Working Away

You may notice that the posts this week are not here or really short.

This is because I am dividing my efforts into migrating my money tips bits over to another website and at the same time cracking on with the research that is required for the business venture that I mentioned earlier.

It is looking more and more likely that I am moving into the area of Niche publishing. Both hard copy physical books as well as ebooks specific to this niche.

This does not mean that we will definately buy this publisher. It just means that we are very likely to either buy or start one from anew.

You'll be among the first to know what we decide as we are meeting them next weekend. ( 5th of September.) Between then and now I have my Mom visiting for a week.

So I'm progressing!


Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Not missing

You may have noticed that there was no Firday progress report in this blog on Friday, but it is not missing.

From Now on I will post them here

http://fridayprogress.blogspot.com

but my daily updates will still end up in this blog. I've decided to separete them out to make them stand out a bit more.

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Passive Income - I love you!

Just read a post on a forum where the poster had been ill over the last few weeks and how he still made a steady "trickle" of an income from his websites.

That's what I want!

I have it from google adwords, to a degree, but it requires a little more interaction than adsense might do.

Although I think the chap in question has picked a very nice niche traffic wise.

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Starting Up The Right way

I think I committed to posting my next days actions on this blog.

Ah well.

Regardless of that, this morning I spoke to a business startup coach and it was a revelation.

If I thought I would be short of things to put on my list this evening I was mistaken. Very!

There is market research, there is business research, there are now TWO business plans to write. There are forcasts to calculate. And one I can do tonight, which is the one that involves changing nothing about the business.

There is far more on the list, but I'm in a hurry so you'll have to wait!

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Buying A Business

At the moment, most of my online time is spent on one thing - investigating if a business we have identified is a good business to buy.

Goodness me there are lots of stuff to think about - but it's a great exercise!

My mind is getting such a juicy massage thinking about strategic alternatives, looking at the accounts ( or in this case - the one sheet of paper ), investigating the market niche, investigating the products relative position in this niche as well as looking at operational and tactical alternatives for the business.

and of course number crunching. For instance, one little test I did showed that by carrying out one activity for one hour, the turn over would on average improve by £53.86 for every hour we did this. I have however not tested if this hourly rate goes down at any particular point.

It's a bit like debts I suppose - always do the one that gives you the highest return.

It's been an interesting lesson, and one that has made my money website suffer tragically.

the three actions I listed on Friday that related to that website has remained not done.

The one that will have the biggest impact is submitting my articles and my articles directory to other websites & search engines.

I guess you know what that means.

I also have committed to send out a newsletter, which means I must write an article about money and come up with a money tips review as well as writing the article.

On we go!

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

FP - 6 Steps Forward & Google Going backwards

How I'm Doing This week?

Funny you should ask. My google adwords are being clicked on like mad. Anyone buying more though? nope. Sales are holding steady, but the clicks have gone up. No idea why.

In my "real life" I am still employed but have no actual "job" to do. It is a bizzarre situation to be in I tell you. I log on to my broadband in the morning and all I have to do is browse my companys internal job noitce board, speak to people in my network and pick up the odd problem from my old "job". Will they let me go? no. Can I pick and choose what roles to apply for? yes? Do I have to get interviewed every week? yes. Are there any consequences if I don't? not for a while.

But anyway. In the evenings I crack on with the possible business venture. Which basically means I am back to my a set of 3 projects again:
- google adwords
- money website
- offline business venture

New things I will do:

I haven't mentioned it before, but as I am doing it already, I might just as well tell you these two things now -
I am concentrating alot of my effort on getting the money tips website content management problem sorted.

The rest of my time is now being spent on investigating buying a business.

Although I have just realised I could launch a paid membership website to the marketplace, without buying the business, and at far less setup cost.

This weeks lessons:

Mark Litman's Greatness held hostage has made me realise I am better at listening to stuff than at reading about it. But he is so annoyingly enthusiastic I have yet to get through the whole hour long cd.

I did pick up a system for making progress though, which involves writing down 6 things I could do tomorrow to progress my business.

For tomorrow I have written down:

1. Write up the market reseach findings I have so far & identify gaps

2. write a money article

3. Submit a money article

4. I need to decide on what to do with my domain / hosting of my money website as the current plan doesn't support the content management tool I prefer.

5. If I receive the accounts from the business we are reviewing, copy them and send a copy off to our accountant.

5a - If i don't get them, then I need to sit down with pauline and write down all our findings in our mind map, so the plan gets written down at least.

6. Write a background or summary for the business startup coach I am hopefully speaking to on Tuesday ( hopefully as I haven't had the call confirmed yet )

I think I'll use my blog to publish my 6-list. Although I might shorten it if I can't get it all done in a day.


Anyone any good at business planning? drop me a line if that's the case!

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Yet another system to manage my progress

I'm trying a new system ( again )

This time I am writing down the 6 most important things I can do tomorrow to bring my business forward. I am on my second day.

So far I have done 3 of them.

and come 10 to 10 this evening, I will stop working, think about and write down 6 things that I will do tomorrow to bring my business & life forward.

And for 5 minutes after ten, I will think about how I will benefit from it, and try to focus on the reward.

When I know how well this system works, I'll let you know.

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

What am I doing?

You could wonder, as much as I am. It seems I am all over the place these days.

I am taking action on a "realworld" project at the moment, as well as making sure I remain in employment for at least a little longer.

But I can not for the life of me figure out what it is that I am doing every evening these days. Because of my current RSI issues I need to limit the time I spend on the machine, but I am not even remotely efficient.

Am I progressing? Well the google bits are earning me a little bit of profit. the money website? Well I am still evaluating the application to use to manage my site.

I have found a tool that I like, but it will not run on the hosting platform I am using.
Ok, time to write down that action
- I will ask my current host what it would cost to transfer / release the domain.

Now to find 5 more...

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Mike Litman is LOUD!

I guess it was a little over a week ago that my mentor sent me an email telling me about Mike Litman and his free Audio Cd.

Well, it wasn't free as I had to pay for postage, but there you go.

Anyway, I have listened thorough about half the CD so far, and once I stopped laughing out loud at the gusto, enthusiasm and sheer american flamboyance there were in truth some nice nuggets of information in there.

He talks about how time is the most valuable asset or currency you've got. That is also why it is important to spend it wisely. He also mentions some time management system that seems quite ingenious.

This isn't a review! I'll tell you what I did instead.

I got down to business and sorted not one, not two, but 3 problems I've been struggling with.

The new website management software is now installed on the test server, and I will be running it for a little while to see if I can put up with it or if I need to bite the bullet and manage my content with another tool. Which means I have to consider getting another domain name for my service. Hmmm. By writing the ebook(s) and setting up a sales page for that, I could in fact migrate the whole money tips idea to that domain... hmmm - worth a thought.

I managed to grit my teeth and actually publish the content I had sitting on my machine, as well as the newsletter. Not that it actually gets delivered anymore - but that's another story.

And I sat down and wrote another article for the ebook. Or rather restructured one I had already. plus I got to test ViaVoices ability to transcribe audio.

And now I know it's a waste of time to try, as I have to retype it anyway!


Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

I HATE Software!!

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting as regularly as I have promised to do.

It happens.

I just didn't feel like it, and so I didn't.

And to be honest, my internet progress has suffered as a consequence. Well the rate of progress at least. My focus has gone towards trying to find a software solution that will work with my hosting provider while at the same time being user friendly from 3 angles:

1. From the visitors point of view, there should be a nice and uncluttered website, great to navigate.

2. From the Administrators point of view it should be easy to manage NEW content, as well as settings and site elements.

3. From the Content contributors point of view, it should simply be a question of submitting it and be done with it.

And why do I hate software? Because they insist on some dork called a "designer" being involved in the process!

All I want, is something that does exactly what I want it to do, not something that asks me to do what IT wants me to do!

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

FP- Sideways Is Also Progress

Hello and let's get cracking. There's not much to say this week so I might just get it over with.

How I'm Doing This week:

Well I have sent off one as yet unpublished article to hitched.co.uk as they were looking for stories on honeymoons.

My website is targeting the UK market place so other than trying to get a foothold on some of the money forums and searching in vain for uk specific article directories, there isn't much else I have done.

I have signed up to the Adwords Mentor website and by tweaking a campaign that was suffering a little I have now twice as many sales this week compared to last week.

I haven't mentioned adwords since about April as I vowed to keep it running as was until August. August is now here and I am ramping up for the Christmas show down.

The merchants are touting the back to school offerings but I have yet to find many positive looking keywords for that market so I am inclined to not bother, unless a particular product offering leaps out at me.

I am looking actively to buy a business with a positive cashflow to replace my salary. That way I would in theory be able to "retire" from the corporate world sooner rather than later. We have so far rejected about 25 possibles, but think we have found one that suit our interests, that has a market with high demand and has run successfully since 1999. Just need to make sure the numbers add up I suppose.

And that we have a clear idea of what we can do to improve it.

I have also finally established a test website for a PHP and Mysql managed content website. Now all I need to figure out is how to change the design!

New things I will do:

None. I have too many outstanding current "actions" as it is! although I have bought a software development package as I have two product ideas for the money website. 

Things I am Dropping:
None.

This weeks lessons:
I feel that I have not contributed as much as I hoped on my "main project" this week as I should, but I think some times, I need to remember that it isn't the PROJECTS that are important but what I am trying to achive with my life that is important.

So when I have dedicated as much time as I have to investigate the market, the suppliers, the customers and the rest, then that is because I think that will bring me closer to my goals.

I know this is an excuse, but I do this for the lifestyle that I want. Too lofty a goal Gary tells me, but it is the reason I do it. The vision of being able to go to Machu Pichu when I want to, is better I suppose, but the over riding factor for me is:

I will not do anything that will take over my life, unless it is enjoyable, and give me the freedom to work it from anywhere in the world.

And my biggest problem is that I don't know what I enjoy! :o)

This weeks audience question:

Anyone know how to modify PHP pages?

 

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.734 / Virus Database: 488 - Release Date: 04/08/2004

If You use adwords you MUST check out AdwordsMentor!

Adwords Mentor is the latest venture from the inventor of googlecash, Chris Carpenter, and his protege, Jeremy Wilson.

I've just signed up and have so far browsed through the Q&A section and the forum and listened to a couple of the teleseminars.

I have also a copy of the audio interview with Chris, Jeremy and gordon and if you take action to listen or read to nothing else, that WILL offer you new insights into how to make adwords work.

The trick you see is not to get the top spot in a competitive and really popular keyword. The TRICK is to get in the top 8 as cheaply as possible on a keyword where people are happy to take the action that you want them to take. And THAT is what this website is ALL about.

You need to get in NOW to get the $2.95 7 Day trial and the discounted monthly membership fee.

Adwordsmentor.com

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=