their site. Be careful not to use redirects, no follows, or other things which can sometimes come as standard in some directory scripts. I also use Mod Rewrite to create what appear to be static pages although I would agree with those that say they don’t make the directory SEO friendly, but as you will see in many of the tips in this post, perception is sometimes as important as reality.
Make Your Directory User Friendly
This was a huge mistake most directories made in the early days. They required users to jump through hoops in order to submit a site for consideration. This could include setting up an account, confusing image verification and double email confirmations. SPAM is the directory owners responsibility to stop and putting the burden on the visitor will only affect the quality of submissions you receive. There are plenty of methods for combating spammers and your visitors can be none the wiser. Also be sure that your navigation is intuitive. I see too many directory sites designed around AdSense rather then the user. If you are after the quick profit then there is probably no changing your mind but personally I believe AdSense is a waste of time if you have less then 1000 uniques a day on a directory site.
Submit Your Directory to Directories
The title says it all. With so many directories around you can’t expect people to find you. In addition to directory submissions, you should post announcing your directory in every forum you can find (and allows it). I would also contact those offering directory submission services and get them to add your directory to their submission list. It will take a while to gain momentum but once you do you could be seeing several hundred submissions a day
There are of course many more specific tips which I may decide to share over the next few weeks. In general, if you are deciding whether to add a new directory, I would suggest picking a specific niche. General directories are a dime a dozen and that means they are a lot harder to market. On the of the more successful ones recently has been Alive Directory but I know that the owner of that directory has a 5 figure budget which he has spent very wisely. If you don’t have the cash to spare, I would suggest carving out your own piece of the market by either offering some niche that hasn’t been catered to or pick an existing niche and do it better.
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