Category: Marketing

By Posted on Posted in Business, Laptop, Marketing, PDRater No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Bootstrapping 101
Bootstrapping 101

Everyone has heard the phrase, “pull oneself up by the bootstraps.” ((Photo courtesy of Jarl van Hoother)) It basically refers to using your current resources to reach the next step.

In a prior post I talked about “How to Start a Business: Plan B,” which was mainly about fund raising.  Fund raising is the exact opposite of bootstrapping.  If you can’t raise funding for your business and you’re really committed to it, you’ve got to find another way.  That would be “Plan B.”  In hindsight I would have entitled that post, “B is for Bootstrapping” or “Starting A Business On A Budget.”

For a very nuts-and-bolts look at starting a business, look to Guy Kawasaki‘s “The Art of Bootstrapping.”  This is an excerpt from his new book, “Reality Check.”  My understanding is that this book is a distillation of his prior books and blog posts.  Its on my Christmas wish list, so I’ll look forward to reading it in about a month.

I used many of these bootstrapping techniques while building this website.  Using the bullet points from Guy’s post, here’s some of the things I used to start this business:

  • “Ship then test.”  To be more exact, I tested the calculators rigorously but didn’t spend nearly as much time testing how the earliest versions of this website looked in different web browsers.  Once I got it to work in Internet Explorer, I started marketing it.
  • “Start a service business.”  In the first few months of building this website I worked as a technology consultant and part-time programmer.  In addition to being a nice change from my day job as an attorney and earning a little extra, it also gave me the chance to learn some new programming languages and techniques.
  • “Go direct.”  I schlepped my laptop to every appearance and showed off the website to every single attorney that was foolish enough to sit still and listen to me.  Besides not having the resources to hire people to sell for me, it also allowed me to learn more about what my customers wanted.  Keeping in touch with my clients/customers has lead to a LOT of new developments on this site.

As to “how” I started this business, here was my process:

  1. I wanted to build my own online rating calculators. ((The exact reasons why are the topic of an entirely different blog post altogether.))
  2. I bought a book about starting a business.  “The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki.  $17.00 or so.
  3. I bought some books about web based programming languages.  $55.00 or so for two books.
  4. I bought a few website domain names.  $10.00 each.
  5. I wrote a “prototype” of the 1997 and 2005 permanent disability rating calculators.  It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
  6. Once I had a working prototype, I bought some web space.  $180.00 for two years.
  7. Market the website.
  8. Make a sale.
  9. Develop more features and/or improve the site.
  10. Lather, rinse, repeat steps 6 – 8.

By Posted on Posted in Business, Free, Marketing, PDRater No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Going Viral
Going Viral

“Going viral” is the latest marketing buzzword to make it into the public consciousness.  This phrase refers to a process where something is promoted mainly by word of mouth.  The “viral” part of the phrase means to imply that popularity will spread exponentially, like a virus. ((Photo courtesy of AJC1))

The most memorable examples of “viral marketing” in recent years is probably the “Blair Witch Project.”  This super-low budget movie was popularized largely through word of mouth, making the highest profit-to-cost ratio movies of all time. ((Incidentally, unseating Mad Max which held the title for twenty years.))

What does this have to do with you or PDRater.com?

Scott Adams, the creator and author of the wildly popular Dilbert comic, recently published a blog post about what he referred to as, “digital tipping.”  He puts up a blog post every day ((Its not easy!  I missed two days last week!)) but makes little to no money off of it.  Recently he partnered with a company which provides a free service ((Which can be upgraded to a pay service.)) in the hopes, or so I believe, that people will use the free service and upgrade to the pay service providing him, in turn, with a financial reward.

Scott Adams made an interesting point about how his blogging has affected his core business – publishing comic strips. ((I wish I could find that link!)) He discovered that his sometimes controversial blog posts sometimes turned people off from his comic strip – thereby losing a portion of his fan base forever.  On the flip side, although his blog is fairly popular his blog rarely improves his comic strip fan base.

A simple cost benefit analysis would suggest that the observed risk is not worth the potential incremental benefit – especially in light of the ongoing time commitment required to publish blog posts.  I suspect that my own blog posts have a similar risk-reward scenario.

Assuming that I’m acting rationally in blogging, why do I continue to do so in light of an unfavorable bost benefit analysis?  Firstly, I rather enjoy writing.  Secondly, its my understanding that search engines rank frequently updated websites slightly higher.  Thirdly, it is my hope that popularity, knowledge, and use of this website will “go viral.”

Much like Scott Adam’s concept of “digital tipping,” I hope people will help me at no cost to themselves by telling their friends about this website, how useful it is for them, and how this website saves them time.  So, if you enjoy or appreciate this website, why not tell a friend?

By Posted on Posted in Author, Business, Calculators, Free, Marketing, PDRater No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A while ago a very entrepreneurial friend of mine suggested I read a book called, “The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki.  This one book is responsible in no small part for the website you see today. ((So, if you don’t like it – blame him!  Haha!))  Guy worked for Apple and later started an influential and innovative venture capital firm, Garage.  As if that wasn’t enough, he’s a frequent lecturer, best selling author, and avid blogger.

In one of his recent articles, he talks about “Plan B for Fund Raising.”  Here’s my take on Plans A and B:

Plan Bee*
Plan Bee

Plan A

Anyone who was alive during the late 90’s has heard of “Plan A.”  Build a prototype, put together a PowerPoint presentation, get some venture capital, and spend venture capitalist money.  You know how this story ends.  The company gets bought out and everyone is rich or the company never goes anywhere and its assets are sold for scrap.

Plan B ((Original photo courtesy of Eye of Einstein))

Anyone who was alive during the 70’s knows all about “Plan B.”  These are the people who started businesses in their garage.  I suppose we really only hear about the success “Plan B” stories.  No one’s surprised when a home business doesn’t go big so no one talks about it.  Plan B is where somebody believes so feverishly in their own idea they work on it nights and weekends after they come home from their day job as a barrista.

The whole reason I’m writing this blog post, indeed the reason why I have this blog and website at all, is because of “Plan B.”  At its most hectic in the last year, I was working a day job, doing contract attorney and techie work for various clients, while marketing and programming these calculators.  While I didn’t live with my parents, I participated in a surprisingly (and embarrassingly) large number of the activities Guy describes under Plan B.

This is NOT something I intend to do ever again.  Thankfully, the hard work of building the calculators is done. ((Well, more accurately, its always almost done.  ;) ))  These days my only continuing time commitment to this site is writing blog posts and answering fan mail. ((But, mostly blog posts.))

By Posted on Posted in Author, Business, Laptop, Marketing, Not Workers Compensation, PDRater, Technobabble No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My laptop is back, up and running!  I truly cannot explain just how happy I am that I have it back.

Scotty
Scotty

As I mentioned earlier, my laptop stopped working on the Sunday night before last.  The next day I stopped by a local Fry’s Electronics and picked up a hard drive enclosure for my laptop’s hard drive.  This solved my initial problem, being cut off from my data, by allowing me to schlep my laptop’s hard drive with me.  Even though I had my data with me, I didn’t have my laptop with me.  I constantly felt as if I had lost my wallet or cell phone.  A disconcerting feeling, to say the least.

On Friday afternoon I took my laptop to a local repair shop, Paramount Technology, and, after talking with the proprietor for a few minutes, left my laptop with them at about 12:30pm.  He estimated they might have it ready on Tuesday; Monday at the earliest.

They called my cell less than three hours later to tell me my laptop was fixed.

Everyone knows how Captain Kirk would ask the impossible of Scotty.  Like clockwork, Scotty would bitch and moan about how he could not perform the impossible.  And, yet, when crunch time came, the polarity was reversed, dilithium crystals realigned, and they had warp engines back on line.

They did a great job, warranting their work for 90 days, had my laptop repaired in record time, and didn’t scratch my baby.  (FYI, Dell offers a whopping 30 day warranty on their work.  In the words of Govenor Palin, “Thanks, but no thanks.”)

I don’t care if they were practicing “under promise and over deliver.”  Paramount Technology has earned my business and my recommendation.

By Posted on Posted in Author, Business, Marketing, Not Workers Compensation, PDRater, Search Engine Ranking, SEO, Technobabble No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday afternoon I received an e-mail “Link Exchange Request” from another website.  That website is for legally related services, but really has nothing to do with what this website is about:  California workers’ compensation, nerdy technobabble, and random silliness.

This other website proposed that I put up a link to their website here.  Incoming website links are one of the primary tools search engines use to rank web pages, which is why people are always offering link exchanges.  Google’s PageRank system ranks a website on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best.  Like the Richter scale for earthquakes, PageRank scores require exponentially more energy to reach the next level.

Bad Link Exchange Offer
Bad Link Exchange Offer

These links to my site can be “high quality” because they are from a website that also deals with California workers’ compensation, nerdy technobabble, or random silliness.  Or, they can be “low quality” because they have nothing to do with what my site is about.

In order to find out whether they were offering a high quality linkback, I checked out their website.  On the right is a screenshot of their website.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with workers’ compensation.  The green circle is where they had the link to their “resources” page.  The green box at the top is the only part of their page that’s visible when you go to their page.

So, not only were they offering me a low quality link, but they were offering me a low quality link that no one would ever look for, let alone find.

While they were clearly making a terrible offer, the idea that they looked up my website in order to solicit a link was amusing.  My website’s gotten so big people want links from me!  Blog bigtime, baby!