Bryan has written a very useful article for anyone who is at all concerned with Web Analytics.  The 7 sins he outlines are:

1. Improper Implementation
2. No Goals Setup
3. No Segmentation
4. Paying Too Much Attention to Irrelevant Data
5. Not Setting up Milestone Events Documentation
6. Not Combining Quantitative Data with Qualitative Data
7. Not Taking Action On the Data

To see the detail on this visit his site at FutureNow.

Remember when a new email in your inbox was as exciting as the postman dropping off a card from grandma with a $5 bill in it? Those days are over. Now email is a crushing tsunami.

The average corporate email account receives 18 MB of mail and attachments each business day, according to the analyst firm Radicati Group; the figure is projected to grow to 28 MB a day by 2011.

The tricks for managing email and ensuring that it gets read are easy:

• Write stronger subject lines help recipients better understand why they received an email and make it easier to search for in the future. (Instead of “Here’s what you asked for” as a heading, the class encourages specifics such as “Delivery: 2008 staffing model for small-business unit.”)
•  Sculpting the body text matters, too: Using bullet points and underlining or bolding text make messages more clear and concise.
• Use IM to initiate conversation rather than writing a poor email
• Pick up the phone.

While this may not stop you from receiving thousands of emails each day, it may help in raising the quality of emails and make it easier to find what you are looking for.

I would have found this article really funny if it wasn’t so true.  Then imagine working with 4 or 5 companies in exactly the same situation and realise that you no longer have a life.

For the last 7 months I have been working on a number of projects, two of my own (em3ideal and itsmywebmaster) as well as itsmylaw, itsmyvineyard, frisby adams and challis for others.  At this time we are making good progress.

But as I read the article by Wil I realise that I am in that startup company that he talks about.

Welcome to the first day of your new startup job! We’re so excited that you’ve decided to be part of our venture. You’re going to find that compared to your old job at a big, stodgy corporation, a startup is a totally different world.

To get you acclimated to the change, let me walk you through the perks and benefits of your new job while you settle in.

• We have a Premium Coffee Service
• Your New Computer is Already Configured
• Your Phone Number is Easy to Remember
• You Now have Three Assistants
• You Set your own Travel Budget
• Take as much Vacation as You Want
• Our Hours are Super Flexible
• You Call the Shots

Just don’t forget that you really aren’t going to get paid in cash this week. Or next week. Or next month. Isn’t a startup great?

Lagging the market is something I seem to do well, but I was not caught out by this change.  Yahoo Photo’s comes to an end while they shift thier focus on to Flickr.

What I do not understand is why Yahoo cannot just arrange the migration and then tell us…  Here is the news straight from Yahoo!

Dear Yahoo! Photos user,

For some time now, we’ve supported two great photo sharing services: Yahoo! Photos and Flickr. But even good things come to an end, and we’ve decided to close Yahoo! Photos to focus all our efforts on Flickr — the award-winning photo sharing community that TIME Magazine has called “completely addictive.”

We will officially close Yahoo! Photos on Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 9 p.m. PDT. Until then, we are offering you the opportunity to move to another photo sharing service (Flickr, KODAK Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Photobucket), download your original-resolution photos back to your computer, or buy an archive CD from our featured partner (for users of the New Yahoo! Photos only). All you need to do is tell us what to do with your photos before we close, after which any photos remaining on Yahoo! Photos will be deleted and no longer accessible.

Of course, we hope you’ll join us at Flickr (you can even use your Yahoo! ID), but we also realize that Flickr may not be for everyone. In the end, we want you to find the service that’s right for you, and we hope you take some time to learn more about your options before making this important decision.

Please give us your decision by Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 9 p.m. PDT. After that time, any photos remaining in Yahoo! Photos will be deleted. Click here to make your decision, or review a list of our frequently asked questions.

Thanks for being a part of the Web’s largest photo sharing service — we hope to see you over at Flickr!

The Yahoo! Photos team

When you are running your own business it is really hard to turn down the opportunity for work, but sometimes that is actually the best course of action.

I have come to the conclusion that my “gut feel” about someone at the first meeting is right.  If I do not feel good or just feel uneasy, no matter how “good an opportunity” it may be.  I should walk away.

If you do not take the decisive action in the early stages of a relationship, it can often lead to a huge amount of time and effort being wasted.

So for the second time in 6 months I have had to invoke the catch phrase from the show “The Apprentice” – You’re Fired!

Please drop me a line either via the comments or directly by email at mike@mather.com.

I look forward to hearing from you.

I must be slow, I have just come across a site called prosper.com which is into People-to-people lending, which they describe as ”an old idea that’s new again”.  I like this

The principle is simple

People who need money request it, and other people bid for the privilege of lending it to them. Prosper makes sure everything is safe, fair and easy. Here’s how it works:

I like this idea that you can “invest” some of your spare cash into helping other people solve their problems.  There is a risk with this process, they can default and not repay the loan, but the principle is that you lend a little to a lot of people, rather than a lot to just one.

Why is this so good?  Well not only can you get interest rates of over 20%, which is much better than the money saved in the bank, but you can actually help people achieve their goals.

I think this is something that we should all look into, and not just for the money.

He is adopting an idea from John Chow by featuring a selection of different links in exchange for a post about his blog on your site.

To make this work he has some rules’ to ensure that the posts work and everyone wins. 

I like this idea, it make a change to see someone out there helping others.

So in an attempt to get this kicked off I am posting this on two of my blogs with the idea of helping raise awareness of the great link exchange.

I have enjoyed reading Will Schroter’s newsletters as he gets to the point.  He has just started to blog with the first one I have read being about starting a company…

Starting a company isn’t a wondrous, magical experience like visiting Venice or dancing at your wedding. It’s a pain in the ass. It breeds anxiety, insecurity and often bankruptcy. And it’s the only game I want to play.

If you want to find a motivational speaker, go to a Tony Robbins lecture. If you want a swift kick in the ass about how startups really work then here you go…

For more of his direct approach go here.