An excuse is always a lie. This is the fundamental difference between a reason and an excuse. Excuses are used by the inexperienced, the lazy, the shameless, and the shady. The only good excuse is no excuse at all. You should learn how to hold yourself accountable. However, it’s not always the “professional” who has the excuses. Clients come up with some weird things too. Whether it’s from not paying all of the money to paying late to finagling their way around the copy to get more out of you, the experienced and knowledgeable businessman will need to know how to spot a bad client.

A reason is always true, but not always fantastic. I fell asleep, and didn’t get a blog post up. That’s a reason. It’s not a particularly good reason (because I should commit to getting enough sleep every night) but it is in fact, the truth. The great thing about reasons is that, when phrased right, they really can be accepted and the situation can work itself out. The bad thing about a reason is that people often give horrible ones, or ones that don’t really make any sense. This is when a reason is mistaken for an excuse.

Life can be unexpected, but knowing how to identify good reasons is the proper way to handle them. Never whine or complain about your situation. It’s better to calmly explain and offer to work out something that works correctly. As well, recognizing the difference between a reason and an excuse can eliminate a lot of miscommunication.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe that there’s no such thing as a good reason? Or do you think there is a definite distinction?

However, how many people go back and look through the archives of a blog that is well established? The idea of time makes old content seem stale, or not as up to date. However, lots of articles, such as tutorials, reviews, and general information apply on a recurring basis. It is these types of articles that business people, freelancers, designers, and bloggers should invest time in. We still read books written 100 years ago. Why not read a blog post that’s a month old?

Do you go back and explore archives of interesting blogs? What about your own archives? What is your stance on time versus content?

Statistics from Nov. 8 - Nov. 14

You’ll notice that the statistics from this week seem to have dropped a sufficient amount. Again, I attribute this to the actual nature of the marketing idea.

• Visitors: 255
• Average Time Per Visit: 3 Minutes and 7 Seconds
• Bounce Rate: 66%
• Most Popular Post: How to Tagline Your Post Photos (there’s a video in the sidebar of this technique)
• Highest Source of Traffic: Direct Links

Spending more time on forums got me a few more reviews, perhaps, but I think it shows that if you participate for a short time period, it’s not going to have a substantial amount of impact. The idea behind forum marketing is to participate, and continue to help support the community. I’ll have more information on forum marketing next week, so keep a look out.

What else I’ve found is that people really do like tutorials, as the tutorial posted on Pro Blog Design also sent a few people my way. I highly suggest checking the post out if you want to make your screenshots more exciting.

In comparison with the statistics from blog commenting, I think it’s easy to see that in the short term, you’ll benefit more from commenting on other blogs and linking to some specific posts than you might if you happen to participate on a forum more. However, over a long period of time, community interaction could be of great benefit.

This week I’m going to try my hand at being more avid when it comes to social media. I’ll also attempt guest posting, as the benefits can be high if you avoid certain mistakes. And to complete the trifecta, I’ve posted a follow-up to Blog for Profit’s post on mainstream media. Don’t miss the debate! Have a great weekend.

(This is actually more a mini-autobiography. Hopefully some of you will find it interesting. If you want to know even more about me, check out the interview.)

At the start of my designing career, largely inspired by my artistic friend Riccy, I used free templates, and a lot of free templates, because there was never one that looked good enough to me. (for some really good ones, check out HongKiat) Of course, the problem with free templates is that you have to learn how to modify them - or at least how to change the text. And back in the winter of 2004 (it was probably spring, actually, but winter is more dramatic) pretty much every design available was still using tables. Tables horrify me.

After setting up what had to be my fourth website on Bravehost (at the time it was pretty cool), I began to want to know how to do certain things, like make backgrounds with columns. Luckily my moderator friend - Chris - from a general discussion forum taught me something that changed my life: CSS. No more scary <tr> tags to worry about. (Point: I’m not saying tables are bad entirely, I’m just saying I did not understand how to use them. And if you want some tech support,and live in Denver, you should check out WalnTech.) I learned one of the most important mark-up languages through problem solving (and some fear).

“I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” - Thomas Alva Edison

This particular form of learning continued, because once I knew CSS, I needed to learn how it applied to the actual HTML code, which meant I had to learn more HTML. Once all of this was done (over a period of about a year), I discovered something interesting: writing code by hand can be ridiculously annoying. So this called for another solution to be made: content management.

At the time, the acronym “PHP” was unknown to me, but I quickly hashed my way through each open source system, starting with E107 and quickly going through Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Expression Engine, SMF, PHPBB, Invision Board, and SimpleCMS (which is a great one if you want to run a very small site). Eventually I decided to develop my own. The need to manage content gave me a larger understanding of the make-up of most systems, and some insight into how PHP code works. Once again, I learned a substantial amount of important skills through problem solving. (For those of you wondering, Diligent runs on wordpress, but my portfolio runs on my custom-made system.)

After all was said and done, from 2004 to now, I’ve managed to gather a lot of information on a wide array of online endeavours, including forum administration, webmastering, designing, coding, developing, marketing, search engine optimization and image, audio, and visual editors. All of which I learned, and some of which I mastered, through needing a solution to a particular problem. What effect has this had on my life? Well I’ve made $140 this week. Not because I’m amazing, but because I’m not afraid to take actions necessary to improve my skill level and recognition. A lot of people will know me better as “that girl who keeps changing her project ideas and website theme” than “that designer who knows her shi**.” However, taking action is the number one way, and the only way, to grow and succeed.

What Do You Do When You Encounter a Problem?

A lot of us go one the “flight” response of the fight or flight system. (Whipping out the Darwin, that’s right.) However, when you encounter a problem, the best way to get around it is to solve it. A lot of people just “deal” with problems, very few take the initiative to fix them.

This week, I found out that Diligent didn’t work in Internet Explorer 7 or 8. Instead of just “dealing” with it, I decided that the largest percentage of my audience would probably enjoy being able to read the blog. So I asked for help from @adbert on twitter, and quickly found the problem was with the custom search. I solved the problem and now I reach 100% of whoever wants to read this blog.

When you encounter a problem, there are plenty of methods you can use to solve it. My process for solving problems goes something like this:

1. Panic. Possibly get mad at whatever might be causing it.
2. Go back to the last settings of when everything was fine, and see what I’ve changed.
3. Try changing something, and see what happens.
4. Panic more. Then ask for help.
5. Get the initial problem removed, and take another route to do what I was trying to do.

Another great part of fixing problems involves using tutorials. You can find a good amount of tutorials all over the web, but I recommend NetTuts (newish, but quality) to get you started.

How Do You Handle Problems?

What’s your method for handling problems? Do you tend to shy away from taking action to fix them, or do you learn a new skill for that particular challenge? Perhaps you outsource? Share your story and don’t forget to subscribe to the feed.

Action is the #1 way to increase your productivity, success, clientele, and income. You won’t get anything if you do absolutely nothing. That means working on your search engine optimization, or learning to be a better blogger, or increasing your productivity. The more you work, the better you’ll become. However, you can’t take actions that will be detrimental to your business, you have to know what you want, how to get it, and go for it. Don’t mess around, be direct. This applies in a various array of areas, including getting backlinks to your site or finding advertisers for your blog. Approaching potential clients, advertisers, and network partners with clear, thought out, direct ideas will help your growth exponentially.

Let’s say you wanted to make enough money to buy a program online that was $50 USD. You could either start a blog, put up an advertising page, and hope that someone would contact you, or you could be direct, and contact the advertisers to offer them a spot on your blog. You could also develop an e-book for sale and make each copy $10. After five sold copies, you’ve got $50. There are various methods of acquiring what you want, you just have to learn to utilize what works for you, and, oh yeah, do something about it.

So what do you do to obtain your goals? What have you learned about contacting people directly to help you out?

Still Time

When you begin your day, you almost always begin it in “Still Time. Still Time involves any block of time that is insignificant to the events that occur before or after it. This includes waiting time, slow days at work or class, and generally anything that occurs after 9pm and before 6am. Still Time is also known as being bored, or those days when you’re too sick to do anything particularly productive, but not sick enough to sleep all day. Still Time can be harmful to your productivity, as it might lead you to practice time discounting. On the other hand, proper time management can help your business grow exponentially.

When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is check my email. Afterward, I’ll spend time working on a design brief, or commenting on blogs, or writing forum replies. Anything to get my brain woken up and going. The key to controlling Still Time is simply to start working on something. This can be a task as simple as moderating blog comments or answering client emails. The more you finish smaller tasks, the more you’ll feel as though you have time to finish larger tasks, and you’ll get a lot more of your “need to do” tasks done. The more you finish, the more you’ll feel yourself slip into “real time.”

Real Time

Real Time is when you’re focused and the amount of time you take to do something is proportional to the amount of time that actually passes. Real time can be utilized by organizing important tasks and attempting to finish one overall goal.

Real Time can also hurt your business because time moves faster, and you can waste it by not doing anything productive. Even if you’re without computer access, you can use real time to develop your business offline. However, there are good days when, while working on something, you can slip from real time into inverse time.

Inverse Time

Inverse Time is when the amount of time you you take to complete something is significantly less than the amount of time that passes. These are times when you’re completely focused on completing a goal, and do all of the necessary steps to finish in a timely manner. Inverse Time is generally always productive, and the best way to utilize it is to avoid distractions, which can loop you around back into Still Time.

How Do You Control Time?

How do you utilize your time to get things done?

Write Everything Down Somewhere

Being in class all day has one perk: I always have a notebook handy when I get a post idea. I simply stop my work for a second, jot down a few key words, and then go back to paying attention. By writing everything down, it gives you the option to come back to it later. On once particularly inspiring (or boring) day, I had over 30 post ideas and wrote them all down haphazardly on a sheet of paper during history. Afterward, I simply entered them into Wordpress, and there you have it, a month’s worth of rough drafts is sitting on my blog.

Some of you may be thinking that I’m gifted, or that I’m just productive. That is so far from the truth it’s funny. I happen to be incredibly lax about things like paperwork and there was a time when I never wrote any ideas down. The result? I forgot most of them. If you get into the habit of jotting things down on paper, you’ll find you have a lot more inspiration in you than you realize. Perhaps one day you’ll surpass me and actually keep all of your notes in a singular notebook or computer file.

Learn to “Think Backwards”

Let’s say that you do forget something, and that you didn’t write it down. The next technique I use to remember an idea I had a while ago is to think backwards. This involves some practice to get right, but is actually a very useful tool that will help you to remember everything. To think backwards, you simply start with what you are thinking presently, and ask yourself, “how did I get to this topic?” Then repeat until you hit the idea you were thinking about. There are times when this fails miserably, and times when it works wonders. By learning to think backwards, you will increase the amount of information you remember by at least 20. Other questions to help you think backwards include:

• Why were we talking about that?
• Who else was there?
• Where were we at that time?

Clear Your Head

I generally tend to have my best ideas while out doing something not related to business or the internet. Taking a break can do some serious wonders for your brain. Simply giving yourself time to recharge can generate ideas out of nowhere, which can develop into money makers and wondrous marketing strategies. My favorite form of “relaxing” is actually pretty quirky: I really love to clean. Something about a clean work environment really helps get me thinking. Other ideas to clear your head include:

• Taking a Walk
• Watching Television
• Watching a Movie
• Going Out to Eat
• Going Out with Friends
• Taking a Bike Ride
• Taking a Nap

People are Funny

People are funny on their own, with very little prompting. If you have an “audio-graphic” memory as I do, you’ll find this technique extremely useful. By writing down quotes, you can easily generate various ideas from a simple sentence. For example, how many post ideas can you generate from the quote, “I’m not racist, I hate everyone equally”? However, to use quotes effectively, you have to remember them. Which brings us back to writing everything down.

When Inspiration Strikes, Drop Everything and Find a Pen!

When you do find yourself in the situation where ideas are just flowing, record them. (Are you seeing a theme to this technique?) Be it jotting them down on index cards, or putting them write on the blog, be sure to write down each and every idea as fast as possible. Spend only 20 seconds on each idea and then move on. Develop the posts later. This may seem counter-productive, but it’s easier to think logically through material after you generated all the ideas you can. Instead of one “really good” article, you can have the potential for 10 really great articles with the proper development.

How Do You Find Inspiration?

How do you develop your ideas? What helps you really generate some thought processes? If you liked this post, please share your stories, questions, views, and opinions with a comment.

It should be pointed out that there are some ideas that cannot be implied with an icon. Icons generally represent “big ideas”, and probably shouldn’t be used for something specific, unless they’re part of an overall brand image.

How Do Icons Help My Business?

Icons are simply like landmarks for visitors. If they’re looking for your rss feed, they’ll look for the orange rss button (and variations.) If they want to contact you, they’ll be searching for your envelope icon. Icons direct your users to the areas they’re looking for. Using icons in your promotional materials will help get your point across clearly and concisely.

How to Utilize Icons

To utilize icons, you should use them sparingly. Overwhelming your site with icons when they aren’t needed (for exapmle, if you have an extremely colorful design already) will make your design feel cluttered and tacky. The idea is simply to emphasize certain areas or concepts.

Where Do I Get Icons?

You can acquire icons very easily around the net. However, I suggest checking out the Function set if you’re interested in nice looking icons for your website.