This is the Google UK’s head office (shared with other companies such as AMEX) clearly showing a fire on the roof. This picture is from Jon Swaine.

Started by a BBQ on the terrace of a Google floor the fire was reported out by 2.30pm.

Via coverage from the Telegraph and Techcrunch.

Updates from Twitter

@bryony_gordon i love that my natural reaction is not to call the fire brigade, but to tweet this

@catherinegee: The whole of the Telegraph just received a text telling us to use the back exit thanks to the Google fire (we live across the road).

@bryony_gordon: how many firemen does it take to put out a bbq? none. its taken them so long to go up there its gone out itself

@lucyverey the firemen trying to assemble their hose to put out the google fire is one of the funniest things ive seen in a while

@lucyverey it upsets me slightly that they were so slow – my tiny flat would burn down in that time

@lucyverey @catherinegee shame the fire went out about an hour ago

And The Jokes…

@JamesProud RT @naked_ape Two men named Wolfram and Bing have been arrested on the Victoria Line carrying empty jerry cans

Adsense For Images

@patrickaltoft Apparently Google employees searching for a fire extinguisher found 1.4 million results in 0.23 seconds.

@davenaylor a UK Googler Searching for a fire extinguisher, found 3 in Aus, 1 in NZ and 1 on eBay, till a His PPC friend pointed out where they where

2. Coffee? Get a good coffee machine, yes it’s a personal thing, but the smell of fresh coffee kick starts the morning for me.

3. Meet standing up. A meeting room is important but not essential. Stand up meetings around a PC are quick and to the point. Try change of scene and meet in the local coffee shop.

4. Look for flexibility. You never know what’s round the corner, keep the lease flexible to allow you to expand or contract as needed. In the current market great lease deals are for the taking, make sure to negotiate on rent and terms.

5. Big office toys are fun, but not essential. Staff most impressed by office toys probably aren’t the staff you need.

6. Use mobile phones, have as few landlines are necessary. In the UK you can get unlimited land line calls on a contract for £30 a month, then add a skype out monthly contract (6 Euros per month) to call worldwide landlines for free (thanks to JasonD for the tip)

7. Location. Think about location but remember its not everything, a dynamic company should be able to attract and retain excellent staff on the back of the business and culture rather than its office.

8. Wireless connectivity. Properly secured wireless is great and saves the need for cables everywhere.

9. Large screens and monitors. We’ve only recently done this, but now everyone has at least 24″ of screen to work with, it just seems to make life easier.

10. Simply entry & security. Keep office access features simple and practical (complex alarms, entry systems, etc tend to need admin time) if you’re small enough to work without these systems, then all the better.

11. Bin clutter ASAP. (I’m terrible at this!) if you haven’t used that stack of CD’s or out of date printer in 6 months find another home for it.

12. Use low tech networks. Low tech networks need low tech support which is cheap, sometimes less is more!

13. Secure your data & backup data off site. Double backup and secure heavily the mission critical stuff.

14. In town office space works. Chances are for a tech start up you’ve got a fairly young team, town centre means the team can arrive by public transport. Also lunch breaks can be used to best effect for people with busy lives.

15. Consider taking space in a shared environment. If you’re on your own, and just getting going, shared office space is a cost effective way to you out of the house (and out of your underpants) and allows you to meet new people in a similar situation for networking and business.

16. See if you local university has office space (Doug of CarRentals used this to great effect), space is normally cheap and flexible, networks are in place and talent is on the door step. The vibe of the university also seems to help.

How Does It Work?

By analyzing the keywords and phrases in the questions you ask, answer or surf, the system finds similar questions that need answering. Feedback is also taken from user actions on the “Suggested Questions” usage.

This new feature will be evolved and I believe will become a cornerstone advantage for Blurtit as the longer the learning the better the match. As always, feedback most welcome please.

A Demo Of “Suggested Questions”

Check out the new feature on Blurtit

Site: BackofTheNet.info
Communtiy: PES and FIFA (football games) on the Xbox & PS3 (players community)
Current montisation channel: Adsense
Size of community: >10k
Strengths: Active community; Links from xbox.com
Owners comment: “We get [>5k] unique visitors a day, most of them come for FIFA information, and the others are returning members. We have a custom built shoutbox (ajax + php) which gets most of our page hits as it’s where members go to chill out, chat, and arrange games & stuff.”

Ideas On Revenue Channel Growth

Ok, off the bat, this is a challenge. Gaming users want to play games not click ads, pay for upgrades, so we’re going to have to get pretty creative and try out lots of things. Key point here is try lots of new ideas, and trust the data you get from testing.

1. Increase The Community Size

Get more members, lots more. To give yourself the best chance you are going to need more users and traffic. Simplify the home page making a a sign up form with information why they should sign up and post sign up take them straight into the action. Also consider letting users get involved without signing up initially.

2. Build a Premium Feature

With enough loyal members a paid premium feature builds an instant revenue channel, and if that product is virtual you build it only once and sell it thousands of times, giving a huge gross profit (like software, drinks or wordpress themes)

Idea (i) – Paid Membership
By winning games all members earn virtual money, but to spend it on the site, (on cool stuff like virtual stadiums, fans bases, cups and medal cabinets etc), they need to become a paid member. This is same model as club penguin runs so effectively. There has to be real value to warrant the user wanting to spend their virtual money.

Idea (ii) – Gameplay Recording and Publishing App
Perhaps a stronger idea is to build a paid app to make recording and publishing goals (and other gameplay) super easy & and have these goals published on your site. This software would be expensive to build but may have application not only in football games but all types of console gaming and once you have built in once you can sell it again and again.

3. Simplify The Site

Streamline the site, take out anything unnecessary, make the design as professional as possible and benchmark it against the competition. Make the site clear and direct into the core proposition you are focusing on.

4. Chat Monitisation

Try monitising the chat system, Meebo is offering a simple way of doing this but I’ve haven’t tried it.

5. Content Library – Build The Adsense Revenue

Build a huge gaming library full of useful football gaming content and get your users to help you. Backofthenet has links from xbox.com so must have some level of search authority. Capitalise on this by building out an excellent resource which will gain traffic from search. This search traffic can then be monitised through adsense or what network or affiliate scheme works best. Blend the adsense ads, make the links the same colour as your normal links and put them in the navigation places for high CTR.

Trial, Error and Time…

To turn this site into a revenue machine is going to take lots of hard work, a splash of investment into new models, time to roll things out and building on ideas that work. In my view it can be done, but you’ve got to be in for the long haul. Good luck!

Su.pr home screen


I’ve used the service and it works really well. The benefits are:

- Post links direct to Twitter and Facebook status updates from Su.pr
- Get analytics data about these posts including optimum posting times for future posts
- The URL shortening service frames the page and put other popular content from your site alongside
- Get stumble opportunities from Tweets or Facebook updates
- SEO friendly and personal site URL shortening options (eg. http://yourdomain.com/a8kjk)

Unlike the Digg URL shortening where the benefit is only achieved if you get enough Diggs to reach the front page, Stumbleupon shorteners encourage stumbles, and a smaller number of stumbles equates to traffic from Stumbleupon.

The URL redirected page:

I’ve always been a fan of Stumbleupon although they are commonly forgotten as a social network. Su.pr should bring it back to the limelight. Using it for simple status updates on your blog via Twitter and Facebook will definately help the best content get more traffic, without any extra work.

Fact #1 Steve Jobs has Syrian roots.
After his birth in San Francisco to an American woman and a Syrian man he was given up for Adoption.

Fact #2 Atari and HP Turned Jobs Down.
Atari and Hewlett-Packard both turned down start-up funding requests from Jobs in the day:

So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’

Fact #3 Jobs likes Gates photo credit: Seattlepi When interviewed live with Bill Gates Steve Jobs made friendly comments on their relationship referencing their long term “marriage”.	Fact #4 Jobs was a fruitarian photo credit: Dreamstime The name Apple was chosen because Apples were Steves favourite food at the time.	Fact #5 He’s not dead Bloomberg photo credit: Tombstonebuilder Bloomberg mistakenly published his 17 page obituary (29-08-2008 ) briefly before the mistake was rectified.
Fact #6 He’s an ex Hippie Please teach me Photoshop In his informative years Jobs travelled to India. Barefoot and threadbare he spent some months on the hippie trail in India, ’60s style.	Fact #7 Jobs paid $10m for Pixar photo credit: Pixar Mr Jobs purchased the computer division of Lucasfilm (of Starwars fame) in 1986 for $10 million and incorporated it independently as Pixar. Later Disney bought Pixar for $7.5 billion.	Fact #8 His catchphrases are… photo credit: Photobucket He favorite catch phrases are: “Un-be-lievable”; “Mere mortals”; “It’s huge” & “Wouldn’t it be great”. He tells the story and sells the dream, this character trait is common amongst successful entrepreneurs.
Fact #9 He’s got huge feet photo credit: Pixel Addict Steve has big feet, size 14 big. Perhaps he went barefoot in India because he couldn’t find any oversize shoes!	Fact #10 $1: Steves annual salary photo credit: bionicteaching As the Chairman and CEO of Apple Computers, he pays himself an annual salary of $1 per year.	Fact #11 Lazy parking habits photo credit: Cultofmac Some people are obsessional about catching Steve parking in Handicap spaces. Steve, you may have changed the world with your computers but you still can’t illegally park!

No prizes for guessing from the following analytics graph when we really started to focus on the site:

So what changed at the end of 2008?

We made the site better for the users.

Making a site better for the users is a great way of making it better for search engines, and the multiple benefits are increased traffic, increased page views and happier users.

Breaking down the key improvements:

- Made it easier for users to ask and answer questions through simple interaction with the site

- Highlighted the best content making it easier to find using the data held in the web analytics

- Improved the design, redesigned the site to make it look cleaner and got rid of clutter

- Improved the navigation to give it greater depth

- Focused on the core proposition by retiring “feature creep” features and functions

It’s easy to get lost in the complex developement of site features rather than focusing on what it actually does. Simple is often better.

Interview Question Ideas

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Run me through the main points on your CV that I should be aware of.
3. What would your friends and colleagues say about you?
4. Why are you taking a risk and leaving your other job?
5. What drives you each day to get out of bed?
6. Tell me about your main strengths.
7. Can you give me a situation that these strengths have helped you?
8. What don’t you enjoy working on?
9. When have these held you back?
10. Why should we give you the job?
11. If you have to learn a new skill for this job how would you view it?
12. Give me an example a work problem and how you solved it.
13. What is the hardest thing you had to do at work?
14. What do you know about this company?
15. And why do you work to for us?
16. What type of management style do you respond best to?
17. What do you find most attractive about this jobs?
18. What seems least attractive about this job?
19. What attracts you to a job?
20. What is this job role all about and what do you think you’ll be delivering?
21. How long do you see yourself at this company?
22. How you manage people?
23. Have you considering other ways of management?
24. What do you think makes a good manager?
25. What attributes do you look for in people you are recruiting?
26. Have you ever had to sack(fire) somebody, how did it go, what would you do differently?
27. Why are you leaving your current employer?
28. Tell me about a situation you have been in beyond your ability and explain how your resolved it.
29. Do you think you have reached your full potential?
30. What is your opinion on personal training and development?
31. What do you admire in your current boss?
32. What do you find difficult when dealing with your current boss?
33. What do you feel this position should pay?
34. What are your long term goals?
35. How do you plan to achieve those goals?
36. Are you happy with your career progression so far?
37. Tell me something about yourself that is relevant to your application that isn’t on your CV.
38. Are you willing to travel for work?
39. What are your current responsibilities? 
40. What major challenges and problems did you face? How did you handle them?
41. Which was most / least rewarding part of your last job?
42. What was the biggest success/ failure in this position?
43. How do you feel about performance related pay?
44. Why are you leaving your job?
45. Why were you sacked?
46. If I asked your friends why to hire you, what would the say?
47. Do you prefer to work independently or on a team?
48. Tell about a example of you working well in a team.
49. What type of work environment do you prefer?
50. Describe a difficult work situation / project and how you overcame it.
51. How do you evaluate success?
52. What do you find interesting about this job?
53. Why do you want this position?
54. What experience have you got that is applicable?
55. Why should we give you the job?
56. What do you know about this company?
57. What would working at this company suit you?
58. Do challenges excite or scare you?
59. What challenges can you see in this position?
60. Explain a situation that you demonstrated being able to work with little guidance.
61. What makes you tick out of work?
62. Do you have any questions about the role that I have not covered?
63. What salary do you require?
64. Who are our main competitors?
65. Which ones do you think we can learn from?
66. What important trends do you see in our industry?
67. What websites do you visit and why?
68. Who are the voices or personalities in our industry?

Post Interview: Questions To Ask Yourself


1. Are they smart enough for the job?

2. Will they do the job better than I would do it?

3. What is their attitude?

4. Are they keen to learn new skills?

5. Can you see yourself getting on with them (imagine an informal setting for a realistic view)
6. Are they a short term fix or long term asset?

7. How will the rest of the team respond to them?

8. What is their motivation for taking the job?

9. What was my gut feeling towards them?

Good luck with your interviewing and remember you can train new skills but it is really hard to change attitude.

Alan Mulally – FordJoeDuck

These CEO’s are taking a pay pounding, some for the good of the company, some because of shareholder and board pressure and some because of lower stock options. These figures are based on information published by the companies, some relate to pay going forward and others for last year. It’s clear that some CEOs are leading the way forward out the of the current economic problems whilst others are being pushed into the pay cuts. Overall, according to Forbes, chief executives of the 500 biggest American companies took an average 11% reduction in overall compensation in 2008.

CEO Pay Cut List 2009

Ford CEO Alan Mulally – 37% Cut of $8.1 million
The ex-Boeing exec takes a big cut but continues to lead Ford through the financial problems.
Source: Auto Blog

Chevron CEO David O’Reilly – 39% Cut of $12.3 million
This drop was mainly down to stock awards, which dropped a massive 58% from 2007.
Source: Mercury News

Macquarie Group CEO Nicholas Moore – 99% Cut of $19.7 million
This Australian CEO saw his pay cut to $A290,756 from $A27 million.
Source: Tradingmarkets

Inverness Medical Innovations CEO Ron Zwanziger – 64% Cut of $3.83 million
Pay was cut in 2008 despite a more than doubling of the company’s revenue, although the company still runs at net loss.
Source: Bizjournals

Constellation Energy CEO Shattuck – 49% Cut of $7.5 million
In the year Constellation lost 80% of it’s stock value its CEO takes a cut of 49%.
Source: Bizjournals

Veolia Environment CEO Henri Proglio – 36% Cut of $1.2 million
This European water company CEO earned 1.62 million euros in 2008 compared with 2.52 million euros in 2007.
Source: Daily Herald

Cognex’s CEO Robert Shillman – 100% Cut of $1.8 million
Faced with laying people off Shillman asked senior managers to slice 10% of their pay. He backed it up with a larger cut to his pay. “And I decided to take a 100 percent cut.”, Shillman said.
Source: Tradingmarkets

United Health CEO Stephen Hemsley – 36% Cut of $1.8 million
United Health said the CEO declined a bonus increase last year due to the challenges in 2008. The proxy said “the challenging economic circumstances” was the issue.
Source: Kare11

Former General Motors Chairman & CEO Wagoner – 50% Cut of $2.2 million
Although Wagoner has now left GM he was due for a 50 percent pay cut. Additionally Vice Chairmen John Devine, Bob Lutz and Fritz Henderson have salary cuts of 30%.
Source: CBSNews

Elan CEO Kelly Martin – 56% Cut of $1 million
According to BNet Kelly Martin earned $830,496 last year, compared to $1.9m the year before.
Source: Bnet

Biosphere Medical CEO Richard Faleschini – 35% Cut of $0.61 million
Losses at this company which makes blood-clotting technologies, grew to $6.07 million in 2008.
Source: Bizjournals

Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd – 20% Cut of $0.28 million
The 20% is misleading as this based (in this case) on base salary only. Last year Hurd’s compensation was $42 million so a drop of $280,000 isn’t going to cause concern.
Source: Siliconbeat

Manpower CEO Jeffrey Joerres – 65% Cut of $2.5 million
This dramatic drop of pay is a sign of the economic times.
Source: Bizjournals

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly – 10% Cut of $0.065 million
Base pay cut only. This is interesting as the Southwest CEO only had a base level salary rise last July.
Source: Reuters

The list has a definite online slant (I don’t have much experience in offline). Many channels are low cost or free just requiring time to get them going.

Please Help: Do have channels and ideas to add to the list? Please contribute your ideas in the comments at the bottom of this post

Search Marketing

• Paid Search or PPC – Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, plus lots more smaller players
• Search Engine Optimization – The best advertising channel for many businesses
• Local Search – Free local listing on Google Maps

Blogging

• Blogging – Showcase your products or expertise through your blog. Works great for service based business in which information can be given away
• RSS – Feed out your blog content direct to RSS subscribers
• Link Bait Content – Generate buzz and links through content
• Guest Posting – Guest post on authority blogs
• Paid Blog Posts – Reviewme

Social Networking Sites

• Stumbleupon – Paid and free models
• Twitter – Follow and connect with prospective customers and keep in touch with existing
• Facebook Ads – Demographic and geotarget ads can work for DM
• MySpace Ads
• Facebook Profiles/Pages – Apps / fans pages / personal profiles
• Mass Social News Sites – A story on digg or reddit may bring your site down!
• Niche Social News Sites – Eg Sphinn for SEO
• In Social Apps Ads – Socialmedia.com, fbx
• Forum Signature – Advertise in your forum signature

Email

• Blanket Mass Email – This is spam, so don’t do it.
• Email database – buy/rent – Send your message to an opt in bought database
• Email Shot Sponsorship – Sponsor a targeted website’s email shot
• Email Newsletter – A regular reason to stay in touch with your customers
• Application Emails – You can add marketing messages to other automated type emails you are sending out
• Targeted Sales Email – The better researched and targeted your email (recipient and email copy) the better
• Personal Email Footer – Add marketing messages at the bottom of your emails

Content Promotion

• Podcasts and itunes
• Online Videos – Start a channel and publish on YouTube
• Articles – Submit articles to ezinearticles & other article sites
• Teleseminars
• Free eBooks – build a targeted database by giving something away
• Question and Answer Websites – Yahoo Answers, Blurtit, Answerbag, WikiAnswers

Online Other

• Web Directories – Dmoz and Yahoo
• Widgets & Toolbars
• Virtual worlds, Secondlife – Would love to hear if this has worked for anyone
• Text Ads
• ISP level advertising – NebuAds
• Behavioral Targeting
• Spyware / Adware
• In Game Ads
• Gamevitorials – Make a Flash game for your brand

Mobile

• Mobile Search
• Mobile Ad networks
• Bluetooth Push
• Mobile Apps – iPhone and Android Apps
• SMS

Viral

• Viral – Google ‘will it blend’ for an example
• Viral Seeding – Paid version seeding the above
• Viral Loop – Gold dust, if the application spreads itself like Hotmail

Online Display

• Banner Ads – Remember to try the ad exchanges for low CPM’s
• Video Ads – Embedded ads in videos
• Popups / Popunders
• In Line Ads – Kontera, Vibrant Media
• Contextual Text/Banner Networks – Google Adsense
• Blog Ad Networks – BuySellAds, Federated Media
• Niche Banner Ads – Eg w00tmedia.net for cult websites

Online Marketplaces

• eBay – Sell anything on eBay
• Amazon Marketplace
• Supplier Portals – Wholesale/Import/Export Portals
• Service marketplaces – Get projects from elance & guru
• Classified Ads – Free ads on Craiglist, Gumtree & Google Base
• Niche Online Storefronts – eg Dreamstime for Images

Online Networking

• Linkedin – Build a network and Inmail rocks
• Niche Online Communities – For example econsultancy
• IM – Instant Messengers – Build your contact lists MSN, Gtalk, Skype

Distribution Channels

• Wholesalers
• Exporters
• Retailers

Online PR

• Local and Industry Directories
• Profile Page Promotion – From Wikipedia to Flickr
• Blog Reviews – Get your products reviewed by top bloggers to generate buzz

Offline PR

• Entering Business Competitions
• Corporate Events
• Interviews and quotes in Publications
• Writing for Publications – With a bio of course!
• Publicity Stunts
• Celeb Endorsements

Partnership Marketing

• Online Affiliate Programs
• Joint Ventures

Networking

• Corporate Entertainment
• Personal Networking – Build a great black book & keep in touch
• Tradeshow / Seminars – Go to events, places & seminars your clients are going to be & rub shoulders

Tradeshows

• Speaking engagements
• Stands
• Tradeshow Sponsorship
• Run Your Own Seminar

Promotional Material

• Flyers
• Branded Items
• Catalogues and Brochures
• Business Cards
• Stickers
• Promotional Gifts

Signage

• Vehicle Lettering & Car Stickers
• On Site Billboards – Construction industry standard
• Store Front Signs
• Walking Sandwich Boards – Also pointer sign holders

Cinema

• In Film Product Placement
• Pre Roll Ads

Television

• TV Ads
• Program Sponsorship
• Product Placement

Radio

• Radio Ads

Radio

• Program Sponsorship
• Product Placement

Outdoor Display

• Road side billboards
• Underground or Subways
• Buses and Vehicles – Regional target via routes
• Restrooms Billboards

Sponsorship

• Team Sponsorship
• Awards Sponsorship
• Bursary Sponsorship

Direct Marketing

• Directory Enquiries SMS Sponsorship
• SMS List Marketing
• Telesales Cold Calling
• Mailshots
• Personal handout
• Door to Door Cold Calling

Print

• Magazine Ads
• Newspaper Ads
• Publication Product Placement

Directories

• Yellow Pages – Plus other large directories
• Trade Directories

Doing Business Well

• Word of Mouth – If your product is awesome it will spread
• Referrals – Ok, so it’s the same as the above