Blair Williams

Everything is an Experiment

Blair Williams

Formidable Pro: The Best Form Builder for WordPress

Formidable Pro: The Best Form Builder for WordPress

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An amazing new plugin launched last weekend. Its called Formidable Pro and is hands down the best, most innovative and easy to use form builder for WordPress I've ever used. The author of this plugin is one of my good friends — Stephanie Wells over at Strategy 11 and has done a remarkable job.

I guess calling this plugin a simple “form builder” is a bit of an understatement — people with no knowledge of HTML, CSS or programming can create extremely complex forms with ease. In fact, you can script and build all kinds of user interactions on your site with Formidable Pro. Check out some of these features:

10 Strategies for Igniting Explosive Growth in Your Business This Year

10 Strategies for Igniting Explosive Growth in Your Business This Year

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ExplosionAmong all of your New Year's Resolutions, there is one that you should pay special attention to.

No, it isn't lose 35 lbs or stop eating Twinkies (my other goal for 2010), the goal I'm talking about is you taking your Online Business to new heights in 2010. Whether your goal is to make a million dollars online or you just want to make enough to cover your car payment, you should write it down, put together a plan and start working.

Don't make excuses as with the help of this guide there are plenty of ways to do something great online this year and make money doing it but they pretty much all involve the same strategies and tools. Whether you're a blogger, affiliate marketer or have your own products — here are the strategies you absolutely need to learn and use in 2010 if you want to ignite explosive growth in your Online Business: [Read more…] about 10 Strategies for Igniting Explosive Growth in Your Business This Year

Stop Using WHOIS Privacy and 3 Other Strategies For Increasing Your Website’s Credibility

Stop Using WHOIS Privacy and 3 Other Strategies For Increasing Your Website’s Credibility

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Domain NameThis article will show you some simple steps you can take to increase the credibility of your site with a very low amount of effort. Today I came across this fantastic article by Daniel Scocco:

Time to Stop Using Whois Privacy?

His article inspired me to write about this topic and to extend his thinking a bit beyond Private Registrations.

Scocco's argument is that using private registration on your domain names leads to less trust. This is 100% true but here's another big reason not to use Private Registration if you ever plan to install an extended verification SSL certificate on your site you'll have to remove the privacy registration settings (and trust me, that can be a pain in the butt). [Read more…] about Stop Using WHOIS Privacy and 3 Other Strategies For Increasing Your Website's Credibility

New Pretty Link Video Tutorials Added

New Pretty Link Video Tutorials Added

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demoI've had a ton of requests from Pretty Link and Pretty Link Pro users to update and expand my video tutorials for these products. I've finally gotten around to recording the first of these.

Do you need help with:

  • Getting started with Pretty Link on your WordPress Website
  • Setting up Pretty Link Redirects
  • Organizing your links with Pretty Link Groups
  • Advanced Link Options
  • Tracking Hits on your Pretty Links
  • Pretty Link Global Options

[Read more…] about New Pretty Link Video Tutorials Added

What Startups Are Really Like

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I found this article yesterday and posted it to twitter — I thought it was so spot on that I wanted to add it here as well:

What Startups Are Really Like by Paul Graham

Some of my favorite quotes from (because I've seen these things in the startups I've been a part of) this were:

On Use of Time:
“Most hacker-founders would like to spend all their time programming. You won't get to, unless you fail. Which can be transformed into: If you spend all your time programming, you will fail.” — DOH!

On Product Development:
“Now, when coding, I try to think ‘How can I write this such that if people saw my code, they'd be amazed at how little there is and how little it does?'”

On Product Development Strategy:
“It's so important to launch fast that it may be better to think of your initial version not as a product, but as a trick for getting users to start talking to you.”

The more I work on my own products and the more I consult with businesses, the more I can see how true the open source mantra of “Release Quickly, Release Often” is in all areas of business as well.

Don’t Raise the Bar — Lower It!

Don’t Raise the Bar — Lower It!

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The Easy Way or The Hard WayIf you're like me, you feel like you can tackle any project, get it done on time or before and with stellar success. Unfortunately, this attitude has brought me nothing but pain & suffering when doing work for clients. In the past, I always used to underestimate the difficulty of my projects and would convey that to my clients in the form of unrealistically small estimates on time and budget.

Luckily, I was usually on a team of highly motivated, competent people — so we were actually able to hit many of our deadlines but the products we were delivering weren't the highest quality and I started to get burned out. However, when I endured a hellish project that ultimately ended up in failure I finally saw the light. I started to realize that these tight deadlines were not only consistently making my clients upset but were ruining my life — it was then that I realized that I needed to:

LOWER THE BAR! [Read more…] about Don't Raise the Bar — Lower It!