View Larger Map

Two weeks ago I tended my resignation as the Marketing Manager at Flippa.com. The above map will explain the the main reason for my departure, the other being the 9lb one I leave at home when I make the journey. Almost 3 hours commuting everyday with a new borne bouncing baby girl at home has starting to get the better of me. I realized the 12 to 13 hours away from home everyday and the constant tiredness wasn’t doing me or my family any favors.

In the 8 months I’ve been at Flippa I’ve learnt a great deal, hopefully made some contributions to the business and people in the marketplace, and met and worked with really cool people. I will miss the 99FlipPoint family and the happy creative working environment they’ve created.

I’m also looking forward to the challenges ahead – once again stepping in to the world of small business having purchased an online business (no it wasn’t via Flippa and it’s .com.au). I’ll also be spending more time on Small Business Big Marketing as well as some consulting – all in all a busy schedule ahead but most of it will be done from home.

Thanks to everyone who’s helped me in my roll as Marketing Manager at Flippa.com – both internally and externally – it’s been awesome.

It’s getting late on a Friday evening, but instead of switching off after a long week, I’m reading emails, checking forums about work related stuff and drafting blog posts.

The family’s asleep, and the cat’s curled up in front of the fire, but instead of switching off and enjoying a glass of red in front of the TV, I’m cradling this insidiously piece of technology that’s become the most convenient means to keep me constantly connected.

Yep, my greatest fear has come to fruition. Constant connection.

The iPad has made browsing the web as informal as picking up a magazine. It’s displaced other relaxation mediums by being so damn accessible.

Damn you iPad.

- Posted using BlogPress from Apple’s new virus, the iPad.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Mornington-Flinders Rd,Red Hill,Australia

Getting out from the pile of nappies for a coffee with Timbo.

Just had the CTG monitor on checking baby’s heart rate.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Every time I install a new WordPress blog I go through the following motions of tweaking it to suit my needs. Here’s a list of WordPress optimization tasks I performing before I even install a theme.

Remove “Hello World” post.

Nothing screams “spam my Wordperss blog” more than having this still sitting in you posts list. Loose it.

Set Local Time

Go to Settings > General and set your local time zone.

Add a Ping List

Add the following Ping services to the Settings > Writing > Updates Services area:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://blogupdate.org/ping/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

Setup SEO Friendly Permalinks

In the Settings > Permalinks section add the following custom permalink structure:

/%category%/%postname%/

Install & Configure Plugins

Install and activate the following plugins:

• Aksimet (you’ll need an API key)
• Easy Contact
• Easy Privacy Policy
• Google XML Sitemaps
• All in One SEO Pack
• pageMash

Update and Add Pages

• Update About Us page copy
• Add Contact Us page and add [easy-contact] to the body
• Privacy Policy – hide this from the main navigation with the PageMash plugin options.

Install Theme

Now you can install and customize your theme.

Google announced today that they are now taking into account website speed as part of their search algorithm. On the whole, this is a good move as it encourages people to speed up their websites, however, it concerns me that this could encourage elitism.

This website, along with a couple of others I run, sit on a shared server at Hostgator. I’ve always been very happy with this service; it’s cheap, reliable and the support is always prompt. However, you get what you pay for. Shared hosting means your sharing a server with (usually) a heap of other websites. The more websites on a server, the more processing power required to serve those sites up to visitors and therefore the slower the website speed.

Of course, speed isn’t just about a fast server. There are plenty of elements website owners can optimise to improve website speed. But what if you’ve done all those things. What if the difference between you and the website ranking a position above you comes down to server speed?

Faster servers = better results

Search results are no longer about creating great content, they’re about who has the faster web server.

The other evening I attended my first Social Media Club Melbourne meetup to listen to 3 local entrepreneurs chat about how they’re using social media effectively to build their businesses and their brands. The three blokes in the spotlight were:

• Scott Kilmartin from Haul
• Steve Sammartino from Rentoid.com and
• Sahil Merchant from MagNation

If had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Kilmartin on the Small Business Big Marketing podcast and Steve and Sahil were certainly of the same caliber; intelligent and inspiring. Trevor Young also did a great job hosting the evening.

<begin rant>

There’s something I didn’t understand through. There were probably 40 or 50 attendees there to learn about Social Media Marketing from 3 guys who are using it to build buzz around their brand. And doing it very well I might add. Essentially, people were there to hear about others’ techniques for marketing their businesses.

Yet, I was the only one in the room employing an age old, simple, cheap, guerrilla marketing technique. I’ll share the secret with you – it’s a branded t-shirt.

I just don’t get it. Is is perhaps bad etiquette to brand yourself at these events? Did I commit some sort of faux pas by wearing a branded t-shirt to a networking event? If I did then there’s surely some irony in it.

It’s funny how people will use something as relatively sophisticated as social media marketing yet not do the basics. This T-shirt cost all of about $20, yet every time a where it in public – at a networking event or just walking down the street, it’s generating brand awareness.

Apart form being a branding tool, it’s also a good icebreaker. People who are familiar with the brand come up and say g’day – and people who aren’t ask what the business does. I might have handed out a couple of business cards that evening, but almost every person in the room laid eyes on the brand.

</end rant>