Your next amazing idea doesn’t need to be a big project with a ton of investment. Sometimes people jump directly to the website building part of their next big venture, when really that’s more like a mid-point. You can build an amazing website that costs thousands of dollars and looks pretty, but if it doesn’t attract any users or doesn’t convert, you’ve wasted your time and money.

Have a plan.

People skip the planning stage too often. It’s hard work and they don’t want to do it. They just want to jump right in. A plan doesn’t need to be some 30 page business plan, but it should fill a certain amount of criteria. It also doesn’t have to be that detailed. It should answer the 5WH criteria at least:

• Who is my target market? Figuring out your target market can be hard sometimes. I can’t believe how many people I talk to who say their target market is ‘everyone.’ It’s never ‘everyone.’ If you’re working on a non-profit website and looking for donors, your market is probably people with above-average income in your local area. If you’re looking to sell houses, it’s probably recently married women. Know your product’s market. It will save you a ton of time in the long run, because you can build and test accordingly.
• What are my goals? If you don’t know your goals out of the gate, you won’t be focused. Every decision you make for your project needs to work towards those goals. Many people say they need to be clear cut and finite. I disagree. A goal can be as simple as: create awareness. Don’t get me wrong, finite goals make it easier to convey you vision if multiple people are involved, because there is a finish line.
• When do we cut our losses? This is really important. You need to set a negative option goal for yourself to have a clear cut idea of when to get out. If you don’t you can potentially waste a ton of time and energy on a project because you’re passionate about it. Know when to cut your losses and stick to your plan if things don’t work out. Unlike goals, this is where you NEED to be specific. For example: if I don’t make more than $1,000 per month in 6 months, we’re pulling the plug.
• Where can this project benefit other projects? Cross pollination of projects is essential at creating efficiency in your life. There is no such thing as separating different jobs or home and work. You’ll always be thinking about something work related at home and vice versa. Embrace that and make sure that when you’re creating efficiencies, that you’re taking all facets of your life into account. If you’re working on a blog project on Monday and a shopping cart project Wednesday, but both need mailing list software, why not use a package that benefits both? Always have efficiencies of scale in mind.
• Why am I doing this? This should be an easy question, but it’s answer should always point in the direction of your life goals. This will be your motivation.
• How will I fuel this project (time, money, passions, etc.)? This is really where you decide IF you can do something. You need to make sure that you have the TIME and MONEY to venture into something. If you don’t it will probably fail. Don’t stretch yourself too thin either. I’m guilty of that quite often. Make sure you can scale your projects adequately.

Test your market before you go big. Grow incrementally.

Before you invest a ton of resources in a project, test it out on a small scale. If you’re trying to sell things in a shopping cart, just go with the default template for a few weeks before you pay $5,000 for a custom template. Unless what you’re doing is based around a custom designed functionality and is completely new to the market, you should be able to test things cheap.

This also applies to things like pay per click (PPC) campaigns, list building campaigns, blogging, the service industry, and a slew of other things.

I started a similar project with my hosting business. We started with a desktop machine in my basement and were able to grow it incrementally until we had a cluster of servers co-located with Rackspace. You should be able to do the same with whatever venture you’re thinking of working on.

Build features and content. Design can come later.

People on the Internet are trying to scratch an itch. They’re looking to buy something or consume content. For the most part, people don’t care about the design of a site if the content and features are rich and useful.

Don’t get me wrong; building a website that looks nice will help people convert too, but he general idea is that they’re looking for products and services before they’re looking for a ‘pretty’ site. When trying to decide whether to spend $1000 on a logo or additional search features, consider which one your users will appreciate more.

I prefer to build projects that run themselves first and then make them look pretty later. I prefer to make my income as passive as possible. That usually means drop shipping product and automating the process of purchase orders between your cart and vendors, and sometimes that means hiring out portions of the work to a third party.

If your redesign looks better than the original, launch it.

All too often, I’m working on a redesign for a customer that is light years better than their original website before it’s done.  That happens in the first third of the project.  If they don’t observe this rule, the other two thirds of the project can be spent knit picking at the details – delaying the launch.  That’s really tragic when you launch the website and do A/B testing and remove all of the little changes they added anyways.  Just because a design isn’t perfect, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use it right now.

In this same vein, but a little off topic: if you are doing a redesign, don’t add functionality at the same time.  It can be confusing and time consuming.  Do your feature adds at a different time than your design change.  It makes the whole project much less convoluted.

Look at the big picture and go.

Once you’ve built a functional website and then moved on to design, start saving your resources for the next big (but incremental upgrade), but only if it fits the big picture of what you’re trying to do. You don’t need to build a million dollar website out of the gate. There are a ton of websites out there that just grew with their user base. Some of them still have horrible designs too. Look at Craig’s List. It looks horrible, but gets the job done. Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and a ton of the other big ones didn’t start big, but that’s where they are now.

What are your thoughts?

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: The Smart Way to Start a Project

I was reading an article over at PPC.bz about how Google links your social contacts to its index to improve your search results.  This is the first I had heard of the service, which is called Google Social Circle.  Click this link to see what social information Google has about you. The service has been around since October of 2009, but this is the first I had heard of it.  You’d think they would announce something like this, especially amidst all of the Facebook privacy news.  You’ll need a Google account and be logged in for the link to work properly.

Barman from PPC.bz basically equates the whole thing to information rape, because they’re taking fondling your privacy.  I don’t agree with that so much, because I feel more like they’re harvesting public information, and everything I put on the web I assume will be public anyways.  That being said, I still wish they told me.

My view is more in line with Bobbi Newman, who says: “Google’s Social Circle & Social Search may not violate any privacy laws but it gives me the creeps.” This is a lot like finding out that you have a stalker – only this one isn’t human, which might be even a little more creepy.  If this technology truly does increase relevancy, I suppose I support it, but I still feel like they were shady about it’s implementation.

In reality this is a lot like XFN search engines, which will probably be the next evolution in social networks.  I’m actually amazed that people aren’t building more of them to compete with Facebook.  It will be interesting how the privacy issues and technology develop with this.

What do you think about it’s privacy implications?

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Google stalks you. Did you know?

Many people think that hitting home runs in business is quite a bit about luck.  I hear all the time that I’m lucky I work for myself and I can live the way I do, making my hours, etc.  My first response is usually: “yeah I make my own hours, but usually it’s 16-20 hour days.”  What really happened is I prepared myself mentally to start a business for some time.

When the opportunity presented itself, I was ready to execute.  I knew I would be changing jobs soon, and so I decided to take a leap of faith and depend on my ability to execute.  It worked.  Since then, I’ve started and joined many ventures with many people, some of which didn’t work out, but others that worked tremendously.  Most of all I learned something from every single venture.

I’ve started or joined businesses making t-shirts, building websites, fixing computers, doing real estate, Internet Marketing, general sales, creative writing, fine art, and some other things I’m probably forgetting.  The first extremely sustainable was my main business, Acute Technology, which started as a hodgepodge of IT support and website development, but is now building enterprise level applications for businesses, educational institutions, and government.  I was able to leverage my clout with Acute Technology to get into other projects that I’m passionate about as well.

Luck doesn’t just apply to the large victories, but the small ones as well.  Just the other day, I heard through Twitter that Brian Brushwood was looking for someone to help with Name That Autocomplete, and was on a very tight deadline.  I was able to make things happen for them and make some friends along the way.  I think the ROI on my few hours worth of work will pay off, and that small victory makes me feel lucky, but really I was just listening at the right time, with the right knowledge and skills (preparedness).

What are your thoughts on luck?

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Luck is Just Being Prepared for Opportunity

St. Paddy’s day is my favorite Holiday.  My birthday is in less than a week, and I still haven’t planned anything for it.  Hopefully someone throws me a surprise party.  Anyways – I digress.

I want to talk about capturing the attention of special days of the year – be them holidays, birthdays, etc.  People are in a purchase-friendly mood when they’re celebrating – especially when alcohol is involved.  When you’re thinking about your next affiliate project, consider what holidays are in close proximity.  You’ll want to be promoting things for that holiday up to two or three months in advance, because people often times buy their products early to get the best possible prices they can.

Brainstorming and Execution

Make sure you brainstorm as many monetization paths as possible when you’re beginning to formulate your first plans.  Here are some of my successful St. Patrick’s Day affiliate sites and how they were monetized:

• A blog for hospitality businesses to brainstorm promotions for St. Patrick’s Day.  I directed people to offers for custom shirts, mugs, guiness, etc.
• A holiday deals website giving out coupons for SPD schwag.  I all of the coupon offers I could find, centralizing a place where people could get discounts for all of their Paddy’s Day needs.
• An Irish music website, complete with funny YouTube videos.  I focused on generating income from Audible.com, iTunes, and Amazon.
• A website with the complete history of St. Patrick’s Day.  I just ran Adsense on this one – I’m not sure why it was so successful.

Conclusion

I hope this helped you decide what to do for your next affiliate project – or at least gave you a little treasure chest of ideas for projects you may want to do in the future.  The other thing that is great about holiday offers is that with a little tweaking, you can run with the same website next year.

Like any other project – the more insight you can give your customers, the better.  If you don’t know much about Easter, you probably shouldn’t build a niche site about it.  Luckily my birthday is so close to St. Paddy’s Day, and I have a little bit o’ Irish in me.  Hopefully this next week isn’t too blurry.

Have questions? Ask them in the comments.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: St. Patrick’s Day Insights

Ok, so this is an update post to my original Shoemoney System Review.

First of all, I still haven’t learned anything new.  There is an eBay arbitrage set of videos coming up that I think I MAY learn something from, but still in week three, I have nothing more than when I started.

Hitting some of my original points with followup:

1. I still have no coupons.
2. I still have no sign up gift. I did follow up with them many times and they took my address.  I haven’t actually gotten anything though.  I know I’m in the top 100 now though.  That’s nice.
3. The podcasts are still old.
4. The videos still don’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. I think I may learn something, but I haven’t yet…
   

Here is a new point:

• Their support isn’t very good. I’ve asked a few questions, and gotten some spectacularly canned answers.  The direct access to Jeremy is WORSE than just @replying him on Twitter and NOT being a member.

I’ve had some ideas for how videos should be released and I intend to share those with Jeremy or his team at some point, but I doubt they’ll care to listen.  Maybe they will though.  My big thought is that the user should get a video credit released every 2 days and be able to select from ALL of the videos which they want to see – that way advanced users can just skip the easy stuff like “How to sign up for Gmail?”

Other reviews I’ve found:

Negative

• ShoeMoney System Full Of Shit?
• Inside the Shoemoney System – Real Review – From a Members Point of View [Video]
• ShoeMoney System Review: Don’t Waste Your ShoeMoney.

I have not found a positive review yet, but if you know if a REAL one, please let me know.

Positive

• Neil Beck’s Shoemoney Learner – Of all of the reviews, this guy is a beginner and finds the system extremely useful.  I found this review the best of all so far.  Great job Neil. (Added 2/22/2010)

What are your thoughts?

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Shoemoney System: Third Week Review

From BI: SAI:

Microsoft announced today that it will allow buyers of the all-new Outlook for Mac to import old messages and calendar events from Outlook for Windows, in the form of .PST files.

This is not a huge deal, and seems like an obvious feature. But for some, it — combined with the fact that Outlook for Mac will finally exist in the first place — could be enough to get them to switch platforms. Or at least to give them one less reason to stick with Windows.

Previously, Mac owners who wanted to use Exchange email — or other features Outlook does better than anything else — had to use Microsoft’s unpopular Entourage app, or more recently, the Mail app built into the latest Mac operating system. But only when Office 2011 ships later this year will Mac users finally get a — decent, we hope — version of Outlook.

No word yet on whether Office 2011 fixes another big Mac disadvantage that Microsoft has savored for years — the relatively lousy edition of Excel it offers Mac users.

What do you think about the change?  I don’t do ‘many’ conversions from PC to Mac, but I do about 5 or 6 a year, and this will make it much much easier.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Outlook for Mac Will Be Able to Import PST Files

I’ve been checking out the Shoemoney System for the last few days, and I haven’t learned anything that I didn’t already know.  I’m hoping that it ramps up soon though.  The videos are basic basic basic, but I’m sure he’s just leveling the playing field for other users.

The sales letter when you first sign up seemed long and annoying.  Why not just do a buy button at the top?  I knew I wanted to try it, but still had to sift through all of that stuff.

The videos and coupons that he advertises are released slowly over time, so you can’t just buy a month, watch and download everything and then cancel (shucks).

It looks like the only complete content is the old podcasts that Jeremy did as Net Income and The ShoeMoney Show on Webmaster Radio, but I’ve heard all of those already.  It would have been cool if the did the work to edit them down into something more to the point.

I also haven’t been impressed by the promise that the first 100 signups for the system get a special bonus, but it’s been like a week and a half and we still don’t know who we hare.  I’m fairly sure I’m in the first 100, because I signed up in 3 minutes, but who knows.

Unfortunately, content is released so slowly that I don’t really have much to say.  One of the videos everyone can watch, because it’s public, and the other three are about things I know very well: setting up a Google account, what affiliate marketing is, and setting up a ClickBank account.

I also noticed that many of the users complained about the same things in the week 1 webinar, so I don’t feel completely alone with this.

My conclusion?  I’ll give it a little more time before I completely judge…

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Review: The Shoemoney System is Meh for Advanced Users.

Ok everyone, I misplaced a memory card and I’m waiting for some pictures from others, but I have some pretty good pictures from Tuesday night.  When I find the other memory card and get the other pictures, I’ll post a final gallery.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Affiliate Summit West 2009 Pictures (Part 1)

So Affiliate Summit hasn’t officially started yet, but check out some of the cool things Michelle and I have been up to – mostly pics.  I’ll be adding captions later, but I need to hurry up and get down to registration.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Affiliate Summit: On Location (Pre-Conference)

Hey Everyone,

I’m laid over in Manchester, New Hampshire right now killing some time writing up the intro post.  I’m headed to Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I’m going with my lovely wife, Michelle, and we’re going to have a friggin awesome time.  We’ve both got Platinum Passes to the conference, which means that we pretty much have access to everything except the really exclusive VIP parties.

We’re also planning on checking out CES (Consumer Electronics Show for those of you that live under a rock) when we get there.  We should get there around 8:00PM tonight, and we’ll probably jump right into some gambling.  I’ve set up some meetings with people – details to come later.

I’ve been checking out some of the other ASW arrival posts, like Shoemoney and Robb Cheuvront.  I hope to see you guys there!

More information to come.  If you’re going to be at ASW or are already there, please leave comments and I’ll buy you a drink sometime when we’re there.

Originally posted on jtGraphic.net: Affiliate Summit West 2009 – Here I come.