Automate Your Business

Archive for February, 2007

I’ve just read this post by Jonathan Ledger about problem-solving, and I’ve noticed something similar.

If I’m writing a piece of software, and can’t get my head around how to resolve a particular problem. I go to the thinking room. Most people call it the toilet. (Apologies if this is too much information considering you don’t know me!). Two minutes later, more often than not, I have my solution.

Ideas often come to me whilst taking my son for a walk in his pram.

Different situations, for different purposes.

What are your best “epiphany” moments, and for what type of problem-solving/idea-generation? Answer that question, and you’ll learn how to solve problems and generate ideas almost on demand.

I’ve just launched a new directory site, focusing on the “$7 report” concept – this is where you can create a short report, sell it for a suggested $7 (although any price could be used), allow your customers to resell it VERY easily (no complications caused by them having to set up a website etc), and they get 100% of the income. In return, you build a list of paying customers.

You can get the initial $7 report here, if you are interested.

Anyway, I mentioned the URL ONCE, in a post on the Warrior Forum.

Googlebot has been around to 14 pages already.

Impressive.

If you’re reading this now, you’ve probably come from one of the other blogs I run, most likely SiteGenerationTools.com or MonthlyStrategies.com

It’s Feb 13th, and I’ve not updated any of those blogs since at least the beginning of the year. Here’s why:

I got tired.

Tired of building up my adsense income only to see it plummet. Tired of running after hosting companies trying to keep my blogfarms up and running without hitting bandwidth limits. Tired of spinning content. Tired of seeing my workload increase and my income drop. Tired of being at the beck and call of Google’s undisclosed adsense payout algorithm (by far my biggest earner, but still not enough to make a major difference to my life). Tired of doing things for the money and not doing what I enjoyed.

So basically I took January off, and then had a few weeks working overseas for my day job. And all I did was think. And think. And think.

I’m going back to my roots – software development, idea generation, and business process analysis. It’s what I enjoy. It’s what I’m good at. And it’s an area where I can provide enough value to others, to generate a reasonably steady income. Income that ultimately is down to me: if I release a suitably researched product and promote it well, I’ll earn some money. If I don’t, I won’t. But if I do it well, I’ll earn more than other months, and won’t be punished by someone in Google changing a “% payout” figure in a spreadsheet somewhere.

I’ll still get involved in side projects, but my main focus will be software development. I’ve had a lot of ideas over the years, but the inherent support costs of developing fully-fledged desktop applications is huge. More than I was willing to risk. But recently I came across a piece of software that will dramatically reduce the support required for desktop applications, thus allowing me to drop the prices of my software to low enough to make them sellable.

So I’ve set up a game plan. 11 bits of software over the next year. And in some cases, a related site that ties into the software as well.

And to keep my divergent thoughts on focus, I’ll be posting here about automating your business. Automation through my software, obviously, but also automation through other software I find, and through managing your business processes, your workload, and your time.

I hope you enjoy the future journey together as much as I think I will.

Will I be going back to those other blogs in future? Certainly MonthlyStrategies.com is one I intend to go back on – I like the idea of doing pilot projects in areas I know nothing about – I’m an natural dabbler, so doing one different project a month is a great motivator to me.

But I’ve got bills to pay, and dabbling wasn’t cutting the mustard, as we say in the UK.

Time to get to work…