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The Gazette ... Issue: 211 (06-25-2004)
A Life LessonWords of wisdom from a fallen President ... gMail ... scumbags galore ! |
| Johnny's Ramblings |
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Recently, we as a nation (speaking for the United States Citizens) mourned the loss of one of the greatest men of our time, President Ronald Reagan. He was a man, not unlike our own Jim Wilson, who touched the lives of everyone in a very profound way, and most certainly, as did Jim, left the world a better place than he found it. In all of the TV coverage of his passing, there were ample stories and anecdotes shared by those who knew him. One of them hit home for me, and I thought that I'd share it with you as my rambling for the week...
A man was blessed with 2 healthy sons, one an eternal optimist, one the quintessential pessimist. The boys were so diametrically opposed that psychologists wanted to test them. They placed the pessimist into a room full of toys; the optimist in a room full of horse manure. They looked in on the pessimist and they found the toys untouched, not played with at all... "I just know if I touch one I'll break it," the pessimist said. They looked in on the optimist and found him digging into the manure with his hands, a huge smile on his face. "Why?" they asked. "With all this manure, I know there must be a pony in here somewhere," the optimist said. What a great life lesson... spend your life looking for the pony, folks, and the horse-bleep you come into contact with every won't seem quite so bad. Now, where's my shovel? |
| In the Crosshairs |
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So, you have decided to sell your business, now what?
Part 2 - Preparing your Business Information for the Sale There you are, "Day One" after you have finally decided to sell your business for whatever reason, chosen an asking price that you can support (hopefully with some advice from research or even an article or two), and are now ready to talk to some potential buyers. Or are you? Much like the asking price, the art of preparing your business for sale is not that easy. In fact, this is without doubt the most difficult part. How so you ask? Personally, I liken this next step to the equivalent of writing a business plan while being audited and making dinner at the same time (if you cook like I do anyway). Of course, depending on your skill set and business or personal organizational skills, this can be much easier. So, what do you need to successfully prepare the business and information? The list and needs vary greatly over business types, revenue sizes, verticals, and so on. For any business, the basic requirements for what you will need are quite similar. At the very least, you should have the following items:
Lastly I will leave you with this: There are no guarantees your business will sell (and/or at the price you are looking for) so be prepared to keep running it going forward. And often putting your business up for sale, gathering your materials, writing up plans and analyses, and responding to questions (and criticisms) will often get you thinking about all the things you should or could do to improve and grow. So what is the worse case scenario if you do that? You do not sell the business but you keep making money -- and maybe even grow from what you have learned (more on all of this in the next addition). That is without doubt the best advice I or anyone else can give, and I hope you use it. About the Author: Ross Whittaker is a Managing Partner at eBizBrokers, Inc., a specialty e-business brokerage firm located in Waltham, MA. For further inquiries or questions, please contact rossw@ebizbrokers.com. |
| A Word from Our Sponsor |
We're happy to have John from GoClick.com as one of our long time members, and frequent contributor to the PPC Forums at VirtualPromote. He has provided a lot of great insight into the innerworkings of the PPC industry, and has inspired quite a fun debate on many occasions. He proves the points that we try to hammer home to our Members and Readers all the time... yes, you can do it alone, and yes, you can make money by "doing the right thing".GoClick is considered by most people to easily fit into theTop 10 Pay Per Click search engines, and John makes it all happen through good old fashioned blood, sweat, and tears. He asked me to relay to you a few new things that he's been working on, and has rolled out over at GoClick.com. So, drum roll please...
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| Forum Watch |
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There are a few personnel changes at the forums that I'd like to make everyone aware of.
Jennifer Laycock (thejenn), our Forum Administrator, is going to be taking some personal time. She's expecting (!!!), and as anyone who has children can attest, there are more important things in your life during this time than forums. We will be seeing her around here sporadically over the next few months, but she'll be in our thoughts constantly. Additionally, she will be making a very "Upward" move careerwise. She's moved on from her Guide Position at About.com and has taken over the reigns as Editor-In-Chief at Search Engine Guide (http://www.searchengineguide.com). She now holds two of the most prestigious and demanding jobs in the world of SEO... Editing one of themost well-respected Search Engine News sources, and Administering the world's greatest forums. Congratulations, Jen, on all fronts! Diane Scott (excell), who has been with us seemingly forever, will also be taking some personal time to focus more on her family. As with Jen, she'll be around every so often, but primarily, will be doing what she does best, and that's taking care of her own. Elisabeth Osmeloski (skiguide) will be leaving her post as full time JimWorld SEO and JimGuide to take on the very prestigious role of Forum Administrator for the newly launched forums at Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com). Danny Sullivan, owner of SEW couldn't have made a better choice. We're sorry to see skiguide go, but wish her all the luck in the world. Good luck with the forums, Danny... running a large community has been aninspirational and moving experience for all of us here. I hope that it's just as rewarding for you. We've also said "goodbye" to another old friend. We've made a tough decision in having to eliminate the "I Want to Sell My Site" forum, forwarding all traffic to it into The Marketplace area of VirtualPromote. This decision became necessary as recent trends in the forums made conducting business there "difficult" on a number of levels. There have been many threads in this forum that degraded into ugly flame wars. People putting sites up for sale don't deserve to be hammered on like pieces of dirt... all in the name of lowering the price. In addition to the flaming that went on in there, we had an outbreak of people putting up sites for sale that they don't own, for the sole purpose of screwing people out of thousands of dollars (more in this in the Scumbag section to follow). In the end, I felt that a "forum" simply wasn't the best place for people to use VirtualPromote to try to sell their sites. The bids andnegotiations in a forum setting are all public. In The Marketplace area, all bids are private and can only be seen by the seller. This makes for a much more private and personal negotiation process, and one that doesn't leave the seller hanging by his neck in a public forum. In it's new home, as with all other Marketplace listings... it's FREE to post your ad. Any VirtualPromote member may post their site for sale at the Marketplace (or any other job request, for that matter). Replies and bids on the job/site can only be made by VirtualPromote "Premium" members. Yes, you'll need to pay to reply. Hopefully, that will limit the bidding to folks that are serious and dedicated to the community, making the "I Want to Sell My Site" area more friendly, and more productive, even if it gets less exposure than before. Visit the Marketplace: http://www.jimworld.com/marketplace/ Go Premium: http://www.jimworld.com/join/premium-membership/ Bid in The Marketplace, Use our advanced ROI Tracking Tools, and all sorts of other fun stuff .... And finally, you'll note that we have FINALLY upgraded the look and feel of VirtualPromote as a whole, and the forums in particular. The new look is definitely much snazzier than before, makes navigating the entirety of VirtualPromote much easier, and moves us out of the 90's as far as design goes. For those of you that like things more simple, you'll notice the "Old School Forums" link at the top of the forums pages, allowing you to get the forums without all the fancy stuff... but what fun would that be? |
| Diamond in the Rough |
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It must be fun to work at Google. Imagine the board meeting... "Hey I have an idea boss... we've been talking about doing a free email service for a while now. I know the developers don't have the programming done yet, but let's put a page about it on the Web site anyway, and people can watch it for a few months!". And so it is done. And like lemmings, the entire Internet wigs out, trying to get a sneak peak at YET ANOTHER free email service. But, because it's Google doing it, the lemmings are especially chipper and excited. They talk about it in every blog and forum, it's the topic of conversation at every NASDAQ listed water cooler, and it's the stuff that real dreams are made of. After a few months, another board meeting at the Googleplex must have went something like this... "I never figured people would go this bonzo over this. I know we're still not ready, but just for fun, let's cherry-pick a few hundred people to help us debug this thing, and let them invite a few of their friends along to help. That way, it won't look like 'vaporware,' and the chosen few will feel really special and probably buy more adwords from us. The best part is, we'll be getting loads and loads of feedback and ideas free. That should free up the developers and our own beta team for more important things like picking the new carpet, paint schemes, and building the Googleplex monorail we keep talking aboutout once all that IPO money comes in." And just like that, the very special lemmings are given special access to the most eagerly awaited internet application since Netscape 4.
So, what do the lemmings do now? Just like with the "dance" and the "IPO," there are actual Web sites springing up all over the place where the "Chosen Few" are BARTERING their Google mail invitations. Yes, the lemmings are an enterprising bunch. Everyone is so infatuated with having an @gmail.com email address, that they're selling, trading, and offering up their first born children for a gmail account. Don't believe me? Head over to http://www.gmailswap.com and see for yourself. Offer up your signed Barry Bonds home run ball, and you just might be able to get a gmail account... if the head lemming deems you worthy. You gotta hand it to Google. They've probably spent about $8.00 in marketing on this puppy. Put up a link on the home page, pay an intern to write up ONE PAGE of information about it, and presto, the marketing wheels are set in motion by everyone with access to a blog or a forum. The buzz about gMail is incredible... people are stepping all over themselves to get it, and Google did nothing to put the word out -- didn't buy a magazine ad, an Internet ad, and they didn't even put their own link into Adwords. They just let the lemmings do the work for them. Genius. Bill Gates... are you paying attention? Maybe I'm just bitter because I didn't get an invite from Google yet. I'm sure it just got lost in the mail. In all seriousness, there is some good coming out of all this. Some enterprising people have put together a gMail swapping service that doesn't require you to give up your goods. In fact, the service is set up to help some of the Troops fighting the war to have access to free email. Jennifer Laycock, our Administrator, has written an interesting piece about this over at Search Engine Guide. Give it a read, and share your invites with people that actually need them. http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/001552.html |
| One on One |
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eBay is more than just a "Home Business" for some people.
eBay is a great idea -- a great way to sell some of your old stuff, find needles in the haystack, complete your collections, and for some people, it's become a full-time job. I have friends who spend their weekends "garage sale-ing" and their weekdays selling off their weekend booty over the Internet. We just had an opening here locally of our area's first eBay "Consignment" shop. eBay is cool, but it's a real drag to go through the whole process of signing up, uploading your images, coming up with a good description, biting your nails through the auction time, and delivering the product. Enter the consignment shop... Got something to sell? Drop it off at an actual store, sign some papers, and go home. They'll put it on eBay for you, do all the descriptions, pictures, and so forth. When it sells, they ship it for you, and then you just show up and pick up a check for what your items sold for (minus the shop's commission, of course). For the buyer, buying an item that's for auction from a consignment shop is much less stressful, as you don't have to be concerned with questions about whether the product will be shipped or about giving your personal information to a complete stranger. These are a complete "win-win." Maybe I'll clean out my garage this weekend after all... For more information, do a google search for "ebay drop off" or "ebay consignment" to find an eBay consignment shop in your hometown. If you can't find one, and you love to eBay, well here's your chance to make your hobby pay the rent (and then some) Don't believe that it's a real business model? Check this January Forbes article out: http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2004/01/14/rtr1211031.html |
| Scumbag of the Week |
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Too many scumbags, not enough time... Rather than my typical researched rant about a single scumbag, this issue, I'm going to just rant about everything that's ticked me off the last few months. These are in no particular order -- Bear with me.
First up, our "Friends" at NBC. Are you still feeling sick from all ofthe Friends hype? Aside from the build-up to the final episode on NBC itself (which included 6 weeks of reruns), did we really need 75 news magazine interviews with these people? How many times can they make us watch Jennifer Anniston cry? Are you as tired as I am of hearing how much Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer love each other ? Ugh. And to make matters worse, NBC, in a truly scumbag move, changed the start and end times of the show by a minute and a half. Not a big deal to most people, but for those of us that have TIVO (which, by the way is probably the best invention of all time), the Friends Finale forced you into recording ONLY Friends. Shows that would have recorded before or after Friends were not recorded by TIVO because of the time overlap. They did that a few times during the season, but nobody spoke out. Well, I think it sucks. If networks are THAT concerned with viewership that they're going to take conscious steps to ensure that the DVR crowd can only watch their channel and not the others, then I think a little bit of a revolt is in order. I'm revolted not just by Friends, but by a classless network that has taken advantage of technology to the point that they're interfering with commerce. Next up, there has been a recent rash in our forums, and elsewhereon the Internet,of people disguising themselves as domain owners and "selling" Web sites that they don't own. We here at VirtualPromote have seen first-hand how people in the forum post (as well as through Private Messages), claim to own a Web site, put it up for sale, and "sell" it, with the terms requiring up front payment by wire transfer. Obviously, because the person doesn't actually own anything, the buyer gets totally screwed. In the world of the Internet, where nearly nothing is tangible, you have to be extra careful with whom you deal with. In the case where you are trying to buy a Web site, take the extra time and do you due diligence: Make sure that the person you're about to send money to actually owns the domain (you can do a simple Whois check in most cases). If you're about to wire money to "Abu" in Pakistan, and the whois record shows that "Sally Smith" in Oklahoma is the owner, I'd probably hold off on sending the money. Also, work through a reputable escrow company (e.g.: http://www.escrow.com) who will secure the domain and the files that go with it, take your money, and then make the swap for you. That way, you know that what you're paying for actually exists, and is waiting for your receipt. Nothing ticks me off more than someone who will work so hard to screw someone when that same energy could have been used for something... useful. Now, how about the guy that sold me a Trampoline for my son, but neglected to tell me that my homeowners insurance wouldn't cover it for liability (nor would almost any reputable insurance company)? Now I have a 12 foot trampoline in my backyard that my 5 year old is in love with, that I have to take down and throw away, because the store won't take it back, and I can't with a clean conscience allow another family with young kids to have it. Then, I was driving through downtown Seattle a few weeks ago (in the Rainier area, for those of you that are familiar with the PNW), and saw a sign in a storefront that said "Victory to the Iraqi Resistance!." Excuse me? You can be anti-war, you can be anti-Bush, you can be almost anything you want to be in this country. But dammit, if you're rooting for the deaths of our Troops, and defeat for this country, then you don't deserve thefreedoms that you have.Scumbag of the week! Move your butt to Iraq and help them out if you feel so strongly about it. I'm sure they'd love to have you. Come to think of it, they really don't give a damn about what side you're on. You're an "American," an Infidel,which means that Allah wants you dead, even if you sympathize with their cause. They'd kill you and drag your sorry butt all around town in a New York second, given the chance. People that think sawing someone's head off is what "God wants" are beyond scum. Even scummier are the people that aren't pissed off about it. George W Bush is a scumbag for paying too much attention to the emotion, reactions, and ramifications of the Iraq situation instead of just unleashing the fury and ending it once and for all. I'd rather have a really ugly month or two, and then get outta Dodge rahter than having it drag on and on and on like this. Get some sack, Dubya, and finish the job. There are more terrorists hiding in caves and sand dunes in other countries just begging for some TV time. Dubya also gets a Scumbag award for not being more pro-active internally. Tenet should have been fired last year, the borders should have been closed down completely on 9/12/01, and every box, bag, and container that enters this country via air, boat, or Star-Trek transporter should be scanned by someone that actually graduated High School. Tough talk is one thing, backing it up takes some cajones. John Kerry isn't immune from this either. He gets this week's final award because, well, because he's John Kerry. I think that about covers it. |
| Payment Due Notice |
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The Gazette is not free.
It is 'Helpware.' This means that you are granted the right to participate, read, and learn from us, if you agree to contribute. Learn something, from here or anywhere else, and pass it on. If you see a Webmaster who's struggling, help them up. If you see someone making a mistake, offer some fix-it advice. In short, you get out of JimWorld, and the Internet, what you put into it. The more you give, the more you get. Even if you get nothing in return, it's important that you share. Karma always comes back around. Trust me, this will make you feel better, and will help a lot of people get their sites running better. OK, you're on your honor. |
| Summing It All Up |
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The opinions expressed here are purely those of the editor, John Cokos. All other small print clauses apply. Such as: Use at your own risk. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Let the buyer beware. A stitch in time gathers no moss.
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