Save Your Internet Work as You Go

It took me a while, but I learned a great lesson today. The teachers were Google Profiles and my friend Ben Elias.

I was working on my Google Profile (one for myself and I created one for the business). (I really don't know if this is going to help with curing my SEO obsession.) For some reason, Chrome (my previous browser of choice - I recently switched back to Firefox. But back to the story... I was inputting tons of text with hyperlinks. More specifically, I was copying paragraphs of text from different pages from the DVD Your Memories website. For some reason, every time I went to look at the preview of my profile, or even if I saved my profile, many of the sections would be lost and I would have to start all over again. Each time I wasted about 30 minutes. Obviously this was becoming highly frustrating (not to mention that at one point Ben brought me over a beer and as I opened it, it somehow exploded all over the desk and my new laptop).

If you know me, I'm all about efficiency. I devoted two months of my life to learning the GTD (Getting Things Done) systems and "life hacking." I hate to waste time. Now, whenever I'm filling out a web form, I will type it up first in Microsoft Word, and then copy and paste it into the web form. I can't tell you what a time-saver this is. I don't recommend adding the hyperlinks inside of word because it usually won't carry over into the web form.

All Things Being Equal - Why do Larger Orders Come Over Time?

I tend to think of the general public (meaning everyone outside of DVD Your Memories) is like one customer that has an almost unlimited number of orders. When a new business creeps up that fills a need for this customer, then the customer will place some small, tester orders. As time goes on and the business proves that it can successfully handle all the smaller orders, the customer will place larger ones.

That is how business has been for DVD Your Memories. In 2006 we never took an order that was more than about $1000 dollars. Then in 2007, we would get orders around that size all the time. And so on and so on. The size of the orders is getting exponentially larger. Now we are at the point where businesses are taking notice and when they want to get a ton of Video to DVD transfers completed or have some photo scanning, we are getting the phone call. My question is, why now, why not two years ago?

But what doesn't make sense to me is that we've always had an above-average looking website and advertised using the same methods for the last couple of years. Why didn't we get some of these larger orders earlier on in the game? And it's not like all of our previous customers are talking to all the newer ones (well some of them might), but for the most part, our larger orders are coming from the same type of advertising we have always been doing.

Maybe the fact that we now have 2 stores, one in Orange County and one in San Diego. Maybe people think that with two stores the business much be good due to the simple fact that they have more than one location. In our case this may be true but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is true. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, just wondering why sequentially larger orders are always happening. I am most grateful, not only for our clients, but to all of our loyal technicians who faithfully complete their work to nearly 100% accuracy and on-time.

I think that the best answer to this question relys on one word, "trust." Trust isn't gained by looking the best or by having the most flashy website. I think trust is gained most efficiently by a very inefficient means, and that is by being consistent.

One More Year, Many Successes

Ha ha. Almost another year went by without me checking in and writing in this blog. Well, now I know better and it's about time I caught up with the SEO.

I guess I better fill in on what has happened over the last year. DVD Your Memories has continued its success. Of course by the end of the summer of 2008, the economy went down, but it wasn't until the day I left for Thailand (September 14, 2008) that the shit really hit the fan. It was a very weird coincidence that this happened at the same time. I remember being at a diving resort in Ko Tao and finally getting the chance to see the news. It seemed like as soon as I left the country, WWIII happened. But enough about that.

Needless to say, September and October were scary months because no one knew how bad the economy was and when it was going to rebound. We ended up having a fine holiday season. The last week I was in Thailand, I spent by myself contemplating what to do with my life. Go back to school, go travel, work another job, sell the business, or grow the business. Well, I decided during that week to grow the business. I felt like DVD Your Memories has an enormous potential and I have a matching enormous ambition.

So I decided to open up another store in Orange County. It was close to home and I though it would be a good market for family media transfer services. So I ended up purchasing most of what I needed by the end of 2008, which not only helped to lower my taxes, but it also allowed me to focus on starting up the office after the holiday season.

DVD Your Memories Orange County opened in March of 2009 in Costa Mesa, CA. Richard became the manager up there and I moved up with him to help start up that store. On June 30th, the store was successfully and profitably running on its own!

Furthermore, we ended up landing a huge (for us) contract with the City of Irvine to convert all of their city council meetings for the last 40 or so years. We all worked very hard on our proposal (Brandi, Bryan, Richard and myself) and with some great references that really sealed the deal.

So now here we are, working on the City of Irvine project and growing the company. The immediate growth of our company will rely heavily on SEM. We have always worked on PPC and have become very good at that, but SEO has been always lacking. That is my next big project.