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- Why Does The Government Hate Us?August 19
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While roaming through the numerous excellent business articles on the Wall Street Journal online, one particular nugget of gold hit me a few days ago. Did you know that the US has the second highest corporate tax rates in the world? That is, unless you’ve started a business in California, Iowa, New Jersey or Pennsylvania (among others) in which case you surpass the levels companies in Japan, the highest overall in the world. A new study from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has confirmed that “corporate taxes are most harmful for growth, followed by personal income taxes, and then consumption taxes.” The study says “investment is adversely affected by corporate taxation,” and that the most profitable and rapidly growing companies tend to be particularly sensitive to high business tax rates.
With all the evidence pointing to high corporate taxation as a huge contributor to a slowing economy, you have to ask where this sentiment comes from? I’ll tell you, people like Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota who have used stastics by Government Accountability Office (GAO) such as the following: 28% of large U.S. corporations paid no income tax in 2005. He says, “It’s time for big corporations to pay their fair share.” Did anyone tell Seator Dorgan that 85% of those companies didn’t make a profit last year? The
- 5 Pay-Per-Click Variables to TestAugust 16
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This is a follow up to one of our earlier post regarding startup PPC campaigns. If you’re a startup looking to pay for a quick boost to your traffic - realize that paying for a boost in traffic doesn’t necessarily mean a boost in sales. Many startups I’ve talked to throw money into PPC without ever testing key performance indicators. If you sell something online and you setup PPC without setting up the conversion tracking tags, then you basically just setup a FAIL campaign.
So in part one of this series, here are five things you could/should test.
Conversion tags - Before you even do anything related to setting up a paid campaign, you should already have conversion tags telling you how you’re doing. Setting up something as simple as Goals in Google Analytics will at least tell you how many conversions you are getting a day and where the referrals generating the conversions are coming from. Use this as a base line in figuring out what kind of goals you want to achieve with the paid campaign.
Keywords - Obviously, keywords are an important part of any pay-per-click campaign that needs extensive testing. However, you’d be surprised at how many people just buy up every single keyword related to their niche. The thing with keywords is, you want to buy the ones that convert with a positive ROI. Your more generic words may drive the most traffic and may convert the m
- The Hollywood Community ModelAugust 16
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At the Gang of 5 meeting yesterday, a few of us entrepreneurs gathered to further discuss the chatter that’s going around the Atlanta startup scene. During the conversation, a number of possible solutions were proposed to get something going and many seem like worthy efforts. (More on that later) However, I was surprised to find a post today by Paul Freet that talked about the Hollywood Startup Model which was also something we touched on during the meeting - did you have a spy on us Paul?
Note: It seems these posts tend to step on peoples’ toes so my disclaimer is that EasyAutoSales is not looking for investment money today but may do so in the next few months. These discussions were sparked by the frustrations felt in the Atlanta early stage startups so please, don’t kill the messenger.
If you haven’t read Paul’s post, go ahead and check it out. To put it simply, it is a great analogy, it makes perfect sense and I agree with his views completely.
On the flip side, the attraction to Hollywood today isn’t so much on the number of talented producers in the area, but more so that the movie studios (VC investors) make an active investment in the community.
As one of the Go5 members pointed out, while movie and TV studios swing for the fences and aim for two to three blockbusters a year, t
- Open Letter to Atlanta Angels, VC’s (We Want Co-Working!)August 8
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In case you haven’t heard all the chatter, Atlanta entrepreneurs are tired of being ignored and/or forced out of the city just to get some recognition. It’s gotten so bad that we actually formed various communities determined to help each other succeed; with or without financial support from the able.
However, millions in funding aside, we (the seed stage startups) have decided what we REALLY need to keep talent in Atlanta is to foster our entrepreneurial community. What this means TODAY is establishing a safe and ideal environment for us to co-work, learn from each other and minimize individual risks by helping each other avoid mistakes we may have already made.
So what does this mean exactly?
Well, as a group, we (the entrepreneurs) are asking someone with the $$$, the vision, and the desire to invest in the Atlanta early stage startup community to step forward, work with us and earn this t-shirt.
While we do expect our joint efforts to flourish and ultimately churn out a few home run businesses, we need investors who can meet our demands and see the value of
- Atlanta Startup (us) Seeking PHP DeveloperJuly 27
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I hope this isn’t an invite for spam from the unqualified…
After getting a great start on our phase 1 technical development, we are now looking for a new technical lead to take what we have already established to the next level. The ideal candidate should have previous experience working in a startup, (meaning you know this is high speed and low pay) and would be willing to work for part equity and negotiable pay.
Below are some the requirements for what we’re looking for:
Required:
Deep understanding of LAMP (Linux, apache, mysql, and PHP) development
Deep understanding of Linux server management with enterprise level experience (multiple servers, tightened security, load balancing, etc.)
Deep understanding of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, ajax, XHTML, RSS/XML
Some understanding of Amazon Web Services including EC2 and S3
Some understanding of Sphinx Search, or be able to learn it quickly
Basic understanding of SEO and online marketing stuffWe prefer someone with a genuine interest in working with web 2.0 websites especially one who is interested in all types of web 2.0 services. Unlike traditional classifieds, we’re looking to do something different so if you play with various web 2.0 services or have worked with Facebook, Twitter or iPhone API’s, we want to hear from you! We also prefer someone who has managed websites with high volume in the past becaus