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We purchased our house 6 years ago and a few years ago my husband got a job 40 miles away, one way, so we put our house up for sale. We put it up for sale right before the housing bubble burst and we had it up for sale for three years. We live out in the country and our asking price was reasonable for the size of the house, the location and the property that we had but still we had no takers.

One of the problems we ran into was our neighbors. They have an old house and they have a lot of cases of unfinished projectitis.  They have a lot of old lawnmowers, old motorcycles, and old cars laying around in their yard.  They are items that they purchased intending to fix up but some how never got around to it.  They don’t live right next door, they are kitty-corner from us and we have trees and a fence that the previous owners of our house put up so they didn’t have to look at the items.  Automatically because of these neighbors people turned their noses up at our house and weren’t interested.

Sure, they have stuff laying around but they don’t do anything illegal, it is their property therefore it is their right to have that stuff, I do not have rats, snakes etc coming over to my property because of their junk, they do not have parties at all hours of the night.  They leave us alone and we leave them. When we have talked to them, they have been nothing but polite and neighborly to us. People who don’t know them always ask us “how are they for neighbors?”  We always tell them the same thing, their fine. Actually besides their junk they are the best neighbors you could ask for.

I understand where these people are coming from because as human beings we are visual beings.  No matter how much people try to deny it, we judge by what we see and if your website is not up to par, you will be judged and you will lose clients.

It doesn’t matter if your SEO is remarkable, you are ranked number one on search engines for specific keywords or if you are the best business around, if your website is bad, you will lose clients.  If your website is sloppy, unorganized, and hard to navigate your visitors will notice that and that will reflect badly on you and your business.

As a small business, you will need all the help that you can get to make it a success so don’t cut corners by trying to do your website yourself if you have no knowledge of web design because there are several elements that makes a website good that you may not be aware of.  Hiring a good web designer could be worth it’s weight in gold when creating a professional, appealing website that gets you business.

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Aside from a few paying positions, many organizations use strictly volunteers.  This can work very well for many organizations but in order for it to work there are a few things that need to be considered.

Keep Volunteers Informed

In order for volunteering to work well, you need to keep each individual volunteer abreast of the different procedures, tasks, and policies that they need to be aware of. Don’t assume the volunteers can read your mind!

Listen To The Volunteers

Volunteers have become volunteers because they are experienced in the department that you needed help with.

This doesn’t mean that you have to take them at their word because nobody knows everything about their particular field but they do know quite a bit and chances are the input they give will help the organization prosper. If you decide not to go with their ideas, tell them why so as not to leave hurt feelings and help them understand why you went the way you decided.  It needs to be more of a reason than just because “I thought it would be better”.

Reply ASAP

If you get a person inquiring about volunteering with your organization and they contact you either by phone or email, get back to them ASAP. Nothing says unorganized, unprofessional, and unappreciative more than not getting a response when someone is offering their services free of charge. Chances are the return call or return email will take only a few minutes that could lead to a long lasting volunteer relationship.

Don’t Expect To Be Chased

If somebody contacts you to offer their help and you don’t get back to them, or you get back to them once and then you don’t contact them again, don’t expect them to continue to hound you to give you free help, they have more important things to do.

Accept What They Can Offer

Volunteers are not employees. Sure, you want to be able to rely on them, but realistically, they are fitting you into their spare time. When life gets hectic, they’ll come and go a bit. When you rely on what other people can freely give, you have to appreciate what they can give, and shrug it off when they can’t give anymore, or when they can’t be there when you thought they should. This is just the reality. You can’t make them punch a clock, and if you make it too hard for them to volunteer, they’ll simply wander off and go offer their services elsewhere.

Volunteer Only Staffing Is A Limiting Thing

There will come a point in every organization, where they will simply implode if they rely strictly on volunteer staffing. Volunteers cannot work full schedules, so you end up having to have 10-20 people to do the job that one full time employee could do. This means your time spent training new people, coordinating work loads, and handling volunteer benefits (if you offer them) becomes unmanageable. Turnover becomes a huge issue with that many people, feedback now comes from all those people as each one tries to remake your organization in the way they think is best, and eventually the whole system breaks down and nothing gets done. Doggedly trying to utilize 100% volunteer staffing beyond this point of implosion will ruin an organization – and has ruined many. This is a prime reason why non-profit organizations seem to fade out very quickly after they file for tax exempt status.

The truth about volunteers is they volunteer because they want to.  They love the concept of the organization and they want to use their expertise to help the organization become prosperous. They love feeling like they are a part of something bigger than themselves.

However, you have to remember that nothing in life is free.  While these volunteers are helping YOU for free, they are spending THEIR time to make the organization better. If they feel unappreciated, uninformed, rejected and unworthy of a response, they will walk away as quickly as they volunteered.

Remember, just because you aren’t paying them doesn’t mean they are any less of an important part of your organization.

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I am looking for adoptable pets that are in shelters or foster homes to spotlight on my website every month.  I will also put a link to the spotlight page in my newsletter for even more exposure. I would like those interested to please send me a photo, place where they are being kept, background story, and contact information for any pets that need a forever home. I will go through them one by one and let you know when you can be expected to have that pet spotlighted. Before I place them on the website, I will also contact you to make sure that they are still available. If they are not, I will take another pet from your organization in place of the one that is no longer available.

This is a great way to get the word out about some wonderful pets that haven’t had the best of luck in their lives so far that are just looking for a home. You can check out my website at www.petloverwebsites.com Contact Us to get your pet spotlighted.

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Today I was watching Scooby Doo with my daughter and it was at a part where Scooby and Shaggy were afraid to go somewhere (of course) and Daphne convinced them just by telling them there would be every type of concession stand they could think of there. Of course it worked because it’s a cartoon but also because as we all know Scooby and Shaggy LOVE their food.  Wish I could eat as much as they did and still be that skinny but I digress.

Daphne told Scooby and Shaggy about the food because she knew that was something they wanted and needed so it encouraged them to take the next step. This same principle can be applied to websites as well.  The purpose of a website is to not only give visitors an overview of your business but to encourage them to take the next step.

Your website visitors need to know that what you offer them is what they need or that it will make their life easier. It’s not enough to just tell them “you need us and we can make your life easier”.  You need to tell them why they need you and how you can make their life easier.  This requires you to get inside the head of your visitors. Unfortunately unless you know exactly what kind of challenges your clients have, this can be a very daunting task.

For example, a company who provides therapy services to children with disabilities needs to show their visitors that they understand how protective they are of their children. They need to show their visitors that while they push their children to make progress, they also take the child’s innocence and vulnerabilities into consideration.  Meaning they don’t push them so hard that they are traumatized. Once the site visitors get the feeling of reassurance, they will take the next step.

Visitors to your site see your business as just a faceless company on the internet but if your content provides them with the feeling of reassurance and trust, you will see your visitors turn into paying clients. If they can see that what you have is what they want or need, they WILL take the next step.

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If you have Wildblue internet and have downloaded and installed the optimizer that they recommend and now you can’t login to your cpanels, chances are it’s the optimizer causing the problems so here is what you do:

1. Go to start >control panel
2. Click on add/remove programs or programs and features in Vista
3. Locate Wildblue Optimizer
4. Click to uninstall
5. Once it’s done uninstalling reopen your web browser and try logging in to your cpanels again and see if you can now login

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