Startups and Web Business
Ignite is a set of events where speakers are given exactly 5 minutes to speak on a topic of their choice with slides that auto-forward whether you’re ready or not. It’s a pretty cool format because it forces you to get to the point very quickly. I gave a presentation at Ignite Melbourne a couple of nights ago about how you can use iteration to build a business, even if you don’t have a ton of experience. (more…)
When you’re in a fast growing company, it’s more than possible to overhire and overstaff, filling in perceived gaps before they really are needed. Today I was emailed an amusing, if slightly over cutesy, fable about overstaffing that I thought I’d share. I think the important thing with respect to growth is to ensure you don’t end up navel-gazing and over analyzing. The fable in slideshow format is after the jump … (more…)
The idea of ‘filler’ content is nothing new in publishing. Magazines, newspapers, even TV has filler, it’s the stuff that bulks up and fills out your editorial calendar. But online, filler content has the potential for a whole lot more than just plugging gaps, and it all rests on search traffic.
For most online publishers, search traffic makes up a reasonably large bread and butter base of visitors. On our Envato blogs, for example, search traffic generally makes up about 20-30% of visits. That’s a pretty substantial amount of traffic for us, but for some publishing sites those are some really low numbers.
You see there is a way to grow search traffic that has nothing to do with tinkering with the keywords on your articles, or even building link-backs. Instead it’s about publishing masses and masses of content, and that’s where filler content is taken to a whole new level.
Dealing with fast growth can be tricky, just ask Bruce Banner. One moment he’s a regular comic book uber scientist, then someone has the bad judgment to make him angry and next thing you know he’s a 10 foot green monster who uses guns for toothpicks and likes smashing things. That sort of growth always comes with consequences. In Bruce’s case, it’s his clothes that suffer. Inevitably we see the Hulk burst out of his shirt as he transforms, all the while counting ourselves lucky that his pants managed to hold on for dear life.
For most entrepreneurs, ambition far exceeds even a superhuman workday. No matter how you slice and dice it, one person can only do so much. To do more, requires something more than working really, really hard. It requires delegation.
There may only be one of you in the world, but there are plenty of other people. So to overcome the speed bump of your own personal capacities, you’re going to need to get other people to do your work. This can be quite a daunting prospect, after all how do you find people? How can you trust them to do a good job? How do you pay them? What if they don’t work out?
