Non-Disclosure Agreements

Non-disclosure Agreements or NDA’s are pretty common practice but I have been having various issues with them lately so I thought it would be worth a blog entry.  My issues are both as someone trying to keep details of my businesses private and with other businesses using them.

As I take counsellors into my Lighthouse Counselling and Psychotherapy business I inevitably need to share with them information about the nature of the business.  I have required signing of NDA’s and equivalent arrangements but I have found that despite this some counsellors have shared information with other people.  In one case when we were launching Lighthouse Counselling and Psychotherapy we indicated what we hoped to provide to members after launch, baring in mind we had not launched yet all of this was merely what we expected to provide including professional memberships (which proved too expensive to be worth taking up).  We were actually able to identify in one case a counsellor who had broken the NDA but what can you realistically, as a small business with lots of time pressures and limited resources (we certainly do not have a lawyer on retainer) do about this?

For counsellors to know whether it is worth their while to become part of the network they need to get access to information that is reasonably sensitive and yet not all applicants can be trusted to act appropriately with this information.  As Lighthouse grows this will be much less of an issue as the benefits of membership will more clearly speak for themselves but it is a gradual process.

From a freelancing perspective I am always reluctant to do any work that passes no direct value over to me or the client.  I find that some employers will want to keep their identities private until you sign their NDA.  This, to a point, makes sense.  Use of freelancers is obviously something businesses may wish to keep private, particularly when they are subcontracting work through Elance etc and charging large margins to businesses or just want to keep their business dealings out of the public eye.  However many businesses are getting what I can only see as bad advice from lawyers or more likely legal document services in that the NDA’s invariably have their business name on them.  So the very thing that they do not want to tell you until you have signed their NDA is on their NDA.  I am always reluctant to do any admin that adds no benefit to anyone and getting me to print something out, sign it and then scan it back to them simply so that they can give me their name (which I already have) seems like a waste of everyone’s time.  In the online freelancing world you are always looking for an advantage so that when there are time sensitive activities happening you are ready to respond even if it is in another time zone.  Sometimes the NDA’s will not have their brand name on it but their actual company name but a quick web search will almost always get the name of the brand they are promoting in a couple of seconds.

Anyway, that is my small rant over until I can actually come up with a sensible way of dealing with non disclosure issues with my own business and can think of a sensible response to businesses that ask for them in the manner given.

EU Cookie Law Compliance

I could be wrong but when I was studying Cookie Law Compliance there did not seem to be any huge penalties for non compliance which is good because for many small businesses it is a bit of a pain getting this sort of thing changed.

Personally I think the whole new cookie laws are a bit strange.  I appreciate that cookies can be used to store information about you and that is not always for purposes for which you would agree but I do feel that anyone who knows this can do something about it and I do not think we as searchers of the internet actually want our experience cluttered up by annoying “we use cookies” bars.  It is also interesting that many people do not know about the law despite being in territories in which the law applies.

Fortunately I was able to find a not particularly annoying extension that I was able to add to my joomla site and after 40 minutes or so playing around I was able to get it to work in a way that was not too damaging for site experience.

Have you got Cookie compliant yet?

Related articles

• ICO “not ready” to probe cookie complaints
• Sticking together

Elance – How to avoid bargain basement contractors

On Elance it is very easy to think that, as a freelancer there is no money to be made on the site.  There are many projects which in the UK you might charge £1000 a month for 6 months wanting the service for less than $500.  It is true that there are some freelancers from different countries who are willing to work very cheaply but it is also true that there are many people wanting a far better deal than is possible distorting peoples perceptions of the value of the platform.

Elance suggests that they got about 70,000 jobs posted in the last 30 days, if 40,000 of them are terribly paid (1$ per 700 word article of original content anyone?), spammy (buy 2500 links for $30) or just testing the market (seeing what it would cost in the future, no intent to buy just now) that still leaves lots of potential jobs even by the time you break it down into your special areas of interest.

I believe that bidding on jobs that pay terribly is a waste of time.  Quite simply if someone wants 6 months of SEO for $500 or less, 500 original articles written for $500, a 100 page book written for $50 etc then this is never going to be worth while, even if you are able to negotiate them up to a level you will be happy with they will probably have unrealistic expectations of you.

Assuming you are only wanting to go for work paying say $20 or more (or whatever you want as a minimum rate) here are a few good pointers to avoid wasting your time of lets say the 100 tips for finding worthwhile projects to bid on:

1) Only bid on jobs you would be pleased to win

2) Only do upfront work for free when needed to differentiate yourself when bidding on a very worthwhile contract

3) Avoid pay per results type situations unless you clearly trust the people and can reach the results with a fair amount of work

4) Avoid unrealistic projects – if someone wants to be number 1 in google in 30 days for very little money then this is exactly the type of client you do not want.

5-95 – other really obvious suggestions – here are a few less obvious ones

96 – check reviews – If someone is prone to give bad reviews this could indicate that they are not worth bidding for both because they may have unrealistic expectations (depending on the reviews) or because you might do everything right and get a reputation damaging review.  No harm in some bad reviews this is worth checking out.

97 – Look at hire rate, if it is a low hiring rate this is a bad sign ( but a hiring rate of 33% could be because they have 2 jobs they are hiring for and have hired 1 in the past so you need to look at their profile to interpret).  I would not leave out businesses with a low hire rate but I would be less keen on bidding for them, also if other “we want cheap” indicators are there, stay well clear

98 – Look to see who is invited – If they all have a low hourly rate or a profile that suggests the buyer is looking for someone with a different type of profile than you then stay clear

99 – look who is rejected and compare the average bid for non rejected and rejected.  This will highlight if they are focusing on the cheap end of the bids as well as being able to gleam useful info from the rejects that could give you an idea of whether it is worth bidding for or not.

100 – Look at who else is bidding – This is not something that you will get info from straight away but over time you will see the same people bidding in your categories.  If you see people who get lots of work but do not seem to bid on EVERYTHING, this can be a good indication that a contract is worth going for although then you will need to be able to differentiate yourself from that freelancer.

All this may seem to take quite a long time but really many of these steps take only a second or two.  Sometimes you can tell straight away something stinks but all these steps do is potentially save you time so you can focus your energies on bids you can win.

E-Marketing – What does it consist of? How can I use it in my business?

Internet Marketing or E-Marketing is HUGE!  If you are not fully utilising technology in your marketing it is likely that you are spending too much on traditional marketing as well as missing out on great opportunities to promote your business.

E-Marketing is not all about your website and it covers:-

Your Website

Your Social Media Presence

Your Presence on Third Party Sites

Electronic Communication through Email and other means.

I would like to pause and focus a little on Third Party Sites because this is frequently overlooked.  If you are a hotel then you might find reviews and ratings on Tripadvisor to be a huge source of business if you manage it well.  True you want to have a decent website to back this up but this could be a huge source of business for you.  Similarly there are many small businesses that do not even have a website but benefit hugely from directory listings and other online promotion of their services.  We are increasing becoming more sophisticated in our expectations of websites and if you are not able to punch big then your Third Party Presence can be very important.

In terms of E-marketing, broadly I would catagorise it into the following areas:-

Website development

Content Creation and Management

Conversion Optimisation

Social Media Marketing and Content Syndication

E-networking

Email Marketing

Search Engine Optimisation – marketing to improve your position in searches people carry out

Third Party Site Promotion – whether to bring traffic to your site or to generate leads and business directly

Affiliate Marketing – Arranging for other businesses to receive payment when they bring you leads and sales

Reputation Management – You dont want bad reviews on Tripadvisor or other platforms and you want to actively engage with customers for positive reviews.  Equally you want to stop “YOURPRODUCTSUCKS” content gaining prominence on the internet

Paid Search Marketing – Appearing as “sponsored” suggestions for searches people carry out

Display Marketing – Promoting your business via other sites

Device Marketing – People are increasingly using phones, Kindles, Amazon Fires, ipads etc to go online and your marketing needs to be effective in these mediums and adapt to the technology

Covering all these areas effectively in one blog post would be impossible but I will follow this up with a range of posts over the next two months to show you how you can use these different areas effectively in your business and decide your “e-marketing” mix.

Some people try to succeed at all of these at once and fail.  90% of business Social Media Accounts achieve nothing and the time would be better placed elsewhere.  This is not saying dont do social media, it is saying that you need to allocate your resources to internet marketing sensibly.  To give another example if you want to compete for keywords where the competition is huge there is no point investing only a small amount of time in this area.  Most business is secured for people appearing on page one of search engine results so if your budget is small you may need to target more niche, less competitive terms with your marketing if you want your efforts to be effective.

Unfortunately there is no simple answer with a road map you can follow, that is why there is money in E-marketing consultancy but I will provide further posts that will help you work out how to find the right e-marketing strategy for your business.

Getting Business from Elance type sites part 2

I wrote recently about how you can use Elance, People Per Hour, ODesk, Guru, Freelancer.com, vworker.com and other sites to secure work and how to go about bidding for work to have the best chance of success.  I have been using these platforms over the past month to secure some extra consultancy work and whilst I still agree 100% with everything I said in my last post I thought it would be helpful to give you the advice and experience that I wish I had known when I was putting in bids for work.  I still am using these sites to secure contractors for my businesses so I also have extra insights from this that I wish to share.

1) Make sure you stand out from the crowd – Projects can get everything from 4 bids to 100 bids put in.  How will your bid stand out.  It can stand out because it is the cheapest, and that is always an option or it can stand out because your offer is different.  I have offered to give a free 15 minute website analysis when I have been bidding on paid search work.  I have done this because I know that someone is only going to be happy with my paid search work if it gets results and if their website is not fit for purpose I will not get the work.  It also gives me the information I need to put in an accurate bid.  Other examples people have done to me where I have looked for bloggers is to actually write an example blog I could use.  If you think about it this gives me a far better idea of their writing than of examples they have in a different context.

2) Make sure you do the minimum to be considered – For instance if it is a writing job you need to either attach portfolio examples of your writing or ensure that you make it clear in your proposal the quality of your writing.  There is no point saying you have “many published articles” if you cannot attach or link to some of them.  Equally make sure you show you have all the requirements of the role

3) When you are starting out and do not have a reputation on the site you are at a huge disadvantage over other proposals.  The best way to get round this is to provide other ways of showing the quality of your work and expertise.  If you do not have any writing jobs then just write some content you can use, if you have not designed any websites then design some.  Equally if it is more consultancy work then offer a 15 minute consultation to show your expertise or only bid for jobs where you can give a response that shows your capabilities.  It may be you can contact people in advance for written testimonials or who will act as a reference for you for projects until you get a good online reputation.

4) focus on newly posted jobs – if someone is posting a job it is because they want work done – if someone submits a job, you put in a proposal that they like then you might get the job there and then without having to compete against all the other contractors who will apply for it.  From their point of view they are not looking for the best of 100 applicants for a small job.  They want to get someone good started so focusing on recently posted jobs is a good idea.

5) Avoid jobs where there are lots of applicants with strong recommendations and an overall low average price if there is not a way you can stand out effectively from the crowd.  You wont get the job and you will waste your time

6) Avoid jobs where the poster often does not award – quite simply whilst you have limited jobs you can bid on and you are starting out with longish odds of getting a job then it makes sense to go for jobs from people who reliably appoint someone.

7) Focus on jobs where you know you have unique selling points – for instance for writing jobs focus on areas where you have significant knowledge or experience.

Crowdfunding in Action

Crowdfunding is getting quite a bit of hype these days and whilst browsing the internet I saw a good example of it working in practice for reasonably commercial ends.  
http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/06/campaign-description-of-crowd-funding.html

When I was a child I used to play a game called Rogue which is one of the very first (and still in my view) and one of the best computer games ever created.  I still play versions of this game sometimes for sentimental reasons.  ADOM is one of the best “updates” of this game and it has been available free for a long time.  The creator of the game lacked the motivation to bring about changes that a community of players wanted.  As a result he launched a Crowdfunding drive to get some changes made.  This has already raised over $20,000 and is on track to reach the $48,000 that him and some other developers require for it to be worth their while to bring about the changes.

This was only possible because the game had a huge following and so it there were a wide pool of people open to funding the project and who would benefit directly from the development.

I had briefly thought of using aspects of crowdfunding to promote elements of my counselling business although I have opted for more incremental growth but it there are some areas where it is a great tool for bringing money into a project, such as where you either need the money up front or that once created you might not be able to protect your project.  For instance getting the money up front for a really useful benefit guide on say filling in DLA forms is something I think crowdfunding could work very well with.  Some people who do not need the guide would still be happy to pay to get something created that would help others and the crowdfunding promotion would also help the promotion of the resource once created which would improve the positive impact of the work.  Other areas such as writing extra content for games, books and comics are obvious examples of where this could be an effective way of bringing products and services to market and engaging and co-producing content with your consumers.

The challenges of adapting marketing plans with experience

When Lighthouse Counselling and Psychtherapy launched in the 6-9 months ago we had a clear marketing strategy that was well researched and presented.  There are two key aspects of the business, recruiting counsellors to work on a self employed basis with the clients we secured and securing clients through our marketing for the counsellors in the network.  Key to the success of Lighthouse Counselling and Psychotherapy was getting a good bank of counsellors on board but counsellors needing work were not in short supply so we focused much of our effort on getting clients for counsellors and thought counsellors would take care of themselves.  We had lots of promises from counsellors we knew but when it came to it they were not as reliable as we hoped and we had to stall our marketing for clients whilst we refocused our energies on getting the right counsellors for our networks.

Currently we are recruiting in Glasgow and Edinburgh and what we are finding is that we are getting a lot of strong applicants in the surrounding areas.  The plan with the initial recruitment was to focus the marketing on the central areas of the cities and then consider expanding if the surrounding areas could be hit effectively with the marketing.  At the same time though strong counsellors are a huge asset to the business and the challenge presents itself to what extent we stick with the initial strategy of recruiting counsellors in the centre of cities and targeting marketing to the centre of cities and to what extent we adapt the original plan to utilise the potentially strong counsellors we are getting showing interest in Lighthouse in the surrounding areas.

As the recruitment is still underway decisions on these points have not yet been made.  It is not an either or.  It would be very possible to launch in the centres and then expand and recruit some of these other counsellors a month or two after the initial launch.  It does highlight the importance of both having key marketing plans and also constantly reviewing them to see if they are right for what your business is experiencing.