busy

Maxed Out

For the first time ever online, i feel like i’m actually working at full throttle. I’ve so much on my plate right now, it’s not even funny. Going back to college next month is gonna be tough - i’ll have to make some major cutbacks to my online work.

Anyway, I’ve agreed to join a 5 person team to enter a blog flipping challenge. The goal is simple… the blog that sells for the highest amount after 45 days wins.

The team get to keep all the cash, plus they get 10% of what all the other teams blogs sold for. So let’s say we sell a blog for $5000 and 10 other teams sell blogs at $1000, it would mean we’d get $6000 in total split 5 ways.

Although the money will be nice (assuming the blog will sell for over $1k, i should get about $150 minimum for my troubles), the other big advantage is getting some more contacts and hopefully forming future partnerships out of it all…

That’s just the tip of the iceberg though… i have a whole tonne of work to get through. I’ll be a relieved man once this skydive is over - not because i fear jumping out of a plane, but i’ll be relieved simply to have the competition work over with I’ve got some cool prizes so far from some pretty big names and sites around the blogosphere, so i’m hoping that continues ($2k worth of prizes thus far).

Moving on from that, i have several sites i want and need to flip in order to take in some cash and i also have my jackpot network of sites which need to be filled with content.

BeerChief is always on my mind i’m well aware i need to keep the boot down on it. It’s always easy to say just focus on one thing at time but i like to keep myself flat out - i feel it makes me more creative as i’m always thinking and don’t have time to slack off and play games or watch TV

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another big week ahead

This week is another biggie… i have to find sponsors for my skydive charity competition, finalize exactly how the competition will operate (how to enter, when it closes, where the money is going etc..). I’m hoping to kick things off on september 1st and run the competition until september 30th, then do the skydive sometime in mid-october.

The competition really hinges on how good the prizes are (otherwise people won’t bother entering), so i’m hoping putting up $100 in cash prizes myself plus some other stuff will get things off to a good start…

It’ll all be pretty hectic and be over in a flash but i know i’m doing a good thing and i won’t regret it.

I’m determined to do this thing and do it right. It’s all for a great cause, it means i’ll get to skydive and there really is no negative points to doing it - the only negative is the sheer amount of time and organization it will take.

I’m also hoping to flip a few sites this week - it’s been a while since i’ve done that and it’s a nice habit to get in to - flipping sites on a weekly basis

At some stage i’ll have to go up to college to register for the coming year, so that’ll be fun - it should give me a chance to see my college friends after being away from them all summer.

If i get a chance i’m hoping to launch another yesnoblog.com type site and i’m also hoping to get a few new posts on yesnoblog.com itself. Busy times ahead…

another big week needed

Last week, i worked my socks off… undoubtedly the most productive week yet as an internet entrepreneur.

This week will have to be similar if i’m to deliver BeerChief version 2 on time. We’ve really put the skates on and hope to launch a new, improved BeerChief within a few weeks. As i’ve said before, this is the big one - this version will be make or break for BeerChief as it’ll be the version that eventually goes public.

We’re extremely confident in this version and it’s definitely going to turn heads. Our current site could well take off on it’s own with some minor changes. It may not storm to overnight success, but i believe the name, idea, design, functionality etc… is all of a decent quality - it’s not rubbish.

Having said that, we both agree (myself and Adam), as webmasters and heavy internet & social networking users, it doesn’t grab you by the throat and pull you in. There’s a real lack of something about it and i don’t know what it is - it could be a combination of 100 things.

But with this new version, our first impressions were ‘wow’. It’s rare i’ll come across a site and say that. So the thinking is, that if WE’RE both impressed with this new version - it should mean it will go down well with the masses.

The only problem we face then is getting members and traffic. It may not be a problem of course - we won’t know until we take the site out of private testing.

So far we’ve faced many hurdles and jumped them all -

• coming up with the cash
• choosing designs
• choosing a company to outsource development to
• choosing a host / server

All of those problems have been handled well… the icing on the cake will be version 2 and the majority of version 2 will be complete this week, i’ll see to it

We’re on a roll now… we launched, had good reaction, got *some sort* of a community going and from day 1 we’d already begun work on a newer version. That work must continue this week and it will mean more 13/14 hour shifts at my PC, but i can assure you it will be well worth it.

At the end of it all i can FINALLY call BeerChief a ‘world class’ social networking site and throughout BeerChief’s life - that’s what i’ve vowed to do

keeping myself busy

Although i may not be earning much these days, i’m probably working harder than ever before. This blog is looking and performing better than it’s ever done before and i’m determined to grow it further.

BeerChief is of course literally days away from being launched in private BETA mode so there’s an awful lot of work to be done for that. It’s work that most people wouldn’t bother with, but i’m trying to make every single detail ‘perfect’.

Bit by bit i’m getting there. For example the email addresses are using squirrel mail, but i want them linked in to our existing gmail addresses so that any mail we get is forwarded on to our current email accounts. That way we can deal with it instantly.

Again, normally it’s not a problem but because we’re on a dedicated server it makes things more difficult. But i’ve figured out the problem anyway so it’s one less item on my ‘list of things to perfect’.

I also have to get the BeerChief blog back working… i’m trying to move it to a subdomain with little success but i won’t give up. When i do get it up, i also have to customize the design to match our new site design. Then i’ve to install all the latest plugins, bla bla… i haven’t even gotten to content yet. And that’s just the blog, with regards the site itself, i’m also trying to tie up deals with plugin programmers to install additional features on BeerChief.

Content-wise, i have to create a full list of beers with short blurbs and pictures… i also have to update our blog, send out emails… implement a custom 404 page, favicon, send out a newsletter…

Then we have the usual emails back and forth to my Adam (co-founder) plus my daily blogging here at smemon.com.

I still have to create some ads for the sidebar and experiment with a leaderboard at at the top of the page.

It’s not all fun and games you know The rewards, if there are any, will not come today or tomorrow… but when they do come, it’ll all have been worth it