Articles

By Stefan Sojka

In the age of ideas, creativity might be a little overrated.

I’ve been suffering a bit of performance anxiety lately, when it comes to creativity.  It seems everywhere I look I am being told to unleash my creativity, ‘Think Different’, stand out in a crowd and think outside the square.  It’s like I am not a complete person unless I can revolutionise an entire industry, transform society or claim responsibility for one of those emails with all the Photoshopped animals morphing into vegetables.

What makes it worse is that I am bombarded daily with thousands of examples of other people doing just that; effortlessly manifesting their creative genius and splashing it all over my screen.  My own inadequacies are being hammered home with every news story about the latest viral sensation, dot-com billionaire and amazingly simple but absolutely brilliant business ideas I wish I had thought of.  Then comes the slick new gadget advert, telling me that it has unlimited potential in my hands, if only I will buy it and swipe my fingers all over it.

If I zoom in, however, I find a slightly different story.  Sure, there seems to be an explosion of creativity on the planet, but it is being done by millions of different people – each individual only coming up with a tiny sliver of inventiveness, if not simply recreating what already was and giving it a slight twist.

Most apparently brilliant ideas are just rehashed and adapted versions of what already was.  Before FaceBook, there was MySpace and before Twitter, there was SMS.  People were uploading videos of themselves doing all kinds of things, way before YouTube came along.  Look at all the latest design trends in the so-called ‘creative industries’.  The same design themes and styles are popping up everywhere.  Musically, there hasn’t been a song like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in the charts for over 30 years... despite the ridiculously powerful creative tools everyone has had at their disposal recently.

Perhaps that old adage about 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration is true.  Thinking outside the square is not something to be done that frequently.  In fact the more time I’ve spent in creative La-La Land, the less actual work I got done and the harder life became.  I have to fight that urge (and all those marketing messages) to be more creative than everyone else in the entire world and focus on getting stuff done.  Who knows, that might just leave me relaxed and comfortable enough, one magical moonlit evening, to allow that 1% spark to kick in.

Small business, particularly online business, depends so much on mundane activities to prosper; technical implementation, keyword analysis and optimisation, mailing list management, spreadsheets, link building, regular maintenance and updating, proof reading, file management, administration and processing…. you couldn’t be any more ‘inside the square’ by renaming 100 photos from DSC0003456.jpg to keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.jpg, but that’s what has to be done.

As I surrender to this mechanical reality of my day-to-day life, I am actually enjoying the process of building the systems, habits and infrastructures I neglected when I believed being creative was the only way to go.  Now I am not only freer to be more creative in my down time, but I am much more prepared to do something with my ideas when I get them.

I can also do what all the other ‘creatives’ have been doing for centuries; borrowing and adapting from those around them who continue to be seduced by the enticing and rather unproductive realm that exists outside my humble – but very effective – little square.

Happy New Year!  Each year we make resolutions that we stick to or don’t stick to, depending on how realistic they were to start with, or how much we really cared about them.  Perhaps this year it is more appropriate for a revolution instead.  Rather than simply trying to break old habits or stick to new ones, how about setting yourself on a whole new course altogether?

It might not be practical to drop everything you are doing and start afresh, but an internal revolution might just be the way to see some big changes take place this year.  A new mindset, a cleaning out of the closet and a new level of motivation could take you new places – beyond resolution and into revolution.

Once you decide you can do it, it can start with the smallest of steps and build to a feeling that you have truly turned a corner and set a new path.  Why not start with your own Website?  Your own online presence?  Your own computer/tablet/phone in whose company, let’s face it, you spend more time these days than with any individual person?

May I suggest that your relationship with your interfaces to the Web is critical in not only how the rest of the world now sees you, but also how you feel about yourself?  If your online presence and interaction is highly tuned, proactive, interesting and action-oriented, you and everyone you touch will be lifted, motivated and inspired.  It’s like you become one of the neurons in the globally networked mind that is active and firing, where previously you might have remained more dormant and passive.

Here is what I am doing, and suggest you do too:

• Update your copyright notice(s) to 2013 immediately
• Create some fresh new content for your Website, perhaps a review of the year that was or a new push for your future plans & service offerings
• Test your Website forms, email accounts & any other functional aspects to your online life.  Email yourself & submit enquiries to make sure everything is working.  Fix it if it is not working
• Review all of your settings, passwords, email accounts, domain names, hosting & other assets 
• Review your Google ranking & traffic
• Review your social media presences, followers & interests
• Google yourself to see how much impact you are or are not having
• Follow some of the links you find & see if you might improve or add anything
• Spend some time looking at what other people are doing, including seeking out those who you might aspire to
• Review your financial situation to see where savings can be made or new means of income can be found
• Clean up your smart phone of all the dodgy apps you purchased on impulse, so that you can focus on any apps of real value
• Clean up your computer desktop, documents, email folders, sent items & inbox
• Clean up all your digital photographs, deleting all the bad ones & collating the good ones into useful categories, renaming them & publishing any of value
• Clean out your office drawers & cupboards
• Clean up your desk, shelves, filing cabinets & boxes
• Pull out your plans & revisit them
• Ask yourself what you really set out to do when you started all of this
• Every night, before bed, write down three things that went well today and why.

It’s just the beginning, but why not make it your resolution to begin your own personal revolution?  See how you feel in 12 months time.  My guess is that you will be pretty proud of yourself for having turned things around.

We are always asked to provide fixed quotes for new Websites.  Whether they be for a small business looking to set up a site for the first time and start promoting themselves online or someone with a great idea who wants to build a Website to make that dream come true, almost invariably the approach is to tell us broadly what they are after, perhaps sending through a brief or a site map and asking for a quote.

The only problem is that a Website is not a thing.  It can’t have a fixed price because it is not something to be bought and delivered.  It is a complex interaction of design, content, creativity and business modelling, interacting with a potentially limitless array of connections on the Internet and the people who are logged onto it.

For someone looking to get a Website, what they are really after is the services required to make that Website come about.  Even when looked at as a set of services, it is still not something that can be delivered for a fixed price – not without either the Website owner or the service provider losing out.  Costing services is generally a time-based practice, so a fixed quote must be based on a fixed number of hours.  The time it will take to build a Website is unknowable before the project commences.  So, the service provider is going to have to overestimate to allow for the contingencies, or underestimate to try to get the job when the client is shopping for a competitive quote.  

Another aspect to Websites is that they are very much dependent on the Website owner as to how much time they will require their service provider to put in.  If the Website owner prepares their content meticulously, they save time.  If they expect the service provider to create, edit or organise the content, they are adding more time to the project.

There are many theme and template-based, fixed-price Website packages available these days, but they still require input from someone to create them, modify them to suit your needs, maintain them and market them.  Again, while they seem like fixed price objects, they are actually much like a lease on a real world shop i.e. a fixed price for the facility and space to run the shop, that does not give the shop owner anything else but that facility and space.  It is up to the shop owner to do all the rest.

This is where people can get led astray.   Websites are in many ways intangible and their functionality and code is often hidden or operating on levels beyond or behind the pixels on the screen.  So, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that a Website will give you everything you need.  Every Website we visit looks like it is doing just that, but behind the screen lies the code, the man hours, the creativity, strategic thinking, analysis and ongoing work necessary to make a Website succeed.

So if you are contemplating asking for a quote for a Website, perhaps the better question might be “can you help me do what I need to do for my business and if you can, what kind of arrangement would you be happy with?”

If you are looking for someone to help you with your Website, you are looking for a relationship with someone you will be working with on many aspects over many months, before and after launch.  You might like to get your hands dirty or you might expect everything to be done for you.  Either way, you will not be buying a thing, you will be creating a living, breathing, multi-dimensional business tool that you expect to make you money.

…and my guess is that the amount of money you expect to make is just as unquotable as the price of your Website.

Usually I delete all SEO spam that arrives in my inbox, but I decided to stop for a minute and take a closer look, to see:

• How much of this stuff I was getting every day and
• Just what kinds of styles and techniques are being used to try to get me to use the SEO services of these spammers.

The other ironic and slightly devious thought I had was that I could use these SEO spam emails and actually get some value out of them.  After all, they have cost me in wasted time and annoyance.  I can post them all on my Website and get Google to index all their keyword content, and get some real SEO value out of them!  Or not…

It’s all very informative and entertaining stuff!  A mix of badly written copy, badly programmed automation scripts and offers that I must refuse, because half the time, I can’t even tell what the offer is.  I guess I am just supposed to phone them and give them my credit card details to kick things off… : )  SEO

Spam #1

Stefan.net.au Team, I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for Stefan.net.au

(I actually don’t want any social media and organic search traffic.  I don’t know why they presume that I do)

1. Social profile is not available in top Social Media Websites.

(Actually it is.  I have facebook, blogger, twitter, MySpace, YouTube and about 10 others)

2. Your site has 0 Google back links, this can be improved further.

(It has a few back links.  ‘Zero’ is a bit harsh!)

There are many additional improvements that could be made to your Website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of a WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.

(Of course I can improve my Website.  Every Website in the world can be improved – Even Facebook just upgraded their interface, and though they might need a better share price, they certainly are not short of search engine traffic.  If I would like to learn about them, I could always Google ‘how to improve your Website’ or, I could audit my site myself.  Perhaps I should ask for that free report and find out what working together would involve…)

Our clients consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are at the top of the Google search rankings.  Being at the top left of Google (#1–#3 organic positions) is the best thing you can do for your company's Website traffic and online reputation.

(Ironically, the reason I am getting this email is because you found me in Google, and I have received this kind of email from more than three people… so if four or more of you are telling me you can get me in the top three ranking, someone is winding me up)

Sounds interesting?  Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you.

(That is a strange request, as my phone number is on my Website)

Best Regards,
Nancy Brown SEO Consultant

(John Smith?  Susan Jones?  Mary White?  Fred Flintstone?)

SEO Spam #2

It’s a fact:  more people find out about your business on Facebook or Twitter than on search engines.

(I am wondering if it might have been worth providing some data to support this ‘fact’.  And do you mean my business in particular, or businesses in general?  Because either way that would be hard to prove…)

Making these sites work may be tricky for you, but it’s business as usual for us.  Let us improve your visibility and enhance your image.  It’s part of our complete Internet Marketing package.  We’ll be more than your friends – we’ll be your partners.

Stella Fair

(“Complete Internet Marketing package”?  That is a bold statement.  Complete Internet Marketing is essentially infinite in scale.  When you said we could be more than friends, are you talking love and marriage?)

SEO Spam #3

The Web is getting more crowded all the time.  If you’d rather not get lost in the crowd, we can help you be a whole lot more visible.  The system is easy:  Search Engine Optimisation is the key.  Help us help you get more business. Best SEO Company Ivan Ballard

(At least that is clear and to the point.  I’d almost get back to this guy, except that I Googled his name and found an empty LinkedIn profile and no mention of SEO.  In fact, if I type in “Ivan Ballard Best SEO company” all I get is numerous versions of this same email posted all over the Internet as comments to blog posts.)

SEO Spam #4

Hi Sir/Madam,

We are happy to announce a very attractive Christmas and New Year Offer on our different SEO packages discount ranging from 10–25%.

(But I don’t know what the packages and prices were to start with!)

In brief, we are a Delhi-NCR, India-based, leading Web services and Google certified partner company that specialises in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).  As an outsourcing vendor we have partnered with many reputable SEO agencies based in USA, UK, Canada and Australia.

(I would like to check your credentials, but you haven’t identified the name of your company, even though you say you comply with the Can Spam Act of 2003)

We have a dedicated team of 300 professionals who are backed by experience and expertise.  We provide both SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and SEM solutions to achieve top rankings on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing for your Website and requirements.

(Again, I would love to know more, but there is no Website to check)

(offer is valid only for the month of December 2011)

(What offer?  I don’t know what the packages are.)

Our principles on which we base our work:

– Ethical processes and white hat techniques

(That’s a relief, I would hate to hear that you practice unethical black hat techniques, like spamming)

– Agency or client oriented approach in our process

(In other words, we pay you money either way)

– Ready to sign NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements)

(You sign ours, or we sign yours?)

– White label for client re-selling and re-branding

(Can I re-brand and re-send this white label email to 10,000,000 people?)

– Facility to provide effective Online Project Management tracking tools

(Show me)

– Frequent reporting with required formats and information

(For example?)

– Timely and smooth communication

(This email is certainly ‘smooth’)

We can ensure that you will enjoy high SERP (Search Engine Result Page) rankings with our high track record of success.  Our SEO solutions will help increase the traffic and sales of your Website.

(Sounds good.  Where do I sign?)

Please get in touch with us to discuss your SEO requirements and more details about our Christmas offer.

(Merry Christmas to you, too)

Kind Regards,
Priyanka Jain
Manager of the Marketing Department Delhi-NCR, (India)

P.S.  This is an advertisement and a promotional mail strictly on the guidelines of CAN-SPAM act of 2003.  We have clearly mentioned the source mail-id of this mail, also clearly mentioned the subject lines and they are in no way misleading in any form.  We have found your mail address through our own efforts on the Web search and not through any illegal way.  If you find this mail unsolicited, please reply with "Remove" in the subject line and we will take care that you do not receive any further promotional mail.

(I am pretty sure that to avoid being accused of spamming, you must identify the name of your company, not just your occupation and geographic location)

SEO Spam #5

It’s an old truth:  people won’t beat a path to your door if they don’t know where your door is.  If you’re high on the Google list, the door to your business is right there to see and to use.  We can improve your rankings so the door stays open.  Email us now and we’ll tell you how our expert Search Engine Optimisation staff can provide you with the key.

(I love the door and key analogy, I hope you don’t mind if I use that one in my own marketing materials…)

Homer Castaneda

(I Googled Homer and the only place he comes up on the Internet is as posts of exactly the same material on various blog comments, or people saying they received his email.  Surely Homer would be all over the Internet as an SEO guru, with everyone beating a path to his door, if he really did hold the key.)

SEO Spam #6

Dear Webmaster,
Greetings of the day!

(Greetings of the day to you, too, even though it is 11pm)

My name is Jones, and I work as an Online Link Building Manager with Mosaic ITES Service Pty Ltd.  I would like to discuss a business opportunity with you.

(Alias Smith and Jones?  I Googled them and they actually do exist!  They have a LinkedIn and CrunchBase profile and everything.  Their Website does not look great and has quite a few technical issues, like broken images.  That is not the kind of thing that gives me confidence with letting them get their hands on my Website’s code!)

Link Building is one of the most significant aspects of the Off Page Optimisation process.  It is a major determinant of the popularity of your site and given maximum weightage by Search Engine algorithms.

(Actually, you must be careful, because Google has become quite wary of excessive link building and you can actually harm your ranking if your external links are of consistently low quality – it is almost at the stage where you ought to hire a company like this for your competitors to send them down the Google ranking list!)

Keeping in mind the latest developments in search engine algorithms and industry trends, we have launched two new services:

1.  Geo-specific Link Building:  Thematic one-way links with high PR from specified country/continent.  We provide links from whichever domain you require; we are the first Indian company to launch this service.

(That claim is a big one and very hard to prove, unless you have some evidence of a newspaper report or something

The links will come with the following parameters:

– Theme-based relevant link
– Manually built, without using link farming/link harvesting/automated back-linking techniques.
– Only from quality sites
– Permanent links
– Search Engine friendly
– Full report of the exact placement for verification, as well as a dedicated Account Manager for each project.

(That does sound very good, however, one wonders just exactly how they plan to do this.  Those parameters imply that the SEO company has way more control over third-party sites than one imagines possible.)

2.  Dedicated Resource Hiring:  We will provide a dedicated Link Builder with at least 3–4 years of experience, who would work exclusively for your project, more like an employee and would be able to provide you with:
– Thematic One-way links
– Contextual links
– Link wheel
– Blogs links.

(More like an employee – at least I don’t have to pay PAYG tax, super and Workers Compensation.  I hope you have good OH&S.  Somehow I suspect that my ‘employee’ will only be getting a tiny fraction of the money I send to this company, so may harbour a deep resentment to his employer and not care as much as I might hope)

For search engines, back links or links pointing to your Website indicate that you are ‘hot’ in the online marketplace.

(Or it might also indicate to Google that you just paid someone to do link-building for you, as Google is very clever these days and can tell genuine links and genuinely ‘hot’ online properties creating a real buzz)

We have a fantastic track record of building more than 2, 00,000 links in the year 2011 and have successfully completed more than 400 campaigns, all one way.

(Is that a typo of a missing zero, making it 2 million, or an extra comma and space, making it 200,000?  Maybe the 400 is a typo too, then it is actually 4)

If you are interested, we would be happy to share our proposal, recent works and client testimonials.

(Probably would be good if you just sent them first, oh hang on, there is a link below… I’ll check that)

Looking forward to your reply!

Best Regards,
Jones
Online Link Building Manager
seotechnologygrouponline.com

(seotechnologygrouponline.com – “This account has been suspended” – I guess it was really 4)

SEO Spam #7

Online enquiry form submission:

Your Name:  Maria Wilson

Email Address:  webfirms.service@gmail.com 

Company/Organisation:  NA

Phone:  (347) 329-2976

Message:  Team, I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic
1. Social profile is not available in top Social Media Websites.
2. Your site has 9 Google back links.  This can be improved further.

There are many additional improvements that could be made to your Website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of a WEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.  Our clients consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are at the top of the Google search rankings.  Being at the top left of Google (#1–#3 organic positions) is the best thing you can do for your company's Website traffic and online reputation.  Sounds interesting?  Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you...........

(This is the same email as we received already, from ‘Nancy Brown’.  This time ‘Maria Wilson’ has provided a phone number.  I Googled it and the top Search Engine result for her phone number is a site called “Rip Off Report” along with other sites like “Stop Forum Spam”.  Not quite the best reputation I would expect from someone I might entrust my SEO services to)/em>

Stay tuned for more Spam!

As the Internet evolves, two things are happening at the same time.

On the one hand everything is seemingly getting slicker, simpler, more elegant and easy to use.  Just think of iPhones and iPads, where children can manipulate applications with the swipe of their fingers and where in a few short minutes an owner of a new device can have it fully configured to check their email, surf the Web, synchronize their calendars and contacts and perform any number of hundreds of thousands of tasks and games with instant app downloads.

On the other hand, the very fact that the hardware is able to be so slick and efficient is as a result of an incredibly complex world of programming, not to mention a totally mind-boggling level of complex interconnectivity.  Behind the slick façade lies the operating system, network protocols, Wi-Fi, ISP accounts, servers and domain names all over the world and armies of the brightest minds of our generation getting paid stupendous salaries to make sure that it all works.

So when users experience the ‘front-end’ of this phenomenon, even though they may still encounter glitches and issues and varying standards of quality between Websites and apps, connections and configurations, one definitely gets a general feeling of satisfaction and ease.  This is starkly apparent if you look back 10 or 15 years and recall the days of having to insert modem strings to make your connection work, pouring through untold other settings and crossing your fingers in the hope that it all hangs together, and once you got online, on your big old chunky computer with an 800x600 pixel resolution screen, having what could only be described as a mediocre experience on most Websites.  We have definitely come a long way.  HD video streaming, facebook updates, Soundcloud uploading and checking Google Analytics from bed while the office computer magically backs itself up without you even thinking is a pretty nice place to be.

Herein lies the paradox.  When a business owner decides to switch from being a user of the Internet today and get involved as a producer, things take on a radically different dimension.  Suddenly they are entering the world of the technology that runs everything.  They enter this world with the mind of a user, often believing that what goes on behind the curtains is just as elegant and simple as what goes on onstage.  It is a forgivable delusion, but it is still a delusion.  Sure, there are products and services out there that enable people to set up basic Websites without any technical knowhow, and sure there are plenty of business tools available that are relatively straight forward – but almost always, the business owner ends up requiring customisations and integrations that immediately put them out of their depth in the technology whirlpool.

Elegance at the front-end involves a great deal of planning, strategy and architecture in the back-end, not to mention a consistent content creation process, to ensure all the text and images are formatted and fitting the layout and style of the delivery medium.  Websites now need to work on desktops, mobile devices of all shapes and screen sizes, as well as tablets and even televisions.

Interactions and integrations between Websites and social media platforms are becoming commonplace, yet each one requires a certain level of control to ensure it is doing what the business owner wants it to do.  Websites are not just information resources any more.  They need to engage, call for action and response, share information from diverse locations, provide downloads or even videos, podcasts and webinars.  They might require logins to secure areas, track usage, charge for access to certain files, hook into third party systems, allow subscription and account management or any number of other functions – all seamlessly and elegantly, as if the entire thing was dreamed up by Steve Jobs himself.

The bottom line is the bottom line – all of this takes time and costs money and is almost always unable to be done to a satisfactory level by a business owner, as it requires high levels of programming expertise and understanding.  More and more we are receiving enquiries from prospective clients who are coming to us having seen all kinds of amazing things online and wanting to do those amazing things themselves.  Almost without fail, their expectation of what is involved to make things happen is completely out of alignment with what is really involved.  They cite Websites that might have cost $200,000 to launch and a further $500,000 a year in staff salaries and overheads to maintain, yet they expect that this could be achieved by one person for under $10,000 and half an hour of dabbling on the weekend.

This is the paradox: The more elegant and awesome the Internet becomes to the end user, the easier everyone thinks it must be to get involved, when in fact it is becoming more and more complex and more epic a challenge to create a real successful online presence.

It doesn’t help when we are being told by companies offering cookie-cutter solutions or simple package deals that you can do anything you ever dreamed of online for $15 a month!  These people never seem to tell you what the limitations are, just that the product or service is totally amazing.

There are two ways to go here – 1) Accept the paradox, accept a compromise and make the most of what you have got in terms of money, time and tools or 2) Accept the paradox and plan your business accordingly with sufficient capital and resources to achieve what you hope to achieve.

If you ignore the paradox, you ignore it at your peril.  Making everything look so easy is not so easy at all.

By Stefan Sojka

Don’t throw the real baby out with the virtual bathwater.

There is something about online business that tends to set us up for a huge amount of misaligned expectations.  With everything just one click away, the hidden complexities of Web functionality lead people to believe that it all happens auto-magically.  Some coder just copy-pasted in a few lines of recycled PHP and ‘whammo!’…instant global success story!  I have had people seriously enquire about replicating eBay and/or FaceBook for $5K and honestly believing that should do the trick.

It’s kind of understandable.  Most of the hard work is hidden in scripts and files and thanks to the limitless talent of a planet full of awesome GUI designers, everything looks so slick, clean and simple.  The Internet is the most complex entity in the known Universe, yet its astounding success is due to its belying simplicity.   If it didn’t look and feel easy to use, it would still to this day remain the bastion of computer scientists, hackers and brainiacs.

As a business owner, I still need to contend with the complexities.  If my business model is almost exclusively an online model, such as selling downloadable software, I am going to need a team of coders on hand to manage the high level of sophistication involved; security, functionality, payment, membership management.  Imagine; a Website as deceptively lightweight as Twitter requires 140 employees to keep it running – at a loss!

The big growth area now seems to be hybrid businesses, with one foot in the online space and one foot in the real world.  Think of pizza delivery.  You need a complex online system to manage and process customer orders and an efficient off-line operation to get the pizza to my door within 30 minutes.  Similarly, sites like Groupon rely enormously on the online component delivering deals and getting online exposure to billions of users, but without the real-world participating businesses delivering on those great offers, Groupon’s image could turn sour real fast.

Then there are your businesses that most of us are engaged in, that operate primarily in reality but use the Web to promote products/services and attract new business.  Even the simplest of “brochure-ware” sites need to be created to a high standard to reflect the quality of the business and to have some basic technical expertise applied, even if it is just for contact forms, updating content and measuring the site’s performance.

There is no avoiding the fact that I have to get the technical stuff right.  But what will really make or break the operation is everything else.  If I expect that the code will magically solve all my business problems and make me an overnight squillionaire, it will be at my peril.  Technology alone will not cut it.  Why does software keep on getting upgraded?  Because it will never be perfect.  It’s what we do with it and how we integrate it into our business that counts.

Here’s what I focus on; customer service, communication, quality control, administration systems and processes, accounts, building relationships with valued associates, ensuring (not assuming) that I am on the same page as my customers, diarizing everything, keeping time-sheets, keeping my desk tidy, my files organized, and my inbox manageable.  You know, all the stuff that prevents my life and business from descending into a chaotic nightmare and will only get worse the more things grow.

Every business now must have a layer of technology surrounding it and you have to get the right solutions and systems in place.  But as technology pervades our lives and the lives of our competitors, it’s the fundamentals of off-line business practice that will determine our ultimate success.

By Stefan Sojka

The growing global movement to redistribute and reorganize resources presents unlimited untapped entrepreneurial opportunity.

I was defragging my hard drive the other day and it got me thinking – as one does, sitting there staring at a little colour-coded progress bar for three hours – perhaps it’s time to defrag our civilization. If my hard drive runs faster and more efficiently when all its files are organized into nice neat contiguous sectors and clusters, surely there is a big opportunity for improving off-line efficiency if we apply the same process.

Defragging is going on all around us already, of course; airline ticketing systems, car-pooling, off-peak hot water, express checkout lanes… but we are surrounded by so much complexity and so much inefficiency, that the opportunities are endless.  It’s only a matter of identifying them, then working out clever solutions.

Many of our off-line systems have evolved over hundreds, even thousands of years, including the economy, transportation, communication and our public institutions, often with outmoded rules that have, like the inefficient way data is written onto hard drives, forced us poor humans that are lumbered with them, to endure a mountain of inconvenience and waste.  Within all that inconvenience, some people make out like bandits (think of currency traders, recruitment companies or 1,000 other types of agency), but if we want long-term sustainability, we must look for ways to profit from making things better, not capitalizing on keeping them the same.

Rachael Botsman and Roo Rogers’ eye-opening book “What’s Mine is Yours – The Rise of Collaborative Consumption” documents an online movement of peer-to-peer sharing and reallocating, and identifies the new drivers and motivations that make phenomena like www.airbnb.com and www.zopa.com take off.  The Web not only facilitates better resource and service allocation, but it has built-in personal reward incentives for participants in the form of social interaction, validation and relationship building.

Here are a few of my pet defragging projects I would love to see get up and running:  House-swapping so everyone lives within walking distance of wherever they commute to every morning.  A register for all your unused musical instruments/tools/books/stuff, so needy local kids can drop in and borrow them.  Something (anything!!) that will permanently eliminate the need for filling out forms.  A map/database of unused backyards that can be made available for suburban farming.  A site for locally-based freelance experts who are happy to come to my place and show me how to use all my gadgets and software properly.  Any niche or industry-specific version of existing Websites and businesses, where unused resources and people-power are made available to others.

If only this column was a two-pager, I would keep going!

Everywhere I turn and look, there are systems, processes and things being mismanaged, underutilized or overburdened.  So, put your thinking caps on, register a domain name and start offering your brilliant solution.  No one ever went broke identifying a need and fulfilling it perfectly.  Build in the social media marketing component, so everyone tells everyone else about your idea and you have yourself a start-up!

Before you begin, spend some time checking out what others are doing in this area, try a few sites out that swap things, introduce opportunities, facilitate microloans, sharing, group investing and matchmaking and you’ll find a defragging movement so diverse it almost needs defragging itself!

We might be a fair way off the Utopian vision of Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project – www.thevenusproject.com – where all resource use is optimised by computers, and humans spend all day marveling at how clever we all are, but it’s nice to think we are at least heading in the right direction.  If you look closely, you’ll see the path along the way is paved with fragments of gold.

By Stefan Sojka

The recent 15th birthday celebration of eBay has got me all misty-eyed as I ponder my own 15-year on-line odyssey, the next 15 years and how to reconcile Internet time with the growing awareness of the inevitable limitation of my own human lifespan. 

How old were you when eBay started?  I was in my early 30s.  1995 was the year I first went on-line.  I had a few Internet friends who were in their early 20s who thought I was the ‘old guy’.  Now they are mid 30s, heading on that slippery slope to the big five-0.  Scary, huh?  15 more years and I’ll be a pensioner!  I have nephews who are finishing high school this year, who were just out of nappies when Craigslist, MSN, Yahoo and Match.com were being born.

15 years in human terms is pretty significant; a full demographic shift, a career or two and long enough for your hair to turn grey or disappear.  Yet light from our sun has only traveled as far as the closest 50 star systems in that time – out of a total of 100–400 billion in the Milky Way alone.  15 years is at once an entire generation and the blink of an eye.  Long enough for Google to go from an idea for a PhD project to arguably one of the most influential organisations on the planet, with 22,000 staff and astronomical cash-flow.  Short enough for me to still have to-do lists from 1995 with things still not ticked off!

For a quick flashback to 1995, try this video:  http://waxy.blip.tv/file/752713/

‘Internet Power!’  There were 35–40 million people on-line in ’95 – there are now almost 2 billion.  Average PC RAM storage has increased a thousand-fold.  Interestingly, even though so much seems to have changed, that old video shows that the essential elements of today’s Web were all there back in 1995.  It was slow and clunky, but you could watch video, download music, images, chat, email, upload and download.  Most of the groundwork had been done.  It just took 15 more years of coding and cabling to bring it all to life.

If we take the long view, 15 more years might go just as quickly as the last for you and me, yet the next Google might still be someone’s PhD project.  Yours, perhaps?

While it seems all the great Internet ideas might have already been done, consider Chat Roulette, FourSquare, local start-up, Envato, or the many other start-ups featured in this very publication, who are expanding exponentially with no sign of slowing down.  In fact the more I think about it, and how frustrating many aspects of my on-line life still are these days, the more massive opportunities seem to remain untapped or not even dreamed of.  The next 15 years could make the last 15 look like the dark ages.

To those born in 1995, the Internet-enabled world is the only world they know.  While we email and Google-search for Web pages, they are hard-wired to 3D surround-sound gaming environments already and will no doubt prefer to do business that way, once their parents stop feeding them.

Will we pay bills by stabbing them to death?  Invoice clients by lobbing a hand-grenade at them?  Purchase products by shooting them?  Hire new staff by challenging them to a Kung Fu fight?  It could get very weird...  Or it could go in a completely new direction and catch us all by surprise the way it has done consistently for the last 15 years.

Whatever happens, I want in.  I’ve got at least 15 good years left in me.  Come on kids, 2025 is just around the corner – let’s get busy!

By Stefan Sojka

Ever since I was conceived I have been producing data.  My mother’s doctor began by taking notes when she saw him about her morning sickness.  Even before that I was generating information that back in the 60s nobody was tracking; new genetic code strings, physical trajectories, chemical changes I was inducing in my mother, measurable rates of cell division, numbers, mathematical patterns, nutrient levels…

Upon my delivery, hospital records were created and the government collected a bunch of details for my registration of birth.  From that day forth, everywhere I went I produced and deposited data – data that directly influenced businesses, governments and me.

Every cent I have ever spent generated bookkeeping records and sales figures. My school reports informed education departments and helped them modify curriculums. My census and tax returns impacted (albeit infinitesimally) policy decisions of governments from John Gorton onward. I have filled out surveys, been ticketed, counted, measured, rated, scored, ranked and photographed – and that was all before the advent of the digital age!

Now, it is getting ridiculous. Every mouse click is generating log files on my ISP and the stats package of the website I am visiting. Driving my car feeds countless cameras, sensors and toll-paying accounting systems. Shopping with an EFTOPS card provides the supermarket with a rich profile of my diet and lifestyle. With time stamping of every record these days, the whole concept of an alibi is as relevant these days as typewriter ribbon, inkwells and anvils. My data trail is stalking me.

This information is and always has been valuable. Not just to those who have been happily and freely collecting it for their own use or misuse (half the time without my consent or knowledge), but to me, for self-management, self-development and self-control. There is a growing mobilization of citizens who are waking up to this. Information is power, as they say, so the best place to start getting empowered is with the information I create.

www.quantifiedself.com is a community of users and toolmakers, who see the value in self-tracking, from health benefits, to better life-decisions, to sheer fascination and fun. www.personalinformatics.org is a wellspring of tools designed to harness human-generated data. Programs like www.patientslikeme.com are achieving phenomenal results by crowd-collating medical information to discover optimal treatments for a wide range of conditions that no clinical trial could have possibly figured out.

Here’s a tip; there are going to be huge opportunities for businesses who can offer services to help people manage all this newly collected personal information; aggregating, packaging, on-selling, interpreting, analyzing and providing tools to help us change our own numbers for health, wealth and happiness. It’s already happening, so strap on your data collection devices, put on your thinking cap and find new ways to share, manage and feed back this infinite data set of our lives back to us.

New paradigms will arise, questioning such things as how to control copyright of the data we produce, how to collect royalties from those who are already using our data for their own benefit and what risk we face, producing information that somebody doesn’t like, or would like to use against us. All of this screams opportunity to me; opportunity to learn, grow, evolve and self-actuate in a way that was unthinkable all those years ago. It’s data mining time!

By Stefan Sojka

With the phenomenal successes of FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., it's easy to ignore failure as one of the critical factors in their journey and the journey of their also-ran counterparts.

Oh, for a time machine!  I would travel back to 1995 and register facebook.com, twitter.com, youtube.com, myspace.com and a hundred other domain names – I'd be a trillionaire!  Reminds me of a friend of mine who was offered a few acres of beachfront property in Byron Bay back in the 70s for $8,000 – who would have known, eh?

One of the most fascinating universal ironies is how utterly unpredictable the future seems to be, yet as soon as the future glides on through the present and cements itself into the past, hindsight turns all those uncertainties into the bleeding obvious and convinces us that we could have predicted it all, if only we'd kicked ourselves.

It doesn't help when everyone who achieves astronomical success goes around telling us in their smarmy autobiographies that it all turned out just as they expected, thanks to their brilliant talent and superhuman level of dedication and determination.  What we forget is that all the losers would say exactly the same thing, if things had turned out differently for them.

I recently interviewed Aussie Internet entrepreneur, Collis Ta'eed, who commandeers the burgeoning Envato network.  It was refreshing to hear his answer to "if you could do it all again, what would you do differently", and he replied "I would make all the same mistakes".  He sees his failures as the most important factors in his success.

Success, I think, is actually quite unpredictable.  Sure, you can control many factors; you can work hard, make smart choices and respond well to hiccoughs, but there is always the element of chance that the losers will always blame and the winners will pretend was part of their plan.

I guess the first rule is to just keep going, regardless, ready for the next stroke of luck to land in my lap.  Through all my failures and hard-knock schooling, I'll be all the more prepared this time.

Life is like a game of Tetris (sorry Mr Gump).  The possibilities come cascading towards us as we madly try to exert whatever limited control we have on the outcome.  We miss a few, but somehow we are given more opportunity to connect another line and catch up.  The more mistakes we make, the better we get at the game.  By game over, we've left a trail of success and failure, achievement and regret, in, let's face it, fairly equal measure.

While Facebook and Twitter ride the crest of a massive wave, their reign is never assured and there are tens of thousands of start-ups like yours and mine, thrashing out our intentions every day, stumbling, falling, dusting ourselves off and getting back out there.  We've probably all got 100 domain names registered and our eye on some land half-way across the Nullabor that will one day be the main street of a megacity.  We're failing every day – and creeping ever closer to our destiny.

The first thing to do with any one of those 100 domain names is to just start.  As James Cameron said "failure is always an option, but fear is not."