nothing new under the sun

In many ways, home-based businesses are nothing new, they are the old notion of “cottage industry” with a modern twist. Indeed, with so many hobby-based businesses around, it is almost a literal renaissance for cottage industry as we now see hundreds of work-at-home Mums sewing, creating, making and mending. The difference with the 21st century version is the way people are able to sell their services as well as hand-made or imported/drop-shipped goods.

Services like writing, book-keeping, graphical design, web site creation, baby sitting, child sleep/behaviour consultancy, personal fitness programs… the list goes on.

the global marketplace

Not only are services now a highly marketable commodity, each and every one of us can reach out to a potential audience of millions, through the magic of the Internet.

Not so long ago, any thought of making money “online” was restricted to things like network marketing schemes, affiliate marketing of ebooks and so on. The Internet has now moved into a new era that blows this whole thing open to literally anyone.

These days it is very easy to create an online presence for yourself, and to put whatever it is you do/make in front of unprecedented numbers of potential customers. Do you enjoy knitting pullovers for kids, maybe sell them down at a local market? You can now take photos of them, upload them to a web site and make international sales without leaving the comfort of your armchair!

make your passion your living

Thanks to the Internet, and the availability of simple, low cost systems, It is now possible to make a living from the thing that you love doing, whatever that is. The benefits to the individual in all this are fairly obvious; job satisfaction by the bucket load,  the elusive dream of “work-life balance”, flexibility and freedom. The benefits to society are more subtle, and will more likely be seen in the medium term as children benefit from having one or both parents at home more, families are better able to provide for themselves financially (easing social security burdens) and people are, quite simply, happier.

it IS the future

I would go so far as to say that governments should offer significant incentives and/or tax-breaks for home-based business owners. The “Work-at-Home” model will provide a strong economic backbone in the coming years, of that I have no doubt.

the beginnings

At the heart of everything is a strong desire to create a business that provides tools and/or services that cater for the “little guy” – the definition of which has now been refined to “work-at-home parents, home-based business owners and similar hobby or micro businesses”. In other words, the really small end of the business spectrum.

Simplifying this further, it is strongly linked with a personal urge to say “f*$% the system”. A desire, if you will, to create and inspire a new business order.

a new business order

The world of business has lurched towards extreme corporatisation; disproportionate power and control, over consumers and employees, is wielded by a handful of international business entities.

At the same time, there has been a massive increase in personal consumer debt and families are struggling to make ends meet. This in turn has led to an increase in interest in home-based business.

poor service for home business

“Work-at-Home” is a relatively new business reality which has many differences with the traditional “SME” (small-to-medium enterprise) sector. For one thing, these businesses are often run on a part-time basis, and typically have a very small budget.

Providers of business-to-business services (in general) don’t cater for these people – businesses that have their own staff and premises need clients with budgets big enough to pay for them!

how to make a difference

In the first instance my focus has been on web site services, because this is an area I know and understand, and is a prime example of how micro business is not catered for. When you see the look of pain or panic on someone’s face, just after you’ve told them that the web site they want will cost $1000, or even just $500, then you will understand what I mean.

There are some home-based businesses that need a web site, yet even $200 would be pushing the limits of their budget!

In many ways, I have been inspired by the way the Virgin Group operates. They identify an industry where things are currently overpriced, customer service is poor, and then bring out a low-cost, high-quality alternative that the public quickly learn to love.

For me, it’s not about taking on existing suppliers in existing markets, rather it’s a case of finding ways of offering the same type of services to a disenfranchised business sector!

So today it might be web sites – tomorrow, who knows?

other influences

Two other things have helped shape the direction that things have taken; I am a firm believer in the value and strength to be found in the creation of recurring revenue streams, and I am a fully paid-up subscriber to the idea of web-based software services, broadly along the same lines as the 37 Signals philosophy.

So the overall “plan” emerged to create a web site service with the following basic characteristics:

• Provide a basic web site framework to users that automatically gives them the necessary structure found in most business web sites.
• Provide an online content management system that enables them to update their web site easily.
• Make the system accessible to non-technical users.
• Offer the service for a low monthly fee, providing the business with an income stream while also removing the cost barrier that micro businesses face.
• Offer a free version of the service so people can see if it suits their needs, get familiar with things, and make a start on creating a web presence even if they have no money available whatsoever.
• Use business software approaches to manage things more intuitively; e.g. a product manager rather than simply requiring users to painstakingly lay out everything within a set of pages.
• In line with the 37 Signals idea of having an enemy , make this service the simpler, easier, more “WAHP” focused alternative to existing, complex systems like Wix and Weebly
• Build the system to suit my own needs and enjoy the benefits of eating my own dog food!

re-connecting with the vision

I’m pretty sure I have been reasonably faithful to these core ideas, yet somehow  it is easy to forget the original inspiration as you work IN your business.

Without a doubt, this had started to happen. My attention was being drawn towards technical details and away from the “grand vision”.

So I am grateful for the message delivered by Dr John Demartini at a seminar yesterday, it caused me to remember WHY I am doing this and my personal vision for a GREAT business.

One of the first decisions ever made about Avallach’s web service offering had nothing to do with features, pricing or some technical thing. Right from day one, the service was designed and intended to be the platform on which the serivce site itself ran.

The cliché is that “we eat our own dog food” – however, cliché or no, it describes the situation exactly. You see, by running the main WAHMBoozle! site on the WAHMBoozle! platform a few critical and interesting side-effects occur:

• Constant monitoring of the service availability
• Real-world experience as an end-user
• Tips and Tricks offered in the community are based on hands-on usage
• Service and software development benefit from direct feedback

Above all else, being a user of the system has a profound effect on excitement and passion levels that give the business a massive boost that I can’t imagine would be possible from too many other sources.

 Do you eat your own dog food? If you don’t, perhaps you should!

Getting Focused

One of the things that struck me about the Avallach and WAHMBoozle! websites was the fact that there was still a degree of fuzziness. The main thrust in recent times has been to provide an affordable way for Work-at-Home Mums to get a website for their business, with practical “hands-on” help in achieveing that. Somehow this message doesn’t always come across.

Clarifying the Message

Over the Christmas break I spent some time thinking about how to remove this confusion; the answer was to start with a clean slate and build a web site that is 100% focused on creating successful WAHM business websites.

The result is WAHM Website Success – a site that is dedicated entirely to the idea of helping WAHMs create successful business websites. By having such a sharp focus, the message comes through loud and clear!

A Valuable Lesson Learned

If you’re considering getting a website (or if you already have one) then this is a great opportunity to learn from someone else’s (my) experience. The lack of clarity that existed before was actually costing me in terms of lost business. People quite simply didn’t know what to expect, were unsure which service offering suited their needs and were left with a feeling of “what do I do from here?”

The existing websites tried to be all things to all WAHMs – a clear case of “jack of all trades and master of none”.

Don’t Forget To Mind Your Own Business

The situation described above happened for one simple reason. My focus was on the thing that I do – build websites for WAHMs. What I neglected to do was to also work on my own web strategy and failing to follow my own advice!

It’s a classic case of spending all your time working IN the business and forgetting to work ON the business.

So now 2012 is upon us, take some to do a little strategic thinking and absolutely do NOT make the same mistake I did!

Happy New Year to you all.

No extensive planning process, no 700-page business plan, no time spent trying to secure start-up finance. It’s lightweight, “agile”, flexible and built on passion and desire. Of these things, the last two are the essential ingredients in any recipe for success.

Don’t Get Bogged Down

All too often people have flashes of inspiration and then proceed to commit “ideacide”, allowing themselves to fall victim to over-analysis, listening to the small voice that says “it’ll never work” and generally becoming convinced that their idea is a non-starter.

Ideas are, at first, delicate creatures that need nurturing and protecting until they have grown strong enough to stand on their own feet (metaphorically speaking). Allowing yourself to get bogged down in negative impulses, stalling things in the name of “proper planning” and finding all sorts of reasons to NOT act on those ideas is the equivalent of pouring weedkiller on your prize begonias!

Forget About “Business”

One of the surefire ways to kill your enthusiasm for something is to start thinking of it as “work”. This is what can happen if you start to take the standard advice regarding “business”. How relevant is standard business advice anyway, when you’re simply doing what you love doing?

As and when you start to build some success, and gain momentum, it might make sense for you to start considering some of the good advice out there. What you don’t want is a traditional business framework stifling development. Why shouldn’t you continue to enjoy doing the thing you love, and simply go with the flow?

There’s plenty of things you can concern yourself with later, things that can start to contrain you, so don’t voluntarily constrain yourself before you need to. Deal with hurdles as you encounter them.

(Continue to) Have Fun

If you’re creating a business out of something you enjoy doing, THAT is your key driver. It’s the thing that will ensure that you keep going even on days when you make no sales. If you’re not having fun, if you’re not enjoying yourself then how is it any different from a job where you’re only motivation is your weekly wage?

As the work-at-home sector continues to grow there will be a massive surge in happy, contented business owners. As those businesses experience success and growth, so the home-based business model will become more obviously sustainable and beneficial.

Happiness, enjoyment and fun are pricless commodities that no soulless corporate can hope to compete with. Make the most of it and above all else,  have fun!

“There is no great genius without a mixture of madness”
 ~ Aristotle ~

After some recent soul-searching, and focused thinking around the basic idea of “how can Avallach be made even more relevant and valuable to the WAHM community?”, I have introduced a fairly radical new approach. The central element to this stroke of genius (or sign of madness, depending on your view of it) is to no longer charge for my personal time – not even the reduced “token” charges that existed before.

The most visible aspect of this is the availability of a “Kick Starter” plan that provides home-based businesses with a comprehensive web site, for just $77 up front and around 50 cents per day for ongoing maintenance/support.

Have You Gone Mad?

Traditional, conventional thinking dictates that you can only earn a living by exchanging your time for money; in other words wages. The main focus of many small businesses, sole traders and consultants is to increase that rate of remuneration as much as possible. Many argue that you need to “go niche” and increase your personal value, heading for the psychological barrier of “$100 per hour”.

So this change, then, would appear to fly in the face of all that is reasonable, right?

Mass Appeal

The simple fact is that these changes herald a new era in the continuing development of Avallach Technology. It puts “front and centre” the total commitment that I have for the home-based business, cottage industry renaissance. At the same time it establishes an important foundation for the business and changes the nature of the business itself. Instead of chasing an ever-increasing personal rate of remuneration, the business now stands or falls on 2 main factors; quality of service and delivery of service to the large number of “work at home” people that are out there.

At a purely commercial level it moves the business away from being a self-made “job” and instead enters the realms of being an income-producing asset; one, potentially, that will eventually involve others and be beneficial to all. It can only achieve this by delivering on the promises made.

Excited Much?

Yes I am, very excited. It has been a long-term personal goal to make a real difference in this area, and with this moment of “madness” I firmly believe that things are finally heading in the absolute correct direction; everything else that has gone before has simply been leading up to this point.

Achieving these goals are important to me for a couple of reasons – firstly to prove it can be done (run a successful business without ripping people off) and secondly because I still have absolute faith in the importance of the home-business sector as a long-term solution for individuals.

Let’s enjoy the ride!

So I figured this was a good time to reiterate my previous point – if you’re a Work-at-Home Mum, if you have a budget-sensitive business (full or part-time) then you probably worry that you “need” SEO. You don’t.

The funny thing is, the article was talking about how Google are starting to put a lot of focus and emphasis on “social signals”. In other words, your web site might start being ranked on how often people “talk” about it online (+1, Like, include your link in posts/comments etc.)

As a micro business owner, you don’t need to pay someone to look after that stuff – all you need to do is be passionate about your business (pretty much a given), jump onto a site like Facebook ( yup, I reckon that’s a given for many of you too) and do what you would normally do with other people; socialise!

Over time you will make connections and friendships, start talking about common ground, what each other is interested in, or work/business interests… It’s organic, it’s incredibly human and in terms of integrity, honesty and personal satisfaction you just can’t beat it!

So put aside that online search engine marketing plan, stop annoying people by pasting your links all over the place and start connecting with your fellow man (and woman). It’s what we humans were meant to do…

That question is often asked by friends and clients and to be honest, until recently, I made a number of assumptions about why this seems to happen. I generally attributed things to issues with the javascript, data being lost in the sheer volume processed by the Google servers and possibly issues with individual browsers and Internet connections.

To a certain degree I wasn’t that far from the truth, however the bigger picture seems more complex than this.

JavaScript “Fail”

Google Analytics relies on a snippet of JavaScript embedded in your web page. As such it’s effectively a component of your page that could fail, somehow not succeed in “calling home”, get blocked or simply not load. If any of those things happen, the page view and site visit won’t be recorded.

Lost Data?

Google are a huge company with vast computer resources powering their operations/ This doesn’t mean they’re not susceptible to the occasional problem with hardware and software. Having worked for a busy hosting company myself, and specifically with services that process web site traffic logs, I feel pretty well qualified to say that sometimes things don’t work as expected, and data can be lost through hardware outages, software bugs and data corruption. I’m sure Google do all they can to prevent and compensate for this – however we all know about the best laid plans of mice and hosting companies…

Browser and Connection Problems

On the other end of the Google Analytics “conversation”, our web site visitors are using various versions of different browsers, accessing the site over a wide range of connections (WiFi, dial-up, corporate networks and domestic broadband) via many different providers. They are also using many different combinations of browser settings, browser plug-ins and add-ons – also there’s increasing use of Internet security software like firewalls, blockers and antivirus apps.

Any of these can potentially get in the way and cause a page view to not be registered with Analytics. For example, many people disable cookies and javascript, both of which Google Analytics relies upon.

Analytics versus Log Statistics

This is a BIG one, and understanding the fundamental differences between Web Logs and Google Analytics is crucial. Web logs dutifully record every “hit” on your site, extracting (where possible) information provided in the request by the browser (e.g. browser name and version, operating system and other useful non-identifying information).

If a browser doesn’t provide some of this information the “hit” still gets recorded by the server. These hits can also include page refreshes – so if the user’s Internet connection drops out mid-page, and they hit Refresh, the logs might double up on some of these hits.

March of the Robotic Spider People

As mentioned, the server dutifully records every hit on your site – it also doesn’t really care too much about where that hit came from. So whether your site is being “crawled” by the Google search spider, probed by a Chinese or Russian “bot” or being visited by some other automated process, the web log will record those hits like any other.

Such bots usually identify themselves in the request, so you can generally figure out the relative percentages of “bot versus human”. That’s not always true, so you might want to treat any “questionable” traffic as being from non-human sources.

So where does that leave us?

Overall we’re still left with our “conflicting” data, though now we should be better informed how to use and interpret the information available.

Web stats and logs, typically integrated into hosting accounts, can give us a clear idea of the raw traffic and load experienced by our site. This is an important metric; it is this traffic that hosting providers count against any limits or allowances on your account. Allowing for the traffic generated by search engine spiders, these data can give a clear picture of the volume of traffic hitting your site.

The vast array of information available from Google Analytics is powerful in a different way entirely. It can help us spot trends and usage patterns, conversion rates (including ecommerce) and sources of traffic (geographic, demographic, advertising media etc.)

Combining both sets of “business intelligence” data we are left with a more rounded view of both site traffic AND site usage. You just need to apply a little grey matter to get there!

Useful/Further Reading on these topics:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-reliable-is-google-analytics

http://www.webmasterworld.com/analytics/4376030.htm

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/webanalytics/message/28175

http://blog.vkistudios.com/index.cfm/2009/8/28/Dont-even-think-of-comparing-AWStats-to-Google-Analytics

http://www.techmug.com/accuracy-and-google-analytics/

http://www.comauth.co.nz/seo-articles/google-analytics-accuracy-or-lack-thereof.html

Even when you’re used to that, there are occasions when changes can surprise you. The Apple iPad is a classic example of that I think. The latest surprise package of change is the latest chapter in the Facebook story.

Recently I was talking about the social network battle between Facebook and Google+, how both were great as general purpose social activity, and how neither really fulfilled the needs of the typical Work-at-Home Mum business.

So today Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook team upped the ante, announcing a new era of social apps and opening up the potential of the Facebook platform as a whole.

I haven’t had time to fully absorb the new information yet, however I’m already thinking that there could be a significant impact on the direction taken with WAHMBoozle! and ExpressWAHPz.

Change is a wonderful thing, it really does keep you on yoru toes!

I’m sure you’ve all heard about “Social Networking” by now, and are probably reading this via Twitter or Facebook. It has been a major shift in the way people use the ‘net, and like all new cultures and “paradigms” it is still struggling to fully define itself. Ignoring Google+ for a moment, many believe that the great social network wars have been won by Facebook, and this victory (albeit temporary, such is the nature of technology wars and victories) has seen the likes of MySpace and LinkedIn securing a niche within the social networking universe. LinkedIn is undoubtedly the world’s number 1 in business networking, job hunting and CV publishing, while MySpace has successfully redefined itself as a social entertainment service, with a strong emphasis on music.

Identity Crisis?

Facebook is currently home to an active Work-at-Home-Mum community, a community that has come up with many innovations that can expand the reach of any such business. Inventions such as “shout outs”, “marches”, “silent tagging” and so on. In the face of this though, Facebook seems to be struggling to figure out if this is something they want to encourage or not. Recently many WAHM business owners have fallen foul of Facebook’s counter-spam systems. Facebook also has a number of rules that control what such businesses can and cannot do (for example, you can only run a promotion or competition on Facebook via the use of a 3rd party app).

Unsatisfactory Solutions

I believe such things are symptoms of Facebook being primarily a social site (with socially targeted advertising) and not really knowing if it wants to be an ecommerce platform (or how to do that if it does). There are of course many shopping cart apps that business owners can subscribe to, that allow product information to be displayed on a FB page via an IFrame. For some reason (and this is based solely on what I have seen and heard) people seem to have difficulty getting many of these working as fully-fledged ecommerce solutions.

Social Commerce In Its Infancy

It is without doubt that the time for Social Commerce is upon us, so far this seems to have taken various forms:

Traditional cart systems and services sporting “Like” buttons on product pages

• Rating and referral systems on cart sites
• Basic ecommerce functionality via Facebook apps
• The rise of the “coupon site” phenomenon (Scoopon, Groupon et al)

The Missing Piece of the Jigsaw

Based on my experience of working with WAHM businesses, it has become clear that there are still gaps in the technology available (from the perspective of a sole trader, low budget, home-based micro business). The social connectivity enabled by Facebook is fantastic, however the commercial side of things still feels like a bolted on extra, like fitting a rear spoiler to a family sedan. Actually it’s probably more like inviting people to set up a market stall at a family birthday party.

So this is essentially why I started work on the WAHMBoozle! project; built on a solid social networking foundation, it integrates ecommerce into the experience by design and from the ground up. Much like MySpace now integrates with Facebook, and sets out to serve the needs of a “niche”, WAHMBoozle! does not try to be “another Facebook” – it simply provides tools and networking opportunities to WAHM businesses alongside the social networking mainstream (a battle ground that is now shaping up to be fought over by Google and Facebook).

Indeed, the eventual result from the WAHMBoozle! development efforts will include integration options that provide full cart/ecommerce functionality in a number of places; these include Facebook, ExpressWAHPz and standalone web sites or pages. This in turn will provide an “upload once, sell anywhere” mechanism for business owners, rather than requiring them to work hard to get several systems working together.

I look forward to this next phase with great excitement – perhaps you will too!