So, if you click a link or post and end up there, don’t be worried! Just finish the story and come on back! Or stay there if you wish!

It’s not well designed yet, but we’re working to bring it upto speed, and get a semi-decent site functioning for 2011.

Kenneth

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

Thought you’d like to see this. We rented some deckchairs and enjoyed the sun in the later part of the afternoon! It was quite sybaritic, just sitting there in the sun, enjoying an ice cream cone with family and friends!…more.

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

In short, when people know you’re travelling … it’s an open invitation to trouble while you’re away. So we are trying to exercise a little caution about this by not publicising our trip any more.

Lack of ‘freshness’ or ‘it just happened’ Twitter like updates are a small price to pay for this … but I’d rather come back to a house that’s intact to one that’s been sold on Craigslist or Robbed by those using geolocation tools on Facebook (Facebook Places!).

So there!

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

I’ve just announced some new goals: "Phase II- improve content/structure and Increase links – very slow! Phase III – build out the site to [b]100 pages and 200 visitors per day[/b]! The new goals! At 65 pages, I’m 2/3rds done. +1 more + 1 rewrite."

So where are we?

Well, after finishing the initial build-out of the site, traffic blossomed to 80 visitors a day or so. But with no revenue, there is still some way to go.

On entering Phase II, I revised and revamped much of the Tier 2 content, including the most frequently visited pages to include additional elements. I’m hoping that visitors will stay a little longer, search for more articles, read related stuff, and eventually click away with my Most Wanted Response.

There are still many pages to be revised (at least 30), and occasionally I found one or two pages that doesn’t have Analytics code, meaning that I’ve not been tracking my visitors properly! There are also 3 pages that need extensive re-writing, too.

So I’m choosing my priorities: finish the rewrites – 3 to go, redesign the top pages – I think I got most of them, find more inbound/outbound links – slow!, get included in a couple of decent directories, and get the content to 80 pages. I’m finding now that some of my Tier 2 pages may need to be redone, giving me extra material that I can move to Tier 3.

Also, with the extra rewriting, I may be able to start my EzineArticle marketing campaign which would bring extra traffic, PR, and visitors. Revenue efforts have started with several programs including Adsense, CommissionJunction and PopShops. But results are very mixed. Only Adsense is generating something. Early days so I’m not worried. I will only have two ad boxes for the time being…

With no subscribers to my newsletter, I’m placing this in a Phase III goal. Phase III isn’t clearly thoughout yet. But it could be a couple of months before I get there.

I also have a second site that is still on the drawing board. I tried to buy another site and repurpose the content as a kickstart, but the price was a little ‘expensive’ for what there was. I will just spider the site and rewrite the content myself in my own voice! So much to do. Not enough time.

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

First, and foremost: think like a buyer.

If you are buying a site, what would you want to know? What would you need to know if the site you are looking at is for sale? Of course: content (what content do you have?), traffic (how much? what kind?), links (where? how many?), monetization included (if any? how much? what kind?), what else is INCLUDED in the sale. What is excluded, if anything.

Examples, make sure that the site you are selling has the rights to transfer photographs, esp. royalty free photos may not be transferable (it depends).

Also, if you are using specific accounts with the sale, such as a merchant’s account, advertising account (adwords), etc.

Second, is it a viable niche?

I do think sellers need to go a little further than just these basics, to make a successful sale you need to show that you have a viable niche. Why? Because you want to make the case that your site has a lot of interest in its niche, if you are to be able to sell the domain.

share with us, your potential buyers, exactly what value your site has to your audience, or an audience, at any rate. It’s easy for us to check out the niche values (remember your brainstormit tools, …) to determine whether a niche is winnable or not (AG day #2).

Third, answer your email/contacts.

So many threads feature the same problem: contacts that are never answered; emails that go missing. People frustrated because they want to contact you but can’t reach you.

Using email: set up a filter (in Google) to stop email going to the wrong place. Use a keyword from your original ad to help your filter work properly.

Using contact forms: check the forms database to make sure your replies are all received. I think that not all contacts made via SBI contact forms get through for whatever reason. So check your DB.

Fourth, site valuation

No, it’s not a science. Unfortunately. But nor is it a mystical art either. It may not be objectively possible to value what your site is worth. Be aware that, when you sell your site, buyers may have price points in mind, such as multiples of monthly earnings, traffic levels, amount of content, domain name valuation, etc..

You should really try to explain to your possible purchasers why you think your site is not just worth the asking price, but actually represents a good deal for them: suggestions – you could say you’ve developed a target mailing list, you’ve got a great domain name, you’ve got a unique E-Book, great list of keywords in the BrainstormIt Tool, … .whatever.
Also, there is no theoretical maximum to the price a site is worth. BUT there is an actual minimum price: the value of a site subscription * (x months)/12 where x = the number of full months to site renewal date. This minimum price is also affected by the pricing of the full subscriptions (typically $299 pa).

Don’t make your buyer work TOO hard!

Remember the harder you make your buyer work to buy the site, the less likely you will be able to sell the site because they may find it not worth it or too difficult to pursue. Worse, by the time you do get in touch with them to answer their question, they’ve already purchased another site.
Over the past few months, I’ve participated on the "Have you heard forums…" and regretted not purchasing TWO sites in particular during that time because I didn’t understand what I was looking at or was too late to see the posts… these sales can go F-A-S-T.

But more often I’ve noted sites that were being sold here that didn’t include basic information, or didn’t follow guidelines, or were blatantly copied, or were blank sites (on two occasions), or that didn’t include decent contact information, or were selling SBI accounts (and weren’t permitted to)… or didn’t answer questions quickly (or at all)…

On some occasions, I’ve tried to help by asking pertinent questions from the OP to explain what they thought they were selling, etc, this being a discussion forum and all that… Unfortunately, when I ask or point out these flaws one by one, I seem to get called out on asking them. Whatever. In at least one or two cases, where I’ve seen a wonderful site for sale, I’ve actually written to ask the person to reconsider selling what was a great money making and fulfilling site.

I hope this post helps people to sell their sites more effectively, that buyers will get better disclosure upfront, and that people won’t have to repeatedly ask for the basics.

Caveat emptor, Caveat venditor.

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

Starbucks Coffee Company: Past, Present and Future

Starbucks Coffee Company Today

Starbucks Coffee Company is the largest coffee company in the world with 16,635 stores in 49 countries, 11,068 of them in the United States.

They maintain a presence in more than 55 countries worldwide, with a variety of types of stores operating from small outlets to large scale premises in prestige locations. (Click to read the rest)

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

The Basics

It took quite a while to digest the material from the SiteBuildIt program from the purchase date, and that’s not a surprise, really. I didn’t start building the site until I was comfortable with the initial steps of the program, and had completed my basic keyword research.

The Action Guide in SBI is crucial to the whole learning process, and you can read much of it yourself, though it may not always make much sense if you don’t have access to the tools mentioned! But it’s a thorough treatment of the basics of business building, and one that many new members skim through as they race to Chapter 6.

It’s in the first few chapters that I wrestled with the choice of my site concept:  blogging, coffee, or Taiwan. In reality, I could have chosen all three of them, and (if I have time) I may well pursue the others, the numbers all turned out to be really good.

So in the first three months, I decided that my concept had legs, and was in some demand using the numbers provided by the BrainstormIt Tool. Then I worked on the keywords choice, and came up with a basic siteplan that really helped propel me to answer the question: Can I make money with the concept?

Can I make money with the concept?

Actually, the question is really a lot different from the typical  yes or no questions you might expect. Even lower keyword demands may be profitable if you have the right skill set, and so it was actually not such an obvious to answer.

But I did identify several methods by which I might generate some revenue: Display Ads, Affiliate programs, and Display Links, of which I anticipated that I might make more money from Display Ads at first, but that Affiliate products may be better and more profitable long term.

False Starts

So I went ahead, all eager and registered my first domain; started work on the Look & Feel of the site, and wrote my first articles. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had registered a name with hyphens that had an active unhyphenated variant on the same subject.

It took a while to come to the painful decision to start over, but I’m 100% glad that I did. I did lose a little traffic, and some money but I felt that removing the sword of Damocles was the responsible thing to do.

In January, I refounded the site, diverted all traffic from the original domain, and redid the entire site. It also coincided with some technical problems at SBI that needed fixing, but within about four days, I redid the entire site, and it started building from there. I only had about 25 pages at that point, most of which was policies and boring stuff, totally not related to the subject I chose.

Where now?

It takes a while to build content that is worth reading, but the biggest and most important tactic is finding the keywords for articles that you need to write. You need to find keywords that have sufficient demand and limited supply for you to have any chance at having realistic traffic levels.

I actually spent quite a while trawling sites with traffic issues, and was confident enough with my choices to realize that it was perhaps the MOST important choice you could make.

Choosing a word with sufficient demand and limited supply really is matching a product in demand with a market! But it’s amazing how often website owners fall down on this basic step by selecting keywords that had outsize competition, and limited traffic. In other words, the owners are going to have an invisible placement because there’s just too much choice in the market place.

Commercial Intent?

The second issue is one that I also failed to grasp properly for my first few websites: commercial intent. In other words, my good buddy Steve who’s developing his business niche very nicely now wrote:

"Commercial Intent – Are people buying in that niche (check Big G’s keyword tool to see if people are spending on Adwords). Search your keywords and read the Adwords and see how others are monetising the niche." – personal email.

But having some tools to assess commercial intent really REALLY helps a lot! I found my education sites really weren’t what people were spending money on, at least with the keywords I chose. I guess checking people’s wallets to see what they really do vs. what they say they do is paramount!

Knowing that people are looking for things to BUY really made a lot of sense, instead of chasing customers with things to sell that they didn’t particularly need, had no interest in, or didn’t trust you enough to buy through you.

10% of $1 is not much: 1% of a million is a lot!

The third issue that I’m now facing is choice of market: I opted to choose a market with a lot more demand, but in doing so, I may have chosen a much smaller pie to get a share of than I could otherwise have chosen.

However, I have resolved to build out the site as much as I can, co-opt the more lucrative keywords and try to take a chunk out of the larger market. I’m not sure that I will be successful, but I have already set myself several long term goals with the site:

I would like to get 7500~10000 page views a month at the end of phase IV. I hope that I will have about 10c per unique visitor meaning that I should earn about US$350~500 potentially. At that point, I guess I may have a site with about 200 pages or so of detailed, relevant coffee related materials.

So where are we now? I mean, NOW!

Phase I: the goal was to create 51 pages including 35 pages of content, get to about 20 uniques per day, and have a good set of keywords with potential.

In fact, I reached that goal around March 22nd, though I have yet to tidy up a few articles properly. Traffic has been building well, so far.

Phase II: this phase is just an interim phase. But I figure it’s pretty important to the site’s overall success: I want to improve the content of my existing pages ( I don’t necessarily mean rewriting the content, though it’s possible). I want to:

• Improve the meta information, esp. the choice of secondary keywords, and change the meta description to something much more engaging. I’ve already changed four pages, and partly changed a fifth.
• Improve the on-page features to create a page where readers will linger a little longer to watch a video; look at pictures; read a related article or search for an additional article to read. The pages on the top of my sidebar already meet most of those criteria.
• Build out the backlinks to the site by carefully selecting directories, websites, blogs, article directories, and other relevant locations so that I can get some decent in-pointing links. I will also expand some outpointing links to other sites, but I’m very picky about those.
• Beginning Monetization: I’ve already selected three or four candidates for monetizing the site, including Adsense,  Infolinks, and Popshops which I will experiment with. The most crucial in the short term is demonstrating that it is POSSIBLE to make money with the niche I have chosen. To that end, I’ve added Adsense to about 10 pages that are the most visited T2/T3 pages or that are linked from the sidebar.

Even in Phase II, I’ll be adding some new content occasionally but it will be some time before I complete Phase II properly … I still have over 40 pages that need revised, and I only have a little time each day to do the entire project, so it’s going to take some time!

Phase III, IV, and further…

Once in Phase III, I’ll be expanding the content to over 100 pages, and I hope to have that completed by the anniversary of the site on December 21st, 2010. I’ll also be expanding C2 options, soliciting more aggressively for submissions, and so on. I’m hoping that by that point, I’ll be earning $50.00 per month for at least the second month, but I’m not confident about monetizing the site properly yet.

Phase III is much clearer than Phase IV at the moment, so I’m going to worry about Phase IV only when I’m nearing completion of Phase III! This site on SBI is the most ambitious project I have ever undertaken, but with good competition out there, I feel I could really achieve something superb, rewarding, and remunerative in the long run.

Wish me luck.

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Yes, simply fill out this form, and you can updates and vignettes on blogging, investing, tech and more that are published on InvestorBlogger.com in your mailbox! Wow! InvestorBlogger never spams, and doesn’t sell the lists, so be assured: InvestorBlogger will only use your email to deliver THIS newsletter!

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

The owners then assume that the product is faulty, and redesign or reorganize the whole business, striving to create the final edition. Guess what? When starting out, often good enough is good enough because in managing any business/website, just making a real start is enough to start the ball rolling.

So if you are stuck in your business plans, perhaps you need to take a concrete action to building a REAL business before you spend too much time tinkering on your products or services. Once you’re up and rolling, you’ll get far more feedback and input than you’ll ever be able to manage!

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

Ok. This one of the hundred or so photographs I tried today. I didn’t use any editing on the image (yet) but I thought you would like to see what I’ve been doing.

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

So I installed a couple of plugins there, including one called db cache and my site loads so much faster now. I matched it with a regular caching plugin, like SuperCache or HyperCache and the server just rockets along. Why?

The DB Cache plugin simply caches requests to the database, and the Caching programs just serve those cached files. Occasionally, the server experiences a slight hiccup, but even then I noted that server queries dropped from over 350 sometimes to a manageable 20~50 queries.

I thought you should try it out. It seems to be compatible with other caching programs like supercache, hypercache etc. and when both db cache and caching plugins are used together, the server really runs fast. And I haven’t found any incompatibilities with other plugins, yet.

I tried this solution matched with a different page caching plugin on different sites, and results are approximately similar: Obblogatory loads about 90% fewer queries, InvestorBlogger often loads just 10~20 queries each time. My school site occasionally loads in excess of 135 queries so there’s still some work to do there.

What I do notice even with sites loading so many queries is that the sites still load much faster than ever. I know though that queries can be cut down even more: by adding fixed urls in the header and footer, but that’s quite a bit of work to get rid of them. And subsequent page loads are significantly faster still, as much of the stuff needed is already cached in your browser cache!

But for the sites on Dreamhost, I also added a Database Virtual Server and Dreamhost upped my original Virtual Server Memory by 100%. So overall, any of my sites hosted on Dreamhost are loading much faster anyway. The database caching plugin keeps things chugging along!

For those bent on optimizing every last ounce out of their server, it might be worth doing! Getting a Dreamhost PS Server is worth it for me! It insulates me from flaky software running other people’s sites, it doesn’t cost the earth, and I have unlimited storage space and bandwidth… it’s an amazing deal, for about $31.00 per month all told. With a VPS system, I might actually get to use it, too!

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

This is my first successful picture on my new light tent. I thought you’d like to see the ‘fruits’ (or is that beans?) of my success. I had to crop a lot of the original picture out but I think in taking these pictures I discovered that I have too much shadow in the foreground. Something I need to work on.

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

Needing Photographs

In the effort of building my own product site (click to see the post about that), I realized that I needed very specific photographs for my site, far more so than I had anticipated.

I had originally thought that I would be able to get by using photos purchased from Istockphoto.com but I didn’t realize that the photos were merely depictions of generic items.

For many of my upcoming review and profile pages, I needed specific products that had been photographed: eg, Columbian Coffee Beans or Instant Coffee Powder or whatever.

It’s okay to use some of the generic pictures available, but if you want to be specific, you just can’t use generic photographs of products: there’s no way you can be sure what is being photographed.

I’m not sure of the legality of using pictures taken from places like Amazon either. Even though I’d be using the pictures to promote Amazon products, I wouldn’t be using them in EXACTLY the way they intended.

While I could use product manufacturer’s pictures without too much of a problem, I guess that part of the problem is that I can’t photograph or portray exactly what I wanted.

So enter the Light Tent

I know it’s not exactly impressive, but I thought I needed to take a first step rather than just sit twisting in the wind! So I did.

The exact instructions are here. I followed them as best I could. But I had to make up the part about the lamps I need. I ended up using 2 x 15W white light CF bulbs in each of the smaller lamps, and a 23W white CF bulb in the top light. There’s also a lot of ambient light from the room lights.

The other part where I had to improvise was the camera: I just used what I had, my Lumix LMC-DX30 which could do small and reasonably close up shots of products. I’m not exactly sure how I will be able to take photos of beans yet. That may require some artistry on my part, esp. if I can’t get a decent close-up.

First sample photographs

When you start taking photographs, it is merely testing the waters: take a look. Any feedback would be appreciated!

This picture isn’t well cropped, but that’s because I cropped it too closely. I know that. What do you think about the sharpness? The color? The background?

I’m making it up as I go along. I do believe the next few shots will be better but the background seems troublingly gray. I’m not sure why yet. The background is why, so perhaps there’s an overcast of shadow on the back.

Having fun!

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

If you are interested in the property market, you will find that the prices in Taiwan are relatively cheaper than almost any other developed area in this part of the Far East. It’s astonishing. It’s also astonishing that apartment quality is even now still lacking by comparison with counterparts in HongKong and Singapore.

Oh, and by the way, it’s totally 100% legal for foreigners to purchase land in Taiwan, esp. for business or residences. There are land restrictions on other types of land, though. So don’t let any ill-informed person (aka Taiwan Realtors) tell you otherwise.

I’d suggest that you wager with them: offer to get a legal opinion written in Chinese by a local lawyer stating the situation. The loser pays for the legal cost of getting the letter. See if they bite.

Do pay attention to the facts and figures on the left and right of the main page. It’s easy to overlook, but you would regret that. There’s tons of great numbers in there. Of course, any number quoted here or anywhere is only a guideline. Only familiarity with the local (and I mean superlocal) market will enable you to figure out where the values lie.

If you have any serious doubts about your first domain name choice, you should DEFINITELY move earlier. I’m moving about 20 pages and it’s a real hassle. But can you imagine moving 200 pages or more?

Ok here are the tips…

1. Allow plenty of time to reset the pages, since you have to do it all manually. It’s quicker than the original setup, but will still present the occasional problem.
2. Use as few blocks as possible will speed things up no end.
3. Always make sure you have backed up all your data, including a backup of your site (as last seen on the old URL), YOUR MKL, mail, etc. as the entire domain is wiped. COMPLETELY.
4. Using the backup of your first site will help you speedily recreate the entire site.
5. If you want to redirect your old domain, then you will need an extra NameParkIt purchased so that the old domain can be pointed there.
6. If you are within the first month of your original domain setup, traffic from Google will be negligible so disruption won’t really be a problem.
7. Don’t forget to tell Google Via Webmasters Tools that your domain is now changed.
8. Don’t forget to check the links when you’re done. Sometimes links may still be pointing to the old domain.
9. If possible, do page 301 redirects (I may explore that option).

Overall, the nameparkit ($10) and domain change cost ($50) are pretty reasonable considering what needs to be done. And you get a new domain for the primary ($10 saved) and 25 new keyword searches.

Of course, if you lost any unused keyword searches, that’s pretty sad.

In the end, I figured it was all worth it as I’ll be able to snag a hyphenated and unhyphenated domain and point them to my site.

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

Today’s post looks at whether your site is mobile ready, and how to do it. The mobile web is beginning the growth phase and could be even bigger a phenomenon than the current web, as the number of mobile units out in the market, many of which are mobile internet ready, is huge!

The results are pretty good, too, if you take a look.

Of course, this is fortuitous because it means I can figure out if people are actually seeing the sign in our target area and visiting our site from the URL or not. But the risk is if you are on the street, and you want to check the details before you call, and your site isn’t mobile you’ll likely discourage the visitors because of what they might see.

What do they see when they get there? Well, before they would have seen a busy site in mini-view with lots of places to click, and not suited to the mobile experience at all. But I installed one plugin called WordPress Mobile which …

WordPress Mobile Edition

A mobile/phone/PDA friendly interface for your blog with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.

This is a combination theme and browser checker that delivers a mobile view if one of the user agents matches the list of mobile browsers. With so many mobiles out there, the list of browsers is quite diverse, but the user experience is great.

Once you install the WordPress Mobile Edition, and activate it, it’s pretty smooth. You can test your site at Ready.Mobi to see if it is compatible.

The stats are meaningless without taking a screenshot of the site in mobile view, but that’s a little tricky! Any suggestions how to get a pc to view a mobi.site? Are you a mobi developer? Do you have a mobile site? Do you have a regular site and are you getting it ready for the mobile world?

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

Would you like to own this ‘thing of beauty’? Isn’t it amazing? Wonder what the gasoline bill is?

After all, how you get about town is as important as getting about town! Right?

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

For many companies and individuals worldwide, 2009 was a difficult year. I am surprised that even now my online income has only decreased a little in 2009 vs. 2008. Most of the income came as the result of advertising to my small network of blogs, some from my broker, a little from personal interest.

The grand total for adding up my extra income (not salary) was in fact, $5,386.51. Like always, this is the gross figure, not including expenses, and taxes. My only disappointment is that at this time, I am just not in a position to earn enough on a monthly basis to justify setting up a company or paying myself a decent salary.

I’m slowly getting to my target of $1500 per month, but without additional income streams, it’s difficult to get the most out of my existing streams.

Plans for 2010.

So, in 2010, I’m building a couple of new sites with SBI, to enhance my income stream. It’s my first real experiment with affiliate marketing despite dipping my toes twice this year already with EeeBlogger and TESOLTeachers, neither of which did much business other than pay for their own domains.

I’ve done some rough figures and for my first SBI site, I think it should be able to pay for itself in about 12-18 months because I’m going into a more saturated market, even though my keywords have less competition. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the payouts are a little less, so profits are likely to be less.

However, if I can even reach levels seen on this site or my other main site, that’d be a blessing! Why? I love creating content, but creating static quality content is a whole new field for me. I think, for the time being, I will ease up on the regular blogging to concentrate on creating real niche sites. 2010 should be really interesting!

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

Nowadays, I use…

Google Docs – for straightforward document creation and sharing. I especially like the spreadsheets options, and the fact I can share stuff easily. I use the standard version AND the hosted version with a domain or two of mine.

USB Key or Flash Drives – I use a lot of apps for the USB key, courtesy of PortableApps. There is stuff for most needs there, including Productivity, Internet, Media, and more. Most of the stuff is open source, and even after so many years, there is no sign that Microsoft has created any portable applications at all. Why would they?

EverNote – I’ve experimented a great deal with EverNote, and I really like the features for note creation, and sharing. I also managed to install the software (from inside the main App) on a keyring and use it without any problems. I think the transfer portions even for the paid version are awfully scrooge like, esp. in these days of 10mb of images (and that’s small).

WordPress – I created a couple of private blogs to host the development of my new sites (the Coffee One and another one to come soon). I find it combined with LiveWriter a great way to write notes, posts, stubs, notes, store research, upload photos I want to use, etc.. If anything, I am finding it much more useful overall than EverNote as it makes everything easily accessible.

To create a private blog, simply install one of the Member plugins that restricts access, turn off the publicity, close the registrations, and voila! One secure, private area.

Flickr – Although I don’t post ALL my photos on Flickr, I find it really easy to share the stuff I want, and to post it to my blog or wherever. It’s not free for unlimited usage. But at $24.95pa, it’s a real steal.

Skydrive – I have 25GB of space from MS courtesy of the LiveSpaces Program. I’ve tried to use it but I find the whole idea of uploading a bunch of stuff from a browser pretty clunky, esp. since I’d like to use it for serious cloud storage (not backup!). But the system isn’t fully mature as copying and pasting files or folders doesn’t really work.

So, I am now using DropBox to help with this. It pretty much works as SkyDrive should. The free space is smaller, but you can upgrade to 100GB of space.

Having your own hosting is also part and parcel of this Cloud computing era, and I run a number of sites that reflect my differing interests. No need to brag here about them all, but it definitely helps with the FTP applications, hosting on your personal domains, and much more.;

Lastly, I spend a lot of time listening to Internet Radio in different formats, esp. I like the Radio?Sure software and XMplayer, both of which work as USB apps or can be installed regularly! (In fact, if you use these a lot, simply copy them to your desktop, run them – all faves saved – and delete them when done.

And, I’ll let you into a secret: I’m beginning to like NOT having to install apps and reboot XP (yes, it still happens) each time I want to use them. I can just copy the folder, and it works! It’s a little slower than running an installed app, but it’s a huge timesaver if you’re testing software.

Now, if I could only figure out how to make money in the cloud… then I could travel the world! Anyone?

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

Frederick the Great (1712-1786).

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.

Why is it different? Well, it’s different because it’s my first site to focus on the SBI site building ideas, so it’s going to be a fully featured site with approx. 100 pages about Coffee Beans and making Great Coffee.

I haven’t set traffic or financial targets because it’s too early to really see what will happen.

The whole SBI process has been quite an opener in terms of the required keyword research and detailed article writing. I’ve also taken the unusual step of buying a lot of photographs and touching them up for the site. I’m hoping to mix my own photos in with the commercial ones.

There’s really not much else to say about the site, but I am working hard on refining the Look and feel of the site by adding lots more images to the site. I’ve still to revise two more articles, then I’ll be adding upto 35 more articles over the coming weeks to finalize stage one.

Traffic levels are still low, as I redesign and rewrite the site… but I’m hoping that traffic reaches 300 unique visitors within about three months. Do check it out and let me know what you think of the site!

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

This is our new banner which we have hung up on the local wall near our school to attract attention. It’s quite colorful. I wish I could say that I designed it all, but I nearly did. With a little help from Microsoft, Istockphotos, and myself, we managed to come up with a design that was fairly attractive.

Of course, I hadn’t realized that Publisher wouldn’t create larger publications, so we had to go the vector graphics route to get the scale! But it turned out quite nicely. The most expensive part of the whole process turned out to be hiring the truck to help put it up as you’ll see in the next photo.

Don’t underestimate the benefits of offline advertising. While we spend similar amounts of money doing online advertising, we find that even where we are in one of the more wired countries on earth, traditional advertising methods do seem to get you noticed faster.

Kenneth

Ads by our sponsors.

Take profits from the stock market by making better trades .
Achieve your personal financial goals by using BT trading tools .

Could this be the one I buy?

Ads by our sponsors.

You can get an easy cash advance online with no extra paperwork.
Faxless payday loans are a fast way to get the money you need between paydays.