World's Toughest Phone - Who Cares?

For the longest time I wanted all my tech to be tough - Dust proof, water proof and drop proof tough. The horse business lifestyle tends to include lots of barn dust and a large variety of broken water toughs to hunch over.

Well the Sonim XP 3300 Force is now the world's toughest phone.

So, why am I not running to the store to buy this? Because it's huge.

Why can't a company build a ruggedized product that fits in my shirt pocket? Sure we can by an Otterbox, or a LifeProof case, but then we may as well buy this brick that is at the top of the page. As soon as smart phones were small enough to fit into a buttoned shirt pocket, tough went out the window. And if I forget to button my shirt pocket, well... Too bad for me.

But until these tough phone builders make a smaller form factor phone... Too bad for them. 

Do you use tough tech? Leave a comment below.

What's required to sell online?
It's safe to say that the majority of the people reading this have purchased something internet. You just sit down at the computer, whip out that credit card and the next thing you know, your package of new wonderful-ness is sitting at the front door.

But, what has to happen on the other side of the computer in order to get your package to you?

E-Commerce.

The typical setup required for a business to be able to accept payments online consists of three parts:

1. Shopping Cart: Enables customers to select the product they want to purchase
2. Payment Gateway: Authorizes payments so the business knows if the card is valid, has funds available, etc.
3. Merchant Account: Enables businesses to capture the funds from a customer once it has been successfully authorized.

How you can be selling within the hour.

Sign up for FREE at WePay.com. That's it.

BULL CRAP!?!?

Yes, it sounds too good to be true. But this company is moving into the payment processing space by eliminating the need to use so many middle men. Then, they pass those savings on to us - the small business professionals of the world.

They're still a company. They will charge you. But, they only charge you when you make a sell. They provide the shopping cart and payment authorization tools in order to make money on the payment processing.

Now, is a custom shopping cart with your own payment gateway and merchant account more desirable? Of course it is. But not everyone has the budget for that. This type of service allows small businesses to get into e-commerce without having to break the bank.

So go register at WePay.com. Then, email info@ranchforeman.com with a link to your products. We'll share them here on the blog. You can also post the link in the comments below or on Facebook.com/RanchForeman.

Have questions or comments? Is this a great tip? A crappy tip? Leave a comment below.

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Rugged phone cases for our rugged lifestyle.

Otter boxes are great, but sometimes they are a little bulky for front-shirt-pocket-carrying. Check out this new iPhone case from Lifeproof! We are trying to get one for the 3G, but they are out of stock. No doubt due to the high demand. Those of you with a 4G should get over there and treat yourself! ;)

Hopefully, they will have cases for more phone models soon. (crossing my fingers for the Galaxy S model) - http://www.lifeproof.com/

Texas Horse

Two primary schools of thought exist in the horse business today.

1) The economy is down. Horse prices are down. It's getting pretty difficult to sell horses.

2) This needed to happen. The market contained too many horses of below average quality. Good horses with quality riding invested in them are still no problem to get sold.

Regardless of your stance on the situation, we can all agree that things are changing in the Texas equine industry. There's no better indicator of this than the recent gaining momentum of Texas Horse.

Check out this link and take a look around: http://texashorseweb.com

When you return to this page, let us know how you think it will effect your horse business:

Great Looking Horse Business Websites

Design is important.

It takes one twentieth of a second for visitors to your website to make a decision about that site. An interesting and more important phenomenon occurs immediately after that first impression.

It is called the “halo effect”. The halo effect makes your visitors first impression difficult to change. In other words, if a site looks good at first glance, the content itself is judged to be of a higher quality and people are more likely to continue visiting the site. Of course the flip-side to that is if your site looks bad your website visitors will never come back. You could have a great horse for sale on the second page... But they'll never see it.

Horse business websites seem to fall short in the design category. So, here is some inspiration. Remember - Copying a design is in VERY poor taste. It is wrong and it prooves you have no creativity. Use these sites to see what's possible and revise your horse business website accordingly. You may even contact them to see who developed their website.

• CenterRanch.com
• WimpysLittleStep.com
• SDPBuffaloRanch.com