Image credit: redjar

Earlier this week we talked about using online backup services for offsite safekeeping of our files and photos.

But many of us have stuff that lives online and not on our home computer, like blogs and websites, and all our goodies at Del.icio.us and Flickr, et. al.

I feel sure we can depend on social media sites and online services like Jott and Remember The Milk to protect what we’ve put out there. And that’s not fangirl talk.

The bottom line is that their bottom line is 100% dependent on their ability to 1) provide the service, and 2) preserve our data. And not necessarily in the order.

So with our links, photos, reminders, and schedules in trustworthy hands, we only need to worry about backups for our websites and blogs. And really, we don’t need to worry (much) about those. Here’s why—

The Good News

The Internet remembers (almost) everything.

When we heard that Sharon over at Get Paid To Write Online lost a piece of her terrific blog to a webhost error and a not-quite-current backup file, Dan and I put our heads together to figure out how she could get restore the missing pieces.

We suggested online resources like the Google Cache and her own feed (more on those below), and Sharon was able to recover most of what was lost from Google’s semi-permanent memory.

The Bad News

The Internet remembers (almost) everything.

Don’t publish anything online—anything!—that you don’t want preserved…maybe forever.

Webmasters have a little wiggle room. If the website traffic is low, it could take a day or two (or ten) for the search engines to note that something has been added or edited. Also, odds are that no one will see (or print or save or share) the boo-boo before it can be fixed. If the website has a lot of traffic? Wellll…maybe not so much.

Bloggers have no room to wiggle. Once a blogger clicks Publish, their content is broadcast to distribution points all over the Internet. The entire web-connected planet can access it immediately through RSS feeds, a copy will arrive in every email subscribers’ Inbox within the day, and the search engines may discover it within the hour.

Just like when we were 12: there are do-overs, but no take-backs.

Lost your website?

With those in mind, here are a few places to check for archived copies of your web pages:

Your website host

While many website hosts keep backups of customer content, there’s no guarantee their backup will be current, accessible, or usable. Most webhost Terms Of Service that I’ve seen say customers are responsible for maintaining their own backups. Avoid unwelcome surprises! Check your webhost’s backup policy before you need it.

Some full-featured website hosts offer routine backups in their hosting packages—both free and for a fee—but watch out for hidden costs. In addition to a flat fee, there may be additional charges based on how much is stored, as well a fee to recover your lost data.

Tip: InMotion Hosting* is an award-winning host with affordable packages that include automatic backup and free recovery, with a reasonable charge for repeated recoveries within a four month period.

The Google Cache

Google’s Cache is updated as web pages are indexed, so it can be good for recovering recent copies. Depending on how often Google’s bots visit the website, Google’s Cache will have a copy that’s just a few minutes old to ancient history.

To see what’s cached for your website, type into the Google search box site:yoursitename.com and click Search. For example, here’s everything for BigBrightBulb.

Every search result will have Cached listed among the links beneath it.

Click on Cached to display Google’s copy of the page. There will be a header with how old their copy is and links to a text-only version.

Google’s Cache is a wonderful, powerful thing…another reason to both admire and fear them.

The Wayback Machine

This feature of the Internet Archive maintains snapshots of the Web forever. It takes about 6 months for copies to be listed and there may be gaps in the timeline, so don’t expect anything current here and don’t depend on it solely, but know that whatever you find there, is there to stay.

The Wayback Machine is best for recovering older versions of content, because unlike Google’s cache, this is a permanent record. For example, here’s Yahoo’s homepage for December 22, 2004.

Lost your blog?

The features that can shame us when we post errors can save us if our posts and comments pisaddear. From the moment we publish, copies of our work can be found in/with our:

Feeds

Depending on its settings, the last 5 to 95 published posts and comments are stored in the blog’s widely published feed. We can access formatted content through a feed reader like Google Reader or FeedDemon.

We can also recover the feed’s XML from our feed manager. At Feedburner, this is at Optimize > XML Source (see below).

Inbox

Bloggers who receive new comment notifications have a stash of detailed reader commentary in their Inbox. This can be a great resource for recovering lost comments if your blog doesn’t use a comment feed.

And if your blog offers email subscriptions (like this one does), it’s a good idea to subscribe to your own feed. For everyday use, it’s good to know what arrives in your subscribers Inbox, as well as when it gets there. For the long haul, you have an easy-to-access archive of every post.

Avid Readers

Loyal as they can be, we don’t want to depend on our readers for our data recovery plan, but they may help in a pinch. For example, I occasionally print or PDF posts for reference, so there’s a small and varied collection of articles on my hard drive.

There’s no telling which readers are saving your stuff, what they’re saving, or in what state it’s in, but it’s still one more way your stuff can be preserved forever…whether you like it or not.

Extreme Backups

And if you (like me) trust your service providers and the Web, but feel more comfortable with a backup for their backup, you can always maintain a copy of your blog or website on your own computer. This is the best way I know of to be assured of an easily accessible, up-to-the-minute copy.

I execute and download a backup of this blog’s database file each time I post, so there’s always a current copy at hand. Of course, because my hard drive is continually backed up by Carbonite*, a copy is maintained at their remote sites as well.

Which means my backup’s backup has a backup. Heh.

Et tu? What’s your recovery plan if your website, blog, or computer pisaddears? After the screaming stops, I mean. And after the crying.

* Yup, these are affiliate links because they’re products I paid for, use, enjoy, and recommend.

Image credit: Eoseye

Like we talked about earlier, word-of-mouth marketing is tops for spreading the word about a microbusiness. We could spend money on advertising and hope for a return, but it’s more cash flow friendly to get new business referrals from delighted customers, and then pay them a commission for the done deal.

The same apples to online businesses: build the business by providing referral bonuses, whether informally or with an affiliate/commission program. Brick-and-mortar or on the Web, the value in word-of-mouth is how it affordably and effectively extends our message to customers that are beyond our reach.

But online, there’s a way to reach people outside of these typical one or two degrees of separation…

Search Engines: Our Silent Partners

Our blogs and websites have silent, not-so-secret partners that offline businesses lack: search engines. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN will deliver potential customers/subscribers to our websites day in and day out, from get up ’til go to bed, without requiring a penny of payback.

Search engine “bots” regularly scan and scope our sites for content, and the search engines themselves will share our message with the rest of the world—but we have to meet them halfway. Specifically, we must make sure our content is accessible, readable, and optimized for what we want the search engines to find.

Search Engine Optimization, a.k.a. SEO is

The process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” search results for targeted keywords.

Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site.

~Wikipedia

My SEO Experience

Contrary to what I often read, in my experience, search engines won’t deliver a stream of visitors just because a website has regularly updated content and loads of incoming links.

In fact, a website that hasn’t been updated in over a year with few incoming links can survive almost entirely on search engine traffic if it’s been optimized. Compare these two sites:

Doodlefinder.com is my directory of specialty dog breeders:

• The site is over 3 years old
• The content has not been updated in 13 months
• Since it’s launch, I have syndicated only one article and posted once to a forum
• According to Yahoo!, there are less than 40 incoming links
• It doesn’t get any love from Twitter, Facebook, or other social media
• I paid close attention to making the content Google friendly
• Summary: Minimal effort on content, much effort on SEO
  

BigBrightBulb.com is my blog for microbusiness ideas and advice:

• The blog is almost five months old
• I publish new articles three or four times each week
• Readers contribute their comments daily
• I have syndicated only one article, but I post to other blogs and forums daily
• According to Yahoo!, there are over 1000 incoming links
• I interact daily on social media with a branded username
• I have put minimal effort into making the content Google friendly
• Summary: Continuous effort on content, little effort on SEO

Putting aside the very different target markets, you might think there is a big difference in the volume of site visitors between these two websites. I sure did. And there is a big difference.

According to Google Analytics for the past 30 days, Doodlefinder.com has significantly more new and unique visitors, and twice as many pages viewed per visit. Another big difference: 90% of Doodlefinder’s traffic comes from search engines, while BigBrightBulb only gets 14% of its traffic from there.

Were you expecting the website with the new, regularly updated content to draw more traffic from the search engines? I sure was. Instead, it appears that my small investment in basic SEO is still paying off two years later, even though I haven’t updated the content.

On the other hand, BigBrightBulb requires daily maintenance across media, yet draws fewer visitors. Notably, its traffic can drop dramatically on days I haven’t posted a new article and/or participated in Twitter. Aside from the occasional boost from StumbleUpon, this blog’s visibility—and therefore survival—depends almost entirely on daily attention.

So What’s So Great About SEO?

SEO is great because:

• It doesn’t require a continuous outlay of cash like advertising
• It doesn’t require a paid commission like a standard referral
• It doesn’t require a continuous time investment like social media
• The results can supplement, or even surpass, our other traffic building efforts
• There are plenty of free and affordable resources

As with many things, your mileage may vary, but for me there’s no question that SEO does it’s job to bring in new site visitors. Now the question is:

How well will SEO work for you?

My SEO Power Tools

Here’s what I’m using to improve BigBrightBulb’s chances to appear prominently in Google. Give some or all of these a try and see if SEO will make a difference for your blog or website:

SEO School: How to Become an SEO Ninja
Focused on the needs of microbusinesses and written for non-techies. Includes real-world examples with the big picture on how web traffic works. Learn how to make friends with Google, implement simple SEO tactics, and avoid behaving like a spammer. Great information with potty mouth language and good-hearted humor, only $39.
**$9 off until July 1! Use discount code MovingDay at checkout**

Creating a Google-friendly site
How to rank well on Google, straight from the source. Clear, detailed SEO guidelines and directions written for semi-techies to high-techies. Includes a wide range of tips, from making useful 404 pages to moving your site.

All in One SEO Pack
Plugin for WordPress users only. Simplifies SEO basics like page titles, page descriptions, and keywords. Instructions and screenshot examples provided. Notably, allows us to tweak items for individual posts, which is not something WordPress can do on its own.

Et tu? Do you need more traffic to your website? If so, what are you doing about it?

Features

• A clever way to hide the social bookmarking buttons
  see Be Playful
• A guided tour for new visitors
  see Small Biz Survival
• Podcasts!
• Flash video demos (3-5 minutes) of Going NoWare apps

Design

Chris Brogan wrote a thorough article on blog design worth checking out.

• Maybe a caricature for a logo?
  see Scrappindipity and Hungry Girl
• Maybe a hand drawn logo?
  sorta like this logo design
• Maybe a bright, chunky, whimsical look?
  see Put Things Off
• Maybe a slick, glossy look with bold colors and rounded edges?
  see Red Hot Copy

Layout

• A fun and yummy, yet professional, color theme
  see ColorSchemer and Colr
• Maybe a big fat header full of goodies?
  see Caroline Middlebrook and Shoemoney and John Chow
• Maybe a big fat footer full of goodies?
  see ProBlogger and John Chow
• Or maybe a skinny header, footer, and sidebar with fewer goodies?
  see Chris Brogan

Comments

• Threaded comments so we can follow the convos better
  use Nested Comments plugin
• Commenter avatars included, so we can see each other
• Big bold text in the comment fields so it’s easy to read while typing
  see Copyblogger
• Sexy form fields
  see Art of NonConformity

Content

• A multi-faceted Archives Page so we can get to everything
  see ProBlogger
• A directive 404 Page for when we arrive at nothing
  see ProBlogger
• A Best Of Big Bright Bulb Page
  see Small Biz Survival Cream of the Crop
• Lists of recommended blogs, sites, tools, books, and apps in sidebar

Getting Around

• A tabbed box for Comments, Popular, Recent, Tags
  see Get Paid To Write Online
• Maybe a targeted homepage to direct different types of readers to specific blog ‘zones’?
  see Targeted Homepage
• Maybe list new posts for the top tags/categories?
  see 6 Weeks
• A regular features list in the footer
  see Small Biz Survival

Feed Love

• An image for the feed
• Subscriber-only goodies and download links in the feed
• A weekly digest by email: Roundup of week’s posts with short intro, top comments with link, top commenter with link, best business quote for the week, and all the tasty little bits that are too tiny to post.

…and everything my readers want, too!

Big love and a thousand thanks,

Pssst! Even if Santa doesn’t come through, I’ve got an elf or two on standby to help with the heavy lifting.

Is there something you’d love to see at BBB that I should add to the list? Or maybe something you’d rather not see? Lemme know down below…

Ask for anything you’d like…I’ll see what I can do.

cc danielle_blue, courtesy of Flickr

A great question arrived at the Idea Cafe’s CyberSchmooz forum about a month ago (time flies!), asking how to expand an annual art show’s income beyond the 3-day event. Edward (the owner) says it best,

I am wondering however if there is another component, other than another event, that I can add onto a business like this that would still fall under the umbrella of this 3 day event. Since the website gets a good amount of hits maybe I can sell something on my site?

My question is: Do I work on ways to add more components to this or do I focus on making this 3 day event the biggest and best 3 days of the entire year?

Edward’s feels he can pull his event off only once a year. I suggested he at least consider a holiday event in December, and promised I’d “chew on” ways he could leverage his website for income the other 362 days of the year. My much-gnawed answer is:

DO BOTH
by providing the value of the real-world event in an online venue

For the artist/vendor, Edward’s art show is an opportunity to display and sell their work while connecting with art enthusiasts. These attendees benefit similarly: they can explore a variety of art in one place, meet the artists, and buy their work.

With those things in mind, here’s how Edward can promote his annual art show and earn year-round income with a restyled website:

Sell display space to artists

Because he has decent site traffic, Edward could easily sell ad space for products and services aimed at artists and those who like art. Sold as a monthly subscription, the advertising could appear throughout his site, on a sponsors page, or as classified ads. Tiered pricing for a range of ad sizes (e.g., banners, buttons, and text links) would widen the appeal.

He could also build a directory and sell profile pages to participating artists. I imagine a single page for each artist with a bio, photo of the artist, photos of their work, where their work is currently showing, their URL (if any) and contact information. Artists without a website may appreciate an affordable, no-maintenance online presence with existing traffic. Artists who already have websites may benefit from a secondary source.

Sell art to site visitors

As the art show coordinator, Edward is in an ideal position to be a broker for the artists. He’s already a bridge between the artists and the art-lovers, so it should be easy to get buy-in on the new role. The mechanics of this could get sticky: contracts with the artists, policy setting, etc. But it may be worth it to earn a nice commission while the artists benefit greatly from the off-season virtual gallery.

With appropriate license from the artists, he could have an online gift shop for direct sales of appropriate reproductions. “Appropriate” being high-quality postcards, greeting cards, and catalogs—as opposed to mouse pads, mugs, and keychains. Print products are my first and only choice for this because they’re affordable, popular, easy to manufacture, sweetly profitable, and simple to ship.

Sell the event to everyone

With a photo gallery of the previous year’s event, Edward could give website visitors a taste of the weekend’s fun months in advance. He shouldn’t need to take the photos himself or hire a professional photographer. Artists and participants might be eager to submit their own photographs for a bit of online presence and a photo credit. He can host the photo gallery on his own site and also start a pool on Flickr.com and request submissions.

He could also sell event gear. He’ll need new imagery each year, but a contest held among the participating artists should yield worthy work to feature on tote bags, t-shirts, and other stuff. At the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival, I met people intent on maintaining a complete set of annual event gear. Poseurs can buy gear after the event and pretend they attended I imagine a display of the artists’ submissions would be a crowd pleaser at the event and online.

And if it suits his ticketing arrangements, he can sell/reserve event tickets online. Even if that’s impractical, he should surely sell/reserve vendor event space online. If site visitors can buy conveniently while they are excited by all the good stuff on his site, it would add to the trickle of income he could be enjoying the entire year.

Et tu? Got more ideas for Edward and getting all year earnings from his 3-day event? Lemme know down below!

Also, I’m taking tomorrow off to get the jump on my semester. I’ll be back Tuesday with a review of Location Independent Living’s X Marks the Spot. Thanks! ~CW

A recent CNN Money article offered alternatives for e-commerce business owners that are “sick of PayPal”. Service descriptions from the article and the vendor websites were revealing, and not in a good way:

• Digital River charges a $1 fee per transaction, more than 3 times PayPal’s transaction fee
• 2Checkout.com charges a setup fee (PayPal doesn’t), has a commission fee almost twice PayPal’s, and always holds 5% of your sales in reserve
• AlertPay charges a fee to transfer funds to your bank (PayPal does this for free), and charges 25% more than PayPal to cut you a check.
• TrialPay undermines your product’s value by optionally making it a free bonus for some other vendor. You get paid by the other vendor, but at what cost to you in the long run?
• And while e-Junkie is a stellar shopping cart, why is it listed in the article among the payment processors?

Seriously? Those payment processors may be options for folks who are sick of PayPal, but I would have to be fatally furious to trade PayPal in for someone who charged higher fees and higher commissions, held onto my money, or charged fees whether the funds were coming or going.

I’ve got nothing but love for PayPal, because:

• I have instant access to my money
  If someone pays me at 12:35pm, I can spend that money at 12:36pm. No waiting for a monthly payment, like with TrialPay. PayPal could and would (and should) hold the funds if they felt the transaction was high-risk or atypical, but they don’t hold a portion of my earnings by default.
• It’s easy and free to withdraw funds
  Did you know PayPal offers a debit card? And there are no transaction fees when used for purchases. Also, they’ll deposit funds into any of my bank accounts for free, as often as I like. Again, no waiting for a monthly payment.
• Their commissions are the lowest I’ve seen
  And their commission decreases as your sales volume increases.
• No setup or monthly fees for standard accounts
  Only the higher-end business accounts charge a monthly fee, and the features are well worth the $30 per month. Only the Payflow Gateway accounts charge a setup fee.
• It has 164 million accounts worldwide
  If I could only convince each account holder to give me $1…or a Euro…or a British Pound (PayPal supports transactions in 17 currencies)
• I have options
  There are 138 compatible shopping cart applications to choose from.
• It will endure
  Banks collapse and regimes fail, but PayPal belongs to eBay…and eBay is (probably) forever.

Et tu? What payment processor do you use to buy and sell online?

I’m determined to abandon software by running my business with online tools and Web 2.0 applications, and it didn’t take long to find I’m not the only one experimenting with working 100% from the Web.

In no particular order, here are the top posts and articles I’ve found on the topic (so far):

Online Tools for Working Abroad
Danny hit the beach last month and is working 100% Web (including phone and mail). His goal is to move freely from beach to beach, access everything from Internet cafes, and have insurance in case his laptop disappears. This list includes detailed explanations and screenshots for each Web application.

Tools For The Mobile Office
This is a relatively short list of online business tools, but it’s worth listing because Brick compares his favorites to what Danny (above) and Computerworld’s Mike Elgan are using. They are unanimous on some (photo storage and snail mail) and totally disagree on others (data storage, meetings, personal finance, and to do lists). Food for thought…

More Tools For A LIP (Location Independent Professional) Business
Lea offers a concise list of the web applications she uses for business operations while she and her husband travel around the world. As you read, be sure to note which Web apps she’s phasing out and why.

Online Business Toolbox: 230+ Tools for Running a Business Online
Whoa! Cameron compiled an alarmingly comprehensive list of web applications suitable for running a small to medium-sized business. Everything from Accounting to Virtual Office is listed here, including “industry-specific” options for real estate and retail management. FYI: I counted 237

The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need
Yoav collected a hecto-list of web applications that has few in common with Cameron’s 230+ (above). He appear to have a looser definition of “web application”—Web services like Moo are included—but it’s still a wide and wonderful list of what the Web offers to microbusinesses like ours. Be sure to read all the way to the end, commenters contributed some useful links.

And an extra that’s only a little off topic:

Putting Together A Portable Office That You Can Take With You Anywhere You Go
Another from Lea—this is her tried and true list of bits and pieces you’ll need for a fully-functioning on-the-go office, whether you’re using software or web applications.

By definition Web 2.0 is “the generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, and blogs…which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users”.

So primarily, Web 2.0 is about connections…about giving us access to friends and strangers anywhere on the planet; storing and sharing our photo albums and diaries and links; logging our briefest thoughts, cataloging our possessions, and enabling virtual and actual exchange.

So I’m wondering: if I can (and do) use the Web to access anyone, anywhere, anytime…if I can (and do) store and share my documents, photos, and thoughts online…if the Web can be (and is) my primary method for exchanging books, products, ideas, and money…then what do I need software for?

Because compared to web applications (Web 2.0 and otherwise), software is a hassle from beginning to end. There’s an—often large—upfront financial commitment, then downloads and maintenance for fixes and updates. Software requires lots of hard drive space, is bound by license to one computer, and accessing new and improved features requires spending more money on upgrades.

Web-based applications lack all that software drama. There’s almost always a free service plan, or advertiser support so it’s free to all. If there is a cost, it’s a tiny monthly subscription payment with no long-term commitment. There are no downloads or installations or maintenance. Web apps can be accessed with any Internet-connected computer with a web browser—whether Mac or PC or Linux—and improvements are integrated at no extra cost.

So here I am, liberated from my desk by a wireless Internet connection, but still tied to this specific laptop by its software. Which is totally okay…until the motherboard croaks, or the hard drive fails, or it burns up in a house fire, or I lose it, or someone steals it. Then my business is in a coma until I can get myself a new computer and reinstall all the software and recover all my files.

But if I was Web 2.0 Wondergirl, I imagine I’d find/borrow/buy another computer and get back to work within the hour. And actually, must it be a catastrophic scenario? Maybe I just want to travel light rather than lug my laptop to Mom’s, or into the city, or on a plane to…wherever. Maybe I like to be on the move and could work quite well at whatever Web-ready computer I found at the cafe, hotel, library, etc.

So I’m wondering: With the appearance of Web 2.0 collaboration tools and other sundry web applications, can we live without software?

I’ll try it and let you know.

Business essentials require email, word processing, spreadsheets, scheduling, and project management. For these, I use Gmail, Google Documents, Google Calendar, and Basecamp.

My reasons are pretty straightforward: they’re free, they’re flexible, there’s little or no advertising, I can access them from anywhere, they’re feature-rich and well supported, new features are added regularly, and did I already say they’re free?

Sometime Essential Webware

Essentials aside, here are Web applications that come in handy on the few occasions when I need them:

• USPS.com
  I use Stamps.com software when I’m at home, but this is it for printing postage when I’m offsite.
• CatPrint.bz
  100% online professional printing services—type in your document information, upload a PDF, check your online proof, and pay. Best bit: their printing cost calculator has saved me hundreds of dollars by showing the impact of design decisions (document size, margins, etc.) on the bottom line. I love these folks.

Could be Essential Webware

Here are a bunch of sites—mostly Web 2.0, one not—that are totally new to me. I haven’t tried them yet, but most come highly recommended:

• WordPress
  I blog with it, but I hadn’t considered using WordPress as a content management system. A grand idea: building, customizing, and editing a website without paying a penny for software.
• Picnik and Splashup
  Along the thought of free design applications, these offer online image editing with plenty of features and power.
• Blinksale
  Simple online invoicing that costs nothing if you only send a few invoices each month. Nice options like customizing invoices with your cool logo.
• Box.net
  For digitals that need a home you can access from anywhere. Perfect for sharing files and offsite backup.

Missing from this list is a desktop publishing application. Service providers for business card printing and whatnot sometimes have design/layout features built into their websites, but wouldn’t free-standing desktop publishing webware be the cherry on top?

There are plenty of web applications out there for business functions (critical or no), these are just what I use and unearthed (so far). If you have favorite webware that you use in your micro-business—especially a desktop publishing app—leave a comment and tell us all about it.

P.S. Reading back through this post, it appears someone could run a business entirely on webware. Huh. Now there’s some good news for folks looking for a low- to no-cost startup…