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We all have days like that, days when we would rather be doing anything else but sitting down in front of our computers and working. If you don't have days like that and you still find every single day a challenge to look forward to then good for you but be warned, the days when you don't want to work will come.

Today is one of those days for me although it could be much worse than it is. I mean I've tried to avoid sitting down to work by doing the washing, catching up on some reading, answering a few emails and generally fiddling around here and there but it could be worse ... I could be cleaning the house. When it gets to the stage where I want to clean the house to avoid work I know I'm in a bad way.

Fortunately it hasn't reached that point today. Instead it's only just gone 8am on Monday morning and here I am pounding away on the keyboard.

A lesson in marketing
We needed to get out of the house yesterday so we went for a drive down to Rainbow Beach. It's a beautiful place that's only just being discovered by tourists so it's still a nice place to unwind.

It was also a place we weren't expecting to come across a crazy marketing lesson ... but we did. I used the word 'crazy' to describe the lesson because we still can't believe that anyone could be this dumb but we saw it with our own eyes and experienced it first hand so it must have happened.

The drive down to Rainbow Beach takes about two hours so when we got there we decided to grab a coffee at a café we have been to before. It's usually very nice there and the service has always been warm and friendly. This time though it was very different. This time we were very close to walking out even before we finished placing our order because the person taking it couldn't understand English.

I'm serious; the person on the counter had such a poor understanding of English that she couldn't understand what we were asking for when we asked for two flat whites. I don't know what it's like overseas but here in Australia if you ask for two flat whites you're asking for two cups of coffee with milk. But it took several minutes to make her understand what we were asking for.

We then had to point to the snack we wanted because she didn't understand what we were asking for when it was right there in front of her in the display case. And we weren't the only ones who were having trouble.

What we can't understand is why anyone who wanted to make money from their business would put someone who had very little understanding of the language everyone was speaking on the front counter to interact with paying customers.

Savvy Internet marketers wouldn't do something like that on their websites now would they? Savvy Internet marketers would be making the purchase process as seamless, simple and fast as possible wouldn't they?

Sadly many don't and I hope you're not one of them.

The secrets of success
Late last week a very interesting post appeared on GFY. Shap, the guy behind Twistys, posted a number of graphs that showed how his business has grown since 2004. He also posted what he considered to be the secrets of his success.

Those 'secrets' were interesting because, as he pointed out, they are almost the exact opposite of what everyone thinks are the secrets of success in this industry. This is a guy who definitely shows that if you want to succeed in this industry then you have to run your business like a real business ... because that is exactly what it is.

You have to provide a product that will keep the customers satisfied and when you do that you will succeed. Of course, that takes a lot of very hard work and who in this industry is interested in hard work? You don't have to work hard here to make money do you?

Dmoz
If you're interested in getting your sites listed in Dmoz then you will be pleased to know that it's recovered to the point where they are taking submissions once more. And right now might be a good time to get your submissions in because there is some suggestion that the editors still don't have access to the sites that were in the queue before their server failed so new submissions are getting done fast.

Page Rank
Even though Google has said that Page Rank is of little importance to them these days they still keep on updating it and many Webmasters still get all hot and horny about it. They like to think that it's an indication of just how good a particular site really is and there are may legends in their own lunchtime - sorry, I meant experts - out there who push the importance of Page Rank.

I even saw one advisor on a very well-known board try to tell everyone that Page Rank was actually an indicator of the amount of trust Google has in a site.

Misinformation like that is good - it gives those of us who really do have a clue a huge advantage over those who have no clue and who want to follow the wrong advice. So, let me suggest that if you are worried about your Page Rank or you're thinking of selling your advertising or links on your site based on the Page Rank then you need to review what Google itself says about Page Rank.

Well there you go, I've just worked myself back into the mood to do plenty more work today and while I was doing that I managed to touch on a number of issues that have been bugging me over the last few days. Hopefully there's something in that brain dump that you will find useful.