Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

Accounting out of balance and out of my comfort zone

Here I am hanging by a thread 500 feet above the ground. The wind combines with the speed at which I’m rapidly descending to forcefully spin me around. I feel as though I’m leaning backwards in a chair at the brink of tipping over head-first. At this moment, I wonder why agreed to go zip-lining at the Sundance Mountain Resort, which according to its website has the 3rd longest total distance and biggest vertical drop of any zip-line tour in the United States. It’s torture and the cruelest test ever of my moderate fear of heights!

#Hawkins2015Retreat Jake and I ziplining.

A photo posted by @dustinwcpa on

The zip-line tour got easier with each successive line as I learned how to control my speed. I figured out how to stay facing forward. I stopped fearing for my life and started to enjoy the beautiful fall colors of the treetops. At the end, I was glad I had the experience. Accountants tend to be creatures of habit and order, enjoying the safety on the ground. As a result we’re part of the joke: why did the accountant cross the road? Because that’s what he did last year. I’ve done things out of my comfort zone the last few years, and I’m glad I did. The shift from doing compliance to being a trusted business advisor is one example. I’ve experienced cloud accounting, and the view is wonderful. Discovering new software integrations and accounting efficiencies has proved to be impactful for businesses I work with. Diving into social networking and creating this blog was scary at first, but it led to meeting some next-gen CPAs who I’ve been able to collaborate with and it’s made learning more fun. I still have many other comfort zones to break out of to achieve my goals, but in the process I’ll do the best to enjoy the ride.
#Hawkins2015Retreat Getting ready to jump off the Mountain A photo posted by @dustinwcpa on

Why Google Analytics is so much fun

While I’m not a power user of Google Analytics like those who track e-commerce and advertising performance, I know my way around it well enough to discover fun and interesting facts about my blog’s visitors.  Below are a few insights into my blog’s statistics:
  1. I love maps!  The Demographics-Location screen shows that my blog has nearly spanned the globe.  It’s no surprise that the United States is the darkest shade of green, which means that it is the country with the most number of visits.  The countries in grey have yet to make a visit.  I am still waiting for Greenland to turn green.  If you have friends there, send them my way. Google Analytics map
  2. It is always interesting to see the search keywords used to get to my site.  “Should I…” is a very common search phrase.  Sure, I can explain how to enter credit card charges correctly into QuickBooks, but don’t expect too much more from me.Should I
  3. Below is a graph showing the value of my investment portfolio.  Just kidding!  The graph shows the number of daily website visits.  It is satisfying to see an increase in web traffic over time.  This is a good lesson for people just starting to blog to not be discouraged by low numbers.  Loyal readers, links from other sites, and search results accumulate over time, so don’t give up!Web Traffic Graph
 

A Tribute to the Bloggers Who Link to Me

Thanks to Google Webmaster Tools, I can find out what other CPA and tax bloggers link to me in their blogrolls.  Below is part of a screenshot showing the blogs with the most links to my site.

List of Sites That Link to Me

If you are interested in tax or accounting, these blogs are worth following.
  1. Roth & Company, PC Tax Update Blog by Joe Kristan in Des Moines, Iowa.  As you can tell by the number of links, this guy is a blogging machine.  My only complaint is that he blogs so much I can’t keep up with every post.  Joe explains tax law in a way that is easy for everyone to understand.  He doesn’t use big words or refer to obscure sections of the Internal Revenue Code.  He also has the uncanny ability to find humor in every tax court case he blogs about.
  2. Beancounter Ramblings by Chad and Donna Bordeaux in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Chad and Donna effectively market their firm with their website and blog.  They blog not only about Federal tax issues, but also state and local tax news.  Like Joe, they have a good sense of humor and are fun to follow on Twitter.
  3. CPA Technology Blog by Brian Tankersley.  Brian is the technical editor of the CPA Practice Advisor and teaches educational courses for K2 Enterprises and Becker CPA Review.  Brian blogs about technology topics that impact the accounting profession.  Brian’s blog, in part, inspired me to create mine.
  4. There are a countless number of blogs on blogspot.  Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t identify which one links to me.  I think that most, if not all of these links come from PRI Tax and Bookkeeping Services, which I became aware of thanks to a few kind comments on my blog with links to their site.  This tax and bookkeeping firm is located in Elgin, Illinois, and on their blog, I am listed as one of only two “favorite blogs.”  What an honor!
I appreciate being listed in these blogs’ sidebars.  They provide me with quality inbound links that contribute to my PageRank in Google.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after Roth & Company added a link to my blog, there was a dramatic increase in traffic from Google searches. Check out the bottom of my right sidebar for more link love.
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How do I get my picture to show up with my comments on your blog?

It’s frequently asked questions time on Diving into the Details!  With this one, we’re not diving too deep. Having your picture (a.k.a. avatar) appear in my blog comments takes only a couple of minutes.  Go ahead, time yourself and let me know if I’m wrong.
  1. Go to the Gravatar website.
  2. Create an account.
  3. Verify your e-mail address.
  4. Upload a picture, and you’re done!
Gravatar associates your picture with your e-mail address whenever you leave a comment on a WordPress blog (and a few other blog platforms).  If you have multiple e-mail addresses like I do, you’ll either want to confirm multiple e-mail accounts with Gravatar or make sure you are consistenly using the same e-mail address when you comment on blogs. Ready to show off your avatar?  Leave a comment below!

Ten Things I Learned from WordCamp Las Vegas 2010

Last Saturday, I attended WordCamp Las Vegas.  WordCamp is a conference that focuses on the popular blogging platform WordPress, which I used to create this blog.  Most of those who attended were full-time web designers and programmers.  I was probably most likely definitely the only accountant there.  I admit that some of the material presented in the conference was a little over my head, especially when they got into PHP code.  My PHP coding skills are a level or two above copy and paste. 
John Lynn speaking at WordCamp.

John Lynn speaking at WordCamp.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed WordCamp and learned tons of new things (well, ten things at least). 
  1. Passion and motivation are the keys to blogging, according to my friend and client John Lynn.  If anyone has that passion and motivation, it’s him, having written about 6,000 blog posts in the past 5 years.  This year, John quit his full-time job and earns enough advertising revenue from his blogs to support his family.  John’s most recent entrepreneurial project is a website to help raise money for sports teams and non-profit organizations.  You can see John’s PowerPoint presentation on his website to learn about how he became a full-time blogger.  Check out the plug he gave me on slide 8 (thanks, John).
  2. WordCamp brings in a tech-savvy crowd.  It seemed like everyone had a laptop, iPad and iPhone.  It was a good thing I bought a Droid X last month because it helped me to blend in a little bit.
  3. Creating a good podcast is a lot more difficult than having a microphone and recording an MP3 file.  Scott Whitney from Podworx gave an entertaining and enlightening presentation showing how they incorporate music and eliminate the uh’s and um’s when recording podcasts.
  4. The M&M peanut butter brownies at the Palace Station buffet were pretty tasty!
  5. I didn’t take any notes on paper.  I used Twitter to jot down great quotes and to have a record of stuff I want to look into later.  On top of that, I shared those tweets using the hashtag #wclv with the rest of the attendees, and one of them expressed her appreciation for it!
  6. Twitter provided me with opportunities to meet people in person that I had read tweets from during the conference (i.e. “hey, you’re @techguy”)!  Did I mention I need to change my cryptic Twitter name?  Nobody came to me and said, “hey @whe97007!”
  7. For security reasons, don’t use the default username “admin” to log into your WordPress admin page.  FYI hackers, my new username is “Dustin.”
  8. I need to try out WordPress’ photo editor instead of using Photoshop every time to touch up photos.  It can do more than I previously thought.
  9. WordPress is a very powerful blogging platform and the possibilities of what you can do with it are almost endless.  A couple of the conference sessions were mind-boggling.
  10. I’m planning to come back again next year.

Why It Took Me Months to Start Blogging

First, let me describe my background in regards to web design so you know where I’m coming from. I built my first web page in the year 2000 using Yahoo Geocities’ WYSIWYG site builder.  It was simple.  I just typed out some text and dragged it where I wanted it, and put pictures where I wanted them on the page.  It was fun and sparked an interest to learn more about web design. Shortly after that, I took a web page design class in college.  The course almost entirely focused on html code.  I enjoyed the course and felt proud to finally be a sophisticated “hard coder” creating web pages with Notepad.  I created several websites by just writing html code and CSS, including the website for my company, a Las Vegas CPA Firm. However, I soon discovered that creating a website this way has its problems.  For example, changing a navigation bar for all pages in the website required me to cut and paste new code to all of the twenty-or-so html documents that comprised each page of the website. My eyes were opened to a better way of managing a website at the AICPA Technology Conference in June 2009.  One of the speakers demonstrated how he used a content management system (CMS) to pull content from other sources on the Internet and automatically create html code.  Another session of the conference was entirely about “blogging, podcasting, and social networking” which covered how a blog can benefit a professional.  I left the conference with the resolve that I wanted to learn to use a CMS and become a blogger! It was a long journey from June to November 2009, when I posted my first article on my blog.  Why did it take so long?  Consider that I did all of the following:
  1. I carefully observed several other CPA bloggers and picked out things I liked and didn’t like from their blogs.
  2. I researched several CMSs and blogging platforms, including Joomla, Drupal, Blogger, and WordPress.  I finally settled on using self-hosted WordPress so I could have total control over my blog and customize it as much as I like.
  3. I purchased my domain and web hosting after a few hours of researching several web hosting services.
  4. I installed WordPress on my web server.
  5. Among more than one thousand themes (or general designs) on the wordpress.org website, I had to choose my favorite.  I then had to further customize my design so my blog wouldn’t look exactly like other blogs using the same theme.
  6. I installed several plugins and widgets (programs for backup, security, and sections of my blog, such as the Twitter and Google Reader feeds on the right sidebar).
  7. I started an account with Feedburner to create an RSS feed.
  8. I opened an account with Google Analytics and configured it to work with my blog, which I have discovered to be a great resource to see statistics of the traffic to my site.
  9. I also opened an account with Google Webmaster Tools to observe how Google indexes my blog.
  10. I created an “about me” page and a disclaimer (every blog should have one!)
  11. At this point, I started writing blog posts.  Every blog post has to catch the reader’s attention, be informative, and be entertaining.  I wouldn’t write anything I wouldn’t want to read myself!  It’s not easy.
This might all sound overwhelming to someone who has never created a website.  If you’re in this category, I have some good news.  It doesn’t have to take months to start blogging.  In fact, I created a simple blog using Blogger and finished it in about an hour.   This blog (dustinwheelercpa.com) took me so long because I created it the hard way, and I’ve learned a lot in the process.

RSS has Changed How I Use the Internet

Over the past few months, I’ve been much more efficient in reading news, blogs, and other websites that interest me.  I now read twice the content in half the time!  In this blog post, I’m going to give my secret away.RSS

You might have noticed a little orange button on some websites like the one on the right.  I had seen them for a long time, and always wondered what they were.  It is a logo for RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) which is a web feed format used by many websites that publish updated content (most commonly for news and blogs). Unless you’re already familiar with RSS, that last sentence probably didn’t make any sense.  Keep reading.  It will.  I didn’t really understand it until someone showed me how a “feed reader” works.  That’s where I’ll go next, but first, a little background: Before I figured out how RSS works, I used to go to each of my favorite websites periodically to see what’s new.  This process consumed a lot of time.  First, I had to find the website in my favorites list in my web browser (and if I didn’t save it as a favorite, I had to do try to remember the web address or search for it in Google).  Then, I had to look for the most recent content, read the title (and maybe the first few sentences of the article) and test my memory to see if I had read it before.  This might not sound like too much work, but when you do this with ten to twenty websites, the time really adds up. Some websites offer e-mail updates for new content.  This became annoying as I started getting my e-mail on my phone.  I got tired of being interrupted by the new e-mail notification sound only to find out that the e-mail was reminding me to read a new article at some website. A feed reader (also referred to as a feed aggregator) brings all of the new content from these websites into one place, like your own personal newspaper.  It also lets you know which articles you have or haven’t read.  It frees up your e-mail as strictly a device for communication.  Another benefit of using a feed reader is that you won’t see nearly as many advertisements, if any, compared to visiting each individual website. There are many feed readers out there, and most of them are free services.  My feed reader of choice happens to be Google Reader.  If you’re still a little confused about how feed readers work, watch this video about Google Reader in plain English. With the help of Google Reader, I’m able to keep up with important publications in the profession such as the Journal of Accountancy, read the local newspapers, and enjoy posts from other blogging accountants.  I can also “share” items that I like and want other people to read.  On the right sidebar of my blog, you’ll see a list of items that I have shared from Google Reader. One last thing … and it might be self-promotional, but I wanted to point it out in case you missed it.  On the top right corner of my page, you’ll see a little orange button and the words, “Subscribe to my Blog.”