Programming Coffee

I spent last Christmas unemployed, and happy that I had the opportunity to work for a different company. I spent my days at Starbucks, working on small programming projects that have long been forgotten. My original hopes were to go into business with another friend of mine, and start rolling in the fat cash. The glamour of owning my own company, working for myself, and making large wads of money seemed to cloud my judgement. Because my father-in-law has been a small business owner for many years, I sought him out for some advice. He asked me a couple questions he asked me:

1. Why do you trust your future business partner?
2. Are you splitting the risks equally?
3. Will each of you be compensated according to the work you perform?

These were very tough questions for a guy who had just ended his first post-college job. I thought that going into business was a lot easier, and that every party involved would be as dedicated as I was. I was wrong. Going out on your own (even with a business partner) is tough. Instead of having to worry about the livelihood of you and your family, you have to worry about your partners as well.

Inevitably, I decided that there was really no good reason I should trust my future business partner, and I’m glad I made that decision. My business partner didn’t need or want the work like I did, and it almost cost me a good client. I also learned that the risks were not being split equally. My business partner was still employed (and I was not), and my working on a project meant less time looking for a full-time job, whereas his working on a project meant less free time. And lastly, the compensation would not have reflected the amount of work put into the project. I pretty much put websites together… once I have a design. I generally get stuck with all client interaction, all the maintenance, all the marketing, and if we were to be equal business partners, then I would have been putting in 2-3x the work for the same amount of money. Even if I were able to live with that, it still would have caused a bottleneck in the company (me), and we would not have been able to maximize our efficiency.

If I had pursued my dream then and there, I would have probably failed shortly thereafter. Why? Things just weren’t right. There was no real trust, the risks weren’t equal, and the compensation would not have been worth it. Instead, I was able to find a good job, and learn a whole lot more about web development, standards, direct-response, and I have a good time doing it. I have no doubt that one day I will be able to start my own business, but when I do I will be able to answer those 3 questions, and feel good about it.

Buy Adwords. For a newly registered domain, and a moderate link-building campaign, I watched all of my other rankings climb, but I had no Google rankings. The update came and went, and my PR went up, but still no rankings. I paid for adwords for about a week (and spent $20-$25), and of course my traffic increased. However, once my ad campaign was over, my traffic did not decrease. In fact, it maintained the traffic, and after a week or two, it started increasing gradually. I went to check my rankings in Google, and my site showed up in the top 10 for several of my keywords. Coincidence? Perhaps. Next time I’ll try to test this on a much newer domain.

Check out this flickr account that shows screenshots of Apple’s website over the years. Pretty cool stuff.

How to Get a Date.

Boy I’m glad I don’t have to deal with dating anymore…

First there was Google Earth, and now because of a google employees birthday wish, Google Moon has been launched. Its not very much at the moment, but if you zoom all the way in, you can see the *swiss cheese like surface*.

Out from Google came the mighty Blingo. Blingo is a new search engine that apparently gives away prizes just for using it. Speculation from other sources says that the site *is* legitimate (I guess google adwords is really paying off for them… not too sure how else they could afford to give away prizes). But since Blingo returns Google search results, I’ll probably use it just for that odd chance of winning something that I would not have purchased otherwise.

Is this a scam? I sure hope not. But I gave them my junk email address anyways (they claim you can win prizes without signing up, but you have more chances of winning if you do), and they sent me a verification email where I had to verify my email account. Of all the searching I do, I should surely win something, and I will definately let it be known when/if I do.

So, if anyone wants to join Blingo as a friend, and increase my chances of winning something, click on any of the links in this post.

Ok, I’ve been claiming this for a long time now, but I know the Secret to Search Engine Success. Are you ready to find out what it is?

Create something that people want, and put it on the website where you want to get a high Google PageRank. Seems simple enough right?

I ran across this article that discusses why Google would possibly be offering up such a great service without a means to capitalize from it. They note that it’s similar to Google having “a tight grip on an empty sack”, and that even though it is *empty* right now (no money directly being made from Google News), that inevitably other competitors will want that “empty sack”.

My thoughts? Why does Google need to make money off a product to legitimize it? I like Google. I think they provide the best search engine available. All of their extra services (Google Maps, Google Suggest, Google News, Gmail, etc) just give more credibility to Google. Besides, I’m sure Google has made a ton of money from Google News (indirectly).

I have been running Google AdSense for almost 1 full year now. I haven’t really done it to make any money, but to learn about Google AdSense, and to get my feet wet in advertising. Just a couple days ago, I received my 14th click… ever. With close to 2500 total impressions, this puts me at .6% CTR.

Where are my ads placed? I have one where WordPressDash is located, and another one at my Online Christmas Gift List site. They are both 1-ad units, and receive a very small amount of traffic (as noted by the impressions).

Now that I’ve made my first $1 from Google, I think I have $99 more to go before they will throw a check my way. What’s the rush you ask? There are other webmasters out there (currently out of my league) that are making $50 per day from AdSense. I might not be able to produce those sort of numbers right now, but I think I am an intelligent enough guy to start working towards that goal.

How will I get there? Creating websites that people will actually use. Not exactly a hard task, but definately a time-consuming one. I’ve learned that there is someone out there to buy any product, no matter how useless or overpriced. My line of thinking says, give the consumer something useful at a decent price, and you will attract buyers. Do I want to control the market completely? Well, that would be nice now wouldn’t it? Really though, all you have to do is get enough customers to cover your development costs, and most of your revenue from that point on will be pure profit (minus hosting, transactional costs, etc). Thats the great thing about operating an ebusiness of your own.

Another way to get your blog noticed (the first way being to submit to the blog directories… aka the blog mafia), is to get out and have your RSS feed syndicated. Here are some more places to have your RSS feed syndicated and your blog linked.

syndic8.com
feedster.com

2rss.com