There are two lemonade stands.  The first has a couple kids giving you some warm lemon koolaid and charge you a buck for it.  The second stand is much better.

The other stand is different. The lemonade is free, but there’s a big tip jar. When you pull up, the owner of the stand beams as only a proud eleven year old girl can beam. She takes her time and reaches into a pail filled with ice and lemons. She pulls out a lemon. Slices it. Then she squeezes it with a clever little hand juicer.

You will have to check out the article at Seth Godin’s blog, “The lesson from two lemonaid stands”

One stand focuses on a real quality product, while the other goes for a quantity.  Considering how much time I spent with my kool-aid stands when I was a kid, it’s interesting to think about what if this was the business model.  My friend and I were very good at driving quantity, but looking back on it we could have done more.

Even if we didn’t adopt the free/tipped model, there were certainly improvements that could have been made.  It is weird to think about just how many things were done wrong in our many campaigns.  For example, why were we advertising our low price and then lowering it?  Does anybody really care if your koolaid is twenty cents or ten cents?  If they are going to stop, then they will stop.

Oh well, it doesn’t do any good to point out flaws in a 9 year old’s business plan from years ago.  Kids are trying to make some money, not get a masters in marketing.  Something about the innocence of the whole thing really does help to sell a lot of that sugary water.

Podcasting has been around for a couple of years now, and it is still growing. If you don’t have a podcast of your own yet, don’t worry: there is still room for growth. Right now the people who already have a podcast have a leg up, but with some determination and a little direction you can not only catch up, but shoot past the incumbents.

You can create a podcast about pretty much anything and get it listed through iTunes for free. Your users have a few other options for downloading as well. They could get the episodes automatically from a number of other programs or manually from your web site.

Choosing a niche topic could be a hurdle. If you are doing it for your business or website, you most likely already have a topic that could be expanded upon. If you want to do one for fun, make sure you choose something that will last. I can’t tell you how many times I have subscribed to a new podcast only to be waiting months for another episode before sadly giving up on what could have been a great series.

If you are not sure why you would want to have a podcast, let me tell you why you NEED a podcast.

Become a recognized expert in the topic

Anyone can start a website or a blog about a topic, but that doesn’t make them an expert. Anybody with enough money or credit can open up a business, regardless of if they actually care about what they are selling or doing. Adding a podcast screams passion for your business, your hobby, and your niche.

If you take the time to make a podcast, you develop a reputation and a voice for your industry. If you know what you are talking about and do a decent production job, then you could easily be THE voice of your industry. When somebody needs to know about buying purple elephant guns, who are they going to turn to: the person with a minuscule website that instructs users to stop into the store but hasn’t been updated since 2003, or the person who has a one hundred page site with 89 separate audio reviews about different purple elephant guns?

I’m going to give my business to the person who keeps their information current, demonstrating a passion for their industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re painting houses, cooking, or manufacturing rubber chickens – if you are passionate, it will show. Even if you don’t consider yourself an expert yet, pick something you love and go for it. You will gain more experience and knowledge the more you podcast, and eventually you will be guru of your topic.

Minimal costs to produce and deliver

Do you know how much it costs to make a podcast? The answer can vary, but you could have one up today basically for free. You can make a podcast with the cheap plastic microphone that comes with your computer. It will sound like a cheap plastic microphone that comes with your computer, but you can do it.

You can grab a microphone for around twenty five bucks that will sound okay, or you can go all out! The sky is the limit. However, studio grade equipment might be a waste for a podcast recorded in a high traffic area with inherent background noise. The most expensive equipment won’t always give you a better sound.

Bandwidth is cheap. Storage on the internet is cheap. Domain names are cheap. Recording software is cheap. A decent headset and microphone is cheap.

If you already have a website, it’s simply a matter of getting a microphone and installing some free software.

Humanize your image

Listening to a passionate voice filled with inflection and emotion is so much more persuasive than text alone. Knowing there is a real person involved creates a connection for your audience. Beyond simply sharing an interest in the topic, listeners will feel like they know you, even if you don’t ever get a chance to meet them. I have bought products created or written by people who I have this connection with. I trust the person, not their companies.

Steve Jobs is a human, and Steve Jobs is also Apple. Bill Gates is a human, but Bill Gates is certainly not Microsoft. He may have started Microsoft and perhaps was at one time the company’s face but who is the human image of Microsoft now? It’s John Hodgman, the “and I’m a PC” guy from Apple’s commercials. In Job’s somewhat healthier days, he would give the keynote addresses and introduce new products and services. Steve was the spokesperson for Apple, and made Apple more than another Silicon Valley technology company. Bill Gates would have to spend a lot more to get the same results.

Talk shows are nothing without the unique personalities providing a face for them. The jokes don’t tell themselves, and text transcripts of jokes are never as good as a solid delivery.

Expand your brand

The more ways people can consume your information, the more ways you can bring in interest. I have checked out many sites due to podcasts. I found them in iTunes and now swing by the sites from time to time.

Now I’ve got them on my radar. I will know about anything new that they do.

I wouldn’t have known that they even existed if they never produced that podcast.

From all of my projects, I have found that having other people watching and interested makes doing the work seem more like fun. It’s marketing but it is not quite the same as traditional marketing where you get out there and start beating on doors.

Very Targeted Consumers

While I haven’t checked out the scene for purple elephant guns lately, there are obscure and highly targeted niches that have more listeners than current podcasters are covering. If you start downloading podcasts, it is because you are interested in the topic. Beyond that you are interested enough to seek out, subscribe, download, and invest time listening to a very specific topic.

The only reason to go through the effort (it is a minimal effort, but it does take actions on the end users part) is because you care about a given topic.

If you produce a great podcast on a popular topic, you can gain quite a following. Even a mediocre podcast in a topic with less competition can gain quite a following. Not just a following, but people who actually care.

Start Today!

It is much cheaper to keep a current customer than it is to find a new one. This is one of the first things you learn in any business or marketing class. A podcast is a great feature to help you get a larger internet footprint.

Podcasting isn’t going away. People are out there downloading them every day. Every day new ones are being recorded. If you want to start, now is the best time to do so. Grab your mike, and get going! Those purple elephant guns aren’t going to talk about themselves.

Quite some time ago on Aridni I wrote about a dilemma I had in getting a project done.  I didn’t have the technical skill to actually write the software myself and I did not have the time to learn it adequately enough.

Now that I am actively trying to restrict the number of projects I’m working on, I wanted to get these ideas out of my head.  They are not quite as powerful as they were when the ideas were born, but they might be of interest to someone out there.  If you decide you want to take on one of the projects, great!  Go for it.  I’ll even help you with getting hosting.

The three projects are right after the break.  They are ‘Hivemind Snapshot Project‘, ‘Articles of Organization and Operating Agreement Generator‘, and ‘Auto-task generation… thing‘

Hopefully you will find at least one of them useful!

(Continue reading this article…)

Have you been wondering if now is a time to start your new business or quit your old project? Right now is a great time to get going with your new business. There are plenty of opportunities out there and with so many people focused on the recession or the depression or whatever you want to call it, there is a perfect distraction away from what you are doing.

Building something amazing.

It is interesting that this company is selling phone services, but still they made a great video. So get out there. and get focused. Get determined. And when the economy is running full steam again, you will be ready.

There’s no denying that selling your house can be a stressful decision. Many factors may have led you to this point. You might be ready for something bigger or need something smaller. You might have an amazing new job in an amazing new city. If it’s a question of sizing up or sizing down, you won’t be pressured to sell within a set amount of time. On the other hand, if you need to start your new job in three months, the pressure will be on to sell as quickly as possible. Knowing how to navigate the ins and outs of the real estate market takes a little ingenuity, but with the right resources – including a competent real estate agent – you’re sure to be looking at a “SOLD” sign in your front yard before too long.

Timing Is Everything

Well, timing may not be everything, but it’s important. If you’re not pressured to sell your house quickly, consider yourself lucky. Feel free to skip ahead to the next section. If, on the other hand, you’re faced with a pressing situation, like a new job that requires you to relocate, you’ll need to act quickly and efficiently to get the ball rolling.

As soon as you even suspect that a transfer or relocation may be possible, get in touch with a real estate agent and hammer out details like what a reasonable asking price might be. If the relocation does, indeed, happen, you’ll be that much further along in the process, and listing your house will just mean filling out some paperwork and keeping the place picked up for showings.

As a new employee about to relocate, you’re well within your right to contact your new employer to request a deferment of your start date by a few months. If your new job is set to start in the middle of the winter, for example, you’d be much better off waiting a few months to relocate to try to sell your home when the real estate market is at its peak in the warmer months.

Wait for the Warm Months

People buy houses when it’s nice out, not when there’s snow and ice on the ground. Showing a house with a lush, green front yard and trees full of leaves is a boon to real estate agents everywhere. When the sun is shining and the grass is green, potential buyers have an easier time imagining their new life in the house.

There’s no getting around the fact that winter is a terrible time to put your house up for sale. Viewers will traipse in and out with slush covered boots, the trees are bare, and everything is gray and overcast. If you can wait for the warmer months, you absolutely should. Also, potential buyers are much more open to discussing how much things like property taxes, home insurance policies, and general upkeep will cost them when they can hear birds chirping and brooks babbling.

A Special Note About the Current Real Estate Market

If you can avoid selling your house right now, you should. With property values at record lows, the current market is nowhere close to being in the seller’s favor. Upside-down mortgages (when the balance of the mortgage exceeds the value of the property), short sales (when a seller is forced to sell the house for less than the balance of the mortgage), and foreclosures are an increasing reality. Buyers certainly have the upper hand in the current real estate market, and can make demands that, even just four or five years ago, would have been considered insulting to the seller.

This doesn’t mean that all hope is lost, though. If you still decide that you want to sell your home, prepare yourself to be patient, and hold off listing until the weather and time of year are on your side. Needless to say, the best time to sell is when you can, at the very least, recoup your initial investment on the property. Give yourself as much time as possible, which will prove to be the most important factor to selling successfully.