I’ve recently thought of my own experience hiring, firing and creating a partnership with someone. That is because I wasn’t always successful and on a few occasions it ended up really bad.

First time I worked with someone, I investigated the guy really well because on the internet you can never know. I managed to choose the right person because I had him as a partner for about 3 years and he never tried to scam me.

Then I tried to teach some guy from Bulgaria how to make money on the internet because his family had really big issues. I succeeded again, but the family problems turned out to be fake and the guy left with no word to me. I found out later that he had put up another idea involving HYIP pyramid scheme. So I guess this turned out bad.

The list can continue as I always got involved with people when creating something on the internet but I think, I’d better tell you what I think of hiring or firing.

Hire only if you need

I’ve been lured a few times to hiring someone just because they were family or because they needed some fast cash. You should get quality for the money you spend. You shouldn’t choose someone just because you feel sorry he lost the job. It won’t be fair for your company or for the employees you already have.

If you have some open spaces in your company then you can go ahead and search, otherwise, put the hiring away. If you don’t need a PHP programmer, don’t hire one with the thought of using him in a few months.

How to hire someone?

It’s not very hard to get people to call you or email you with their applications. Forums, fliers, local newspapers, Craiglist or a bunch of other resources can help you find possible candidates. However, that’s not the hardest part.

After getting some people that you think are fit for your needs you should test them somehow because you need to know them, you need to trust them. So, pay them low in the beginning and then you will know if it’s the right person.

How to fire someone?

If you already made the mistake of choosing the bad employee for the job, or if you just need to cut some costs you should be able to fire someone. If you will keep them on board, results may go from worse to much worse. Why not save your business by firing someone if you can do it.

Some people say you should follow rules when firing someone, like timing it wisely. Do it early in the week and early in the day, and never do it before a weekend or a holiday. I say that’s bull, because if I am not satisfied with the service anymore, I shouldn’t lose the money for the whole week just to make sure the employee won’t be upset over the weekend.

I do agree, that when you let someone go you should be backed with some good reasons. Do not point to only one event or the person you’re firing will think you are just trying to get rid of him. Explain the reasons why he’s not filling the job requirements.

Great news for Jane May and John Anthony of CareerRamblings.com because it looks like their Sitepoint auction ended up, and the final price was $20,000. The site where they had all kinds of tips and career advices, managed in just about 7 months to get a PR6 and a heavily targeted audience.

If you ask me, the site was started from the beginning with the idea of being sold in the near future. Jane and John started their project really well and the best argument is the $20,000 price paid by Impulse Communication, also the owner of Bored.com. I don’t think the price is too high since they were making around $1800 with almost 38,000 unique visitors a month.

How CareerRamblings.com achieved success

They hired student (educated) writers for those fancy articles you’ve read on their site which of course they paid. That’s how they managed to offer both quality and quantity. However this is something I’ve read in the Sitepoint auction when they presented the product in details, and Jane May never mentioned it on the blog.

Since this is a niche blog dedicated to people looking for career advices (and they are so many) it was really easy to be picked up by other authority websites, which linked to them. Another way of getting traffic for CareerRamblings.com was guest blogging on JohnChow and other known blogs, which really gave them some respect.

My conclusion is that the deal is great and that these guys got a really nice return on their investment. Congratulations.

It’s the summer, you’ve worked for the last 5-6 months and you need a vacation. You’re in the same routine working for a buck, many of you writing content for their readers and you need a small change. I can also add, 104 F degrees in my city, so imagine what a beautiful experience I’m having when I go outside, when I sleep or when I go out for a beer.

1. Go far, far far away

I advise you to take a vacation away from your home. If you can afford, go abroad. See places and people that you’ve never seen before. See if you can fly (if you don’t fear it) to the place you’re going, because it’s psychologically tested that flying is the sign of freedom, just like a bird that seems to have no worries.

2. It can keep you healthier and more productive

Taking time off to recharge your batteries is a great way to keep stress levels low, therefore in the long run it’s a way of staying healthier. Vacations can soothe the soul and

3. You don’t need the anxiety pill

When you leave your home for a vacation, from the moment you close your door you’re leaving all your problems between the walls. Your mind is set to take what’s best from the places you’re about to see. Pictures, souvenirs, foods, beaches, mountains, oceans or seas, fishing or any other activities from your holiday are all going to relax and increase your concentration.

4. Strengthen a relationship

Take your love ones with you, on your vacation. You will enjoy life with someone that you care about, which is a way of keeping bonds strong. These people are those that will help you get through hard times, when you get back to your working habits. It’s worth it!

5. Increase your creativity

Do you need to be creative? Sure. A vacation is the perfect way to inspire your work (for example a designer), to reconnect with yourself and become “the best” again.

“Should a blogger be more or less credible than a reporter for the New York Times?” is the question that is really bugging me for the last few weeks. I saw how Engadget managed to move Apple Inc quotation on the stock exchange, when they released internal news about the company. This is the power of the blog, but should we trust Engadget or any other blogs more or less than an offline magazine because the news turned out to be nothing but fake (how’s that Jason Calacanis? Engadget publishes everything they get in their email, TOO?).

However, my other question is, is the blogger a real journalist? Yes!

Bloggers are the new storytellers

I agree that false alarm stories were published on big blogs, but You have to agree with me that it happens with mainstream magazine, too. For those that think a blogger is someone that won’t fact-check a story I am here to tell you different because I’ve read a survey made by PewInternet which really makes it very clear: bloggers do check their sources! Even if you think at Engadget, the email they’ve got their eyes on, was really from the Apple system. But let’s see what the survey says.

Only one-third of bloggers see blogging as a form of journalism. Yet many check facts and cite original sources.

34% of bloggers consider their blog a form of journalism

57% of bloggers include links to original sources either “sometimes” or “often”.

56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post either “sometimes” or “often”.

However, I am aware that many bloggers publish anything hot they get for a little more traffic (yeah I remember Jason Calacanis saying ValleyWag will eat everything you mail them) but it’s not the general trend. Also, if I think, there are mainstream blurry magazines that publish anything just to fill all their pages, I don’t think a journalist from CNN is more credible than Michael Arlington from TechCrunch.

One last thing worth to mention. If the blog wouldn’t have power, believe me not as many journalists would come up with a personal or company blog, so yes, I think blogging is the new face of journalism.

If anyone that’s not a blogger or a mainstream journalist, I would really love to see what you think.

It’s been a while since I haven’t found such a good story on Digg, that it’s not Apple, iPhone, Microsoft sucks or anything like that. It’s the story of two guys that used to work in GoDaddy and managed to create Zenter, the online version of PowerPoint, which was later bought by Google. Now that’s a great story because it only took them 6 months to get bought.

What I am going to do now is a little different from what I did so far. I will re-write these guys’ article but thinking of making money online. After reading it, I realized these ideas work great if you are starting a new blog for example and couldn’t resist.

• Don’t focus on monetizing the site. Their example with the 70y old lady looking for a husband is great. It will happen to you when you least expect it, so why get stressed out thinking of how to increase your earnings.
• Focus instead on your visitors and offer them quality articles, not only ads. Check your comments and establish a relationship with them. If they want certain articles, research and give them what they want. You will increase your RSS readers if you deliver what’s needed.
• Don’t be afraid to tackle the giants. I love this one the most, because even if you are starting-up many of the top bloggers may not be better than you. If you disagree with what the pro bloggers in your niche say, do not hesitate to correct them or make your voice heard.
  ps: usually the dot com moguls enjoy a good debate, so you may take advantage of that.
• Ignoring limitations. Many will think why shouldn’t I set some limits. Well don’t get me wrong but you should. This is however something different. If you ever come up with an issue that you think it’s unsolvable, don’t embrace “NO”, try to find a way around the problem, around limitations. If you don’t think negative you will seek solutions from different angles, and actually find one in the end.
  
• Pay attention to the details. These guys said that if you think your product is 80% done then you have another 80% to go. What a good one. Think if your blog wouldn’t have a “home” button and your visitor would come directly to a post you’ve wrote. Where does he go next? AWAY! So, test your blog theme before you launch and ask your visitors what else, they need added.

The Zenter guys, Wayne Crosby and Robby Walker also mentioned the fact that you should have an understanding spouse. I don’t know what I can say since I am single but I am sure you need one if you have some metal on your finger.

So, for those of you that needed some hints to start a blog (business), keep in mind that the online version of PowerPoint got acquired by Google only after 6 months of work. How good are these guys? Great!

In a recent discussion with someone trying to make money on the internet, he told me something really interesting that made me think if it’s true. The guy is almost sure that Digg.com was created mostly for blogs. The next thing I did was to access the site and to get me some statistics.

Really nice. There were 12 blogs featured on the front page of Digg.com, 7 blogs on the 2nd page, 10 blogs on the 3rd page and finally 10 blogs on the 4th page. I considered that 60 headlines would be a pretty good base to start with. So the math says that : out of 60 news, 39 are blogs which means that 65% of the news on Digg.com are usually from blogs.

Blogs are great resource for everyone because of their fresh content, which is why the search engines love them so much. So, going back to my question, were the social bookmarking websites intended for blogs? NO, I don’t think so, but since there are lots and lots of content on blogs, they cannot be neglected.

Day by day Yahoo is much more behind Google. Google has Feedburner, Google has Youtube, while Yahoo is waiting scared in a corner. But rumors say that they’ve engaged in discussions with Fox to acquire Myspace.com for 25% of the combined entity shares.

Myspace was worth $10 billion late last year, and is worth at least $12 billion today so imagine how much money (or shares) would Yahoo give up at. I am sure for Fox this would be a great deal since they only invested $580 mil in Myspace, but would it be such a good deal for Yahoo? Think of the quality of users on Myspace: full of perverts, illegal stuff and related.

Michael Arlington believes that Myspace is going down the slope, and I agree. I don’t think that the increased number of page views and users is a good reason to pay $12 billion dollars. I think the rumor will not confirm, but if it does, Yahoo just made the first mistake in the chess game. From what I see if Yahoo really needs to buy something now, why not look in the Facebook direction? It is much cheaper (maybe $2-$3 billion dollars) and they really seem to be on an upward slope. Check up this chart from Compete.

How abut “MSN buys Yahoo for ….. “? I think this would be the best solution in 2008 to run closely behind Google, if not in front.

I just saw a very very interesting interview with Jason Calacanis where he explains why Mahalo is going to be a success in the next 5 years and why there was need for such a service. I must say he has some good points that I really enjoyed hearing.

The first thing I agree with, is that the search results we see these days on Google, Yahoo!, MSN or Ask are filled with websites designed for the spiders instead of the visitors. It’s the era of SEO and everyone needs to get there building link farms or other black methods, that made some of the search results look like a garbage dump. We polluted the internet by not focusing on quality. Agreed.

For those of you that didn’t know Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine that is supposed to be “as big as Google” (yes I think you’ve gone mad) in the next 5 years. The difference between Mahalo and the other spider dependent search engines is that they will not have any spam inside because everything gets through a hand.

The interview however has some very interesting ideas about promotion, marketing and how to create a rock solid company to compete with the big guys.

My Mahalo Conclusion

• These guys (40 people so far) are going after 25-30% of the queries (top keywords of the long tail) which is pretty decent. But I am not very fond of how their results look like. I agree the idea of doing it manually gives some sort of “weight” but I did a search for Paris Hotels because that was the guys example throughout the interview. For a traveler like me, that looks for a hotel in Paris the most interesting things to see would be : average price to see if I can afford it, area (he has Google Map) and some reviews.

• I really like the design.

• I fear that in the next few years, when they will grow, there will be people willing to pay to get a hotel up there in the list. I am not sure if they will be able to say no to money when the offer will pop in.

• Last thing is that I don’t think 5 years is enough to cover the 10-15 percent of the queries people run these days. Either hire 10 times more the people they have now, or move the deadline from 5 to 10 years.

I don’t want people to think I am against the idea because I am not. I really believe in it, but just not the way they are doing it now. Surely along the way their experience will speak for themselves and things will improve.

There seems to be a trend online with people saying that their earnings with Google Adsense dropped by 10 to 30 percent. I see it on DigitalPoint and other forums I read,  so this has become a trend for the last 2-3 weeks. From what I’ve read and personally saw, the problem is not really the CTR - though I hear voices saying it is - but it’s the cost per click (CPC) that has dropped a lot.

I know I’ve said a few weeks ago, when Google bashed those doing arbitrage, that the CPC will increase, but it looks like it’s not true. The trend is down and no one knows why! I think it’s just a small stage, maybe they are upgrading their algorithms and systems. I expect the bids to be back as normal if there were any problems.

Desktop Tower Defense the game I’ve “tested” for at least 3-4 working days in a raw, has come up with some statistics. Paul Preece launched it in March and ever since it’s been played 15 million times. I read about that game on Shoemoney when he started a contest and of course I got infected and I want it banned now.

Michael Arlington from TechCrunch, which was recently mentioned in Top 50 Business 2.0 people that matter, wants it banned, too.

Paul Preece is a programmer and has his own company that creates games. Paul, I really hope I won’t read any blogs where they mention your games in the future, otherwise I will say bye bye to a few days of writing. YOU EVIL!

Play the game here and give me your comments in one week!