Dell’s excellent Digital Nomads blog has inspired a few of my friends. Clearly, working on the road is no longer the niche interest it once was.

Earlier this year, I wrote about my on the road workspace. A few weeks later, I discovered The Business Class, a network of flexible workspaces from Brazil to Berlin.

I signed up at the Berlin branch while out for the summer, and thought it’d be interesting to speak to the man responsible, Manu Kumar.

QN: Can you introduce TheBusinessClass.Net in one sentence?

MK: BCN connects real people in real places — allowing freelancers from all over the world to live the freedom of working with their PCs, barefoot in the 21st century.

QN: How is BCN different from other shared offices?

MK: I don’t try to set up just offices - I call BCN locations “ports” each location also has a “agent”…

On request the Port-Agent can provide info about business contacts, tips and tricks for the respective place, the surroundings, and its culture. BCN port managers also act as native speaking business guides.

BCN supplies a platform for freelancers which has only been available to employees of large international companies till now. You have an address from where you can discover the new city and also find new clients - and most importantly: you have local people working beside you. People you can ask and connect with … a kind of “professionalized” friendship network.

QN: What gave you the idea for the BCN?

MK: Over the years I’ve worked all over Europe, Japan and China. It was always easy finding a place - from sofa surfing to five star hotels, but finding an temporary office and connecting with like minded folk was nearly impossible.

Now I am building up that kind of “office” - with the essential infrastructure, connections and people at these locations . BCN is my answer for the growing number of freelancer traveling the world while working…

QN: Where are your locations across the world?

MK: We have two types of locations: “Drop In Offices” - Urban locations, to work from or establish new business contacts, while our “Drop Out Offices” are exotic locations where freelancers can withdraw, relax or work intensely. Presently you can find BCN in these places:

Our first “Drop In Office” is my former studio located in Berlin-Kreuzberg/Germany; currently one of the culturally most active quarters in Berlin.

Our Desert Office is in the Mojave-Desert (just one hour drive from LA/USA). “Quintal do Mar” - our Island Office - is located on a tropical Island in Brazil, right at the beach, but just ten miles away from a mayor city. “Ramsoft” is the software company in Bangalore/India that hosts our Outsource Office.

“The Grand Street Loft” - is our Loft Office located in New York/USA, and The Alps Office lies directly in the historic city centre of Graz/Austria.

QN: Which is your favourite location and why?

MK: Our next location! Seriously, each person and location that joined the BCN-network was a great experience for me to meet and get connected with to work together. All these partners became friends of mine! I am very exited about to whom and where it will takes us next time.

QN: You run the BCN as what you call a ‘fairchise’. Can you explain a little about that?

MK: Anybody having a suitable office location can apply to become a BCN-port.

We advertise your port on our website - in several languages. We manage the timetable, the booking, the banking … We set the whole system up for free - we are taking all risks, because if it doesn’t work you’ve got some advertisement for free.

QN: What next for TheBusinessClass.Net?

MK: At the moment I am talking to nice people in Cape Town/South Africa, Thailand and Brazil - but nothing fixed yet. (but if you have somebody, somewhere … please tell me, but the weird-the better!)

We are looking to have at least one BCN port every continent as soon as possible.

Soon our website will have a workspace that will be very helpful for freelancers. If you want to be updated, just log in as a member - and join BCN for free. All of its members can use the website to present themselves, or to look for and find business contacts.

Learn more at TheBusinessClass.net.

eBay have discovered good ol’ fashioned keyword stuffing. Surely some mistake?

For my non-SEO geek readers, keyword stuffing is a spammy old-school SEO trick.

It fell out of favour with most SEOs soon after the Declaration of American Independence.

Google’s webmaster guidelines say…

“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking… typically, these will be lists or paragraphs of keywords, often randomly repeated.

I usually avoid SEOmoz-style outing. But this is too funny not to flag up.
Here’s a screenshot:

Now in case you struggle to read 300+ words of paragraph-less 8 point text, this reads…

eBay’s Music category is the best place to buy or sell music from top artists across all music genres: rock, pop, R&B, rap, hip-hop, reggae, blues, classical music, country music, easy listening, adult contemporary, new age, heavy metal, Christian rock, folk music or children’s music. Whatever your tastes, eBay has it available new or used in every format: CD, cassette, Box-set, LP, record, vinyl record, single EP or super audio CD. eBay even offers music as digital downloads, meaning you can buy music in digital / MP3 format. Looking for today’s most popular music? eBay has great prices for Dave Matthews Band, Bruce Springsteen’s Devils & Dust, Coldplay, Systems of a Down, American Idol, Green Day, Audioslave, Toby Keith, Il Divo, Jack Johnson, Beck, Rob Thomas, Kem, Nine Inch Nails, Ryan Adams, Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani, 50 Cent, The Game, Mariah Carey and others. Looking for the all time top selling albums? eBay has them new and used at the great prices: The Eagles Greatest Hits 1971-1975 (The Eagles), Thriller (Michael Jackson), The Wall (Pink Floyd), Led Zeppelin IV (Led Zeppelin), Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volumes I & II (Billy Joel), Rumours (Fleetwood Mac), Back in Black (AC/DC), The Beatles (The Beatles), Come on Over (Shania Twain), Boston (Boston), The Bodyguard (Whitney Houston), Cracked Rear View Mirror (Hootie & the Blowfish), Elton John Greatest Hits (Elton John), Hotel California (The Eagles), The Beatles 1967-1970 (The Beatles), No Fences (Garth Brooks), Jagged Little Pill (Alanis Morissette), Born in the USA (Bruce Springsteen), Physical Graffiti (Led Zeppelin), Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd), Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack (Bee Gees), The Beatles 1962-1966 (The Beatles), Appetite for Destruction (Guns ‘N Roses), Garth Brooks Double Live (Garth Brooks), Supernatural (Santana), Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys), Ropin’ The Wind (Garth Brooks), Bat Out of Hell (Meat Loaf), and Purple Rain (Prince and the Revolution).

This should really help those all-important rankings on Altavista…

Take a look for yourself, just above the footer on eBay’s catagory pages.

“After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted,” wrote the researchers. The response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001%. (Via BBC News)

That’s one sale for every 12.5m e-mails sent. A 2003 article in The Register put spam’s breakeven point at one in a milion emails, suggesting that either:

1. Spam operating costs have dropped by an order of magnitude in five years.

OR….

2. Berkeley/UCSD researchers are RUBBISH at pushing penis pills.

Either way, I recommend Conversion Rate Experts’ new report on how to improve conversion rate.

Seriously, $240 for an afternoon’s internet access?

Dear reader, I write from San Francisco airport, where SFO business centre bills at $40/hour. I’m in the wrong racket.

But I’ve got a blog post to write pronto in response to CK’s ultimate PubCon 2007 roundup, and before I head to Yosemite for the weekend.

It’s no secret that most webmaster conferences are *cough* a little boozy. Plus they must hold PubCon in Vegas for a reason, right?

So forget my usual distaste for SEO biz tittle tattle. Here, in all its glory, is the one, the only PubCon drinking game.

Take one sip each time…

• Matt Cutts mentions ‘quality content’
• Urban myth sighting of Quadszilla
• Barry Schwartz spotted live-blogging
• Vanessa Fox uses the word ‘awesomeness’
• Greg Boser advocates a complex use of 301 redirects
• Rand Fishkin wears yellow shoes a suit
• Andy Hagans is referred to as Mr Linkbait
• Bill Slawski is called Mr Patent
• Danny Sullivan is dubbed “The Nicest Man in Search”
• Evil Green Monkey suggests ‘one more beer’
• Digg users are dissed as socially-awkward virgins
• An Ask.com rep looks unloved on the ‘Meet the Engines’ panel
• Bluechip SEO admits spending $30k/mo on paid links during a site clinic
• Any blackhat claims to go clean within earshot of a Google rep
• Jim Boykin mentions below-the-radar paid links

See you in Vegas!

I’m speaking at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) London tomorrow, Wednesday 5 November, on the topic of “Buying Sites for SEO”.

Does the credit crunch mean web 2.0 is dead?

Don’t get me wrong: I love gradient fills, drop shadows and year-long public betas as much as the next man.

But the idea that anyone with a vague-but-sexy idea and a patsy to pick up the tab is an internet entrepreneur really grinds my gears.

Quadszilla has beaten me to the sucker punch with a finance primer for web startups:

Start with how you are going to profit and work from backwards from there. If you’re not spending less than you’re making, then you’re doing it wrong.

We agree on the symptoms, but disagree on the diagnosis.

The problem isn’t merely web startups not considering how to make money. The problem is some people still believe the basic rules of commerce don’t apply online.

If taxi companies ran like web 2.0 startups, drivers would:

• Offer free rides for three years (’first mover advantage‘)
• Spend heavily despite rising gas prices
• Aim to repay their bank loans by selling up to General Motors

I’ve never run a taxi company, but that sounds like a high risk strategy.

A few years ago, I worked briefly for a small startup. The CEO’s experience intimidated me, until he told me he expected to sell the company to Google or Yellow Pages within six months.

Reader, I lost all faith in the man’s judgement in a heartbeat. This six-man strong company was turning over less than my then sideline (my fledgling affiliate business).

Here’s my ready reckoner: if your business model involves, er, doing no business, it’s really a hobby. Simple!

Many people have forgotten the lessons of the dot.com boom and bust. My advice? Read widely - start with Jason Calacanis on The Startup Depression - and be ready to capitalise on the stupidity of others.

In the words of Warren Buffet:

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

There are dozens of decent books on the dot.com bust. Here are some of my favorites:

• Boo Hoo: A Dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe
• F’d Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts
• Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet
• Karaoke Nation, Or, How I Spent a Year in Search of Glamour, Fulfillment, and a Million Dollars

I’ve said it before: A4U Expo might just be my favourite webmaster conference. But since I know a few serious affiliates who didn’t go - and I’m not afraid to name names, Mr Powell - I thought I’d sum up what I learned:

1. Mel Carson’s Cost Per Monk story
2. Joost’s WordPress SEO talk
3. Rob Kerry and Marcus talking SEO dirty tricks
4. Advance notice Google would drop the ‘no gambling ads’ rule
5. Shakil Khan’s tales of a £600,000 offer on a domain…
6. … and of being the first Brit to sell viagra online
7. Ben and Karl from Conversion Rate Experts on site feedback tools.
8. Demoing Sunshine.co.uk’s WordPress plugin for affiliates
9. Roy’s summary of internal link building strategies

Alas, I missed Al Carlton’s session on blogging, which was the talk of the town.

Next stop: SMX London. I’m speaking at the ‘Buying sites for SEO’ session with Dave Naylor, Doug Scott and Kristjan Mar Hauksson.

Ever register a domain with your web host?

I used to, too. Many of my friends still do. It’s usually simple and cheap enough.

But it’s also unwise. I realised *why* when a friend lost control (albeit briefly) of their domain, after falling out with their host.

They’d sent an opt-in newsletter. A handful of spam complaints later, and they pulled the plug. I eventually learned the hard way myself, but more on that later.

At PubCon 2006, everyone was talking about Moniker. I couldn’t work out why. With hindsight, owner Monte Cahn is a popular and well-respected guy in the industry.

I decided to give Moniker a shot. In the couple of years since, I’ve learned why people recommend them:

1. I have my own account rep. Moniker asked for my feedback on something. I got a response from the company’s founder. Pretty damn impressive.

2. Their interface is fantastic for managing domains (even if it’s ugly as sin). For example, you can update nameservers or registration information in bulk.

3. Moniker have a domainers’ price plan, charging around $7 for a .COM.

4. Moniker have never lost control of a domain. I thought this was BS sales patter, until I lost a domain last year when a major UK registrar swiped a domain from me (why? the old owner “asked for it back”).

5. Moniker run their own domain escrow service (though I usually use escrow.com) and run many of the biggest domain auctions.

Don’t get me wrong: Moniker aren’t perfect. Last year, Nominet (the UK domain registry) was offline for a weekend, and Moniker couldn’t explain why my registrations were failing. But compared to the competition, I think they rule the school.

Go Daddy’s interface and relentless upsells drive me nuts (let me know if you *ever* work out how to transfer a domain out). The front running scandal put me off using Network Solutions.

All things considered, I’ve been very happy with Moniker and now have most of my domains with them.

Which is your favourite domain registrar and why?

PS. Don’t forget to check out Domain Lookup, my Firefox extension for finding domain names.

There’s an old Bill Hicks joke about what happens to US Presidents after their election.

As Hicks had it, the President Elect was taken into a small, smokey room. A projecter screen comes down, and a big man with a cigar goes, “Roll the film.” And, with that, the twelve men who really run the world explain exactly how things work.

SEOktoberfest felt a little like that for internet entrepreneurs: meet the men and women who really run the internet.

SEOktoberfest was the opposite of most webmaster conferences: no BS, no fakers, no newbies, no self-promotion. Just 25 or so serious internet entrepreneurs from the four corners of the world.

I’ve never been to any webmaster conference where people speak so frankly: how they make money online, which traffic tricks work now, which strategies will pay off longer term.

I met people driving more traffic in a day than some of my sites get in a year. I met the man whose site took 5% of Google.de’s traffic at one point. I saw huge deals signed on a BlackBerry screen at 5am.

The experts included Joost de Valk, Bob Rains, Brian Clark, Brent Csutoras, Greg Boser, Barbara Boser, Frank Watson, Martin Sinner and Johannes Beus, plus of course organisers Marcus Tandler and Quadszilla.

The parties each night were the most fun I’ve had since my last trip to Vegas. Oktoberfest itself feels like the world’s biggest, booziest village fete.

Think tents the size of superclubs, litre steins (Maßkrug) of 6% beer, plenty of meaty Bavarian food and non-stop live music. Bizarrely, John Denver songs are massively popular for drinking to in Germany…

Thanks to Marcus, Quadszilla and Philip for organising an amazing experience. Eins, zwei, drei, g’suffa!

PS. I forgot to mention the Lederhosen and Dirndl, the traditional Bavarian outfits. Maybe I should wear mine when I speak at SMX London in November…

Working for yourself rocks.

But working alone? Not so much.

I recently attended my first Jelly, a network of fortnightly ‘work together’ or coworking events.

Jelly was started in New York City by Amit Gupta and Luke Crawford with a mission:

“[To] provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of”.

Whether you work solo, remotely or in full-time employment, coworking offers a change of pace as much as a change of scenery.

The atmosphere at Jellys is deliberately casual and chatty - perhaps not the ideal place for a hard days GTD.

Instead, the events offer the chance to meet some interesting faces and throw new ideas around. For myself and those that I met, the opportunities more than compensate for a little lost productivity.

Last week’s Berlin Jelly was predictably popular with fellow internet geeks. Most were web designers or developers, reflecting common expat vocations in a city where local employment is elusive. The event was hosted by Robin Slomkowski, a developer on the Flock browser.

Coworking events in other cities, like London’s Tuttle Club - in my diary for my return to the Big Smoke - attract a broader crowd, from professional musicians to marketing consultants. Others specialise in a particular field, like art.

Jelly events take place in dozens of cities around the world, as listed in the Jelly wiki. The coworking wiki lists dozens more non-Jelly events worldwide.

Interested in learning more? Watch Amit’s video introduction to Jelly.

Been to a Jelly or coworking event elsewhere? I’d love to hear your experiences.

Thanks to Mokolabs for the photo of a San Diego Jelly.