The month of March is all about #trypod. It's a month long campaign between dozens of podcast producers to get people who are podcast fanatics (that's me) to recommend podcasts to others (that's you). Since I find podcasts so valuable I'm helping out.
I'm going to share my favorite podcasts and why they're my favorite. I'll also share some podcasts I used to love and why I no longer listen to them. And then I'll share how I listen to my podcasts efficiently.
It's been more than 6 months since I left my job. And when someone asks me what I do I still don't know how to answer. Because I've done a bunch of things.
So it's hard to answer. Do I go with what I'm working on today? Do I go with what I've been doing the longest? Or do I go with what I want to be working on?
I've found that what I do on a week to week basis varies quite a bit. But my mission has been pretty consistent:
Help people build their own business
And e-commerce is an arena where I have a lot of expertise and can help them succeed.
Some people obsess over plans. They want to have a 1, 5, & 10 year plan. And they stick to these plans even when they shouldn't. And I think this is because many people don't know how to make an impact in this world without large & complicated plans.
But large and complicated plans don't guarantee you make an impact. They just guarantee you'll accomplish some thing at some point. And this resonates with something that Seth Godin said:
A ten-year plan is absurd. Impossible, not particularly worth wasting time on. On the other hand, a ten-year commitment is precisely what's required if you want to be sure to make an impact.
And this is how I'm approaching my business. I have a mission: to help people build businesses. And anything that falls under that mission is something I would consider working on.
I have a 2-3 month plan and when I finish that plan then I start a new 2-3 month plan.
I'm working on different course ideas, talking to companies, and helping individuals. And my plans keep changing. And for right now that's okay. I'm trying lots of things and figuring out where I can make the most impact.
It's still a tough question when someone asks me what I do. But at least now I answer with:
I help people build online stores.
It covers my mission, provides a hook if they're interested, and it keeps my options open.
So if you have trouble answering the “what do you do question” just think about your mission. It's the most true thing you can say anyway. You can always go into more detail if they express interest.
If you’ve had your site for a while you’ll likely have experienced spam in your analytics. I know I have.
Google Analytics Language Spam
Thursday morning was cold. The weather was slightly foggy & overcast, and I foolishly only brought running shorts & a t-shirt. Despite the conditions I ran 3.2 miles and I had an 8:57 minute pace which is the best time I've had in over a year!
This past year I've been hot & cold with running. On average I ran twice a month. But there were months where I didn't run at all. And one month where I ran eight times. There was no consistency. And every time I started running after a break I had to start all over again. Running 12 minute miles which is pretty bad for me.
Over the last few weeks I've been talking to WooCommerce store owners. I've been asking them questions about what they're struggling with, what they want to learn about, and where they want to go.
I've been asking these sorts of questions for the last couple of years. But recently I've heard different responses:
“There’s a perception in the community that Automattic is taking over all the things”
“I’ve been using [WooCommerce] since 2011. It was pretty crap back then.”
“The Woo people were the least interesting, most boring, most useless talks.”
I'm getting lots of positive feedback but I've seen an increase in negative feedback.
It was July and I was in Berlin for the WooTrip, an annual gathering of all my coworkers working on WooCommerce. I was meeting new people, I was learning… and I was also planning on leaving.
That week, I had a choice to make. One option was a rock and the other a hard place.
I've been creating courses for Lynda.com since last summer and I finally released the course that I've been dying to work on. It's actually the very first course that I pitched to them. Hint: it involves WordPress + eCommerce. Today I'm pleased to announce that WordPress Ecommerce: WooCommerce is available on Lynda.com.
One of the most effective ways to block spam is also one of the most complex. You can setup a filter to only record data that uses a valid host name. Now a hostname is the name of the website you're visiting (aka your website domain) so you should be able to list them on your fingers.
Crawler spam is what happens when a bot crawls through your site and leave fake data. They might leave a fake referral just to get you to check out the referring website.
Wowzors I must be improving my writing. Look at these spikes on social media!
In fact I've had this exact thing happen. I was looking at my analytics and thought someone mentioned one of my articles on Reddit because over a few day period I got several hundred visits. I wasted my time digging through analytics to try to find the exact post.
If you've been digging through your analytics you may have noticed some unusual data. If I go to my reporting page and scroll down I'll see a list of languages used on my site. And some of them are definitely spam.
Google Analytics language spam
In fact over the last month I've had over 1,000 spam visits. Those visits are enough to skew my data tarnishing any decisions based off of that data. Ex.
Wow this post is doing great – we should write more like it!
With just a bit of filtering we can remove this language spam which will make it easier to navigate our reports and it will give us much better data.