I stumbled across a Techcrunch post about how startups need to manage money and hiring processes or risk failing that came as a result of a post by Jason Calacanis about how startups can save money that was then sensationalized and heavily criticized.

The debate reminded me of the thoughts on handling employees at a startup (and the extremely differing opinions on the topic) that were shared a while back by Rand, Andy and myself. Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis seem to agree with Andy and myself that “jobbers” are cancer to a startup and need to be ousted as soon as you figure out you’ve made the mistake of hiring one. Rand seems to be more with Duncan and Stilgherrian.

Michael made one potent and all important statement in his article:

You cannot waste money because every dollar is an amount of time you can keep running the business before you have to shut down. Run out of dollars before you reach profitability or convince investors to double down, and you’re done.

The only thing I might add is that you cannot waste money *on consumer goods or on employees* and that if you find you’re doing either, you must stop – stop spending or start firing those who aren’t giving you the best bang for your buck possible. Harsh? Maybe. Necessary? You bet your ass.

That said, Calacanis had some smart suggestions (though I wasn’t in like with them all) on saving money…

Buy second monitors for everyone…

I couldn’t agree more and every employee in my office has a double monitor setup. If there is one thing we can’t afford to be cheap with as an Internet startup, it’s our computer and monitors. The money spent on the front end is recouped many times over in the long run.

…establish a no-meetings policy…

While I’m not buying my employees lunch four days a week (though I do once in a while) I do believe heavily in the no meetings policy. I worked for a corporation at one point in my life that was obsessed with them and would drag every single employee in the company into a meeting for hours every Friday… the “higher level” employees like myself got to go to even more. They were always a waste of time, boring to employees and took time away from being able to do real work.

Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs…

That pretty much describes our office setup for all the workstations (our chairs aren’t Areon, but they weren’t cheap either) – even mine… though we did recently splurge on a bookcase and a set of drawers (and I hated every second of spending that cash).

Don’t buy a phone system. No one will use it.

I bought a cordless phone system (next to the printer) with two handsets that are as mobile as they need to be and that is what we use in the office. We’re not on the phone a lot and a regular phone works just fine for our needs.

Rent out your extra space…

Done. We sublet some of our office space out to one other small company and we’re like this weird little hybrid family now. We save on our own costs and get some great minds (and users with social media accounts) at the same time.

Allow folks to work off hours…

All of our employees have a choice on their hours (within reason)… some come in as early as seven a.m. and others as late as 10 a.m. – and we aren’t in a “commuter heavy city”… I simply give the option so they can have some flexibility on when to start their work day and work during the time they feel most productive.

Outsource to middle America…

Some of our best “employees” are full time contractors who work from home within “middle America”. With Basecamp (ironic ain’t it), IM, webcams, email, multiple means of BlackBerry communication, etc. being remote definitely doesn’t mean being isolated from the team.

Several other things Jason suggested – outsourcing accounting and HR, utilizing Google docs instead of Microsoft Office (unless you’re the type of company to use bootleg copies, which we of course, most certainly are not) and keeping the fridge stocked full of sodas are also things I’m also doing with my company.

Pat Phelan made some additional suggestions which included not flying first class (I would never use company money to upgrade, but would use personal money or points) and having events and conferences justified before spending the cash to attend them (SEO conferences are on my own dime because they largely are about giving back and seeing friends now… company money only goes to conferences where we think we can get the ROI on attending). Pat also mentioned keeping your company offices away from large metro areas, which we’ve also done.

Robert Scoble also chimed in saying he thought Calacanis was right on his tough stance on hiring/firing, though I can’t say I agree with firing the smokers but maybe the fact that my smokers are working late, from home and doing whatever it takes to get their tasks done on deadline and better than required has softened me there. But I did agree with his suggestion of doubling up on hotel rooms… our guys are doing so at the end of the month for a conference.

As my own added money saving tip…

- We trade if and when we can. We have valuable skills and we’re not adverse to trading them with people who have other valuable skills when the opportunity arises *and* is a win-win situation for both companies involved.

On the subject of “firing those who have a life”, I think Jason said it very well in his subsequent post…

Some people work in order to live (like I did in IT), while others live to work (like I’ve done most of my adult life).

I won’t hesitate (and haven’t hesitated in the past) to get rid of an employee who is just showing up to collect a check. I find it amusing that people automatically assume that if you cut the slackers and keep only the achievers, then the employees you do keep must be miserable. From Stilgherrian’s post…

Can you imagine what it’d be like working for this guy? Do you think you’d get much loyalty in return for being a wage-slave?

Guess what – being expected to be a stellar performer does not automatically make someone miserable or make the person with the expectations an asshole. Our employees, according to their feedback to me, are glad to be in an environment where they are valued, they’re able to learn a hell of a lot from the fast pace and feel that they are part of a fantastic team of talent, drive and meaning.

If you think expecting hard work brings resentment, try talking to your best performers who stay late, work hard and always over perform and ask how they feel about being paid the same and treated the same as employees in equal positions who start packing up to go home at 4:50 in the afternoon – *that* breeds resentment folks. Along with feelings of under appreciation.

In my opinion, being kept on a team with high standards that *also* recognizes and rewards those efforts breeds satisfaction.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Good Financial Advice for Startups

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Good Financial Advice for Startups

I’ve been extremely busy this week and as such, I missed a totally kick ass post over at seomoz which offered up some advice to people who are ceo’s of startup companies. I’m not saying I agree with the whole post, but a lot of the points were dead on and it was a fresh topic I was glad to see being brought to the table. Quicker than me, Andy was able to give more advice to startup ceo’s and his own opinions on some of Rand’s comments. Having some personal experience with this, I figured I’d throw in my two cents.

As most of you know, I went from bathrober with several remote employees to a full fledge real company (shut the hell up and be patient… that website isn’t a priority at the moment – it’s coming eventually) with offices and in house employees (though we kept the remotes on board) a while back.

Now I’ve been management before, but being a ceo, in this capacity (again, without the bathrobe) has been a hell of an experience.

Rand said: “My sometimes naive optimism has also been a great olive branch to making friends and connections in the industry, although I’ve occasionally been duped by a client who was never going to pay or given up valuable time trying to smooth thing over a non-issue.”

And I can say the same exact thing about being the opposite. I am definitely more on the cynical side. That said, I think what Rand may be seeing is the relationships and contacts his *honesty* has built. For him, that honesty results in being naive at times – for me, that honesty results in accidentally saying “shit” in the middle of a conference session. Our personalities are very different, but I think being yourself and confident in yourself is what gets you the contacts you want (and need) to survive as a ceo.

Rand said: “I’ve also found that personally, it’s easy to spot someone who’s just in the business for the money vs. those who really care and want something great for the industry. It might be the optimism speaking, but I feel that the latter group usually produces the brightest innovations (and eventually, profit, too).”

Andy said: “The urge to make a snarky reply is unbearable… Tropical… must… resist… impulse to… scratch itch… hippy jokes… overloading…”

I gotta agree with Andy here. I’m in this business because I love what I do and I’m good at it. That said, I get up and go to work everyday for my company, for myself, for my family… the industry is something I like to give back to when I can, but the money is what gets me out of bed every day. I don’t think that makes me less of a ceo. I think it makes me more willing to give up a good idea that isn’t profitable and stands to suck the life out of my business and my drive.

Rand said: “Not only have I made a few mistakes in hiring the wrong folks, I’ve also struggled to find the best fit for the talented people we do bring on board. I’m deeply envious of CEOs who can magically size up a person’s strengths and weaknesses and put them in a position to leverage the former and minimize the latter.”

I’ve made both of those mistakes, but have found that fixing them is key. If you hire the wrong person, let them go. If you hire a great person for the wrong position, move them into the right position and hire for their replacement in the wrong position. I think ignoring a mistake is more dangerous than making them.

Rand said: “This is probably my toughest issue. I’m great at telling people when they’ve done a good job, but awful at criticizing any effort. In order to overcome, I’ve started hiring only those folks who have a deep, internal need for perfectionism.”

Andy said: “Rand, where do you find these people with a deep need for perfectionism? I, ahem, haven’t found this trait much in our generation.”

Perfectionism is relative. Your perfectionism is not another’s and in my world, all of the work being pumped out of my office must meet my standards and not those self imposed by someone else. If all a person hears is how wonderful they’re doing, they may become complacent and constant complacency is a dangerous thing in a startup. Additionally, you rob them of the chance to have someone with much more experience and knowledge show them how they can do things better. That said, you can also be too negative… you need a balance… the balance – of not being *too* critical – is something I’ve slowly developed and continue to develop.

Rand said: “It’s a dictatorship. When tough decisions come up, they’re my responsibility. I’ve noticed that even with little things, when we take a company vote, dissent and discomfort abound.”

Andy said: “I’m impressed. Is the “team building” and “consensus” fad over yet? Good. You’re CEO for a reason: you have a higher batting average at decision-making.”

I take everyone’s opinions in… and sometimes someone has a great idea. No one needs to have any fear of bringing an idea to me or questioning how we do something in a constructive way. But at the end of the day, the decisions of what site to build, where to focus our priorities and every other decision is made by me. Not only do I have the “higher batting average” in making the right decisions about doing what we do, but in the end, I am responsible for not only my own personal financial success as the owner of the company, but also to make sure that those who depend on us for employment and mortgage payments can continue to do so.

Rand said: “Just because some skill, ability, or product got you where you are today doesn’t mean you should never give it up.”

In my honest opinion, being unable to grasp that concept is what will send a lot of ceo’s back to the corporate world as an employee down the road. Knowing when you need to change strategy and *doing it* is key.

Rand said: “Don’t ignore the power of others to do your work for you.”

This concept was one of the hardest for me to accept. Rand, those perfectionists you want to find – I’m one of them – and we have huge problems delegating because it means that not everything will be done exactly the way we would have done them – which would have been perfect. ;-) Delegating was the single hardest thing for me to learn to do… and there are still certain tasks I’ve yet to delegate… but I’m getting there.

Rand said: “I can remember dozens of times when I felt like the world was crashing down around me – that I could barely hold up another day.”

We’ve all had those days… and they suck. But they build character. That’s what all those tough life experiences so many parents try to shield their children from have prepared us for… the times when things aren’t always fair and shit feels like it’s crashing in on your head. You push through, you survive, you move on. There is and never will be another choice except failure.

Rand said: “That employee who’s struggled the last few months may indeed turn things around.”

Andy said: “Also: employees don’t generally “turn around”. Underperformers have no place in a company that’s not publically traded, so ditch them as soon as you know.”

I also have to agree with Andy on this one. There is no place in a startup for people who simply want to show up and collect a paycheck and people with that mindset rarely change it. They have to go the second you realize it. It is a tough thing to do… but, as we’ve already discussed, sometimes you have to make hard decisions for the good of yourself, the company and the people who depend on it.

Rand said: “If you have mediocre people doing mediocre work, that was your bad call at hiring time. Either way, taking responsibility and correcting course is required.”

That’s like saying someone should stay in a miserable or abusive marriage because they made the mistake of saying I do in the first place. If someone is harmful to you, you toss them. If someone is harmful to your company (and for a startup, every penny/second of time wasted counts) and the people who depend on it, you toss them too. That is what separates a ceo from a career counselor.

I don’t have all the answers… I’m still learning every day… but that is my input based on my own experiences thus far. I’m lucky to have a great business partner with much more experience at this than me to help me along and push me to get better each and every day in the aspect of being a ceo.

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” – Dwight Eisenhower

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Even More Advice for Startup CEO's

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Even More Advice for Startup CEO's

There’s a show on Nickelodeon called iCarly that my daughter likes to watch. The whole premise of the show is that Carly (Miranda Cosgrove – who is a talented kid) and her friends make and broadcast a live web show from an attic. The web show is accompanied by a website that host all their previous shows and allow interaction with their “fans”.

My daughter wanted to go to the website and I was surprised to find that Nick is allowing kids to make their own videos, send them in and if they’re “good enough”, they can appear on the icarly website and/or TV show.

Now, the thing is, kids don’t know anything about making web videos… so, Nickelodeon has a few videos explaining to kids how to do their own web shows (note to Nick – give people the ability to EMBED your videos and access them via straight links without having to right click to find it if you want more publicity).

What results is quite a few quick, concise and most importantly, simple enough for a kid to understand, tips and tricks to making videos for use on the web…

Picking a theme
Being prepared – information about scripts, stage direction and more
Picking your co-stars for your webcast
Make sure that you rehearse your web show before doing it
How to use lighting to improve the end output of your video

I hope like hell that they put more of them out because these were probably the easiest to understand tutorials I’ve ever seen about making online videos, though these are some decent video making tutorials as well. If anyone has some links to simple – key word being SIMPLE online video making tutorials that deal with sound, lighting, etc. that are aimed at beginners (and not in-depth tutorials on shooting underwater) feel free to drop them in the comments below.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Nickelodeon Turns Webcasting Into Child’s Play

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Nickelodeon Turns Webcasting Into Child’s Play

Yeah, yeah – it has been almost a month since I’ve made a post. Long story short, in June, I incorporated a new business in Canada and on August 1st, I opened a new office up there, hired several new employees to work in it and moved myself and my three children from Florida back up to Canada (if you’re new, I lived there for two years up until the summer of 2006) to run it.

First, to answer the three most common questions… MFE stands for marked for evolution (hey, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it), it does what I’ve always done – build and market our own websites and because I hate the weather in Florida – that’s why I’d move from there to Canada. ;-)

Along the way, I learned several things about opening an office in a different country that does what “we do” and thought I’d share (and prove I’m alive at the same time). Some are general business, some are specific to web business and one is simply a hatefest on a shitty airline, but all should explain why I’ve been a bit busy (I’d also like to say thank you to webmasterworld and Sphinn for not canning me as a moderator for my prolonged absence as all of this has occured).

Without further ado…

- US Airways sucks ass. Seriously. I was on my way up on the 31st and they got me to Philadelphia four hours late… which meant I missed the last flight to Toronto and since Air Canada was nice enough to throw me on their 6 a.m. flight, I didn’t have time to get a hotel room and instead stayed awake all night until my flight boarded at 5:30 a.m. To answer your next question… I can’t do the timing of the only two star alliance direct flights, so I am forced to take a layover on all flights from Florida to Canada. So, I was two hours late to open my office and by the end of day one, I’d been awake for 38 hours straight.

- If you take your employees shopping with you for all of the needed office supplies, they will attempt to co-erce you into buying vending machines for “cool factor” instead of a fridge for drinks.

- If you try to transfer accounts of quite a few domain names at godaddy (we wanted all domains falling under the new company to have their own account), they will automatically reset the DNS servers and you’ll lose traffic. According to godaddy, there is no way around this issue. However, a quick call to Moniker domains revealed that this was a godaddy issue and not a blanket problem with all registrars (it also revealed that their entire sales staff knows me as the “crazy badass girl” from the conferences *shrug* lol). So, all of the needed domains were transferred to Moniker.

- I was reminded that any domain that has been either registered or had a change to the registration cannot be transferred (see: 3. Obligations of the Registrar of Record) until 60 days after that change has taken place. So, several domains registered in the last two months will need to wait 60 days to be transferred to the good folks at Moniker.

- Someone in the office accidentally buying a poster of Johnny Depp’s Rolling Stone cover (I never did ask what they *thought* they were buying) and then hanging it on the wall directly across another person in the office’s desk for kicks is funny as hell.

- Dealing with Bell Canada was not only a horrid experience, but also left us without phone service or decent Internet access for almost a week. Apparently, I was also “striking fear into the hearts of customer service reps everywhere” according to those in the office while voicing my displeasure about the situation. The electrician installing outlets apparently thought so as well. While I was on the phone, he looks at two of the guys in the reception area and said, “Is she in charge here?” and when they nodded he gave a look described by the guys he was speaking to as “sucks to be you”.

- Like with godaddy, we wanted the sites under the new business to be listed under the new company in the commission junction account as well. However, we were informed that because the country is also being changed, we have to open a brand new account, which means we also lose our “performance history” on the network, which currently gets us a lot of good offers but also means we have to change our links across a crapload of sites, which really sucks. Additionally, we were informed that some of the companies we affiliate for may no longer work with us under the “Canadian account” though they couldn’t tell us which of the companies we affiliate for may choose to take that stance. Thank goodness we don’t use CJ for the bulk of anything. (Linkshare on the other hand, made the switch pretty damn seamless.)

- Take lots of geeks who know each other, add in freshly bought whiteboards and whiteboard markers and you quickly have a war of whiteboard nudity, insults and general all around “proof that we’re ThinkGeek shoppers for life”.

- We were reminded that switching payee names on an Adsense account also requires opening a new account and the topic is brought up among us as to whether or not your smart pricing history not being available in the new account has any sort of detrimental effect on earnings in the short term. I guess we’re about to find out. (As a unrelated side note, I’m totally curious why Adsense is in a folder and Adwords is on a subdomain.)

- For some reason, my business partner finds it “disturbing, but not surprising” that I have framed prints of Scarface and the Rat Pack on the walls in my office. He then becomes more disturbed by finding out I have another on order for my office and even more at home. ;-)

- Never be afraid to haggle. I managed to get Future Shop to give us 19 inch LG widescreen monitors for the price of some generic brand and even got them to throw in free adapters (or cables or whatever the hell they were called) for every one of them. Additionally, I got Rogers to take almost 300 dollars off the price of my new blackberry 8800 and throw in a free car charger after they didn’t have one available for me when they said they would (originally I was only getting 150 off). (Side note to Rogers AND Future Shop – entry pages suck ass.)

- The amount of people who call new businesses is absolutely disgusting. I have gotten more sales calls in the last two weeks than I’ve ever received in my life. Too bad that I won’t be able to get one of those fun calls from Merchant Circle since they don’t service Canada. (Note to the folks at MerchantCircle, you may want to pick up the .ca of your domain, which is currently unregistered if you plan to expand the “business model” into Canada.)

- Having an LCBO and about 8 bars within walking distance of the office may or may not be a good thing, depending on how much work I’m supposed to be doing. ;-)

So there you have the reason for the recent silence. And also the reason I am not in San Jose right now, no matter how many people tell me I suck for not going or email me asking me what time I arrive. ;-)

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Things I Learned While Opening The New Office

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Things I Learned While Opening The New Office

We all know it isn’t a good idea to have a “network” of sites connected. Typically though, by a network, you tend to think of a group of sites targeting the same topic or a group of sites interlinking to one another in an attempt to boost the placings in the serps. But what happens when you have a legitimate grouping of sites, that aren’t targeting the same niche topic areas (and if they are, they’re doing so with very specific segmenting, branding and reasonings) but are all owned by the same parent “website publishing company”?

I’m from the old school days of affiliate marketing and as a result, some might call me a bit paranoid. ;-) I also own a website publishing company that has built of an impressive grouping of Internet properties that are thoroughly legitimate websites (my “new breed” which has been in motion for quite some time now). And all of the above companies have chosen to be transparent with their publishing empire.

By legitimate, I mean that we do our best to make them excel in their categories by producing killer content and filling voids left open by other sites in the industry and market the hell out of them via every legitimate means of developing traffic that we can think of and execute.

As an example, one site has been featured by major sites in its industry, is an author of a column for a top offline industry publication and is definitely the best site on the topic to exist at the moment. And we expand and improve on it every day via dedicated staff assigned to it. It is the epitomy of the types of sites I have said before are needed to survive the affiliate evolution.

As the company makes the move from utilizing a heavy portion of remote employees to “in house operations” and having an actual office as its homebase, the question arises as to how transparent we want this company to be. Advertisers want to know a bit more about the parent company as deals get bigger and employees also want some inkling of the company they are applying for.

Publishers like Ziff Davis, McGraw-Hill and Weblogs, Inc. are probably some of the bigger names in “website publishing companies”, though Weblogs, Inc. is the only one with solely online properties. But, you get where I’m going here. And all of the above have chosen to be transparent with their publishing empire.

As a paranoid affiliate, my immediate trained reaction is to build out the company site, sans the names of the sites we actually publish. But, the logical part of me knows that we’re building a great set of websites that have no reason to “hide”.

But another aspect to look at when deciding transparency is my “higher profile” within the industry. Having my name attached to the company makes it easier to score lucrative affiliate deals before we even begin to build a website. Having my name attached to the company makes it easier to reach out to connections built over the years when we have a big launch or marketing push. As you can tell, we’ve decided to be public about my relationship to the company, if for no other reason than that we have little choice since I’m running it. ;-)

But, my “higher profile” could also serve to be a liability if we are transparent about the sites we own due to people hitting our sites with competitive intelligence, scrutiny from search engine representatives due to my “competitive past” or people trolling to identify niches that we may possibly enjoy little competition within. Of course, we could always choose to display a few “flagship” sites to avoid having all of our sites “exposed”.

The issue of transparency is a tough one for us. I’m interested to hear thoughts on the topic.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

The Question of Transparency

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

The Question of Transparency

I got an email today from the folks over at Amazon telling me about their newest stand alone site, Endless.com. Within ten minutes, I had purchased a pair of black patent leather Steve Madden 3 inch heels (thank you Madden for offering a pair of patent leather heels that doesn’t force me to wear “fuck me” heels that are a literal pain to wear any longer than four hours).

There were several reasons I was impressed with Endless.com. Now, let’s forget that they offer free overnight shipping for a minute. Wait, let’s not forget that “What? They pay you for overnight shipping???” to quote a friend. Free overnight shipping alone is enough to get any woman’s fashion spidey senses tingling (total credit to the spidey sensing whore for that line). But, you’ll even give me a discount? Now you have my undivided attention.

In addition to offering me a clear cut and “insane” offer, they’re also owned by Amazon, which gives them a quick sense of trust in my mind as a long time Amazon customer. So, armed with a great offer and a sense of trust, I clicked through to the site from the ad to see what I’d find. and I was surprised to find a product line I wouldn’t expect from Amazon.com.

The labels included Steve Madden, Nine West, Kenneth Cole, Hilfiger… brands you’d be likely to find in a department store, though missing the more severe higher end ones (like Dolce, Coach, Dooney and Bourke, Louis Vuitton, etc). I was actually kind of shocked to see the offerings were of such great “brands”. Think Zappos level brands.

Of course, Zappos main draw is their service. Like Zappos, Endless.com has a 365 day return policy and offers free shipping on returns. Both sites offer 24/7 customer service via telephone. And both sites are offering a 110% price guarantee.

The interesting thing to note about the price guarantees is that Zappos only offers the guarantee on finding the lower price on another website or retail store and limits the price guarantee to ten days after you’ve made your purchase. Endless.com has the same policy, but the price guarantee is good for 14 days and will be honored if Endless.com themselves lowers the price of the shoe within 14 days of your purchase.

After seeing all the comparisons, the reasoning for the five dollars credit for overnight shipping becomes clear. They’ll not only match the competition’s (Zappos) free offer, but they’ll give you an extra five dollars to switch to them (Endless).

What I was most impressed with at Endless though was their search function. Most fashion sites have clunky search functions. Until I saw the search over at Endless, I definitely would have said Zappos has the market cornered on usable shoe and handbag search. Not anymore. Endless gets rid of the clunky drop downs and replaces it with Ajax and allows you to search multiple scenarios at once.

For instance. If I’m at Zappos and want to search only Steve Madden and Nine West shoes, I’d have to do so by searching each category seperately. Same for shoe colors. If I want to limit my search to red and black shoes, I first have to do a search for red shoes and then a search for black shoes. Same for shoe styles. But not at Endless.

I can choose to “Narrow by” for Steve Madden and Nine West shoes, in black and red, in multiple sizes (sometimes shoes run small or large and there is nothing worse than falling in love with shoes you can’t have), that are pumps, with a heel size of less than four inches with one search. I cannot even begin to tell you the sheer and utter joy this causes to wash over me.

Add to it that the entire time I’m shopping, I see: “Order in the next 2 hours 29 minutes – get it Tue. Apr. 10″ running in the top right hand corner gives me that sense of urgency that I only have two hours to order the shoes I didn’t know I wanted, nor do I need by April 10th. It’s amazing the way certain website features can make you feel.

After I made my purchase, I did a bit of research on the “buzz” for the site and found this article over at Techcrunch. In it, Steve Poland asks: “The question is — did Amazon really need to launch an entirely new brand for this new shoes/handbags shopping experience?”.

Well, yes, I think they really did. Why? Because I don’t associate Amazon with Steve Madden or Nine West. To me, Amazon is not synonymous with fashion or middle to higher end fashion brands. By seeing Endless, the seperate site, I associated Amazon’s trust after learning who they were owned by, but not their “mass retailer” image that I have in my head.

The only complaints about the site is that some of the shoe categories can be a bit confusing and if you don’t have javascript enabled, you’re pretty much out of luck.

Additionally, if you’re a fashion affiliate, it appears you won’t be changing your links anytime soon. Endless doesn’t offer an affiliate program as of yet and I don’t see any way to “link into it” in the Amazon affiliate backend. Additionally, Zappos offers 12% commission on affiliate sales, where as, even if it were available via the Amazon linking system, the usual commission rates there are about 10% or below (Last I checked and for regular affiliates, anyway. I am not now, nor have I ever been a heavy Amazon affiliate).

So, I was impressed with Endless and I also think Zappos should take this is a message to up their game, get a little bit web 2.0 and a little less clunky and not assume they can stop striving to be the best simply because they are used to having already achieved that title. Because, for now, Endless.com will be getting my frequent and impulsive shoe buying interest because they make it the easiest for me to self indulge. ;-)

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Look Out Zappos, Endless.com Has Arrived

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Look Out Zappos, Endless.com Has Arrived

I’ve been on the great quest the last few days to find a product management solution. I should really say a contractor management solution. I have no need for clients to be able to see this. I just need to keep the contractors working on my projects organized and flowing well. Sounds easy enough….

And then I started touring the hell that is project management software land. Some of these things could probably control rocket launches. I mean, seriously, maybe with a degree in computer science and a gift for being psychic I could actually figure most of these things out. And my god are some of the expensive. I could deal with the cost, but I need one I can actually work – and that my contractors will actually be able to figure out.

All I want is a project management software that can…

1. Allow me to task individuals with their duties for a project
2. Allow my contractors to see what needs to be done by them and check it off when it is done
3. Allow my contractors to track their time so I now how much to pay them at the end of a project
4. Allow me to run multiple projects
5. Be easily customized
6. Be worked by even a middle school student

And then I found it. Recommended by a friend, there it was in all its shining glory.

Basecamp.

So, we’ll hit down the list of requirements…

1. I can task people, task myself, set milestones, create training documents – easily and without hassle
2. Anyone assigned to a project can see what needs to be done and who needs to do it.
3. Allow people in my company to track their time on projects – and will even do it at the 15 minute level (most others stick to straight hours)
4. Depending on the plan, you can run 1 to an unlimited number of projects at a time
5. Customization was pretty damn easy. No HTML required – just grab the hex codes of your color scheme, upload your logo and you’re good to go
6. A middle schooler could not only use this, but they’d probably kick my ass on the speed at which they learned to use it

So, you’re saying, great Rae, why the hell do you sound like you’re going to bitch?

It lacks in a few areas. I know no software can be perfect for everyone, but there were a few features lacking that I felt really dampened the program…

1. Only people within your company can track their time. So, if you are using a designer or anyone else from an outside firm and list them as a seperate company, they can’t track time. You’d have to make them listed under your own company for that feature.
2. Anyone assigned to a project can see not only *their* tasks, but everyone elses as well. For me, this leads to a privacy issue. Maybe John Doe doesn’t want people to know his business isn’t going well and he is freelancing to pick up the slack. Maybe I assigned 3/4 of the content work to Charles and Mary realizes she didn’t get the bulk of the work and gets pissy. Anyone who uses various contractors knows why this could be a bad thing.
3. The dashboard shows you a listing of tasks and happenings – but it shows them all. Would be better if they only showed what was new so you could see added things at a glance without having to study it.

Of course, I went to their forums to express my concern – especially on the privacy issue. Seems the developers feel that openess is a good thing and they will never change the privacy features. I understand that not every product can be perfect for every person. But, this is a fundamental feature – and if users are willing to even pay extra for it, why wouldn’t you provide it? The makers of basecamp hide behind the “because the more features, the more bloated and we don’t want to turn into everyone else” motto. And I can understand that, but at the same time, privacy is a fundamental feature.

While I’d like to tell basecamp to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, it still is the better of the products out there for those looking for *simple* project management who don’t have a need for 8000 features. So, I guess I’ll have to figure out some workarounds (aka take some of the organization and streamlining I was looking for away), unless of course someone has other recommendations. Sigh.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Why Does Product Management Software Suck?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Why Does Product Management Software Suck?