Kim Hughes (www.kimhughes.com) a Real Estate Virtual Assistant has recently been accused of scamming business owners. There’s a lot more detail about this virtual assistant scam over at watshit.com scam reports, but this caught our attention for several reasons.

This is not good news for the Online Real Estate Virtual Assistant community, because up until now they have held a clean record as being honest hard working individuals/companies. Never have we heard of such complaint.

How do you tell if someone is planning on scamming you? How do you tell if someone is a well known scammer? Easy, you run a search, ask for signed contracts and always remember to grab as much information from the service providers in case you need to sue their asses.

A simple search like Kim Hughes Scam now returns the warning sign results.

Be careful who you do business with!

Website Marketing Basics

Traffic means money pure and simple. The more users that come to your site, for whatever service you provide or product you sell the better. It’s not rocket science is it? Question is how does the average web owner with limited know how in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and online marketing get the traffic they need to run a successful online business and earn good money? Here’s the answer;

Anyone with limited web knowledge can make good money online, they just need a starting point, and here it is. Traffic, that’s all you need, the more traffic the more potential clients/users the better. Ranking on search engines is one way, but to do it right this can be both time consuming and tiring, trust me, I’ve been there. Sure it works, and also does wonders for your business in the long run, but I suggest you start off with funneling traffic so that your site starts making ’some’ income, and then market it full scale and get it ranked for search words and phrases you want to target. So let’s get to the good part, how to funnel traffic, several ways which i’ll list below;

First way, and one a Slovenian Designer friend of mine uses, is by providing small free downloads to people. He’s a designer, therefor spends 15-20minutes a day designing something the web design/graphic oriented users would want to download for free. He then signs up on about 5 high traffic warez/download forums and simply creates a topic, with a screen shot of what he’s providing, or a sample, and a download link that looks like “www.yousite.com/thedownload.zip” That simple, usually you get around 500 unique visits of users wanting to download this design related product, if it’s an ebook then people interested in that ebook, if it’s a service, then people interested in your service. Do this daily for a while and this user base will only increase as you bump up old topics and keep new ones fresh, generating over 2000 unique visitors a day from direct targeted traffic and getting bookmarked by these users which will in turn generate repeated visits, thus consistently growing traffic, all by spending 25min tops a day.

Blogs are a powerful asset, because they help you target low-key phrases and search terms to rank high for and scrape search engine traffic from the small number of people looking for a search phrase, related to your service or product but not exact. Say you sell Hand made mugs, ranking for Mugs will be tough, but ranking for Home Made Mugs, or Find Home Made Mugs, Buy A Home Made Mug, Mugs made at home, hand made mugs…etc will be much easier to rank for, and combined might generate you almost half if not as much traffic as the main strong keyword. It’s common sense.

Just think outside the box, me for example, i’m aiming to rank this blog post for ‘Website Marketing’. As big a keyword as this may seem, I may eventually rank on the first or second page, in which case, mission accomplished ;)

Ok so I picked a site (spotlocal.net - they state that - “Spot Local helps you target consumers who are actively searching for your service or product” -we’ll see about that) at random online to check different webmaster SEO skills out. Spot Local is the site, and what a site it is. They claim to increase traffic to advertisers and what not, at least that’s what I got from this site. It’s rather simple really, they have some major no-no’s and I’m going to exploit them by ranking higher than them, or at least rank high enough for their keywords to bug them! Funny, they have a slogan that says “Spot the difference, with Spot Local” haha well let me spot your bloopers then so you can better satisfy your users!

No navigation - Learn from their mistake, the closest thing to your body tag and one of the first thing the search engines absorb are the navigation text based links. They help a great deal and also help spread the PR juice through your site to other important pages you want to have rank higher. Their navigation is crap, sorry to say it like that, but who on earth uses a nav like that anymore? If they were thinking creativity? Originality? Then someone please slap them with a couple pound of ‘reality check’ because it’s tacky, old fashioned, confusing, retarded and crap.

Validation/Code Compliant -  Spot Local’s home page has over 40 errors. With so little content (which poses another issue) that’s way too many errors, Java, Flash, just wrongness all round.

Meta Tags - No meta description or meta keywords, which just makes me want to slap their web developers. Yes it’s not a life or death issue but any web developer knows better.

MAIL TO??? now come on, why not create a simple contact form to make users lives simpler. Fill in a couple fields and hit send, Done!

Page URL’s : They have the strangest url structure I’ve seen in a long time, numbering their pages? That’s a red light right there.

Among other things, their blog for one is not even optimized to rank at all which is sad.

Just goes to show you the sort of mistakes other webmasters are making, learn from these sites i’ll post at random here guys, don’t make the same mistakes!

So, identity theft. It’s a huge deal online, more so than in real life, but then again ‘online’ is real life, right? Today I got a call from a long time client telling me ‘they accept my new terms’…what new terms? After talking to them for a bit, I am shocked to find out, someone with the email (rnichaelkane@yahoo.com - which I guess looks like michaelkane@yahoo.com - the r and n together trick one into believing it’s just an m)  claimed to be Michael Kane, me!! They went on to tell my client that an update on their site was necessary and that a bug was found and should be patched up before it gets exploited, they go on to giving my client wire details and stating payment should be made immediately (They even gave them a 30% discount on a fabricated fee as they were current clients) and that was that.

I told my client not to pay, obviously and have now sent these crooks an email, and one to Yahoo! Hopefully this will get resolved before something nasty comes of this. In the mean time, I have forwarded an official letter to all my clients noting that all emails from that said email address should be disregarded and deleted. Same goes to all my online contacts.

Be careful of online identity thieves!

So, we’re re-designing a home page for Shouting Zone, and not only that but we’ll also be setting up a personal blog for the site. The forum will get a face lift and we’ll give all our members (my friends) a friendly nudge to let them know we’re back, and for good this time.

Just to answer a couple peoples questions, I was recently asked, why bring SZ back to life, well, because it’s always been a place I could go to joke around and have some fun, I missed it.

Some asked what was going to be different this time, I personally hope not a lot, because it was great fun! There will be Design/Coding/SEO sections implemented nicely, and it wont look out of place I promise, but this is to help a lot of website owners, web developers, and regular web page designers, or users with profiles to spice things up a bit and rank higher in the search engines for more online exposure!

There will be a couple extra features, like a Shouting Zone  directory for all your favorite sites and such, also, SZ members will be able to create their own fully customized WordPress themed blogs for free and so on.

I’ve always believed in freedom of speech and self expression, if by creating a forum for people to join and freely commute in I aid in giving more people a voice to shout out and be heard, then i’ll do just that! A lot of people create forums these days and sensor a lot of peoples opinion in fear of being whip lashed by search engines, law and what not, as long as my members can be civil about it, I don’t see why I should stop anyone from saying what they have to say! ShoutingZone.com - Go check it out.

How many people out there love Yahoo!? The Yahoo search engine, in my honest opinion, is the ONLY search engine for me! Why? Well I go on and on about why Yahoo Search Engine is the best search engine in the world over at iheartyahoo where i talk about pretty much everything Yahoo related. How much I love yahoo and how I am probably the biggest Yahoo fan alive.

I hope you guys can go check it out, it’s a few days old and I’m really trying to do something new with it. Some say I’m on this one man crusade to convert all none yahoo believers, others say I’m just a Yahoo fan boy, one thing is for sure, on iheartyahoo.com I post crap worth reading, crap worth noticing. Crap you probably wont read anywhere else, so check it out. :)

Amanda is one of the few people I respect as an armature SEO. She really does think outside the box. It all started when a friend came and talked to me about giving him a hand in ranking high for a keyword, related to some seocontest2008 contest. Prize for ranking first (if all the rules were followed) would be $1,000. With a prize as small as that you would be right in thinking, what a waste of time, but for some, it’s all about Ego.

Anyway Amanda has been experimenting for the past year or so and she overheard me talking about helping this friend out. Next thing I know, she enters the contest with a unique blog post already late in the game, long after several hundred people had started over 2-3weeks before her. It was her unique post, and some of her enginuity that has now got her ranking higher than that friend that first asked for my help, having started weeks after him, she has skyrocketed from not being indexed, to ranking on the fifth page for that keyword, with only 1 real backlink to her site.

So Amanda, congrats, and show those link buying, spamming fools that it’s really not about all that, it’s about what the rest don’t really know ;)

I personally don’t have anything against freelance designers, I’m pretty much as freelance as they get, but a friend of mine recently hired a freelance graphic designer for a small job, mainly because I was down with the flu and she was too shy to call the office and ask for one of my designers.

Her experience fell in the “I hate freelancers” category which to me was a low blow. I have always tried my best to keep the freelancing general reputation (on my end anyway) as high as possible, but some people, some low life good for nothing design bums have to go and add to the bad name that is slowly being forced upon the freelance community.

To all you new freelance designers out there, please read the following tips with care and carve into the inside of your eyelids;

If you don’t know your clients Gender, for the love of everything holy do NOT guess. After my friend and the Freelance Designer (who i shall call Design Bum here on in) emailed a few times, Design Bum called her, and asked for Mr Murphy. She was at work, and simply said “There is no Mr Murphy.” To which he replies “Oh alright, I thought you were a man.” What a moron, a sexist assumption like this could loose any freelancer a client, in a heart beat. Be careful when talking to a client, word things right, take your time, think before you spit bull shit out of your mouth.

Follow the clients instructions to the bone. Don’t cut corners, don’t be creative, don’t crap where you eat, you’re a designer, not fucking Houdini. Client has a vision, but does not know how to bring it to life, as a designer, that is you job. Sure, sometimes you will see a fatal mistake or decision the client is making, as a designer, it is your obligation to note that so and so could be done in a more efficient way, or adding something here or there would be to the clients interest. Give feedback because the client will feel better that way. Why else would they be paying?!

DO NOT take jobs if you can not meet a clients deadline. This is a big NO NO. The client has a deadline, you don’t meet that deadline the client looses time and money, now instead of helping the client profit, and making money off the project, you’re hurting the client and with any luck will not get paid. Simple math, are you freelancers following me here? 1 + 1 = 2. yes, 2 not 8 or 0.827, just fucking 2. Client says blue text you do the text blue.

Remember, if you run out of time and you’re not done yet, tell the client, don’t hide it and play them for fools. They know what they want, so if it’s not there or not finished they’ll notice!

Don’t rip other peoples work. I wont go into detail on this because I plan to make a full blog post later on this very same matter, but remember, rip a template, you hurt the client and end up loosing all credibility. After being found out you might as ell just kill yourself. Gun to the head, pull trigger.

Just be honest and make a decent living and name for yourself - Michael Kane

I received an email from an old client today. She wanted to thank me again for the t-shirt design I did for her non-profit organization. What they were after was a t shirt, to protest the spread of Hate all over the world, and they wanted to do this in a friendly way. The design took me all of 2 minutes to come up with, simple and to the point.

That’s the thing, designers today underestimate what they are capable of. They don’t realize that a small idea can give birth to an explosion of creativity, which in some cases leads to things far beyond the scope of any normal designer. It’s as they say, a picture really does speak louder than words. Why should people write letters to congress in protest of certain things, why is design not given the respect it rightfully deserves.

As designers, we have the ability to create, to destroy, to deceive or tell the truth in ways no one dared to do so before, all with a simple graphic, be it a funny one, a simple one, serious, detailed, abstract or 3d, we can spark emotion. We can anger people, we can please them, make some cry and others laugh, we have so much influence over the general public, as designers today, we blind ourselves from the truth. We can make a difference.
No need for long speeches, money or power to get on TV and say what we have to say, we just use our creative skills, and create, beautiful designs, that speak for themselves, louder than any words ever can.

We need to realize this, and do something about it. I’m tired of hearing people say they care, designers saying they would love to make a difference, and really not giving a damn. If you truly care about something, however talentless or talented you are, prove it now.

Be Passionate - Michael Kane

Free Templates these days are not at all hard to come by, but they suck really bad. Those that are worth buying are over priced and usually flash based with annoying splash pages and bad navigation, found mainly over at . Now the Web Templates there will cost you anywhere around $50 for a simple html template with absolutely no life or personality, to $200 for an equaly distasteful unoriginal design, keep in mind this very same template your paying for could have been downloaded hundreds of times before. Now, you could pay for the Unique template and become the soul owner of it (if no one has purchased it before) for usually $1500+ but you’re still not getting a unique custom designed template to fit your needs, but if you’re alright with that then go for it

I don’t like ready made templates, I don’t have anything against them, they do the job when you’re in need of something to slap content in and move on, but to run your business off a template that litters the internet, and is as unique as a yellow cab in NYC is not a smart move.

My point is, get a custom template, they cost a lot less than those templates over at TM and at the end of the day, you’re getting something your mind creates, for your business, something that does no exist anywhere else. Not to mention that if every template sold over at is available for free. Yes, absolute free, shocking isn’t it? Here are a few templates I picked out to share with you, feel free to download them.

I have about 40 comments for the previouse two blogs to moderate and I really can’t be botherd as most consist of several links to the said posters website, so I will start fresh. Sorry to those who were contructive in their comments. From here on in, any comment with more than 1 link will be disregarded, and I shall try to accept the comments on a daily bases.

If you want a free TM template just comment and add it’s number, if I have time I’ll get you it.

Remember, creative, unique websites are the answer, but, it never hurts to use a ready made one every now and again, just don’t pay a silly price for it - Michael Kane 

I was asked by a client, who owns an amazing domain name, what she should do with it. My answer, “Start an online business.” I think that confused her because of the way she cringed her face and looked at me, “What online business?” she replied 30 seconds later. The story went on for 2 hours before she decided to sell her domain name for some profit, but that’s not the point of this blog post.

When you decided to start your own online business, it’s really important to decide on something you excel in, or at least are passionate about in some way. For example, a mother, may decided to start an online business selling something she’s good at making, like baskets or scarfs and so on, better off doing that than hiring some one to help you set up say, an online hosting company, or online directory (the stupid craze these days) and driving you into the ground.

Don’t take other peoples opinions either, not with much weight anyway, just do something you know most about, make a list, then search online and see who your competitors would be, don’t go starting an online software company and expect to make a living by head butting Microsoft and other tycoons, that will never work out for you.

Why don’t you start a p2p site, sell advertising and channel all the money to zurich, get caught and go to prison, by the time you’re out the interest alone will net you a nice nest egg right? you can spend all your time watching shows you missed (Take this advice at your own risk, I may not, in any way shape or form be held responsible for your stupid actions)

Anyway, at the end of the day, a simple site, with a good eye catching design, yes, a good design is required however small your business is, an idea you feel passionate about or have knowledge in, and a lot of patience is all you need to start off on the right foot.

Making it a success is a whole different story! - Michael Kane

Be it in graphics, web design or even writing, freelancers these days are multiplying at an alarming rate, it’s not even funny. Many of these so called freelancers are popping up all over the place from all over the world don’t even know what they are getting themselves into. Now I am not a writer, so I will refrain from commenting on the Freelance Writers out there today, those that provide so called original articles and content, so I will talk about what I know, graphic and web design.

I am a designer, so I have high expectations of designers. Just last month, I worked with a designer, James Croft on a clients site, islandmix that can be found in my design portfolio. I expected him to know how to listen to my ideas, then take my sketches and concepts combining them with his own to present me with at least three sketches of possible solutions to the design problem at hand, then collaborate together some more. I expected him to know something about the website in general–what they were supposed to accomplish–and to balance his creative urges with the clients needs. I expected him to be prepared to go back and forth with me and our client as we refined the design, and to complete his assignments as agreed.

James, by the way, did all of these things and we produced a striking and effective website design that blew the clients minds away (literally speaking of course, no not really.)

My point is, you can’t just hire the first freelancer that sounds cheap and seems to know what he/she is doing. Always ask around, google up his/her portfolio, ask to see sites that are online that he/she has worked on, and if there is not a “Designed by; designers name” somewhere on that site, email the site owner and ask for confirmation. Most of the time, using one of the ways I suggested above, will end up saving you a lot of time, heart ache, and money.

So many kids are popping up these days calling them selves designers, just because they downloaded a 30 day trail of Photoshop and have a couple fonts under their belt to flash at client in an attempt to impress them. It’s a sad truth, but clients that look for a designer, usually know very little about design, therefor get sucked into a whirl pool of banana manoosha (which means bull shit in baby language). Beware of fake designers, they are everywhere, behind you, under your bed, in the mail box. Sniff them out with common sense.

Another thing when hiring a freelance designer is Ego. A designer needs to have a rather large ego, but needs to keep it under control in service of his/her client. Many do not do this well. When working with a new client, it’s wrong to force ones opinion on a client, but one should rather give it, and better explain the point at hand, accepting anything the paying client has to say of course. If a designer can’t do these basic tasks, then you’re better off without them.

Inability to listen and really hear, inability to surface assumptions (his/hers or the client’s) or to clarify them are all things that you should watch out for in a freelance designer. And, of course, many designers are simply poor communicators, either in writing, phone or face-to-face. However that’s not always a sign that the free lancer is not a talented designer, but I promise you, it will not be an easy task when it comes to communicating with him/her about the project.

There is no room to trust your gut instinct when it comes to hiring a freelance designer, just go with the facts and what you see in front of you. Reputation plays a big role, so do past projects, check and check again, get a phone number if you can, check the contact page on their portfolio for an address. Only then can you be sure that you’re getting what you paid for!

“Happy freelancer hunting!” - Michael Kane