Today, starts out with me rushing like a madwoman downtown trying to get to a class the State of Pennsylvania was holding. As a partner of an upcoming daycare, I have to go to all the classes to make sure everything is a go as far as having the information I need to open. I called last month but they said it was full.
My newly acquainted friend from a previous class encouraged me to go the day before. So I switched all my plans (just a doctor’s visit) just to go. Here I am half running thinking that I am late for a class I wasn’t even supposed to go to when I was supposed to be spread out on the doctor’s table to see if I am dilated or not.
Then I realized while I was downtown that I never sent in some paperwork for these online classes. So I figured it would be great to kill two birds with one stone. So it was a very productive day aside from this project.
Profit/Loss Statistics---
Hosting: $6.99
Domain Name: 2.19
Google Adwords: $2.09
--------------------------------
Total Business Expenses: $ 11.27
Google Surprise
I used to love to see how many clicks I had gotten when I had a different website. The idea that my advertising was sitting in front of thousands of people while I was handling other things is the amazing part of business. The real joy is to see how many actually clicked onto the site. But the bottom line is how many people bought from you.
I had received over 22,000 impressions in less than 20 hours since I set it up. So that’s
24,000 impressions
16 clicks
0.06% CTR
See it grew just in the time it took me to write this. The best part is that the bids are only 15 cents compared to the 50+ cents I used to pay. The only bad part is that it costs me two dollars. I figure that I could a sale after my first 50 clicks. Then I can work on getting that number lower and lower as I improve this site.
One oversight on my part is that I could have had my Adsense set up already. I could have made back some of investment. But that’s a lesson to learn. One should have a working plan of what they want to accomplish as big picture. Then from that, they can figure out the daily to do’s that are prioritized. A plan that comes together on paper has more success when you work at it instead of working in different directions without a clue to what should be next. That why they invented the business plan. Just because you shoestring your budget doesn’t mean you can’t be organized.
Anyway, I have the one ad performing a little better than the other one. They have the same body but a different title. Perry Marshall knows a lot about Adwords. I remember him saying that you should give each test add 20 or 30 clicks. Maybe tomorrow I could make some changes.
Managing Yourself And Your Business
Right now, I realize as any business owner does, that I have to manage the time I dedicate to the project. The project can be broken down to many different projects. Some have a small impact others may cost me money. I realize that each day I got to pick my battles. Sometimes I’ll get stuck, and I should keep working because I am in momentum. Other times when I get stuck, I should just put it on tomorrow’s list and move on to something else.
I like to make lists, but when it comes to following them, that’s a different story. Sometimes we work continuously but is it accomplishes the goal for today or creating a new problem for tomorrow? I have to constantly gage my progress on this project. I, however, can not say that I am not making progress because that would be an understatement.
I just feel that with all the work I am putting in, the results are not coming in fast enough. That is the way most business owners feel in the beginning of their projects as well. But I must keep in perspective that it is only Day 8. This is the most work I’ve ever gotten down in a week. I expect to continue after this experiment if all goes well. Somewhere down the line, I won’t even remember the beginning.
Starting something new is something we all continually face. I personally believe that if you are not learning, you are not growing. I just have to remind myself that I am going to be worth a lot of skill dollars before it is all over. And once I have the technical knowledge I need to add to my current skills I will be unstoppable.
I read that “ Rome wasn’t built in a day”. That’s something we’ve all heard, but it hit a hot button when I saw it posted in a forum today. Speaking of forums I’m due to join some…
Mile Long To Do List
I am still trying to get to my niche through Myspace. It is very easy picking out the pictures of the big belly women because they stick together. I figured out a way to requests friends faster for those of you who wants to know. It is really simple. All you have to do is right click on open in a new window. DUH?!?!!! I used to just click on each profile and wait for the download. It took so long and was frustrating. By the third time I was done. But making all those windows work at one is little something I like to call leverage. This allowed me to request 10 friends.
Part of managing my Myspace reputation is to send them a message. I mean who wants a friend who is not friendly. I responded to 2 people. I think that I will make a daily routine of that. I also included my URL at Cafepress. I hope that they check it out. I asked for feedback and I really would appreciate if they did give it. And if they want to buy something, hey that’s fine with me.
Next on my list: complete the Google Adsense process. I answered the questions gave my tax information. All that good stuff. I was so excited about getting it together and getting my code. Don’t you know I couldn’t figure out where to put the code. After searching the forums for more than an hour on this and tracking, I came up with that I am not the owner of the site so it won’t happen---at least not today.
So my new strategy is to open up a premium shop with Café Press, which I have been meaning to do. This will allow me to do much more than what I can with a basic store. I don’t have to pay for it for the first 15 days. So I am going to set up special time to create, design, and work it before they take money out. There’s no point of half doing the job. It just has to be done. Plenty of designs, categories, search engine optimization, no excuses!
The basic shop was a great learning experience. I might have given myself a head start.
I just have a weird feeling that the premium shop is for the HTML-ready user. We’ll see.
I signed up for eXtReMe tracker. Then I realized that I could use Google analytics for free. I thought that it was for getting reports on Adwords. That would be convenient if Google was all I need. Maybe tomorrow I can find out where to stick it so it can work.
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