break throughs. April 25, 2008
Posted by engjake in Nothing, business.add a comment
I love them and hate them at the same time. I’m not talking about breakthroughs in science or technology that change the world – love all of those. Especially if they had one in Cancer research. I mean break throughs in the office. The kind where you’ve been struggling with figuring out some software and you just can’t get it and support articles don’t help. Then you finally figure it out, or someone clues you in. Suddenly a wieght is lifted off your shoulders because you know a new trick that will save you lots of time. That part I love. The part I hate – If I had only known that trick months ago I could have gotten a lot more done. Too bad you just can’t know everything there is to know all at once! I guess then life would be too easy.
Google Sandbox. A Myth? April 21, 2008
Posted by engjake in business, seo.Tags: Dmoz, google sandbox, seo
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I don’t think it’s a myth. We have a couple of websites that i beleive are in the sandbox right now. One is an older Home and Garden site that we recently have done a lot of optimization and expansion on. The other, an ATV Accessories website is just a few months old. Both are struggling with google rankings. The new website especially ranks well for obscure items but for the most popular terms we are optimizing for we cannot be found. After analysis of competitors that are ranking for those terms… we beleive we are doing a much better job of playing by the rules and optimizing better. The only explanation I have is that we are in some sort of sandbox. I’ve been involved with SEO on my websites for years and we are doing everything the right way as far as I can tell – at least what we have done has helped other websites of ours to rank well. So I guess we sit back and wait for them to let us out of the sandbox. The odd thing is, and I’m not sure if this is related at all – we can’t get dmoz to list either of these websites. We have tried listing in multiple categories. Our older website was listed, but suddenly dropped year or so ago. SEO can be really frustrating sometimes. Any thoughts on how to get out of the sandbox or get listed in Dmoz are appreciated. For right now we’re just optimizing more, adding more product and trying to get more external links so that when we are released we’ll be a bit more seasoned.
Close Call April 18, 2008
Posted by engjake in family.Tags: close calls
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Just heard from my bro today who lives down in Texas. Out of the blue a car came crashing through their back fence and rolled across their back yard. The car was going pretty fast but luckily the driver was not injured and we’re so thankful my little niece who is not in school yet wasn’t playing in the yard just then. Life could have changed drastically in a flash.
Quick Fix. Happy Camper. April 18, 2008
Posted by engjake in business.Tags: Americommerce, mals-e, patience, shopping carts
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Funny this happened today after my last post about patience. One of my websites has used a shopping cart called Mals-e for years. The cart is real simple, but it’s very dependable and works. I have looked at many, many carts because I would like something fancier. I even found a great cart called Americommerce and have a few sites hosted there. The guys over there have helped me customize it so that i can make the switch pretty easy. I just haven’t convinced myself to try and fix something that isn’t broken.. even though it is lacking a lot of cool features that Americommerce has. So for now I’m trying to get my Americommerce websites working well enough that they can be a significant source of income before I risk making the change. Mals has worked great but we have kind of outgrown it as it’s lacking a lot of features that would make our day to day a lot easier – Americommerce has it.
Anyway, after more than 5 years, I had my first issue with Mals-e today. Suddenly if you added a product to the shopping cart, continued shopping and then added another item to the cart, the second item would overwrite the first. Not a great situation. Without thinking about it I picked up the phone and called the number on Mals-e’s website. You’d think I would have thought about the time difference as I dialed the overseas number, but I didn’t. Daytime is the busiest so I was just real concerned about getting the issue fixed for our customers. Just as my call was answered I realized it was about 9:30 at night for them. As luck would have it Mal himself answered the phone and had the issue fixed within minutes. Thanks Mal. The planets were aligned to make all of that happen so quickly, I’m sure.
Patience is a virtue April 17, 2008
Posted by engjake in business.Tags: ecommerce, patience, paypal
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I think i have a lot of patience until I get really impatient about something. I have serveral little issues I am trying to resolve with websites, some of which I am relying on the service provider to help me fix. One of these service providers is Paypal. I know Paypal is a big company and so resolving some issues can take some time. However, when I set up our account with them we went through extra paper work to get it set up correctly under our business name. Now they have placed limitations without warning and their reasoning is the exactly why they made me fill out the extra paper work when I set up my account. So now I have a sizable amount of money in my paypal account, but they will not allow me to withdraw it. I realize I am one of thousands of customers but I think certain circumstances require a little more attention than others.
This reminds me of an experience I had with one of my suppliers a couple of years ago. This particular brand has a niche in the market place and they are apparenlty quite proud of that. As a result, they figure they can act however they want and all of their customers will keep buying from them because the demand is there and you can’t find the product from anyone else – which is actually true unfortunately. Anyway, I had a large order and they completely dropped the ball on it. I called to speak to a sales rep about it and of course they have their rules they have to abide by and would not help me resolve the issue. I tried different representatives hoping someone would realize the error and take responsibility. Finally I worked my way up to the top and got the sales manager for the entire US.
I explained the issue and this was his response in a very rude tone, ”You are one of thousands of customers. You think I can give you personal attention on your orders?” Of course I said, “Yes, if you want my business I think it is approriate when they have messed up a large order and ruined my chances of doing business with that customer again.” I can’t remember his exact words but it was pretty much to the effect that it really doesn’t matter to him if I buy from them or not. The problem I have is that customers ask for their products all the time so of course I want to sell it. I’ve been patient though, and now that we are selling much, much more. They kind of value us as a customer now - they are still the most difficult supplier we have to work with.
Homecoming April 16, 2008
Posted by engjake in cancer/leukemia.Tags: cancer, leukemia
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My little girl of 7 years hasn’t slept in her own bed for over 4 months. Over the past 8 months she has probably only been home for a few weeks. On 9/11 – ironic I know – her cancer came back. She has spent a lot of sleepless nights at the hospital in pain, discomfort, or just nausia. As a result, my wife and I have spent a lot of sleepless nights as well. After a clinic visit today she was finally given the go ahead to come home next week. My wife cried. Chloe was estatic.
We’ve been lucky to have gotten her good treatment for her leukemia and a bone marrow transplant that we pray will eliminate the cancer once and for all. She has had great nurses and doctors. For months now we have been living apart so our other two girls can keep going to school, so we trade off living with Chloe at the hospital or apartment. We are looking forward to not having to pay for an apartment as well as our home, having to catch up with each other by phone, eating on the road all the time, spending a fortune on gas; but mostly just being able to be together. Every day.
You tend to take things for granted, until you don’t have them anymore.
Starting a Website April 16, 2008
Posted by engjake in business.Tags: business, ecommerce, new website, start-up
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Partners and I have started a few ecommerce websites over the years. A couple have been pretty successful, some deceased and a couple more still in climbing the charts. I’ve learned it’s not as easy as people think. It sounds easy, hosting is cheap and there are a lot of shopping carts out there for people to use. With the .com boom back in the day the idea that internet businesses are easy money still lingers. While it is true that you can make a good living operating an internet business, the same is true for a brick and mortar business you open down the street in your home town, I have friends who do it. The truth about both types of businesses is that it takes a lot of work to make them successful.
My cousin emailed me today wondering how I got started because he’d like to try something similar. I’m excited for him because starting a business is fun, challenging and can be rewarding so I gave him the basics to get him going. Later I was talking with my brother Spence about it. Spence and I started an ecommerce site a while ago and before beginning he asked me similar questions. Today he says “If you would have told me all of the work it takes I probably wouldn’t have beleived you and done it anyway. But If I had been able to actually visualize what it would take, there is no way i would have.”
That sounds pretty discouraging. It really does take a lot of work, but any successful business does. I’m so glad I have the businesses I do. There are a lot of advantages to owning your own business. When people ask me how I got started I am happy to share some ideas, but I hope they realize that it won’t happen overnight. I started learning as much as I could about 10 years ago and as my partner at The Plan Collection can tell you, it took us a few years before we were really able to personally benefit from the fruits of our labors.
It’s not as easy as people think but as a wise man once said, “He who wants it does it”.
what’s the deal with mac and cheese? April 7, 2008
Posted by engjake in Random Food, family.add a comment
i do make a mean batch of home made mac and cheese but still, why do kids like it so much. My wife can make lots of tasty dishes, but mac and cheese is what the kids always want. Don’t they get sick of it? Apparently not or i wouldn’t be writing this. Maybe it is because when my wife and I were first married we ate mac and cheese all the time because it was real cheap and we were poor. I’ve eaten it too much. It just doesn’t sound good anymore. I went to the Noodle Company the other day to pick up some food for my wife and I and they have mac and cheese on their menu. Funny thing is my sister recommended the place because they have great macaroni and cheese. Nevertheless, i did not buy mac and cheese. I’m not going to pay $6-10 for a bowl of macaroni. Not when I can get something a quite a bit tastier for the same money. Call me crazy. For the record, i tried the mac and cheese my sister bought and it was pretty decent - still, i’m not buyin.
updates… who needs ‘em! April 3, 2008
Posted by engjake in business.Tags: shopping cart, software, updates
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everyone unfortunately. I love it when I have to update something and it’s a seemless process; but seriously, how often does that happen? For the last two hours I have been trying to get some coupon codes and package discount programs to work on our shopping cart system to no avail. They worked fine before our update earlier in the week. Now, they suddenly don’t. Something is keeping the number of items in the cart from registering so the discount is not applied. I guess i’ll be calling the software provider tomorrow to try and figure that one out.
There is a good chance that a lot of the time it is me causing the problem. I recently upgraded another wordpress blog i have and it took me way longer than it should have. WordPress has been one of the easier installs and upgrades I have ever done. As it turns out, i was doing the upgrade wrong. This reminds me of the first few years building The Plan Collection. I would constantly run into problems and get Justin on IM to see if he could help me out. It was almost always “the path.” You’d think I would have learned. But ot seemed like every time he’d say, “did you check the path?” and most of the time it was.
This time, i’m 99% sure it’s the software causing the issue-not me. But i’ve been wrong before. Just ask my wife.
fireworks is explosive. April 2, 2008
Posted by engjake in business.Tags: macromedia, website images
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this is actually a really basic feature, but man it saves some time. I had to resize and rename hundreds of images today and the fireworks batch process feature is soooo nice. Takes a lengthy feat and turns it into a quick process.
thanks macromedia.
