For the most part, working from home does not require any specialized telephone equipment. But for some people, their small home based business will grow to the point that their regular home phone system will no longer do the job. That it might be time to look at Business Phone Systems by Comtech.

Comtech offers telephone systems and business phone repair services for both home based, and office based businesses. They will help you choose the right phone system for your business and work with you to get it installed and working. They sell both new and used phone systems, and will even buy your old phones from you.

Comtech Phones has been in business since 1982 and offers a 2 year warranty on both phone sales and repair services.

To my readers who come to my blog for my musings on the Telecommuting lifestyle, please bear with me a moment as I take a momentary diversion. I promise the next post to be back on topic.

As a means to drive new visitors to this site, I’ve added the Entrecard widget to the right column of this page. This service was created expressly for bloggers to network with one another and drive traffic to their sites. Compared to other services with a similar aim, Entrecard has shown some promise and I have seen a dramatic increase in traffic for this blog which was launched only two months ago.

I won’t go into the basics of the Entrecard model, which you can learn more about here. What I wanted to talk about for a moment is the quality of the traffic I receive from the service. Traffic for traffic’s sake should not be the goal of any website owner. You want people to find your site and make use of your content. If you are trying to make some revenue from your site, you also want them to find and click on an ad or affiliate link.

The best indicator for site visitors making use of your content is the Average Time on Site statistic (I will abbreviate it as ATS). This statistic is available via Google Analytics and can be displayed per traffic source. Here is my direct traffic (bookmarked or type-in) ATS number:

Notice that for this traffic source, the ATS is 5:28 while the site average (all traffic sources combined) is dramatically lower at 1:36. The reason for the disparity is due to the highest traffic source for my new blog – currently Entrecard. You can isolate the ATS for a particular traffic source by clicking on Traffic Sources in Analytics on the left and then by clicking on Referring Sites. After isolating the referral traffic driven from Entrecard (entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com and entrecard.com), I can see that the ATS is zero:

I’d rather it be something closer to my direct traffic ATS figures.

A lot of this phenomenon is due to the fact that at least half of the traffic comes from other Entrecard users – other site owners trying to drop their card and gain credits. What I think is happening is what I will call “Chain-dropping” and this is what leads to a zero ATS:

1. Click through to my site from my Entrecard ads or from the Entrecard site
2. Find my Entrecard widget on the page
3. Drop the card
4. Click on the ad 2mm above the drop area and move on to the next site for another card drop

Once you get a rhythm, the above process takes less than a second to perform. Since site owners buy ads (campaign) with credits gained partially from dropping cards, it is a very fast way to collect credits. Since site owners want to purchase ads on the highest profile or highest-traffic sites, it can cost a lot of credits so they need to click on a lot of ads to collect them.

I must say that I have only put the Google Analytics tracking script into the blog a few days ago so my sample size is admittedly small, but I’m confident that the trend will probably continue until something material is changed with the Entrecard model. A suggestion I would have for Entrecard would be for them to delay the clickability of the ad for several seconds after a card drop. This would force Entrecard visitors to do something while they wait – read your content. However, I think it would result in an implosion in traffic, available credits and ad costs so they probably won’t do it. I think Entrecard users are mesmerized by their newfound traffic and would lose interest if the traffic dropped substantially, regardless of the quality of that traffic.

That all being said, I am certain that I have received new regular readers via Entrecard as I have seen some comments left on my posts from other bloggers using the service. I’m keeping an open mind on Entrecard and will keep the widget on my site and bask in the newfound traffic, even if the traffic comes with an * asterisk. I welcome other thoughts on my analysis and your thoughts on Entrecard.

When I first started working from home, in an effort to save money, if I had to buy any type of office machine at all, I would buy the cheapest I could find. Generally it would be a machine that was designed for light duty home use. Within a short amount of time the machine would break or wear out. Or, it wouldn’t quite do the job I needed it too. Take for example, my stapler. I prepare tax returns and I do a lot of stapling this time of year. Some tax returns are very thick. The first year I struggled by with a regular stapler. It was a hassle and it didn’t do a very good job. Finally I bought a professional, high capacity electric stapler. Such a little thing, but it saved me more in time than it cost me in money, and my thick tax returns looked better with only one staple holding them together.

This is why I think everyone with a home office should consider buying professional office equipment. General Business Supplies is a source for professional quality business machines such as staplers, hole punches and all types of binding machines. The materials you give your clients need to look first rate. So it is important that all of your reports are properly bound and professional looking. General Business Supplies offers many different types of binding machines including wire binding, plastic coil binding, and thermal binding.

In the long run, professional quality office machines save you time and money, and make a better presentation to your client. Don’t waste your money on cheap machines that are designed for occasional home use.