When I first began as a web designer about 5 years ago, the career choice creating websites for clients didn’t seem like a bad idea at all. At my first job, it was not uncommon to bill clients in excess of $5,000-$10,000 for a simple html website. It was easy to run a profitable business with a large enough client list. These days are pretty much all but gone now, sure there are still web [...]

It seems like ever since I returned to Kauai, I’ve watched business after business close up shop. Many of the local businesses still operating are still struggling more than ever. These businesses are family owned and operated and have been gone through multiple generations. When asked why sales are so poor, they always cite outside sources; Costco, Wal-mart, K-mart, Safeway, the economy, etc. How can they compete with these big box stores with huge national [...]

When I discovered a month ago that Verizon Wireless was getting an Android device by the end of the year, I became very excited. I had been sitting on a contract renewal for some time now but did not want to renew just yet because there really weren’t any cool phones available from Verizon. Historically, Verizon has always had the lamest phones of any major carrier but almost everyone on Kauai has Verizon so it [...]

When this qualifies as a business trip, you know you’re doing something pretty cool.

Being that today is Mother’s day, I came up with an idea for a way for a flower shop business to increase their yearly revenues. Offer a subscription service targeted at men that reserve flowers for them for all important dates. Standard package would include, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, for additional fees birthdays, anniversaries, etc. The payment is a yearly subscription and will guarantee that there will be a flower arrangement available for each subscriber [...]

Them: So what do you do again? Me: My partners and I run a website where we teach people how to play the ukulele online. We have around 7500 registered members now and get like 20k uniques a month. Not great but it’s a pretty good start considering we started with $300 and spent no money on advertising. Them: Oh wow, so all those people pay to use your site? Me: No, we give away [...]

Ukuleleunderground.com has given me the opportunity to meet and befriend so many amazing people throughout the world. I always take some time everyday to think about just how fortunate I am to have made so many new friends within the past year. One of these new friends is a man named Mike Hater from Nashville Indiana. Mike is an amazingly interesting person. He has described himself to me on more than one occasion as a [...]

Understanding your website analytics and statistics is a key component in developing an online web strategy. INC magazine had a great article on this in November. Here’s the link. If you are a business owner looking to develop or grow your online presence this is important info. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/improving-your-sense-of-site.html

I get a kick out of hearing local businesses complaining about negative reviews on blogs or sites like yelp.com. The game has changed my friends. The internet is like a megaphone for word of mouth marketing. It’s word of mouth marketing on steroids, or on HGH, or both. Good or bad, your customers now have a voice and the power to let others know if you suck or if their experience with your company was [...]

I’m currently reading ‘Predictably Irrational‘ by Dan Ariely and am finding it fascinating. The book makes the case that while we like to believe that we are very rational creatures that make decisions based on past experiences and learned behaviors, many of our daily decisions are influenced by shared irrational though patterns. More so, we are so much more irrational than we think, that we are predictably irrational, meaning if we know what to look [...]