Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Day 12 of the 14-Day Challenge
Today was a lost day as far as the Challenge is concerned -- and dangerously close to the deadline.

I knew today would have a lot of family responsibilities to it, but I had hoped at least to get the new site ready to be viewed. That didn't happen, though.

What time I had outside of family responsibilities went to finalizing this week's newsletter, with articles about article marketing and SEO.

I suppose I could claim some of that time as Challenge time, since both articles will appear on the new site. (See, I'm thinking in terms of getting double use out of my efforts!)

But, realistically, I didn't complete the tasks specific to the new site.

That happens. Family responsibilities are important, too. That's not to say I can afford to fall back on that excuse on a daily basis.

But sometimes that's the way life is.

Tomorrow looks more clear for a big push. After church, I've blocked off the rest of Sunday and all of Monday for the new site and the infoproduct. I'll probably push completion of them closer to the deadline than I had hoped, but I'm determined to go into the meeting able to say I accomplished the Challenge -- and ready to start promoting it.

Stay tuned.
Jeff

Labels: start business

Day 11 of the 14-Day Challenge
The Rubicon is crossed!

After some last minute doubts about my new domain name, I reserved it. My new website now is official. (I'll tell you the domain name in a couple of days, once I have something up on the site worth looking at.)

Similarly, I started writing the home page for it and finalized the skeleton of the site. Tomorrow I finalize the design and start to add content.

I feel better about the direction I'm going. I've looked at the competition enough to feel confident that holes exist that I can exploit. The fact that I deal with both traffic generation and conversion also gives me a unique angle that I don't see elsewhere.

I'm a little apprehensive that the combination may make the site a little broad, and more challenging to promote, but we'll see how this goes. I simply can't bring myself to discuss traffic generation without tying it to conversion. Traffic alone is meaningless without also paying attention to conversion and I don't want to be part of that.

My doubts focus more on the future. Will I continue to carve out enough time to promote the site and its first infoproduct adequately? Or will it go up just to be orphaned?

That challenge remains for me to tackle after these 14 days end.
Jeff

Labels: start business

Day 10 of the 14-Day Challenge
My keyword research is complete for now. I may do additional keyword research in the future, but I've done all I feel necessary to nail down the site architecture enough to get the site up.

Frankly, I feel that doing more right now would serve mainly as a way of giving myself more time to talk myself out of the whole idea. The monetization research proves out nicely. Clearly, my site topic of getting web traffic is a profitable area.

What still concerns me is the competitiveness of it. No way will I be able to walk in and score quickly for the most competitive of those keywords. I have plenty of long-tail keywords (less competitive keywords, for those of you who don't speak the lingo) to work with, though.

And going head-to-head with others who make their living off of knowing how to get traffic will be a major test for me.

I've always been able to get good rankings for sites without putting a whole lot of work into off-page search engine optimization. I've done enough to get decent results, but I've usually been able to get some results, even for sites that I basically set up and left to fare for themselves.

Yesterday I was having serious reservations about tackling this. But I've come to see it in a different way today.

This will be my master's thesis in SEO. Building traffic to a site run by other professional traffic builders should either prove to myself that I don't have to doubt my abilities, or at least be a tremendous learning opportunity.

So I continue to move forward.

Tomorrow, I finalize the blueprint for the site and decide on the domain name. And I stay within my challenge by not paying anything for the domain name. It comes as part of the SiteBuildIt! package I already have.

Four days left!
Jeff

P.S. I noticed today on SiteBuildIt's site that they are running a special for Christmas. You can buy one SiteBuildIt site and get a second one free. It's a great deal. Start one site for yourself and give another one as a Christmas gift. Or get both for yourself and build the second one once you have the first one up.

Labels: start business

Day 9 of the 14-Day Challenge
The research on SiteBuildIt! continues to take longer than I hoped, but with each step on the process, I find more useful data that I otherwise would have overlooked.

I am getting antsy, though. Only five days remain before I have to have by ebook up and ready to sell.

I'm also experiencing more and more self-doubts. Did I really pick the right project? Can I really compete in such a competitive niche, filled with savvy competitors?

Without the challenge spurring me on, I might otherwise have returned this project to my large scrap heap of not-quite-finished projects.

The whole point, though, of this challenge is to get something finished. Whether it turns out to be the absolute best choice I could possibly have made or not is irrelevant. If it's not the best choice, I'll still learn valuable lessons from the experience.

And this choice doesn't lock me forever into never doing any other project. Granted, this project will not be done when the 14 days end. The marketing of it will be ongoing.

Even as I work on that ongoing marketing, though, I will still have the opportunity to pursue other, related projects. And I'll pursue them with the added knowledge and experience I have gained from this one.

No matter how much the old self-doubts attack me, THERE IS NO DOWNSIDE to taking action.
Jeff

Labels: start business

Day 8 of the 14-Day Challenge
I got underway today building my new SiteBuildIt! site.

It went slower than I hoped. One frustrating thing I've always found with SiteBuildIt! is that it forces me to take a more deliberate approach with site preparation than I would like.

My pattern with any major business goal has always been:

1. Research, research, and research all the little inconsequentials, delaying any decision to move forward, in the hope that I would be able to overcome every conceivable obstacle before I even know what obstacles I will actually face
2. If I even get as far as making a decision, then burst into action, skipping the research that really was essential in favor of throwing the project together as hastily as I can
   
3. Convince myself that the project is fatally flawed on account of that missing research, and that I need to start over from scratch
4. Abandon it while I start over again with a completely different project
   

The way that SiteBuildIt! leads me through this project is much better, though. Rather than me running off half-cocked with without testing my idea, SiteBuildIt! has me doing comprehensive keyword and monetization research that forms the foundation for a successful business.

It has already gotten me to rethink my keywords. I'm finding a sweeter spot for my site with keywords that aren't as "grammatically correct," in my opinion, as what I would have gone with off the top of my head.

Keeping momentum going
I need to be careful, though, that doing this deliberate research doesn't diffuse the sense of speed I discovered last week. Today I experienced downtime while SiteBuildIt! crunched keyword data. I plan to use any downtime tomorrow to tighten up the loose ends on my infoproduct, rather than just sitting in front of the screen or browsing football forums.

The infoproduct I plan to release, by the way, is tentatively entitled "51 Ways to Get Your Own Website to Multiply Your Traffic." That's still tentative, though. One of my remaining tasks will be to review the possible titles I've already written, add a few more to the pot, and determine which title to use.

Getting used to a new me
In a way, pushing this forward to completion still seems a little unreal. There's always been a part of me that has chosen busy work over achieving goals. Putting what I know about traffic-generating into an infoproduct is a new step for me. It feels like, "This can't really be happening. This can't really be me."

It's similar to the feeling I had as my wedding day approached: "Nah, I can't really be getting married. I've never been married before in my entire life! This can't really be me."

But my wedding day came and went and I grew into being married. I've now spent more of my life married than unmarried. Being married is second nature now.

And I look forward to the same thing as I become a first-time infoproduct author. I look forward to moving into new territory and growing comfortable taking up residence there.

I look forward -- beyond the launch of this first infoproduct -- to finally breaking the barrier that I have allowed to hold me on the observer side of the glass, and taking my place, instead, unveiling all that I have to share with others.
Jeff

Labels: SiteBuildIt, start business

Day 7 of the 14-Day Challenge
The key word of the day is indecision.

Having decided on an infoproduct to complete and promote, I got stuck today on too many options:

"Hmm... should I promote it right on my main site? Or should I disassemble the website for that failed idea whose domain name would work kind of OK with the product? Or should I use the SiteBuildIt! license I was planning to use on a joint project with my wife on one of her interests and pick up a new, free domain name with it that really fits the product well?"

Which one, which one, which one?

Considering that I've always been more enthused about the joint project with my wife than my wife has been, I came to the conclusion that it's time to let go of that idea for now and use the license for this project. It would be the quickest and cleanest way to build it. And it would give me more hands-on experience with SiteBuildIt!, one of the tools I recommend most highly to new business owners.

That leaves me with three major tasks to carry out in the next seven days:

• Tie up the loose ends on my nearly completed infoproduct
• Get a small website up
• Plan and start my promotion strategy

Yikes! Sounds like a lot! Time to get rolling.
Jeff

Labels: start business

Day 6 of 14-Day Challenge
This is getting embarrassing. No tangible progress again for the third straight day.

I'm excited, though, about this week. By pushing just about all of my upcoming non-challenge responsibilities into this weekend, my week looks really clear for me to bear down on the challenge.

One observation about the the challenge. I do see some mindset changes taking place.

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you've probably read a number of posts about the difference between an employee mindset and an entrepreneur mindset. I'll add another contrast to that list.

Employees focus on tasks. Entrepreneurs focus on results. This challenge has been an eye-opener about the extent to which I have focused on tasks rather than results.

And another observation: a couple of weeks ago I had rewatched a webinar on mindset I had seen about a year ago. After watching it, I revived a practice I had drifted away from. I started playing a mental movie in my mind of the way I would like my life to be as a way of keeping those goals vivid in my mind.

When I started doing this exercise again, my mental movie consisted more of stereotypical goals like were described in the webinar: new luxury car, unneeded home enhancements, etc.

As I focused more on this challenge, though, I've found the goals in my mental movie growing less ostentatious and more meaningful: going back to buying my favorite imported cheese instead of going strictly with cheddar until we get our revenues back up after a disastrous year; reinstating the regular Friday night date nights my wife and I used to do; making regular donations to the nonprofits I want to support.

In all, the goals I envision have become more modest, but much closer at hand. Which I think is really the way it should be.

So there you have it. No dramatic deeds to report, but some interesting developments in my thinking. Perhaps that itself qualifies as progress. After all, no progress in deeds can occur until the mind is ready to support it.

Tomorrow, we add deeds, stir, and see what happens.
Jeff

Labels: start business