Those of you who know me will also know that I'm addicted to conferences. For me, the eye-opener was the second edition of the European Shareware Conference. I went there just to see what it was like, not knowing anyone. I am very shy in nature, and it's not always easy to get to know new people. But when I was there, I went to the informal drinks the evening before the conference, and knew everyone who was there in no time.

Many marketers and product developers make a disastrous mistake: They develop and sell products that nobody wants.

This is usually how it goes: The product developer starts programming software or writing a book, just because he is interested in the subject, without looking at the market. Then once the product is ready, he starts promoting it, just to find out he can make no sales.

We all know the importance of incoming links to our web site. The more incoming links you have, the better your position in search engines. A measure for incoming links is the google PageRank (PR), which you can see on the google toolbar. Another good measure is the linkdomain command in Yahoo search. To know how many links there are to your web site, type linkdomain:www.