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Cool Tool Review: Docstoc

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools, products, and practices that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks in a business environment.

Cool Tool Review: Docstoc
A Review by Todd Hoskins

Docstoc is a virtual flea market for small business.

Stepping into a flea market, you must sort through other people’s clutter, junk, and art to find what is useful or beautiful to you. In the same way, Docstoc offers thousands of free documents, but you’re going to need to be patient to find what you need.

Looking for a contract? Relevant presentation? Template? Background article? Chances are, there will be something of value within Docstoc’s archives. Think of it as a combination of LegalZoom (a content partner), eHow, and SlideShare. Scribd is very similar (and with a better interface), but puts more content behind the paywall.

As a small business, you can upload documents that others may find useful and share in the ad revenue. When registering, Docstoc links your account with AdSense. Through your profile, you also get the chance to highlight the capabilities of your business. Or, you can sell documents on your site – market reports, e-books, etc. You keep 100% of the upload revenue for the first 60 days, and 50% after that threshold has passed. Clicks on the ads earn you a bit of cash, uploads can earn you cash, and clicks on your profile give you potential leads.

There is the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a community-driven site. The good is the sheer amount of content. The bad is how much of the content is devoid of value. The ugly is that the ad-supported chaos is just that – ugly.

The document viewer, on the other hand, is clean, easily branded, and allows you to quickly embed PDF’s, presentations, and other document types within your site or blog.


Todd’s CV –

There is a premium service, which gives you access to more free professional documents, storage, and an ad-free experience from $17 per month up to $120 per year.

I would like to see support for Google docs, more levels of curation, and marketing help for e-book publishers. The site could use some U/X help as well, but for free, I’m not complaining.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 2/5 – If you have extensive bylaws, handbooks, and approval processes, Docstoc has limited value

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – Go premium if you have the budget

Personal Value: 2/5 – One of a multitude of ways to now publish your novel, guide, or collection of resources

Let me know what you think!

Todd Hoskins helps small and medium sized businesses plan for the future, and execute in the present. With a background in sales, marketing, leadership, psychology, coaching, and technology, he works with executives to help create thriving individuals and organizations through developing and clarifying values, strategies, and tactics. You can learn more at VisualCV, or contact him on Twitter.

Cool Tool Review: Mechanical Turk

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Mechanical Turk
A Review by Todd Hoskins

“Maybe we should hire an intern.” If you have uttered this phrase, or heard these words spoken inside your organization, stop and ask the question: “Would an intern grow and learn from this project?” If the answer is no, you may do yourself a favor by setting up a relationship with a crowd-sourcing service such as Mechanical Turk. Even if an intern is a possibility, how much trouble is it going to be to find one? And, will you get better results with paid labor than with an intern?

Mechanical Turk aims to create large and easy to assemble workforces to complete simple tasks that would otherwise be nearly impossible to finish given their overall volume. “Mindless tasks” often require a mind. Artificial intelligence has become more intelligent, but sometimes tasks are better suited to people rather than computers.

I have used Mechanical Turk to find, categorize, and document scattered information on the web. This could be used for sales leads, research, categorizing the sentiment of blog and forum posts, transcribing audio, tagging content, or cleaning up a database. Once you set up and fund an account, you post a task. You assign a cost per task. If you are not satisfied with the quality of the work, you don’t have to pay the workers. With the thousands of people looking for flexible and/or stay-at-home work, tasks typically get done quickly. The key is explaining the tasks with clarity and details.

Here’s a Best Practices video.

Mechanical Turk is owned by Amazon, so there is legitimacy.

UPDATE: The workers that earn a supplemental income through working with Mechanical Turk may only get paid pennies for a completed task, but the free marketplace means that workers will be inclined to find the tasks that pay best – the most money for the least effort. If you post a task and don’t get sufficient workers, you need to increase your pay rate. It is common for MT workers to make in excess of $12 per hour.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 4/5 – Quality of the output depends upon the quality of the direction. Even large companies can benefit from the speed and flexibility of Mechanical Turk.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – Minimize your time being focused on energy-draining tasks.

Personal Value: 1/5 – Hmm. De-duping my contact database?

Let me know what you think!

Todd Hoskins helps small and medium sized businesses plan for the future, and execute in the present. With a background in sales, marketing, and technology, he works with executives to help create thriving organizations through developing and clarifying values, strategies, and tactics. You can learn more at VisualCV, or contact him on Twitter.

WILF Comes to SOBCon

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Today we have a guest post from Robert Hruzek, a SOBCon alumnus that I had the pleasure of meeting last year. I am looking forward to spending more time talking to him this year!

What I Learned From...
What I Learned From...

Howdy fellow SOBCon folks!

Hey, if you’re scratchin’ your head and wonderin’ what the heck WILF means – and what it has to do with SOBCon – well Bubba, wonder no more!

It stands for “What I Learned From…” and is a groupwrite project we run on the first Monday of every month over at Middle Zone Musings. Yup; every month!

In fact, since we started back in May of ’07, there have been 23 editions of WILF with a total of 650 entries to date! Pretty amazing, when you get right down to it.

As the name implies, the purpose of the WILF groupwrite project is to encourage folks to share something – anything – they learned from… well, whatever the topic that month happens to be. And, in doing so, they collect a link (and sometimes two) back to their blog. It’s that simple.

So what does that have to do with SOBCon? Well, for the month of May, the topic is (sound of drumroll) COMMUNITY – which happens to tie right in, don’cha think? So for the next project I’m extending a special invitation for all my fellow SOBCon’ers. (Is that a word? Who cares?) And, it’s not limited to those who will, y’know, actually be there. Nope; it’s a lot bigger than that!

In fact, this topic is for anyone who:

  • A) plans to be at SOBCon09,
  • B) has attended any previous SOBCon,
  • C) hasn’t made it yet but wishes they could one day,
  • D) never heard of SOBCon and accidentally stumbled across this post, or
  • E) has a cat who walked across the keyboard when you had the SOBCon website up on the screen. Or whatever.

(I think that about covers everyone, don’t you?)

So, no matter which letter of the alphabet you happen to, uh, B (sorry), you’re invited to join the fray and tell us what you learned!

Here’s how it works.

Write an article sharing something you learned, either from SOBCon, or because of it, or would like to have learned from it, or – hey, you get the idea, right? Length isn’t important –you can be as eloquent (or as brief) as you like. (Note: there’s only two rules: Be nice – and keep it “G-rated”)

Then, you post it on your blog sometime that week and email me the link at rhruzek [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. I’ll collect ‘em all, then post the entire list of entries at the Middle Zone. The list will then point everyone to YOUR brilliant blog! Plus, you’ll have a great compendium of lessons learned, to boot! I’m tellin’ ya; ya can’t beat that with a stick! (Well, I guess you could… but that would be, y’know, wrong!)

OK; mark your blogging calendars, folks, ‘cause the kickoff for this special WILF will be on Monday, May 7 (right after SOBCon weekend), and will be open for entries through Sunday, May 13. (But don’t worry if you’re late – I can always add your link to the list later.)

Hey, I look forward to seein’ y’all in Chicago. Tap me on the shoulder and introduce yourself, won’t you? Just look for the hat.
_______________________________

Robert Hruzek
Robert Hruzek

Robert Hruzek currently lives in Houston, Texas, and thoroughly enjoys being married to The Most Wonderful Wife in the Whole World (sorry fellas, it’s no contest). He is usually employed as an engineering project manager, a job which has allowed him to travel, live and work in many interesting locations within the United States and around the world.

Robert writes on the Web at Middle Zone Musings. It’s described as a comfortable place to stop, have a cup of coffee, swap a few stories and share practical ideas for the real world. He doesn’t ask for much, just a bit of your brain every now and then. Why not drop by, grab a seat, take a load off, and relax…

Crowdsourcing the SOBCon Secret Project

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I have been looking at this for hours:

Mike Rodhe made these sketchnotes at SXSW last week and they are fantastic. I have been thinking about doing something like this for SOBCon because I am a big notebook freak. But I can’t draw so well…

So I am going to ask you all to help with this little project. On Sunday the Lovely Bride TM and I went to Boston for a trade show and I stopped by the Levenger store to pick up some supplies for this “secret project“. I am looking forward to seeing what the attendees put together.

If you have any ideas on how to make this better, please let me know (contact form).