Stepping it up a notch and creating my own product

I started my entrepreneurial journey back in January 2008 and have just taken the time to really observe the different ways people are making money online and determine which might best suit me. I must say I have learnt quite a bit from my ever growing blog library and rss subscriptions. Now I think I have an idea of the route I wish to take in building an internet business.

At first I must admit I was quite caught up in the Google Adsense hype. The possibilities seemed endless but from my own experiences with adsense I realise that it still entails quite a bit of effort and seems most unrewarding. My true realisation came after reading this post at bloggingexperiment.com by Max Davis the new owner of the blog.

After reading that post I have decided to begin creating my own products and leverage the strengths of others to help make my product and business successful. My goals for this month then, are two develop the product I intend to market as well as build some credibility in the particular niche and of course build a list.

Currently I am developing two free products (newsletter and free ebook) to use on some of my existing websites so as to capture some leads and eventually market a paid service/product. I will make sure to let you guys know how it goes right now I’m just working on structure and gathering information.

Well that’s it, thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post please subscribe to my rss feed.

$10,000 in 37 days from facebook!

I know most of you may have heard about this by now but if you haven’t here goes. Brian Campbell of Internet Marketing University has made the claim that he will make $10,000 in 37 days from facebook. Even further he has invited everyone to join his group and follow him as he goes along.
This is pretty interesting stuff. He’s either going to be a huge success or embarrass himself horribly, either way its a good way to learn. I’ve already joined and became a fan of Brian on facebook so I can see what he does. I have some ideas as to how he might do it but I’ll still wait until he reveals his plans.
This post is of course a bit late. The end of the 37 days is May 16th 2008 which really just gives Brian a little over two weeks left to generate the money. Let’s see how it turns out!!

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Top 25 blogs by Time.com

Time.com has released its first annual top 25 blogs index. They have chosen what they consider to be the best 25 blogs on the internet from the millions that exist.

From millions of blogs about nothing, we’ve selected the 25 best about something—from politics and global affairs to shopping and sports. And, yes, we’ve got a few about nothing, too.

The avid blog readers will recognise most of the names on this list. It features names like Life hacker, Boing Boing and The Huffington Post to name a few. Check out the article and see if you agree with their choices.

Alternatively they also have a top 5 most overrated blogs index. This list has some very big names on it as well.

Regardless if you could get your blog on either list that would bring you some serious traffic and popularity. Let’s see if any of us can make it some day

Quick Project Management tip: “respect the chain”

This weekend I worked on a national event where I was in charge of the playing of advertisements on the big replay screen (I used to work for an ad agency so I have a soft spot for ads).It was quite a stressful weekend but I did learn some things that I will now share with you. As an Entrepreneur projects are our lives, each business venture we take up can be considered a new project as well any services we choose to provide. Project management is extremely important. Last week I mentioned some of this in my effective administration post. I want to dig a little deeper now.There will come a time, primarily depending on the size of the project when you will be forced to work with others. Established businesses often ask of your ability to work well with others, are you a team player things of that nature and trust me they wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Why is it important? Well if you don’t work well with others in a team effort then there will be chaos and the project will be a failure!

But back to my point. Normally when working in a team the work is split up amongst the constituents of the group, each person being put in charge of a particular topic, aspect, department, you name it.

What is important to remember here is that you must not undermine the authority of each other. Never cross over into the territory of another group member and start giving orders to the persons he is in charge of. If you recognise something fundamentally wrong with the approach he is taking then address it to him directly. This is the best way to keep everything in order. Persons do not take well to their authority being undermined, and there may be good reason (more times than not) why he is doing it in that particular way.

This is really just a quick lesson in team work. Trust each other’s capabilities and respect each other’s work and authority over the people they are in charge of. When there are too many chief’s in one tribe there can only be chaos. A clearly defined chain of command should be established and adhered to.

Hope you found this somewhat informative. Thanks for reading

Traffic goals: changing the light from red to green

I, like most green webmasters am addicted to viewing traffic stats. I find myself spending quite a bit of time checking stats on every service I have running, especially on google analytics. My traffic has completely died down, from my little StumbleUpon campaign for one of my sites, and for the period March 1st to 11th I have had 32 visits, 18 being unique visitors. Obviously something needs to be done here as I have gone from an average of 40 to 50 unique visitors a day to roughly 1.8. This blog is doing a little better actually. For the same period google analytics reports 47 visits, 32 being unique.

So lets make some improvements here; I will devote the rest of the month to doing intense traffic building techniques. I intend to write posts describing the different techniques I use and be able to show their effectiveness as results (if any) begin to show. As a starting point I will do some Search Engine Optimization, especially for this blog as well as some more social network marketing. Keep reading as I keep you updated as things progress

Thanks for reading and Thanks to all 47 visitors so far this month, I really appreciate it.