Resources: Mars Dorian, stickk.com, BlogcastFM (remarkablogger), Ashley Ambirge, MarsEdit, Password Protect Children Pages, TungleMe, m6 method
dec 12
- slept really late…12pm
- read more 4 hour body, made more notes
- set up hdtestvideo.com and installed wordpress theme.
- customized theme for uses, scheduled time to come back.
- opened up mindmap and started creating the tiers of service blog page.
- http://www.itarsenal.com/wordpress-websites/
- used omnigraffle and exported elements out of it for blog use. works amazingly well
- pulled free, awesome graphics for use from graffletopia.com, which are stencils for omnigraffle
- asked mars dorian for quick look, got feedback on adding some intro text….
with the initial options page done, it’s time to go deeper. the train me page salespage, orientation video. quicknote on SEO as well, when first building the whole structure of your site, and flow of these service pages, or core information pages…it’s better to just get it up so it exists then worry about optimization. that can be done later, or you can outsource someone to do it easily.
although these are super specific nitty gritty details. it’s important to track these and remember this is what it takes to launch a product, or sell an expertise.
page creation, visuals, sales copy, creating links, linking with payment gateways so people can pay you.
the more comfortable you are outsourcing these pieces, or doing them yourself, the more they will fall to the side as “scary” items, so your ideas for creating value and creating sources of income can shine through and free your lifestyle and time.
late night…
exploded the wordpress websites mindmaps. architecting an entire system for sales, and delivery on website, digital pdf and time scheduling is not the easiest. still formulating the best flow. it’s tricky as it needs to be updatable and dynamic enough for future changes.
dec 13
stayed up way too late on sunday. capturing this on tuesday and have no clue what i did.
spent a lot of time thinking up xmas presents
built mindmap for “troubleshooting website issues”
struggled for a few hours on how to address some sort of client/project management. ultimately i decided that it’s going to be dependant, and either handled strictly by e-mail, set up a protected wordpress client page, or using a management system like basecamp
hashed out more specifics on the train me to build a wordpress in my nucleus document. worked on mindmap, image details.
dec 14th
spent way too long thinking up xmas ideas
i signed up for stickk.com, put in a small goal for IT Arsenal and rolling out these services, and invited two of my friends to keep me accountable for $10. a small amount, but i wanted to test the service that lets you put a contract out on yourself. it’s not a very robust 2.0 platform…i’d particularly like it to be able to find friends via social networks, but it has the core “wager” risk reward element needed to keep yourself committed. i committed to having the salespage up, the payment gateway, the video’s and worksheets at least revision 1 of everything for the wordpress website services (do it for me, train me) up by next thursday.
reminded to execute execute execute after that post.
wrote LDP post for 530 plus days recap
finally, I can use LDP as an outlet again, emotional, resources, research. it’s a research project! not another job
listened to remarkablogger’s blogcastfm at night. nothing super specific that i pulled out of it for use, except a little SEO nugget.
“before you finish up your post and title it, do some keyword searches on various elements in the post, and title your post whatever keyword gets the most amount of searches.”
dec 15th
Insigniam work day. got a weeks worth of work done, made a big impact on what i’m managing in the day to day. didn’t get to work on anything else at work.
bought a pizza for maria because she’s dealing with law school finals…it was good to relax with her for a short while.
i got home, ready to get some work done. i opened the sites i am working on, the mindmap, wrote down some details…and….played call of duty black ops until 10, told myself i’d get up early and then do some work on my business.
i’m making a public announcement to myself. not once have i ever actually gotten up and done my own business work before i went to my 9-5. so i’m making the commitment not to say that to myself anymore…it’s a dirty trick i tell myself.
dec 16th
suck, last night wasted. oh well, onto today. weighed myself as i’ve just started dabbling in Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Body book. I haven’t even bought or started to adhere to the diet strictly, basically I’ve ONLY changed out my breakfast…for about 6 days…and it could be pure fiction, but this morning, after breakfast and two glasses of ice cold water. I’m down 3 pounds, and 2% bodyfat according to my scale, which I’m sure isn’t accurate, but I do use it regularly, and if it’s reading 2% down from what it normally does….I can at least safely say there is a change.
okay, now the work I lined up last night, I will attack. Two client websites that linger I have to spend 15-30 minutes on. 30 minutes on an adsense website I’m just started called www.hdtestvideo.com.
then, enter three of the services I plan to roll out into eJunkie, and create the pages in my business websites backend.
go.
ahh, the 9-5 has burned my day away again, which usually isn’t my typical story, but i bet it is for most people. the holidays are a busy time of year. oh well, i still have some energy in me for some moonlighting action.
back at home, deskwork. read through the competitive analysis section of m6 method. i eat this stuff up, it’s 100% online business analytical gold, and david writes it well. i’ve always struggled with the niche phase because in IT, things change so quickly, and bounce from 100 different products, problems, or websites. sure i’ve narrowed down what i want to offer to about 5 service packages, but even in those 5 service packages, you touch on, or deal with multiple multiple different products or concepts. so…the niche strategy is going to focus on online entrepreneurs, and tech mastery, solving their technical pains. it’s very broad, it’s not searched in a particular way, but hopefully the nitty gritty, how do i do this with this, will lead people to very specific things on my site, which allow them to see the overall picture, and the solutions that they need.
i took the time to write david an e-mail asking for help and thoughts on the above. i know without a doubt there is need, and money to be made providing technical instruction, service and expertise but how to craft the offering, how to pop up for people with so many complexities in online business…well i’m still grappling with that. i do it by choice, as i just won’t be happy if all i ever did all day was set up wordpress. i want to fix your webcam, link up ejunkie, backup your computer, your website, get your content on iTunes…and so on. i think providing a system to get at these things if you land on my site will produce, if i continue to drive exposure, actually HAVE (thats the relaunch i’m working on) the service packages available, and blog about those specifics that people can search and find…it will do well. all part of the project…no more reading…time to do.
mindmapping and system creation.
i created another product in ejunkie, ignoring some fields i wasn’t sure about and just forging ahead to get something i could take the link information and put on a wordpress page. i skipped to wordpress and created the appropriate tiered pages for my service, put rough dummy text of what i wanted on the page and was finally able to visualize the flow in real elements on the web from my mindmap.
i then tried something that is going to be a breakthrough for all my work from here on. the phenomenal software package omnigraffle, which is my mindmapping tool has several export options. one such option is to export to HTML. meaning, it will take all my nicely laid out mindmapping elements and convert them to a web ready format. the end result is a huge time saver. i can polish up my mind maps into an end ready state, post to wordpress and have the pages visuals be done. there are some caveats, like the elements needs to be chopped into images, and you can’t use any fancy animations, but for the first revisions, and pretty much for the end product, it comes out looking super sharp. see what i mean here.
http://www.itarsenal.com/wordpress-websites … the elements and options you see on the page, came straight from an export from my mind mapping tool omnigraffle. i didn’t have to recreate images, or go through a bunch of web development. i can just export as HTML or a picture from omnigraffle and upload into wordpress. this has massive potential.
i’ll continue to create some of the actual placeholder wordpress pages for the service pages that will make up an actual service packages content pages, with future video’s, how to’s, tools to schedule personal coaching time and so on. essentially everything is just a collection of information, as is any digital product, the system is finally starting to take shape.
note: i contemplating putting it all into a pdf, making it a separate website, and so on. in the end, the platform delivery will be password protected wordpress pages, and all the written content will be accessible online, or come with the option to download to PDF so they can take it with them. i see no need to get more complicated than that…and of course, there is a wonderful plugin to create a sudo-membership capability to your wordpress blog. this plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ft-password-protect-children-pages/
makes it so if you password protect a page, which is a built in feature of wordpress, any child pages underneath that top level page will have the same password protection. furthermore, unlocking one of them, will unlock them all for that particular page hierarchy. this capability will mean i can put all my content under a particular password protected page, and that page (and it’s children) will become their own little exclusive private content section.
excellent night. found a way to push out my mindmap content to a finished state, and protect it. the framework is looking more solid for the “wordpress & websites trainer” product, now to schedule some time to do the actual video’s and write out, create the content. i’ve created next steps action list in my capture tool, otherwise used as my daily action list. some of this won’t make any sense to you because you don’t have the context.
set up wordpress service next steps
trainer salescopy
decide – pay button on site, or sign up e-mail
trainer delivery content
general – better shapes, nicer fonts, text changes in omnigraffle
make nested content pages in wordpress (try mars edit)
write content for child pages (mars edit?)
record videos (schedule)
wordpress websites orientation
trainer purchased welcome
link up tungle me…
test and configure customizations for ejunkie paylink
the day is spent again already. sleep.
dec 17th.
back at it. i’ve looked at my next steps a few times over. gathered some e-mail notes from corbett bar, who weighed in after looking at a few mind maps, his comments were smart. he reminded me to add a touchpoint after the sales process for testimonials and checkup, and to ad a specific project agreement for the more service oriented products. mindmaps updated. i am still thoroughly excited that omnigraffle has such great export capabilities. it’s going to be a core utility from now on in my computing life.
in fact, i spent a good hour after i expected to be sleeping last night looking up more stencils that i could incorporate into my content to export to the blog today.
while at my day job, in the sparing minutes, lunches, and breaks, i can’t create video as it takes a bit more focus and ambience, but i can create the page structure of the blog pages that will make up the products (i’m going to use an offline blog client called MarsEdit, always take a quick scan to see if there is a time saving tool for your job) actual content. i can also re-work and create visuals and links for the actual content in omnigraffle export.
i don’t think i’ll be able to write the actual content without a good chunk of un-interrupted focus time, but with the above finished, i then at least have a container to throw quips, comments, and resources into for organization later, when i polish all the valuable how-to, instruction, and easy to absorb content on stuff i enjoy. it’s good to be excited.
back to MarsEdit
after lunch, and more omnigraffle touch ups, and creating all the pages for the first service in MarsEdit, i’ve realized i would not want to build an in blog product without an offline client editor, there’s no page reloads. you don’t have all the options, but for quick creation, the framework and entering a brunt of the content, it’s much much faster.
dec 20th
no action over the weekend except some sparse e-mails and 4h body reading.
busy social weekend. it happens.
today, did some client website work.
scheduled and bookmarked all pages for the extras i’m going to sell back from the 4hb launch bonuses tim sold. i should make at least 100 profit, and hopefully spend minimal time setting up the sales by having virtual assistants do the work.
scheduled when to put 4h body into action (jan 1st first tracking methods and diet go into play)
back in the frame of mind to carve out my service explanations and intellectual content
updated about 7 pages worth of content and framework for the wordpress train me service. i haven’t recorded the videos yet. it feels good to get a lot typed out but i have this creeping thought in my head that this stuff is so basic, who couldn’t do this stuff on their own, and i’m wasting my time. i suspect a lot of people have this when building a product or putting their expertise to paper, as i’m writing it, i think, who couldn’t do this on their own with Google? it’s a scary mini battle i’m not going to let waste my time. i’ve done the research this is valuable and can always be upgraded later, and on top of that, the wordpress page framework will be very valuable to later.
just as an added booster (hopefully) to my mind, i e-mailed ashley from the middle finger project and asked for some validation. she has awesome content, but i know she struggles with some of the technical ends sometimes so i sent her a portion of my mindmap and asked her if this stuff is useless, or like a “life raft in an ocean of confusion” … i’m hopefully for the later, or anywhere in between.
time for dinner, looking forward to getting all the pages done for this service, getting the videos up and styling them this week. further looking forward to the xmas break to dig in more during large spurts of free time.
late night: finished some framework and added a resource index page for the wordpress train me service. every page has been touched now and has been outlined.
dec 21
uploaded the core, which links to all the other pages to test. the image map omnigraffle creates works like a charm, and the breadcrumb plugin allows people to drill back from any page which might need some extra attention but works well.
time to open up adium and see if there’s anyone i can send to my core page to scan, test and give feedback. still a lot of linking, styling, and videos to create.
asked anthony, a client who i’ve helped because of linking up and partnering as support for sean ogle’s overcoming uncertainty program, a relative newbie, and doug, an experienced and successful real estate entrepreneur, to look at my framework and offer feedback. feedback at multiple stages is critical.
anthony said this information is really valuable, and worth $50-100, especially if I could ask someone questions when needed, which is exactly what the personal Q & A session is for.
2 hours creating infographics, cleaning up text and adding styles to the pages which represent the entire train me service. the product is starting to take shape.
several hours later…almost all pages are done. video’s are missing, along with a few explanations, but the core information is there. i have to schedule when to record the video’s, add contact/intro information to the core welcome page, add “next module” links to each page and then get a real test user in there. i’m hoping all this can be easily duplicated into the framework for the other products.
dec 22
a lot accomplished yesterday, details looming are annoying to finish up at work, and the videos need some poise….
dec 31
vacation is almost harder to get business projects done than normal work days. traveling, no schedule, or desk to work. i’ve had a mish mosh of hour long clips to continue adding text to my wordpress trainer service. a few more e-mails with critiques from business contacts doug fath, ashley ambirge, and colin wright. i love time off and hanging with my fiance’s family…it’s not conducive to online business actions though. not a problem just a reflection.