A busy Christmas ahead

Things sure have been busy for me recently. The biggest problem I've had is that my day job has sapped a lot of my time... I'm a management consultant by day, and that often means working long hours to tight deadlines, not to mention working away from home. This year, I'm going to be working all the way up until Christmas... now if I was really smart, I would have done this whole internet entrepreneur thing while I was doing my MBA rather than dossing around for two years!

On the bright side, I've got a week off between Christmas and the new year, so I intend to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of getting my Business Plan eBook written. I also intend to write some articles to publish in order to drive some traffic to the site. The site itself could also do with some original content. Although I'm sure my family would appreciate me spending some time with them, rather than me being stuck in front of the computer all day.

Anyway, I'm off to Germany now for work, so I don't know whether I'll be able to post before Christmas. One tip before I go - check out www.warriorforum.com if you're serious about internet marketing. There is a ton of useful stuff on that site.

Steep learning curve!

Well the new site has been up and running for a couple of weeks now. I've had about 30 signups for the newsletter, but no affiliate sales yet. It's early days, I suppose and I've only had one user unsubscribe. I did get one click-through on a GoDaddy link that resulted in a commission of less than $2 though - it's a small start, but a start all the same.

Things on the Google AdSense side are going a bit better though. I'm making a few dollars a day. It's slow going, but I can see that it has potential. One thing I learned is that the click through rate from people who do searches using the Google search box is incredible! Definitely something to think about - I think this can be leveraged in the future.

I've also been indexed in Google and MSN. Now all I need to do is some SEO to get traffic from natural search. This will be important in the future. One interesting thing that I have noticed is that the ads served up by AdSense when you click through from search seem to be "better" than if you type in the URL directly. For example, when I type in www.biz-wise.net directly, I usually get an ad from Google in the first position. I'm guessing Google don't pay much for a click through on this ad! (although you never know). If I go to Google, search for my site and click through to it, I ads from banks etc. - I'm guessing they pay more! Try it out for yourself and you'll see what I mean.

The main problem I have at the moment is that I have about a million ideas in my head. I really need to focus and concentrate on one idea at a time, but my head is literally buzzing with ideas! A case in point... I purchased a ready-made site for $17 the other day. You can see it on www.realty-researcher.com (I think the domain name alone is pretty cool). The main reason I bought it is to serve as a template for other niche sites I'll be creating in the future. Anyway, for now I need to customize the site and make it my own, add some original content and launch it properly. But when will I get the time? Plus I'm still trying to get the forum going on my main site (www.biz-wise.net/Forum) and progress there is slower than I thought it would be. My MBA buddies didn't help me out as much as I would have hoped. Oh well!

In addition to this, I'm having another go at Adwords/Clickbank, but results again are disappointing. And I still really want to write my definitive guide to writing business plans - I have so much knowledge and experience about writing business plans plus all of the wisdom of the entrepreneurs I met at business school - I'm sure this could be a great eBook... but again, where will I find the time?

I really need to sit down and focus, focus, focus!

Anti-climax!

Today has been a bit of an anti-climax, really. I'm at work for a start!

I decided to bid on some PPC keywords last night, as the paid traffic will not kick in for a few days yet - I just wanted to drive some people to the site to see what they get up to. Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning, I'd only had 100 impressions, let alone any clicks! I upped my minimum bid, but it still doesn't seem to have had much of an effect.

I've got a ton of things planned in order to drive traffic to the site, but I want to hold off on those things until the paid traffic experiment has run its course. Also I need to wait until the weekend, when I have some free time! Of course, I will talk through those things as and when I do them.

But for now, I guess I'll just have to play the waiting game...

I think I'm going to go crazy when I actually get the first sign-up to the email course, and when I get the first registration for the forum !!

So if you are reading this, come and say hello and sign up for the free 6-part introduction to becoming an entrepreneur!

It's ready!

Well, I've put in a lot of work and now comes the moment of truth. www.biz-wise.net is finally ready for launch!

I'm quite pleased with the end result. The site is a good start, and I look forward to updating it over the coming months and learning what works and what does not work. I'm sure it will be a steep learning curve!

The big question now of course, is how to drive traffic to the site? Do I pay for traffic, use Pay-Per-Click like Google Adwords, or do I try to organically increase my web-ranking?

For now, I've decide to experiment with the paid traffic route. I've purchased 10,000 visitors from a company called engineseeker. The traffic should kick in within 24 hours... so fingers crossed and we'll see how it goes. But if you're reading this, visit the main site at www.biz-wise.net and let me know what you think!

Almost there!

Wow, this has been a prety busy month for me. So much going on and trying to find the time to do everything. The new website www.biz-wise.net should be ready for launch on Sunday. I'm going to email everyone in my address book, i.e. everyone I've ever had any sort of contact with, and plead with them to visit the site, check it out and give me feedback. One of the most important things will be to get the new forum up and running, so that it actually has some posts in it when I do start to get real traffic.

It's my grandma's birthday tomorrow and I'm going out tonight, so I'll not be able to work on the site until Sunday... roll on Sunday is all I can say!