July, 2010

Entrepreneurship / Internet Marketing — No Comments
30
Jul 10

My Side Business and Massive Action August

Until now, I’ve been pretty quiet about what type of business I’m actually working on. Partly because it’s a tiered model of attack (and therefore can sound quite lame if I explain it wrong), but also because I’ve been too busy to really draw it out.

I mentioned back in April, that I made just over $14 that month. Well, I’m really excited because this month I will end up right near $50. I always said that if I could make $1 online, then I could make $10. And if I could make $10, then I could make $100. What’s really cool is that it is proving to be true.

So what am I actually doing? Building websites and ranking them using search engine optimization. I signed up for The Keyword Academy in the middle of March and have been steadily plugging away ever since. TKA is basically a membership site that breaks down all of the internet marketing clutter online and delivers to the point guidance and advice on how to rank a website.

They’re not made for Adsense sites though, as the goal is to add quality to the search results through information. Although it is recommended to monetize with Adsense, there are a bunch of ways to make money without it once you get traffic to your site.

Unfortunately, it is a front end loaded model. You have to put in a bunch of work at the beginning to get a site ranked. Once it is ranked, however, it is much easier to keep it there. This makes the beginning stages a bit of a struggle and causes a lot of people to quit. The people who succeed are those who revel in the little victories and push through until they’re past the initial undertaking. I fully intend to be one of the successful folks.

Although I have been seeing good results from what I’ve been doing, I need to step it up a notch. I know I will be even more motivated when I start to see bigger numbers, so I’m going to force the issue. The founders of TKA always say that the best way to move forward is with massive, reckless action. I’ve read a lot of threads on their forums from advanced members taking massive, reckless action and seeing amazing results.

August is my reckless and massive action month. In addition to my current link building campaigns for my current sites, I’m going to setup 30 new niche sites. I picked out my niches with a detailed selection process and purchased my new domains accordingly. I’m amped up and ready to go.

This will be quite a task, but I’m not giving myself the option to fail. After all, you’ll never steal second with your foot on first.

Blogging — 2 Comments
21
Jul 10

Why My Blog Sucks

By now, I’ve realized that I’m just not the blogging type. I’ve tried multiple angles at it, but I just can’t commit to a regular schedule of posting without an end goal in mind. Blogging to me is like playing World of Warcraft, except a little worse.

In WoW, which I played for a semester in college (ironically getting my best GPA ever), you perform quests that give you experience for completing them. When you’ve stacked up enough experience you get bumped to the next level which comes with new available quests, skills, and potential weapons for you to utilize. It was quite entertaining to run my merry little character around, explore the map, and make my character better. But at some point I got bored with it; I realized that I was really just doing the same thing over and over again.

Ideally, the goal would be to get to the maximum level, which was 60 at the time, so you could get the best of equipment and perform dungeon raids. I didn’t really care about that, so getting to the highest level was never really a goal of mine. I think the same problem holds true with blogging.

My entrepreneur blog will probably never make me money, and I’m okay with that. The same as being a low level character in Warcraft, I have been happily bumbling along playing in my free time. I have multiple issues with this that keep me from ‘succeeding’.

The first is that the tasks to complete are fluid and unknown. Everyone gives different advice and you can’t do what everyone says. Some of the advice is even contradictory. So you really have to plow your own way in the dark, not knowing if you’re actually on the trail or just wondering through the woods.

The second problem is that I don’t care about getting to the top level. I don’t want to be a famous entrepreneur blogger; that would be complete agony for me. I simply enjoy occasionally sharing my thoughts with the world.

What I need to do is redefine my definition of blogging success so that I see what I’m already doing as succeeding. Since my purpose for the blog is just to connect with other like-minded individuals, have a place to jot down thoughts, and allow myself to work through ideas by writing, then I should consider myself a blogging success as long as I’m accomplishing that.

The biggest obstacle that I see that will keep me from consistently doing those things above is that I’m already overloading myself with priorities and a regular blog post is unlikely to crack the top of the list. When working full-time and working on a side business, there isn’t much leftover for a task with no ending goal…

Management — No Comments
7
Jul 10

The Gervais Principle | Corporate Management According to “The Office”

I stumbled across an absolutely brilliant article that analyzes, at a strangely deep level, the management theory that is witnessed in the recently deceased television show, “The Office”. I’d give a brief summary for you, but am honestly incapable of recreating one in my own words. So, below are some snippets to give you a taste, although I would strongly encourage you to take a look at the article (and prepare yourself for 20-30 minutes of reading and analyzing.

“The Office is not a random series of cynical gags aimed at momentarily alleviating the existential despair of low-level grunts. It is a fully-realized theory of management that falsifies 83.8% of the business section of the bookstore. The theory begins with Hugh MacLeod’s well-known cartoon, Company Hierarchy (below), and its cornerstone is something I will call The Gervais Principle, which supersedes both the Peter Principle and its successor, The Dilbert Principle.”

“Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.”

Check it out for yourself: The Gervais Principle