I spent the last 4 days in Phuket in Thailand. I stayed at a major brand hotel and indeed they claimed to support wireless connectivity in their lobby if not in the rooms which were spread across a large area. Unfortunately when I got there I found out that the wireless connectivity didn't work, nor were we able (for some reason) to download my FTP program from the internet in the business centre.

My office emails are encrypted and only readable from the one machine, which meant automatically that I was out of touch with my work emails for 4 days. Given that this was supposed to be vacation time I figured I could live with this, but what about my website updates and daily emails?

Fortunately some advanced planning meant that I had all my files on a memory stick just incase. A short walk brought me to an internet cafe where I was readily able to download smart ftp and I had my set up details stored in my main email account which is webbased. I think it took me about 40 minutes from start to finish to update the website and send out the email. This was mainly because the pages had been pre-built prior to me leaving and just required a quick rename to become active.

I'd like to claim a major victory for planning around technology failures, but I still made some dumb mistakes and potentially upset a couple of subscribers who decided to unsubscribe whilst I was away. I have of course written and apologised and they seem to be ok.

I guess the morale is that we tend to take technology for granted but when it fails or simply isn't there some good planning can get around most issues. Even the problems I had could have been resolved with a little more thought before departure.

So far we have not included an archive on the site, but several people have requested it.

 

For those that are interested the business ideas we have covered so far are: -

Travel Information

Wallets

Personal Security

Bankrupt Fittings

Chess Sets

Decorating Supplies

Gallery

Ironing

BBQ Accessories

Religious Artefacts

Car Accessories

Artificial Flowers

Home Help Aids

Music Stands

Shoe Shines

Tailors

Yoga Mats

Buttons

 

I will update this from time to time and let you all know once the archive is up and running. I have worked out how to maintain it, but have yet to catch up with all the missed items. Best estimate is that it should be up and running next week.

 

Brad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK so my website is 2 weeks old and I am trying to find ways to maximise its exposure. Windows Live spaces is one strategy that may drive a few extra clicks and hence me being here.

 

For those who have not checked out the site, it is designed to work primarily on an opt-in email subscription. I currently have about 200 members and emails go out daily. The email topic is always a new idea for a business and some ideas around how to get started, where to find stock, how to find buyers, maximise your distribution channels etc. All the ideas are designed to be started with a small budget.

 

Enough about the site, or you will all go away before I get to the meat of this post. If you want to check it out go to www.ideas2earn.com

 

Email database

I started out by emailing everyone in any of my address books, and in my brother's address book. This gave a total of about 280 people.

The weakness here was that many of these people did not want to be on the list, and many of the email addresses were either out of date or innacurate

The nice part was getting responses from lots of people that I hadn't spoken to in a while

 

Buying Traffic from Bravenet

I bout a 2500 hit campaign from Bravenet in the first week of operations

My Hit Counter (from Mycomputer.com) never worked properly so I have no idea if this produced any hits or not

 

Google Ads

My google ads campaign has so far cost me about US$13 and has produced about 9 hits

I budgeted $100 a month but have come to realise that google tries to spread this across the month

So far they have only used one of my key words or phrases and have advertised me just under 250 times

I figure this is good exposure so will stick with it, but it is not going to make a big difference

 

Forum

I set up a forum that linked from the site and have been pleasantly surprised by howmany people have viewed it.

2 weeks in the forum had had about 250 hits

This was my first way to get listed on Google. I guess the forum site does it for you

 

Submitting site to Google

This is very simple to do, but I have not yet optimised the site for searching, as initially I expected the site to spread purely through word of mouth. I will of course get around to doing this (titles, metatags etc) and then submit to lots of engines

If you go to google and search the site name you get 2 hits, one for the forum and one for the site itself

 

Tell a friend

This is a little ad on that I got from Bravenet that allows users to list their friends emails and invite them to look at the site

Later on I may use this with some kind of offer to generate more hits

 

I got 28 hits yesterday according to my newhitcounter (also from Bravenet) that has been installed all of 24 hours. I will keep you posted as to how I get on as I develop new strategies.

 

Brad