comments

This is fascinating. I've been operating this way for years but didn't think about it exactly in this way. Though in my field it's somewhat tricky -- for some reason people often think they can take that little bit of knowledge and go off and do it themselves.

Great article-- Small business owners are way too casual about this topic. Too many think that just by having someone sign an independent contractor form, (which is meaningless to the IRS) they've somehow protected themselves. If the IRS determines that the contractor was actually an employee, you could be on the hook for a lot of money.

Actually, we know exactly how well direct response tv commercials work. But I don't believe Tatyana is referring to Broadcast/ Cable advertising.

One way for a non profit or small business with no budget to get a nice video made is to contact local college film programs-- some of them even have this as a requirement for a marketing video class, to make a video for a non profit or small business. Where I teach, Seattle Film Institute, does this, and the school I was at in Phoenix, Collins College, had a required class in which every student had to create a PSA for a real non profit client.

I recommend that people who try that, treat it as a learning experience themselves and to stay in communication with the students during the production-- don't just hand it off to them.

Great idea-- wish something like this had been around a year ago, I might have stuck with Word Press.

I'll be going Just to see what Dan ends up wearing!

I'd be up for some video or film community happy hours. It's nice to just hang out and compare notes and not be trying to sell yourself. I really miss the trade associations we used to have here in Seattle.

I'd add, have relevant photos ready to hand over if you're pitching a story. This is especially great for trade publications, it seems to help put your story forward if you have good imagery to support it.

Credit Union, All the way.

I'd be interested.

Yes, bumping up your RAM, especially if you're at 1 gig or lower, will really help a lot.

Also, when I bought a Macbook Pro six months ago, I bit the bullet and bought the support plan for $350. I was surprised to discover that it included the Disk Warrior program!

Run Disk Utility. This will be in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.

Pick out your hard drive from the list on the left when the program opens. There will likely be only one listed, though it may appear as if there's two, as it list the name of the manufacturer of the drive, and then the partitions of the drive. You likely don't have more than one partition.

Click Repair disc in the lower part of the screen. This takes awhile.

I think you are talking about the "zapping the PRAM" process. It's really simple. Restart, or turn on your computer, and quickly hold down the OPTION, the COMMAND (That's the one with the apple and or the squigle on it), the P and the R keys, simultaneously, until AFTER you hear the beep tone. Then you can release the four keys, and your Mac will go through the startup process again, and you'll hear the beep tone again.

This can fix a number of odd behaviours, but obviously not all. Here's a page of other helpful tips: http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html including, repairing the disc permissions, which is also likely the cause of your slowdowns if you haven't done it in a long while. It's not hard to do.

How about one of the new art gallery/bars? The Macleod has worked great for Biznik before. There's a couple on Cap hill, can't remember the names of them though. On 12th, between pike and pine I think.

Are you thinking maybe of something more like the Q&A section of linkedin?

You might want to contact Bryan Brewer http://biznik.com/members/bryan-brewer , this is his specialty. I met him at an event last week.

Yeah, I tried that. But I dind't remember which of the women there that night it was!

The business card is the first thing you do, because it is so easy to do. I just go to avery's site every time I need more cards and print up a bunch as I need them.

So I don't really see it as a which comes first, the website is essentiall but takes a lot more time and effort than a card.

Brian,

Remember that event producer event we were at in the nightclub in Belltown where I met you? There was a woman there who had a space available for events. I can't remember her name though.

I liked this article too. I'm certainly more comfortable networking and circulating, connecting and helping, then I am selling.

But I notice that some folks think networking can be a substitute for selling. Sales is still fundamental, maybe not so much for individual freelancers or consultants, but for almost every other company it's essential too.

I don't know if I've found great value yet, but It did bump up the search ranks for a couple of the web sites I listed. My main page was already at the top for searching on my name.

I spend quite a bit of time with a now hoary ancient old internet networking tech, the email list. Specifically the cinematography mailing list, which first started as an AOL board, and became a mailing list around '96. There's a web site too, http://www.cinematography.net where the posts can be read and replied to and are threaded and archived, but I think most people read it as email.

I want to start a restaurant where every item on the menu is wrapped in Bacon.

Then, 1 yr later, I'll open a competing restaurant that duplicates the menu of the first-- with the addition of everything being deep fried too.

I love your premise-- That basic SEO isn't rocket science. Though it can be a lot of tedious work if you have to upgrade a site with old fashioned design that's opaque to search engines. I'm not an SEO specialist, but using the tips you mention, plus others (such as describing photos in their file names, and giving them descriptive alt tags containing the important key search words of the site) even an amateur can greatly improve a ranking. A long time associate is 30 year expert in a field that was moribund and is suddenly hot. (Stereoscopic Video 3D) But his search results were terrible despite having a lot of searchable content. I've been slowly going over his site, changing all the page URLs, adding Tittles, changing the image file names from numbers to descriptions, etc. One of the main problems was that all of his main headings were gifs, not searchable text! This preserved a certain font look but hurt search results. I took out those gifs and made them text headings.

Now instead of being low on the second page of results, he's usually hitting in the first two or three.

It's tedious work, but it paid off.