Sure, Apple does have a somewhat strict review policy. They don’t allow apps that don’t work within the confines of their user interface guidelines. Buttons and menus have to be intuitive. There shouldn’t be any unexpected and/or “mystery meat” type of navigation. Violating any of these rules will often result in a rejection letter.

But what about rejecting stupid apps built on stupid ideas? How about exercising some judgement when it comes to the quality of the content being presented on the App Store?

The state of the App Store today.

Here’s an example. My team and I built Snow Dice for iPhone. We’re in the sports category, and we’re doing our best to rank high for searches like “snowboarding.” For us to be one of the top snowboarding apps would mean a lot. It would mean increased visibility and potentially more sales.

Here’s what sucks. One of the top apps for the term “snowboarding” is an app called “Snowboarding!” What does the app do? Well, nothing, really. It’s just a collection of some snowboarding pictures some guy had on his computer. You heard me. $2.99 (more than the cost our app) for a little collection of snowboarding pictures for your iPhone. LAME!



Grabbing tindy is not as lame as the high search ranking this app gets for the term “snowboarding.”

Wanna know what’s even more lame? The majority of the reviews have this app pegged at one star. People hate this app. They think it sucks. Well if it sucks, then why does it rank so high in search? Shouldn’t everyone’s hatred send this piece of crap to the bottom of the search results? I think so, and so do a lot of other developers who work hard to produce quality products for the App Store.

My modest proposal.

Google works because people effectively vote stuff up by linking to it. Inside of the App Store, Apple has loads of data on the apps they sell. Why not offer a search ranking penalty to apps that have a lot of bad ratings? Why not get rid of apps that get such abysmal reviews we all know they should be removed from the App Store?

Apple is clean. They shouldn’t have crappy apps cluttering up their App Store. If everyone keeps saying an app sucks, just get rid of it. Tell the developer that the people have spoken, and they have voted the app out of existence. Then prohibit the developer from uploading an update to the app for a two month time period.

The people have spoken. Remove this ridiculousness from the App Store.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s okay for apps to have some bad ratings. Apps have bugs and other issues that often need to get worked out. But no app should be allowed on the App Store if practically everyone hates it. If I developed an app that nobody likes, I wouldn’t keep it up. I’d take it down until I’ve fixed all of the issues that need to be fixed.

I can see how some companies might try to hire fake reviewers to write negative reviews and take down their competition. Apple would need to monitor this sort of behavior and weigh it against the actual quality of the apps themselves. If the app belongs to a major player that has a lot of other quality products, there’s a good chance all the negative reviews are an act of malice. Such situations would require further investigation.

At the very least, Apple needs to adjust its ranking algorithm so it doesn’t favor keywords as much as it favors positive reviews and sales. It’s really easy to name an app anything you want, but it’s incredibly difficult to build a great product. Crappy apps should never appear anywhere near the top of the search results, no matter what you’re searching for.

Listen to the wisdom of the masses, Apple. If most people say something sucks, they’re probably right.

How bad is sitting? According to the numbers, people who sit more than 6 hours are day are 40% more likely to die within 15 years compared to those who only sit for 3 hours a day. Wanna know what’s even crazier? It doesn’t matter how much you exercise! Even if you’re running the occasional marathon, all that sitting still takes its toll.

There’s other data too. The moment you take a seat, your body gradually slows down its metabolism until you feel like you’re about to fall asleep. There’s your explanation for the 2 P.M. blahs. It happens because you’ve been sitting down so long that your body is literally shutting off underneath you (i.e. the electrical signals die out in your legs). When you sit down, you only burn one calorie a minute. That’s less than the amount of calories you would burn while chewing gum.

So what did I do? I gave up my sitting desk, moved into my closet, and setup my computer monitor on top of my chest of drawers. I now have a standing desk in my bedroom.

What I’ve noticed

It’s funny because the benefits aren’t so clear right away. You sort of need to spend at least a few days doing this to get a sense of what’s going on. It’s not as if you’re miraculously more productive or particularly energized. There’s a subtlety to it, almost like you’re living in a different space altogether. Allow me to explain.

The feeling of accessibility: When you’re sitting down, anything that involves moving around the room feels like an ordeal. It takes a lot more energy to get up and go to the kitchen while you’re sitting than it does to do the same thing while you’re standing. As a result, you never take these little trips when you feel like doing it. When you’re standing, it feels more natural to go grab a glass of water or open a window.

No afternoon lull: Back when I was spending most of my day sitting, I would experience a very distinct energy lull sometime around 2 in the afternoon. I can confidently say that I no longer experience that same lull. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s because I’m in a more active position instead of a passive one. People sit down when they need to rest. They stand up when there is something important to do (like killing wild boars and dragging them back to camp with your tribesmen and tribeswomen).

Less aches and pains: Not that I’m particularly prone to them at my age, but I’ve noticed that my back feels a lot better since making this switch. That’s mostly because I am no longer lurching my back towards the screen. If you are going to sit down, the best possible position is reclining on the sofa. Most people don’t do that in their offices. They bend their backs toward the screen so they can focus on what they’re doing.

The freedom to pace: When I need to think something through, it’s nice to have the option to just walk away from my desk and stare out the window. When you’re sitting, it takes a lot of extra energy to do that, so you’ll tend to rack your brain in frustration while staring at the screen. I feel like I worry a lot less about problems I have to solve. That’s because I’m not really tied to the screen in front of me. If I can’t think it through right this second, I just walk away. The solution eventually shows up.

Give up sitting. It’s killing you.

Most of all, I’ve noticed that I’m much more excited to be doing my work. One thing I’ve always hated about desk work is that it feels passive. It doesn’t have the same energy, the same kind of satisfaction you get from building something with your bare hands. Having a stand up desk puts you into a more active frame of mind. It makes you feel like you don’t really have a desk job.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the reason people are unhealthy has a lot more to do with overall lifestyle choices. If you spend most of your time sitting on your ass, you’re probably going to be fat. If you spend most of your time working yourself to exhaustion in the fields, I’ll take a wild guess and say you’re gonna be skinny. I don’t think 15 minutes on a stationary bike at the gym is going to help you when you pretty much spend the rest of your day resting. Seriously. Just get off your ass.

Having a standup desk is a good way to do that.

Getting the Elance Data:

We’ll start off with Elance. To get last year’s transaction data, you’ll want to go to Manage –> Transactions.



At the top, Elance will ask you if you want to download your account data. Click on the “click here” link, and you’ll get taken to a page where they’ll ask for a range of months.

The range you want is from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. For 2011, that’s January 2011 to December 2011.



Click download and you’ll get your data in a “.csv” file.

What to do with the Elance .CSV file:

During my first two years of online freelancing, I had no idea what to do with these files. All of the transactions come bundled together, and there was no way I was going to sift through it all by hand. I actually hired an accountant last year, but I don’t want to bother with it this year because it’s pretty easy to do. So let’s open up that .CSV file from Elance!



Mine looks just like the above mess when I’m first starting out. Notice how all of the amounts are mixed in with one another. What’s up with that? At first glance, it seems very difficult to separate all of the payments and fees from one another, but it only takes a little bit of trickery.

Step 1: Click on your table, and then click on the “reorganize” button in the top menu. You’ll get another popup menu that looks like the one below.



Step 2: Choose Column D under “Sort.” Column D corresponds to the payment amount. By sorting this way, you’re separating the payments received from the payments sent.

Step 3: Remove all ACH Payment rows. These don’t correspond to any payments from your clients. They simply denote bank transfers.

Step 4: Remove the plusses from your payments received. This is the only part of the process that’s manual labor. It sucks, and I’m still looking for a way around it. You can’t sum up your payments until you remove these plus signs.

Oh, and you don’t have to remove the minus signs from the Elance fees. You can sum them up as they are. It’ll be a negative number, but you’ll still know how much.

Step 5: Sum up the payments received and Elance fees using the “SUM” function. Pick an empty cell and enter =SUM( . Keep the parentheses open, and Numbers will allow you to select the column to sum up. Make sure you’re summing the payments received and Elance fees separately.

That’s it. This process doesn’t take that long. You can probably do it in less than ten minutes. It certainly beats trying to add up all those payments any other way.

Getting the Odesk data:

To get your yearly Odesk transaction data, you’ll want to go to Wallet –> Transaction History. The transaction history button is a tab located at the top of the page.

You will be presented with a screen that looks like this:


Enter the range from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011. Don’t worry if Odesk changes the range after you’ve typed it in. They’re just trying to line up the range to the weekly payout for time. Only transactions from the year 2011 will appear.

Odesk makes it a lot easier for you to do your taxes. That’s because they never take fees away from their contractors. The client is the one who gets charged all Odesk fees, so you never have to worry about them. To find your total payout for the year, simply scroll all the way to the bottom and use the “Total Credits” number.

The rest of your accounting will probably take a lot longer. At least this part won’t trip you up. If you have any questions for me, I’m happy to answer them in the comments below.

Happy taxes!

Fast forward and Content Spree has just launched a beta version of their site. Right now, they are working on getting out all of the kinks. I decided to ask Andrew a few more clarifying questions about the launch of Content Spree. Here’s what he had to say.

Ted: How long will the Content Spree beta last, and what are Content Spree’s plans for working out the kinks?

Andrew: We don’t have a set date but we certainly don’t want it to last long. At this point we’re fairly bug free and are focusing on making further enhancements to the UI.

Ted: During this process, can anyone sign up for an account? Can anyone post jobs or look for work?

Andrew: Yes, during beta anyone can sign up for an account. However, we are actively monitoring registrants and removing writers and employers that aren’t in compliance with the Content Spree code of conduct. We’re currently building a system that will vet writers. In order to have high paying jobs on the site, we need to ensure that the writers meet a certain standard. We also have a $50 minimum on all job posts, and we are exploring having different minimums for each job category. For example a corporate whitepaper should have a higher minimum than a blog post.



Ted: Who is Content Spree directly marketing itself toward? Can you give me the names of some businesses you’ve contacted directly to advertise your services.


Andrew: There are a couple of markets we’re attacking. We’re marketing directly to creative agencies as well as Content Marketing Managers that work at medium to small corporations.


Ted: Many people on sites like Elance and Odesk feel as though these sites have a bias toward the buyer. One example of this is the ability for buyers to post jobs for free. Many of us feel as though this system encourages abuse and a lack of seriousness on behalf of the buyer. What are some things Content Spree is doing to eliminate this bias or at least add in a different bias to counterbalance the system towards writers?

Andrew: It’s a tough balance, especially with a new site. While there is no financial risk for the buyer, there is the time and effort it takes to post a job. We monitor all jobs, so any jobs that come across as spammy are removed immediately. We also work with the buyer throughout the process to ensure that he or she is actively engaged with the writers and is serious about the project.

Ted: I would imagine it’s incredibly difficult to launch a business like Content Spree. Solvate, a site with a similar aim, recently decided to close its doors. Why does Content Spree have the winning edge to compete, or at least carve a niche for itself, in what appears to be an extremely challenging market? Why should businesses hire high quality freelancers when there are so many people out there willing to work for pennies?

Andrew: Our strategy is to focus on one segment and dominate it. For Content Spree, that segment is writing. We don’t believe that any of the existing marketplaces do a good job of catering to the needs of larger businesses. Corporations have a huge need for content and they’ll pay for quality. We believe that Content Spree is the site that will help facilitate transactions between quality writers and buyers seeking high end writing services.

It certainly looks promising for Content Spree. Having spoken with Andrew several times, I feel that his head is in the right place. He’s equally concerned about the writers and the buyers, something that’s rare in online marketplaces and bidding sites. I’m really happy that he feels so strongly about minimums. It is, in my opinion, the only thing that keeps all of this sane. Allow the buyers to post as many projects as they want, but make sure they at least adhere to the minimums. I feel like that’s a pretty good way to keep the spam out of the system.

Thanks again to Andrew for taking the time to do this interview. If you are interested in hiring a freelance writer, check out Content Spree’s professional writing services. You can even hire me too.

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

It’s actually the world’s most popular productivity trick. It’s also the world’s simplest. The Pomodoro technique relies on one simple tool, a basic kitchen timer. This technique was made famous by one Francesco Cirillo who used a tomato-shaped timer to get the most out his day at work. The word “Pomodoro” is Italian for tomato. Hence the name.

So, how can you use a simple kitchen timer to suddenly become more productive? The Pomodoro technique is built on the power of time pressure and deadlines. To become a pomodoro technician, you simply set a kitchen timer to 25 minutes. You assign those 25 minutes to some task you’re trying to accomplish, and then you allow the timer to run. Once those 25 minutes are over, you have to stop doing the task and take a 5 minute break.

You cannot do two blocks of the same task next to one another. After your 5 minute break, you have to start on a completely different task.

Is the Pomodoro Technique effective?

I think so, but you’d really need to try it out for yourself. I believe this particular technique makes creative thinking a lot easier because you don’t just pigeonhole yourself to one task all day long. You have to keep switching. The efficiency probably comes from all the background calculations your brain is doing between tasks. Once you switch back to the task you started with, your mind is fresh and able to solve all the problems associated with it.

The ticking clock is the most important component of this technique. When you’re working, you feel more like you’re taking a test. You don’t really choose to work faster. You just do because there’s some weird instinctual thing in you that just has to get stuff done before the clock runs out. Once again, I can’t explain it. You’d really have to try it out for yourself.

Alright, now to the Pomodoro App Review.

Kitchen timers are cool, but they are ancient technology. These days, we use apps to prod us into productivity, and I’ve got to say the Pomodoro Mac App works like a charm. It is a fully customizable tool for turning the Pomodoro Technique into your own program. It also keeps stats on the work you’ve done, giving you a sense of accomplishment while you go from one session to the next.

The one thing I like the most about this app is the automatic breaks between each session, and the loud buzzer indicating the beginning of the next one. I was doing the Pomodoro Technique before I got this app, but I didn’t have the self-control to only take a 5 minute break between sessions. I would go for 30 minutes to an hour between, often compromising my productivity.

Strangely enough, I feel like the buzzer is a kind of psychological conditioning. If you go back to work when it buzzes, you’ll feel the need to continue to do so the next time it buzzes (meaning your 5 minute break is over). I liken it to a recess bell for adults. You’d think we don’t need that sort of thing, but what’s worse; being conditioned to work more or being conditioned to spend all day doing nothing on Facebook? I’m happy to be Pavlov’s dog if it means I can get more out of life.

The “Get Things Done” method.

I haven’t delved into “Get things done” and/or Omnifocus methodologies, but suffice it to say, this particular app features an integration with those software platforms. So far as I am aware, you can feed items from your Omnifocus into the Pomodoro app, allowing you to… well… get them done.

You can also integrate this app with Twitter. I’m not sure why you would do that, but you can. I have decided against it because I really don’t want to broadcast every little task I’m doing throughout the day. My Twitter is linked to my Facebook which is linked to my LinkedIn. A few too many tweets about how productive I’m being (while you aren’t), and I’m sure I would kill what few close friendships I still have.

Use Pavlovian conditioning to get better at life!

We are all Pavlov’s dog in one way or another. I happily accept this fate, and I like that the Pomodoro Mac App (although perhaps unintentionally) conditions me to be a better worker. There is the constant ticking of the clock and the ringing of bells. It’s eerily reminiscent of elementary school, but damnit if it’s not effective. Once I hear the end of the five minute recess bell, I actually get back to work. Pretty crazy.

Over time, the social pressure and reinforced Pavlovian conditioning will make you get a lot more done in a day. The Pomodoro Mac App is ridiculously simplistic, but therein lies its strength. You don’t consciously pay attention to it. Pretty soon your day is over, and you’ve got piles of finished work in front of you. That’s worth more than the very cheap $4.99 price tag. This app is definitely worth it.

The above is me doing a switch frontside under flip 5 on the second jump in the Freeway terrain park up at Breck. My friend Brian Locke snapped that one.

Here’s Brian getting rad:

I took that one. It’s on the fourth jump in Freeway terrain park, arguably the biggest in all of Summit County.

My friend Luke Sinclair from New Zealand was riding with us too. Here’s a picture I snapped of him:

We mostly got a lot of pictures of Brian. He doesn’t come out here that often, so the session was ON. Brian lives out in Bozeman Montana. This crazy guy is going to be your doctor someday.

Here’s one more of Brian. I’m loving these hiding-in-the-trees shots.

I’m a huge fan of simplicity, and this mac app certainly embodies that philosophy. You start off with three empty task bars and a simple widget at the bottom to create new clients to assign them to. Give each client a color and a price, and you’ve got the basis for an invoicing system.

But I don’t just stop at invoicing my clients. I also like to keep track of the time I spend on all sorts of other tasks like blogging, sending out proposals, answering emails, skyping, and accounting. I create groups for each of these tasks so I can see how much time I’m devoting to the other aspects of the business. This is important because it doesn’t matter that you’re getting $50 to $100 per hour if your ratio of marketing to billable hours is off.

Log hours. Invoice clients.

Desktop Task Timer has an invoicing system built into it. I’ll readily admit that it’s not the easiest system to learn, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be fine. You can export a time log for specific clients, and you can also assign a payrate to those clients. Once a project is done, you can export a date range to a .csv file. This is really nice when you want to send an invoice. Your clients can very easily see which tasks are taking up the lion’s share of the time.

There are a few issues with the app. I found myself accidentally assigning the wrong groups to certain tasks a little more often than I would have liked. I’m not sure if that was just me being an idiot, but it is worth noting.

I also had to ask the developer how to export a date range to invoice my clients. It’s not entirely clear how to do this once you start using the app. You have to click on the date, allow the calendar to pop up, and then select a range of dates with your mouse. Doing so will show you a list of all the projects within your date range for that particular client. You can then export everything to a .csv file. The functionality is completely there. It’s just not as intuitive as it could be.

My favorite feature.

I’m not a perfect person. I tend to get distracted. I’ll go take a shower, brew another pot of coffee, or call up a friend in the middle of a task. With my old scheme, the time tracker would keep on recording my time. When I got back, I would have no idea how long I was gone. Whatever time got recorded was completely inaccurate.

Desktop Task Timer has a cool feature that shuts off the timer when it suspects you are no longer doing anything productive (Facebook doesn’t count by the way). A message will pop up, asking you if you would like to discard your inactive time. You can then be sure that all time logged is productive time. Very useful.

I am certain there are other productivity apps out there that do something similar. I am merely pointing this out because it’s a feature I use all of the time.

Managing tasks from the status bar.

I’m a huge fan of Apple’s spaces concept. They’ve done a really great job of it in OSX Lion. Having said that, it can sometimes conflict with time tracking software. You have to keep switching spaces if you run a lot of different apps. Desktop Task Timer allows you to turn the timer on and off straight from the status bar within any space. It’s yet another handy feature when you just want to turn off the timer and take a quick break from your work.

Overall impression.

Desktop Task Timer is fantastic little app at reasonable price. I still think it needs to go through a few design iterations before it’s ready for a more mainstream user. I needed help on some of the complicated aspects of using the app, things like crafting invoices. I had no idea you could get the calendar to pop out of the side by pressing on the date, for example.

I have used a lot of other means of tracking time. I have used the time tracking apps that come with Odesk and Elance, mostly out of necessity. They are okay, but they take too much control of my computer (not to mention the implication that I’m not being productive enough and my clients need to spy one me). It’s annoying to have an app constantly taking screen shots and accidentally disconnecting from the server. I’ve spent extra time making sure those apps are working, and that’s ridiculous because I don’t get paid for it. Desktop Task Timer is very simple. It doesn’t connect to a server at all.

Pretty soon I’m going to review an online service called Freshbooks. I have more than one computer, so I’m excited to see if it will improve my overall workflow. I’ve been a little hesitant to go with a fully cloud-based system, but let’s face it. I’m totally useless if I don’t have some sort of Internet connection. To go fully cloud is merely acknowledging the reality I already live in. Stay tuned, and I’ll let you know what I think.

Look. I just want to tell you how I’m feeling. I’ve gotta make you understand this one thing. Rick Astley knows a hell of a lot about more about being successful than you or I could ever imagine. He knows the game, and he’s gonna play it. Here’s what you can learn from him.

Never give up on your clients.
Even when the going gets tough, it usually doesn’t make sense to completely forfeit the business relationship. Try to end things peacefully if you can, and always be a resource for your clients in the future. I know it’s easier said than done. Even if a client hasn’t paid or is somewhat angry with you for whatever reason, don’t consider the book entirely closed. People cool down. Things get better. You never know what’s around the corner.

Never let them down.
Give every project your best shot. Don’t be late in delivering anything unless it is a complete and total emergency you can’t control. The day I get a project, I start on it right away because I know I’ll have a bunch of questions. This is the mindset you need to cultivate. Only deliver your best work, and always follow through on your word. Commit.

Never run around.
How focused are you? Do you answer all of your emails right away, or do you let things go for a few days before you finally get to them? People don’t like long lags in response time. While you’re running around doing other things, your clients are thinking about getting someone else. Be like Rick. Stick around, ask questions, and get the work done.

Never desert your clients.
O.K. I admit that this is pretty much the same advice as the first point. But I’ve done this before, and the consequences are never good. No matter how stressed you get, no matter how angry you are at someone, don’t just up and leave a project in the middle of the heat. It’s all too easy, and it solves nothing. Not to mention, word gets around when this sort of thing happens. You don’t want to be “that guy” or “that girl.”

Never make them cry.
Tears of joy are okay.

Never say goodbye.
“Final” is never final. You really don’t know who you will run into the future, nor in what capacity. People change. Businesses morph into something else. The person you politely told to screw off could come back to bite you later on in life. It’s awesome to move on to bigger and better things (as Rick Astley did when he gave up his music career). You’ve just gotta do it the right way. Always keep a door open.

Never tell a lie.
It’s all too convenient to say you can’t deliver on time for whatever made up reason. Nobody will believe you, and you’ll just get branded as a liar. Another common one is lying about your experience. It impresses nobody, and it makes you look like a fool. Be straight up. Tell ‘em how you’re feeling. Make ‘em understand that you’re the best candidate for the job (even though your heart is aching, and you are too shy to say it).

Never hurt them.
That is, unless you want the police breaking down your door at 4 A.M. with a warrant for your arrest.

Sage advice from the one and only Rick. You have to admit there’s a power you just can’t deny. Follow Mr. Astley’s advice, and you and your clients will be together forever.

Are you a website, or are you a blog?

I want to start off with some confusion that I think needs clearing up. A lot of companies show me their website template and basically tell me to fill in the blanks. They’ll say, “we’re looking for search optimized content for all of these pages.” I say, “Great! But there’s one issue. What about your long term content strategy?”

It really isn’t enough to simply fill in the home page, the about page, the testimonial page, or whichever other pages you’ve got on your site. I would normally say you need to have a blog, but that’s not really my point either. Your entire site needs to be a blog! You need to update it at least once a week with something relevant to what you do.

The rest of the content on your site only makes sense in light of the articles you write. You can write the content for all of your other pages, but it carries so much more weight when it’s backed up by legitimately useful articles. I liken it to the difference between saying you provide great customer service and actually providing great customer service. Be active. Be an educator. Be more than a WordPress template you hired someone to fill in.

Consider your audience.

At this point, many of you are wondering what you should write about. I’m a big fan of mixing it up. You want to have some content that aligns with keywords, and you also want to have content that just comes off the top of your head. I’ll tell you from experience that my best posts are the ones I think up on my own. Keywords are important, but they can become a prison of sorts.

At the very least, do not simply copy the keyword and make it the headline of your article. The point of creating content is not to simply hit on certain keywords. You need to think to yourself, “Why would someone search for this? What other sorts of questions might this person have? How can I answer all of those questions at once?”

You are basically doing psychoanalysis on your website visitors. In this case, I would imagine you are looking for quality content. So now I’m answering your other questions too.

“Quality,” as we all know, is a subjective thing. One person’s rose is another person’s thorn. Yes, the writing has to be grammatically correct. Yes, it needs to flow. And yes, you most certainly need to do the basic things like appealing to peoples’ curiosity. All of that goes into creating quality content.

But the most important thing is…

You guessed it: tailoring that content to your audience. Answering questions is always priority number #1.

So this is what we do when I sit down with companies looking to build a website. We go through all of the different types of questions their customers or clients might have, and then we make a huge list of them. After that, we’ll head on over to the Google Keyword Tool, and we’ll try to find the keywords and keyphrases that best match those questions. It’s an iterative process that eventually gives us a huge list of content ideas.

In other words, if you think you don’t have anything to write about, you’re dead wrong. I guarantee you I can find at least 20 different topics you haven’t even thought of. Every piece will be high quality content your readers will appreciate.

Quality content comes at a price.

Beware! Some companies hire out these huge content farms, and they wonder why they haven’t received any traffic from search. In my mind, it’s a no-brainer. You can’t offer pennies and expect to attract the best talent out there. Good writers know not to accept any project valued at less than $50. To do so is business suicide. If you don’t see yourself as someone who is talented with words, make sure you hire someone who is.

This isn’t about putting content out there and hoping it gets into the search engines. It’s about engaging people who show up on your website. If people get to you through search, and the content appears to have been written by someone with limited English skills, they’ll go somewhere else. The traffic is useless if you don’t do anything with it.

At the end of the day, only your customer matters. You aren’t in the SEO business or the sales business. You are in the business of answering questions.

It was sad parting with these gloves, but I figured my loyal users of Snow Dice could give them a good home. Check out my review. These babies are nice and toasty!