A slow one...

"Next week I will finalise the niche pack & the niche product for an NSS member to review and I will finish the shopping site that I now have setup so that I can promote it with one of our customers.

I will also have a look at adding an ask campaign for the book that we are launching in November, when the digital format is ready and a second campaign for a niche that I had already rejected, but I have now found a couple of possible outlets for the title. We’ll see what I have time for. The top priority is to get this niche pack out and the shopping site set up properly."

Number one: I have NOT finished the niche packs nor the niche product that was the top priority NOR did I finish the design of the shopping site I had set up for my publishing business.

I DID launch an ask campaign using a free formmail account & dreamweaver to create the form for the publishing book and I will launch another ask ( or flycatcher ) campaign next week.

I did NOT do any work at all on the shopping site.

Is this going to slow down my progress. No. Progress happened slowly THIS week, but it does not impact the speed of progress next week.

It will of course mean that I will either deliver the products later or I have to work harder to deliver them on time.

Has my business suffered from me not meeting my objectives? Yes. There are members on the NSS site waiting for stuff to happen.

Has this week been wasted? No.

Resoundingly NO.

I spent an hour or so on the phone to a great trusted friend and mentor trying to figure out what to do with this book launch in November and how I could go about it without breaking the bank. I spent even more time working with book stores, book websites and my wife to sell more books and to get more money for the launch. We worked hard to figure out how to execute a plan that could work for our book.

That took a long time to go through but in the end the instincts told us that taking this on as a financial gamble is too stressful so we're going to work out another way of Launching it.

And we will definitely spend some time at the trade fair to get some publicity for our company & books.

But other than that, my mother is over visiting from Norway until Wednesday so it has been slow this week and I expect it to be slow next week too.

We'll see what I can come up with for goals. The main thing is to get the nichepack ready. the book is already on paydotcom, but the salespage needs serious work! ( http://www.traditionalchristmasrecipes.com/ )

And this is only the lead into the niche. There are more products lined up for Christmas. You should have yours lined up by now too...

Christmas Is here early.

Last Week I said:
Next week, I’ll have a paydotcom book ready for my NSS members to promote, and I am also giving them a couple of website designs they can play around with in XSP. I’ll start up my adwords cashcow campaign again to see how it goes. And I will be contacting some people about my books.


Ok. The niche pack is delayed a bit as I had some troubles with the domain I set up and with getting it to work with paydotcom. I also need to feed in some articles, but the site is at least finished and about 80 percent ready. I’ve also got 3 design options ready for the site.
I have also moved forward a 3rd niche product because it is loosely related to a niche one of the NSS members is working in, and the product could lend itself well to her niche, with a bit of modification. So that one is about 80 percent ready as well.
The adwords cashcow has already given me two sales a week in, which isn’t too bad at this time of year, and I know my adverts covert well when they get shown, but they are being blocked by the fact that I am sharing my URL with the site I am promoting and so they get their ads displayed instead of mine. But again I have a PLAN to fix that, but it’s a matter of finding the time. Hmm. It could mean getting more money so I guess I’d better up it’s priority.
I have not had time to deal with the book company this week as much, but I spent Wednesday in London discussing publishing options with a print on demand and “short print runs “ specialist that doesn’t charge anything up front. Very good for our book launch in November and gives us the flexibility to print short test runs of possible titles to get review copies out etc.
I also read a very interesting piece in a newsletter this week about how to prove to investors that your business idea works, which I will adapt to publishing and try a few titles that Pauline has hinted about in the last few weeks as possibles. Although we already have 3 titles ready for publication as soon as we have the money. The book people in London might be able to help us out there though. They even work out cheaper than Profitspublishing which is incredible.
Next week I will finalise the niche pack & the niche product for an NSS member to review and I will finish the shopping site that I now have setup so that I can promote it with one of our customers.
I will also have a look at adding an ask campaign for the book that we are launching in November, when the digital format is ready and a second campaign for a niche that I had already rejected, but I have now found a couple of possible outlets for the title. We’ll see what I have time for. The top priority is to get this niche pack out and the shopping site set up properly.

Cheers,
Jon

Websites, Shopping Carts and Money

Next week I will work on selling more books, and on the XSP niche product sites. Those are my main priorities. I’m also going to figure out why my google maps don’t seem to work and have the shopping cart software installed by Wednesday.
:
Ha! I laugh in the face of such easy targets! How vague those first 3 objectives are! Bah humbug what an easy life I lead.
The shopping cart was installed by Wednesday. I spent time over the Monday and Tuesday to install it on a hosting plan that didn’t support perl on IIS. Doh. So as soon as I was told to go for a linux server I did and had it installed and running like a dream on Wednesday. Then spent most of Thursday trying to figure out how to modify the design.
But finally I have a blimmin affiliate program!! Two tier and customizable by each affiliate! Woo hoo!
And that was the one that had a fixed target!!
The other target I had was to make the first seasonal product available via paydotcom by the 15th. The good news there is that I have the raw material for a 60 page ebook and I have the design for the site. Between now and the 15 I have to get the various pages that paydotcom requires me to put in place created and I have to pdf the product and add the links and feedback forms etc in the book it self. Oh, and I need a coverphoto, but I am working on that already. I have a picture of a whopping big turkey dinner from last xmas on a pc somewhere – if not I’ll grab one from my stock photo website.
Now, when you see what product it is you’ll go – Oh for Peters sake Jon, why did you waste your time on such a daft product?
Because I could. Just get it DUNN! That is my goal for this one. And it’ll be available to resell for anyone that are members of our service station too.
But the NICHE that this niche is within is a HUUGE industry and it gives me a foothold to develop further products to sell into the related niches.
Oh and the googlemaps thing is sorted out – google is case sensitive, but does not recognize uppercase … though it seems it is delisting my sites faster than an Australian can take wickets against England talenders.
And I’ve sold more books. Although my priority has been to set up the shopping cart to help some of our partners sell more of our personalized books.
Next week, I’ll have a paydotcom book ready for my NSS members to promote, and I am also giving them a couple of website designs they can play around with in XSP. I’ll start up my adwords cashcow campaign again to see how it goes. And I will be contacting some people about my books.
I also need to find a way to raise a bit over £4k to pay for the things that I need to launch our next title at a tradefair in November. Me has a plan…

Cheers,
Jon
- every day in every way I am getting better and better-

Now we're talking

I feel good about this weeks progress, I must confess. I think it is because I have started to realize that I have no fixed income anymore and that it is up to me to replace my income. It is up to ME to make the sales figures in the publishing business increase. It is up to ME to get the new titles promoted. ( we got two new books definitely in the pipeline and are hoping to be able to afford two more ) So you could say the success of the sales force is quite critical for our future success.

I absolutely LOVE the freedom and the simplicity of running my own business. I have no employees to deal with and my aim is that I never will have to deal with it. What ever actions I take or NOT take have a direct impact on our business results and that is just incredible. To me it is at least.

Anyway, on to my progress!

Last week I said I wanted to spend my time this week working on the XSitePro niche packs and selling loads of books.

Well I sold a few books by ringing around some book stores, but I have also got some contacts in the company HQ that will come in handy and should provide us with a bit more traction in that book chain.

I have also extracted a recipe book from a public Domain book that I have been working on, and two other potential titles. My aim is to have all 3 ready on PayDotCom from the 15th of August and I am so far on track.

I have made some in roads on this ecommerce solution for the publishing company, and it seems I may have to resort to getting someone to install it for me as it isn’t as straight forward as I hoped it would be. I certainly can’t understand why it’s not working and we need to increase the revenue from our books significantly as we were hoping to exhibit in London in November. ( subject to lack of bombings… )

Doesn’t look like a lot but I have managed to identify 5 other decent projects to work on this week. I have bought instantblogandping and have run it on two of my sites. I will re-run it on one site again on Monday when I have updated the adsense adverts on the pages that I have on the site.

I have also finished the redesign of the money tips site and updated the 404 page with an automatic redirect. I have over 100 pages listed in msn and ask.com and I need that traffic to get redirected to somewhere useful until they come around again.

Next week I will work on selling more books, and on the XSP niche product sites. Those are my main priorities. I’m also going to figure out why my google maps don’t seem to work and have the shopping cart software installed by Wednesday.