A while back I ran across this site, http://studentsthatfreelance.com I thought to myself, what a great site. The mission of the site is simple:

We are here to help serve as the stomping grounds for student freelancers all over the world who want to start freelancing or want to improve their freelance game. The lack of information on the interwebs to help student freelancers has been our driving force in creating an awesome community.

The site is run by a pretty cool cat that knows her stuf @amberlturner

What is the point of this post, well first to tell you about STFL, but also so you can download the wallpaper that I made for them :)

You can download this puppy here.

I will be back with you soon, I promise. It’s just been one of those weeks and the next two are not looking any better, but until then enjoy:

Photographer Jill Freedman did a ride-a-long with the NYPD from 1978 to 1981, and her black & white photos from that time are now on display at the Higher Pictures Gallery (764 Madison Avenue). Her “Street Cops” exhibit will be hanging through October 28th, and here’s a preview. Seems like things were way more fun back then, no?

{photos courtesy of: http://gothamist.com}

Do you know everyone’s blood type in your town? Do you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the same restaurant every time you go out? Does being in a traffic jam mean you are stuck behind a tractor? Do you spend the weekends drinking around a fire sitting in walmart parking lot?

You MUST live in a small ‘rural’ town.

Which is AWESOME most of the time, except when you want to make a million bucks, or even 100k a year. That is where the proper use of internet and smart marketing will help your business grow exponentially. I am going to tell you my secrets give you one simple way to help your business grow in a rural area.

• This is KEY no matter where you live, STUDY THE DATA.

Okay, now I have the info how do I use it?

This is part of the hard problem with farming this data. You must set specific goals for your online business and figure out how to reach and possibly even excede those goals. The easiest way to use this data is to first understand how people are coming to your site, then to figure out how to make that a easier process. Then you need to move onto the reason why people are leaving your site, or at least at what page they are leaving your site. Once you have gathered that information you must devise a way to keep people on your site. Possibly one little link would grab their attention, but truthfully this is going to be different for everyone.

How does this information pertain to rural businesses? The truth is this info pertains to all businesses, but running a rural business means you have to work extra hard to gain clients/customers and this one simple way will help you do that. Yes, it is true, people are now using the web to learn about your business, yes, even in rural areas. Yes, yes, you may still be on dial up (wait, what is that?) but, more than likely they have a fancy lil smart phone in their pants that leads them to businesses that study the data and make their sites more user/google friendly. Be smart and learn who your customers are and once you do that make those customers happy and go vertical with your business.

**this is not the only thing you need for success, but this will contribute to better customer satisfaction**

Want to keep your employees productive? Yeah, me to.

This is my 5 step, fool full-proof plan for keeping employees happy and productive, how do I know if it works? I don’t, but I hope it does. :) Plus, it is based off my own work experiences and what how experiences taught me a lot about having employees.

1. Hire a jack of all trades, they have a desire to learn, so let them learn.

By hiring a Jack of all trades you allow that employee to become a master in many fields and you do not have to waste your time explaining a project to 5 different sub-contractors to get one job done and as they say, “time is money”

2. Do not make your employees work on one project all week, actually don’t let them work on one project all day. *unless you are pushing for a deadline, those come first. :)

Thinking about when I am most productive at work I realized that if I got stuck on one project all day, especially one that I did not enjoy {i.e. Magento product imports} I would accomplish practially nothing. However, If I switched up projects throughout the day I completed at least double the amount of work. Yeah, you heard that right x2, BONUS!

3. Give them cool stuff

Yeah, money is nice, but places that offer incentives such as paid lunches and the latest technology make the workplace a bit happier and in turn, more productive. So, go buy your employees some new work computers, or a burrito.

4. Give them Fridays, or Mondays off, or both?

How productive are you on Fridays or Mondays? Personally I am not productive at all on those days, so why not give your employees those days off, so they can spend time doing what they want to do?

5. Let them work on their own projects.

This is more for full-time employees and is based off of the Google model, but allowing your employees to work on their own projects for a certain amount of the week (google allows 20%) gets their juices flowing and in turn they use those juices on your projects, yeah, I would call that a win win situation.

*by following this five step program you do not hold muah responsible for unproductive employees, maybe your business just sucks.

Since the boom of Facebook it is interesting to watch the Baby Boomer Generation make comments about the ever-changing features and additions that all websites implement or should be implementing over time. The beautiful thing about the Internet is its ability to grow and change over time to include or exclude the features that make our lives easier. So, what is my response to comments like these:

Seriously!?!?!? You compare something to YAHOO??????? Yahoo is so 1999 they use those tactics to keep people like, well, this person.

But, truly what needs to be said is that the Internet and change go hand in hand. You, as users are the people that are the driving force behind the features that we add to the Internet everyday, so I challenge you to not automatically turn against a change. But,  rather I ask you to embrace that change and look for the positives in it and then make constructive comments. You might find that if you spent the time learning why they changed it, instead of typing a complaint right away about the change, you might learn how to use the Internet in a new, better way.

In all seriousness, if you need help with a change that has happened online feel free to shoot me an e-mail and either I will help you, or get you in touch with someone that can.

Stay classy interwebs,

Love,

Your brother in code – Drew