From A Royal Cockup To a Cock Eau Vin

How I'm Doing This week:

My google ads are doing quite well I must say. The profit so far this month looks to get pretty close to last months turnover! I think most of it is seasonal changes, but it's great to see anyway.
My "new" money website is coming along nicely. But it has ment I haven't bothered with the old one at all. It seems like there's no point until I have moved everything over. Or at least more of it. It's a little more time consuming than I anticipated. And unfortunately the first usability tests are down compared to my old website. But this new solution includes some membership features as well, although nothing that allows me to charge for it yet.

My business venture is looking promising. We're now doing some comparisons between two strategic options but my action list remains far too long for my liking.

New things I will do:

I don't have time to do new things - the only thing I can think of is that my fitness is becoming a business risk. and as such I need to consider how I can reduce that risk. Now there's a novel way to look at being obese!

But it is true. Certainly is in my case as I am Clinically Obese according to my GP and there are all sorts of health risks involved. So from the point of view that I could die from this one day if I don't change, and also the energy levels and stress tolerance levels can be improved by some simple fitness exercises.
So I need to think of a way to improve my health for next week

Things I am Dropping:

I'm beginning to think there's no point to these Friday Progress Reports anymore. I'm not sure I'm getting anything out of them anymore. Especially now that there aren't really any goals in them.

This weeks lessons:

This one comes from my J.O.B actually.

I think it is incredible how powerful a relationship can be in getting me to do things I had never dreamt of before. it is no secret that I detest my job with gusto, but I let someone I respect down early this week, and this colleague of mine TOLD me straight that this upset her.
So I spent the remaining 4 days of this week working my B-hind off to try to re-deem myself in some fashion. I don't think my standing will ever quite recover, but at least I took charge of the chaos I created and made every available effort to keep it stable and at the same time keeping all my other projects moving along as well.

My job is the reason why I want to focus on one thing at a time. In corporate lingo I am currently "on the bench" which means I am between roles within my company.
I handed over my responsibilities 3 weeks ago officially, so that my old department no longer pays for me. But I am still responsible for progressing 4 projects. Full workload would usually mean over 10.

But having only those 4 to focus on made such a huge difference as I can follow up both developers and clients daily if required, and give them updates before they come and ask for it.
Anyway, I digress. I don't think I would have put in such an effort if it wasn't for the simple reason that I hated myself for letting this particular person down. And it was all down to the respect I have for this person that I have worked so closely with for the last two years.

This weeks audience question:

Did you read this far?

The Rule of 6, adwords success & a telephone chat

How I'm Doing This week:

Yay. Google: Good times are being had. August is set to become the 3rd most profitable month since I started adwording. If you haven't started thinking about what to promote for christmas, get your finger out! and forget anything with "gift" or "present" in the keyword as it is WAAAAY full of untargeted competition.

Money tips review: Hm. Grumble. I think the site feels a lttle neglected. It has been. but Hey, it's August and at least I KNOW what I SHOULD be doing! and at least the website will be getting a little more attention over this weekend.

Business. ah - yes. We'll be meeting the vendors in 14 days to look at the premises & the accounts as well as the order books. had a great chat with Julia McDaid from Startup Right - http://www.startupright.co.uk who gave me some truly excellent advice that has resulted in me having an action list longer than ever before!

life. My mom is coming over for a week next Saturday so next Friday really IS a going on holiday day. And then on the Monday after Peters seminar I am off to visit my wifes family in Malta for two weeks. So I have every reason to get cracking. Especially as I don't actually even have a job as such in the company I work for.
( end self motivating talk)

New things I will do:

It's not so much a new thing, but as I have finally sorted out an easier content management solution I have to move the 80 or so articles over. I'll be busy.

Will I be too busy for Mark Litman? I must admit it is a hard slog to get through his ENTHUSIASTIC SCREAMING but I have at least gathered ONE nugget already and I will continue to try to apply the rule of 6.

Things I am Dropping:

My HTML template on my money website! It's been bugging me pretty much since day one.

This weeks lessons:

It's great to just START, but if you set things up wrong, you'll soon suffer for it.
BUT. the only way to KNOW if your setup is wrong is by STARTING in the first place!

Now my hope is that I will in fact take this lesson to heart on my other projects as well!

I KNOW I should be taking certain actions to promote my website, and I'll get there one day. When I am good and ready.

At least the rule of 6 is helping a little. I call it that by the way - not sure what he calls it as I haven't been able to face Mark Litman SCREAMING about my GREATNESS since last week
.
The rule of 6 is a time management system where all you do at the end of every day is to spend about ten minutes thinking about which 6 concrete things you can do the NEXT day that will bring your business forward the most.

I'm struggling with THINKING too little and writing too much - I always end up with a chaotic list of about 8 items that would be useful to do.

Seems to me that one beneficial thing for me to do would be to spend 8 of those ten minutes brainstorming the things that could bring you progress and then spend the next 2 minutes picking the 6 most important ones.

But I'm sure Mark Litman might tell me that in the second half of the CD, if I ever get that far

This weeks audience question:

Will I be seeing YOU in Bimingham at the "Twister" Seminar?

6 steps & google

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!

An Introduction

Hi there.

I have posted a report on my progress into the internet world since March 2004. I have done this on the UK internet marketing forum.

It started as a way for me to make myself accountable to someone for what I was committing to do. As a result I launched my first website in May, creating over 80 pages of content so far.

Now, I am getting requests to share my posts to other websites, and I consequently have created this blog to let people add feeds to their sites to get the updates automatically when they happen.

And to save myself some time!

This is indeed the FIRST post to this blog, but I have imported all the Friday Progress Reports that I have posted so far and in cronological order.

I hope you enjoy reading my journey as much as I have enjoyed travelling it.

Thanks for visiting.

Keep Progressing,
Jon

Moving 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.Â

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?