The benefits of listing with directories are twofold – not only is there the prospect of more visitors from the directory website itself, but your website may also receive a positive search engine optimisation effect from the inbound link, as the directories are normally well-established and respected by the search engines.

Consider adding your site to the following directories – note that some will try to ‘upsell’ you for a paid submission with greater benefits, but this is not mandatory (and in most cases, I suspect, not worth it):

http://www.yellowpages.com.au/awu_freeListing.do

http://www.hotfrog.com.au

http://www.aussieweb.com.au

http://www.truelocal.com.au

http://www.bigroo.com.au

http://www.dmoz.org – a difficult one to get into, but well worth trying due to the importance accorded to it by Google and others.

http://www.google.com/local/add – a very important one that will see your business plotted on Google Maps

http://www.webwombat.com.au/submit/index.htm

Previously it was not legal to transfer .AU domains for a fee, the justification being that AuDA wanted to avoid the blatant cybersquatting and spiralling domain prices that have occurred in other unregulated markets.

Now, it is possible to trade .AU domains, albeit with some limitations – for example, you are not permitted to trade a domain until six months has lapsed from its time of registration.  The full guidelines can be found here:  http://www.auda.org.au/pdf/registrant-transfer.pdf

Over time I have accumulated a number of domain names that I had intended to develop, but have not got around to doing anything with.  Now that it is legal to sell them, I am going to consider putting them on http://www.netfleet.com.au/, a new trading platform which has been set up by Netregistry.

Whilst AuDA guidelines preclude the purchase of domain names purely for resale, I am sure that a small buy/sell industry will emerge, although not to the extent that we have seen with .COM domains, the trading of which is completely unregulated.

In the meantime, the loosening of the rules provides a good opportunity for netpreneurs to clean out their domain name portfolios.

The tax break applies to all companies with an annual turnover of less than $2 million.

Under the new 50% tax break, a business will be able to claim a tax deduction of up to $15,000 (that is, 50% of $30,000) in the year of purchase.

The rebate is designed to stimulate the economy by encouraging small business to bring forward their capital equipment purchases.

Here’s an example of how a business could use the tax break, from the government’s budget papers:

Maria runs a retail clothing store and meets the definition of a small business entity. On 7 June 2009 she buys and installs six new mirrors for her fitting rooms. The mirrors cost $200 each and are substantially identical, so the cost of every mirror can be amalgamated for the purposes of meeting the $1000 threshold. Maria’s total investment is $1200 and she will be eligible to claim a $600 bonus deduction (being 50% of $1200) in her 2008-09 income tax return.

Budding netpreneurs and small business operators should take advantage of this scheme – if you need a new computer, office furniture or even a company vehicle, now is the time to buy.  Speak to your accountant for further information.

I’ve made the switch and I’m never going back.  This is the way of the future and those who are ahead of the game have started transitioning their systems to this new way of working.  Perhaps you should consider doing same?

So what is SaaS?  It stands for software-as-a-service.  Basically, SaaS is any web-based software product that is available on a subscription basis.  Instead of having software applications reside on your local computer, the software is hosted on the web.  That means you don’t have to buy software from Microsoft and others, you don’t have to maintain it, you don’t have worry about security, bugs, patches, upgrades etc., and you can access your software from any web-enabled system around the world.

The rapid advances in internet broadband bandwidth have enabled SaaS to become a reality.   The announcement of the new super-fast National Broadband Network by the government will only result in a greater uptake of SaaS in coming years.

SaaS isn’t really a new thing – any of the web-based email services – think Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) or Google’s Gmail – are essentially SaaS services.  They do what any email client does, but over the web.  There are other well-known SaaS products on the market, too – CRM software Salesforce is probably the best known.

I have just made the leap to SaaS and have transitioned my email to Google Apps/Gmail and I am rapt – no longer do I have to wait an hour for Outlook (and my virus/spam checker) to download email from the server.  Now, my email is available instantaneously on Gmail with all of the spam automatically filtered out by Google’s fantastic spam technology.

Gmail can be configured to send and receive email from multiple POP accounts, with customisable email signatures for each account.  Gmail also offers some fantastic tools including filters, canned responses, use of labels (instead of folders) and a brilliant search capability that make using this service an absolute dream.   Gmail’s contacts, task list and calendar function have made Outlook obsolete. Perhaps best of all, Google Apps can be used on any web-enabled computer and on my mobile device, which means that I don’t have to lug my laptop wherever I go.

Google Apps also offers Google Docs – an alternative to Microsoft Word and Excel – and a host of other web-based applications (video, chat, collaboration websites) for a measly US$50 per user per year for the premium edition (free for the standard edition).  Compare that to the cost of a Microsoft Office software licence.

In addition to Google Apps, I have started using wiki software – Atlassian Confluence – for my business.  Again, this software is web-based and maintained by Atlassian for a fee of US$490 per year, which I think it pretty cheap.

With a name derived from the Hawaiian ‘wikiwiki’ buses (so named for their speed), the defining characteristic of a wiki is the ability for multiple authors to create and edit documents.  The most well known wiki is Wikipedia, which has a distributed authorship across the world.  The idea is that the community of users is self-regulating to ensure the veracity of the content – despite this, there have been some well-documented instances where Wikipedia content has been ’skewed’ by nefarious Wikipedia contributors, although that content has been ‘righted’ fairly quickly.

Wikis are great for organisations of all sizes too – they can be used as intranets, external websites, project management portals, knowledge management systems, electronic document records management systems (EDRMS),  as a replacement for internal email, or as a replacement for a conventional directory-based file system.

For each of my businesses I have created a collaboration ’space’ within the Confluence wiki which contains pages, blog posts and documents pertaining to the business.  Each of these documents can be read by anybody in the space, edited directly on the server, commented on, downloaded, searched and cross-referenced.  Each space provides a forum where discussions are held and decisions made and recorded.  Over time, these spaces will become rich with historial information and provide us with a valuable knowledge management system.

Slowly I am transitioning all of my files and software to the Google and Atlassian systems.  I can see a day when computers no longer have an organic storage capability (ie. a hard drive) – instead they will simply draw upon the vast storage capabilities on the web (this is called ‘cloud computing’).  Indeed, there are already slimline laptops on the market that do not have a hard drive built in.

The pessimists and the luddites will argue the toss about the security of information, but the reality is that internal systems are often more vulnerable to failure or compromise than those hosted externally by companies like Google and Atlassian.

I encourage netpreneurs to start exploring the very powerful and inexpensive SaaS capabilities that are available to them.  This is the way of the future and early adoption will put your business in a advantageous position.

It happens every year – and every year I am taken in by one of these pranks.  I’m talking about April Fools’ Day gags.

If you think about it, April Fools’ jokes are an absolutely fantastic way of getting some free viral marketing!  Come up with an elaborate hoax and send it to all your friends.  If it’s believable, then it just might find its way around the globe, providing your business with some great free publicity in the process.

There were a couple of highly-publicised pranks on 1 April this year from serial ‘foolers’ Google and Virgin.  Google’s gBall prank even had News Corporation bluffed – the latter published an article about the gBall on the News.com.au website, unaware that the gBall was a joke.

The gBall is supposedly a joint Google and Australian Football League project whereby a satellite tracking device is installed in an Australian Rules football, so that the trajectory of the ball can be tracked.  As you can see in the graphic, you simply plug your ball into your computer to download the data!  The gBall also vibrates if a talent scout wants to speak to you and if your ball goes missing, you can simply locate it with Google Maps – gold!  Even better, the gBall website proudly proclaims that all gBalls are made to comply with Australian Standard AS-0104-2009 (Use of electronic Geo-navigational satellite instrumentation in leather goods).  Double gold!

I wasn’t tricked by the gBall hoax, but I was fooled (momentarily) by a fellow blogger,  Geoff Jennings, who announced that he was giving up his position as a online jobs board ‘watchdog’ because he had accepted the CEO job at one of the job boards that he routinely criticises (CareerOne.com.au).  I should twigged when Rupert Murdoch (owner of CareerOne.com.au) was quoted in the blog post he sent out.   As I reached the bottom of the blog post, it became apparent that he was pulling our collective legs, but he certainly had me going for a moment…

The point of the story – April Fools’ jokes attract attention and if you can engineer a good one, then you can get yourself a whole lot of free advertising.

I’ve recently opened a Slideshare account and uploaded my first Powerpoint presentation.  Like YouTube, Slideshare allows you to syndicate your presentations – presentations can easily be embedded into a website or blog with the nifty Slideshare viewer.

My first presentation ‘The Future of Recruitment and the Web‘ has already been viewed over 260 times in 7 days, so it looks like Slideshare provides a good mechanism for attracting attention to your business.  Importantly, it also figures highly in search engine results.

Most small businesses have presentations that they have created for various conferences or training courses – if they contain publicly-releaseable information, why not put these on Slideshare for the benefit of others?  When dealing with new clients, it’s great to point them to a Slideshare URL to give them an understanding of your expertise.

Other benefits of Slideshare include the ability to integrate it with Facebook and LinkedIn, the ability to add sound to your slides and run webinars, and the ability to view Slideshare presentations on your mobile device.

Here’s the official spiel from the website:

Slideshare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations.

- Individuals & organizations upload presentations to share their ideas, connect with others, and generate leads for their businesses.
- Anyone can find presentations on topics that interest them. They can tag, download, or embed presentations into their own blogs & websites.

SlideShare is the best way to get your slides out there on the web, so your ideas can be found and shared by a wide audience. Do you want to get the word out about your product or service? Do you want your slides to reach people who could not make it to your talk? Are you a teacher looking to share your lesson plans? It only takes a moment – start uploading now, and let your slides do the talking!

Some of the things you can do on SlideShare

- Embed slideshows into your own blog or website.
- Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately.
- Synch audio to your slides.
- Market your own event on slideshare.
- Join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests
- Download the original file

Are you web pages ‘valid’?  Valid??  What does that mean?

Web pages are typically written using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It’s important that your site uses valid HTML and CSS code so that the search engines can index your site properly.

Like all computer languages, HTML and CSS change constantly. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the governing body that establishes what is valid HTML/CSS and what is not. Search engines obey the HTML/CSS standard. If there are errors in the HTML/CSS code of your web page, then search engines might not be able to read your web page properly.  Accordingly, you may be penalised in the rankings.

To test your site for valid code, visit http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/

With the GFC has come the anticipated corporate failures (eg. Storm Financial Limited, Herringbone and Strathfield), stock market plunges, a huge dip in consumer confidence (despite government handouts – another story…) and rendundancies (Pacific Brands, ANZ).  It is almost certain that we haven’t seen the last of these issues – who is going to be next? 

Seemingly, it’s not a good time to be in business.  Clearly, it’s time to batten down the hatches.  Or is it?

I reckon it’s a great time to be in business, because times like these spell opportunity, opportunity, opportunity.  Your competitors are so scared about their own circumstances, that they haven’t got the time to monitor what you’re doing.  Now’s the time to get your brand out there and seize the initiative from them, particularly as your competitors have probably slashed their marketing budgets to save precious costs.

It’s just what Woolworths are doing – they have undertaken a full rebrand and they are spending stacks on marketing (have you seen the weekly updates on fresh produce?) in order to steal more market share from Coles and others.

Why not take Woolworths’ lead?  Bugger the negative stuff – get positive and start making a big difference now while the chips are down (and it doesn’t mean spending lots of money, just do something…anything), and your business is sure to power out of the recession when the cycle inevitably turns in 12-24 months time. 

So, turn off the television news, ignore the nay-sayers, don’t read the papers and just pretend that everything is hunky-dory.  Your business will the better for it.

I was reading a competitor bookstore’s online newsletter the other day and it gave me an idea for a post.  The newsletter went on and on and on.  I scrolled, scrolled, scrolled down through the content and found myself deleting the email before reaching the bottom. 

It’s not that the content was bad – it was actually really good (and it gave me some ideas for our own Boomerang Books Bulletin).  It’s just that I didn’t have the time or the inclination to take it all in. 

There’s a lesson in that for netpreneurs.

People’s attention spans are short these days.  We have so many things impacting on our time - so many distractions, competing priorities, and the ever-increasing demands of everyday life.  We just don’t have the time to read through a lengthy web page or email newsletter.  And when we do have the time, we can’t possibly take in all that information, because our mind is full of so many other things!

So for our human visitors/newsletter subscribers, the advice is to employ the KISS principle - keep it simple, stupid!

There’s also another important consideration when reviewing the length of our web pages - will Google index all of the content if it is too long?  Like most people in modern society, the Google indexing robots are busy little bees.  They will only spend a certain amount of time on your website before moving on to the next site.  If each page of your website contains a thesis, then much of the page content won’t be indexed, which means that your site won’t achieve its traffic potential from the search engines.

With that in mind, here are some tips for good page content:

- Keep each page or newsletter to 200-300 words maximum per page.

- If your content is more than 200-300 words, span it over multiple pages, but offer a ‘print version’ that contains the entire text (it’s painful having to print articles that span over multiple pages)

- Use bullet points, prominent headings, white space, 1.5 line spacing and short paragraphs to break up the content and enable the reader to ’scan’ your content.  It’s proven that most people scan, rather than read.

- Include keyword combinations that you want to rank highly for in Google and other search engines, but make sure that they appear ‘naturally’ within the text (ie. when read, the text should read naturally)

- Put your best content ‘above the fold’ so that every visitor can see it – ie. it is visible once the page has loaded, without the necessity to scroll down to reveal the content.

- Cross-link to other appropriate pages on your website so that your visitors can find other content quickly and easily.  Use contextual links (links within the body text, like this one!) to provide natural pathways throughout your website.

Of course, I am aware of the irony – this article appears on a blog page that scrolls and scrolls and scrolls.  A consequence of using Wordpress, although I am sure that it could be configured differently…