While this is useful information the premise is flawed. The fact is no one searches for your name, and no one cares about your name (except for your mother).

People search for solutions. They want a web designer, a plumber, to buy a book, to get a lawyer. An individual's name is seldom used to find that solution.

Before Oprah was Oprah she was just another talk show host. It was what she did, what she provided as a solution to her viewers that created her brand and the resulting prominence of her name.

If you want to enhance the results of a search on your name by all means do so. But if you want to impact the results in being found as a product supplier, a solution provider, a professional or whatever it is you do, you better focus on maximizing your search presence for that instead of your name. And by "that" I mean the keywords that relate to your USP.

It certainly can't hurt. But your personal profile and your business profile should be two different efforts.

I'd also dispute the comment that every inbound link counts. Only links from relevant sites are really useful. Stay clear of link farms and links from sites that are not relevant to what your site focus is.

I like it, it looks really good. It scores well SEO wise which is unusual ;-)

My suggestion would be to sort out your canonical file name issues and 301 redirects. The link you have above redirects to http:/doodlekit.com/home. So in essence you have three paths for the search engines. Not a huge issue but it gives you a bit of extra SEO juice in a crowded keyword field.

I saw this discussion this morning and nodded in agreement with Bob. There have been a lot of blatant promotional postings here. In fact earlier today someone merely posted a link (that did not work) to a ClickBank product. The other habit of these posters is they comment on their own promotions to keep the post at the top of the home page discussion list.

It's seems to me there is less frequent use of the discussion area over the recent past. Maybe this mis-posting is one of the reasons.

I should note this sort of behavior is hardly unique to this venue. It happens all the time in LinkedIn and other forums. Some of it is being unfamiliar with the "rules" some of it is simply ignoring the "rules". Either way it degrades the experience for everyone.

I like Mark's point about finding folks to join your network in the discussion groups. I do this frequently in LinkedIn where there is a substantially greater range of discussions. I've joined some very interesting people's network by finding them in a good discussion.

Promoting a Clickbank product in the discussion area is not appropriate.

And worse yet, web developers keep pushing flash over more search friendly methods.

I believe you can use the small (8 people) room at the Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble on 106th in Belleuve for free. Bellevue library is also good, however you can only use it once a month, unless you get others to sign up for it. They stay busy so book early. Free WiFi at the library.

It's dependent on the profession you are targeting. Each will have different standards and requirements.

Try Audacity. It's a free and fairly full featured audio editing program.

Amy, I'm not sure you are correct about Picasa. I upload my photos to Picasa Web. My URL is: http://picasaweb.google.com/richgeasey and I don't believe you need an account to view it.

Photobucket and Flickr are also good as well.

I like Picasa though lots of features for no cost. A good formula.

You should consider some sort of web presence. In the short term set up a local business listing in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Identify the best keywords representing your business and craft a quality listing. You don't need a website to do this, however it does help.

As far as attracting the attention of designers in Biznik, invite them to join your network. Don't sit back and wait for them to find you. Offer some sort of deal for Biznik designers and tell them about it.

It appears Christian is a non-person now.

Craigslist does not delete ads unless they are duplicates. One ad in one city, period. If you want duplicates you need to chage titles and description so they don't look the same (then they are not duplicates).

Users delete ads because they violate the terms and conditions of Craigslist, or because they simply don't like them (affiliate ad, improper category, etc.).

A useful article with some great thoughts. However, I'd say for the most part you should be looking for your business applications on-line.

While there certainly are many issues for most small businesses software as a service is now a very viable alternative. And for the individual business person there are hundreds of great alternatives that are low priced and very powerful.

Best of all, all you need is a browser (you could even ditch Windows and use Linux) and can access your application anywhere.

You are correct on one point, there is some rule breaking going on. You advocate creating listings in other towns and using a keyword rich phrase instead of your company name and a single listing.

Google is starting to crack down on this behavior. What you are suggesting, while it makes sense and does work is gaming the system (some folks might call this black hat optimization).

Google does not like people who game the system and the penalties can be severe, such as all of your listings being deleted!

As far as doing it yourself versus paying for it, well that's how an economy works! I can wash my own car, I can paint my own house, and many other things on my own. Yet, I pay to have them done because someone else can do it better than I can.

I've seen plenty of people do their own local business listing and in most every instance they do a lousy job.

The site you refer to does not work. The link is OK, but the site itself is not functioning.

I might be mistaken but doesn't it take 30 days for flood insurance to become effective? In other words, buy now, the rain is coming!

Get a non-USPS box and call it a suite. No one cares in my opinion. Many large businesses use a PO Box as their address.

Nancy, I think it's quite simple. You are charging for the event. Biznik people don't pay for events for the most part. Half of your event is by Steve, he has presented that material to a large number of Biznik people in the past, all for free.

I have offered events for a charge and had zero takers, when I offered the same event for free it was over capacity.

Look at the event last night sponsored by Lara. 40% RSVP. A lot of hard cost to get those two authors to the event I'll bet. A survey was done on who Biznikers would want to hear from and there was a lot of response. There was a lot of interest in those particular presenters, but yet when the time came to crack open the wallet the result did not match the survey expectations. Not the first time people did not put their money where their mouth was.

You know if this event was free it would be full, or close to it. We have trained the general population of Biznik to expect free and we should not be surprised when they continue that behavior.

While there have been successful paid events they are few and far between. Some that work one time don't the next. For the future I'm looking at other alternatives that will generate the results I want. Will it include free events on Biznik? Maybe, but it's my last choice. The lack of attendance at quality paid events like yours (and others) only lead to fewer quality free events. Wow, big surprise!

There is the old relationship breakup line, "it's not you, it's me". Well in this instance it isn't you, it's them!

You should focus on the price yielding the optimum profit, not revenue. Far too many businesses chase revenue while forgetting the most important part of the equation is how much net income you are making. I've been to the revenue at all cost movie, it does not end well.