I finished another article today. I think I'll need to go back and edit these at some point, but the idea right now is to get some good content up. There will always be improvements that can be made.
I need to write 2 more articles before I start promoting this site. That's when the real fun begins.
This is the article if you're interested: Why People Get Help, The 5 Fundamental Benefits
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
How to Do An Outline
I've spend the last few days refining my articles outline (or course outline as I'm starting to think of it) to flow better. I'm not done yet, but I am now happier with the overall flow, and I've written one more article. I cannot stress the importance of getting this outline right up front. It makes the writing part so much easier, I can't even tell you how much. It will save you a lot of rework in the end.
Here's a tip from a public presentations course I took about a year ago that will save you a lot of time, and ensure your articles or presentations flow.
Do an outline.
Lay it out like this picture. The blue circles show the order to write each part.
This means you write it in this order
1. Subject
2. Conclusion (what do you want people to do or remember as a result of this)
3. Agenda (3 main points is generally best)
4. Body
5. Summary of each agenda point
6. Any opening remarks (more for presenting live than writing articles)
7. Optional creative opening
The red arrows show the order you present it in.
I also got one more article written and posted, "Why People Buy Things, The 6 Fundamental Reasons". Check it out.
Here's a tip from a public presentations course I took about a year ago that will save you a lot of time, and ensure your articles or presentations flow.
Do an outline.
Lay it out like this picture. The blue circles show the order to write each part.
This means you write it in this order
1. Subject
2. Conclusion (what do you want people to do or remember as a result of this)
3. Agenda (3 main points is generally best)
4. Body
5. Summary of each agenda point
6. Any opening remarks (more for presenting live than writing articles)
7. Optional creative opening
The red arrows show the order you present it in.
I also got one more article written and posted, "Why People Buy Things, The 6 Fundamental Reasons". Check it out.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
My First Article: Welcome to Business 101 for Engineers
On Monday I layed out my to do list. If you go back and look, you will see I was working on planning 25 articles and writing 5.
Well yesterday I planned them all out and started writing the first one.
Today I finished it, and posted it to the web (business101-bt.blogspot.com)
It's written with the intention of getting people to come back looking for more articles in the future, and outlines the topics (the 25 or so articles) I plan to cover in the upcoming weeks. When all the articles are done, I will re-edit them all into an e-book and start trying to sell it on-line. Right now the focus is on getting the first 5 written. Once 5 are written, the focus will shift to driving traffic to this site and continuing to write at least one article a week.
On the main web site, BoundlessThinking.com I also added a link to this under Courses. I will promote this as a free on-line course while I continue to write it. You can post comments to the author and ask me any questions you want after you read any section.
That's it for today. In my new-found lifestyle of flexibility I am going to spend the rest of the day doing some much needed work around the house.
Well yesterday I planned them all out and started writing the first one.
Today I finished it, and posted it to the web (business101-bt.blogspot.com)
It's written with the intention of getting people to come back looking for more articles in the future, and outlines the topics (the 25 or so articles) I plan to cover in the upcoming weeks. When all the articles are done, I will re-edit them all into an e-book and start trying to sell it on-line. Right now the focus is on getting the first 5 written. Once 5 are written, the focus will shift to driving traffic to this site and continuing to write at least one article a week.
On the main web site, BoundlessThinking.com I also added a link to this under Courses. I will promote this as a free on-line course while I continue to write it. You can post comments to the author and ask me any questions you want after you read any section.
That's it for today. In my new-found lifestyle of flexibility I am going to spend the rest of the day doing some much needed work around the house.
Monday, March 19, 2007
8 Steps to Starting a Business: my To Do List
Mar 16, 2006: I'm posting this the following monday, but here's what I did on friday.
First of all, I dug out my to do list and gave it a read. Then I wrote down the next 2 things I need to do on the back of a cracker box, and put it beside my PC (you could also use regular paper, cracker box is what I had handy)
I've decided to focus on the Buisiness for Engineers site first. Here's what the To Do list looks like now. This is a good template to follow.
1. Define your Target Market (Done)
First of all, I dug out my to do list and gave it a read. Then I wrote down the next 2 things I need to do on the back of a cracker box, and put it beside my PC (you could also use regular paper, cracker box is what I had handy)
I've decided to focus on the Buisiness for Engineers site first. Here's what the To Do list looks like now. This is a good template to follow.
1. Define your Target Market (Done)
- Engineers wanting to move into management
2. Research & validate the top needs of the chosen market (Done)
- Time Managment - lots of stuff available already (project managment resources)
- Responsibility without Authority - lots of stuff available on that (leadership by influence)
- Lack of Business Understanding - very few good resources (this is my chosen niche)
3. Create a Web Site (In Progress)
- Content Page (good enough to start driving traffic to, don't go too crazy here the objective is to get to market ASAP, not to get it perfect before you tell anyone about it)
- email Gathering page (I have an email newletter subscribe button, this should become a separate opt in page at some point)
4. Create Newsletter Content (In Progress)
- plan at least 25 articles
- write 5 of them
5. Create/Find Free Stuff - 3 Items (perhaps this step should be later)
- Excel templates may be a good place to start
- Good, screened articles could also be good
- Research professional looks - what makes something look professional?
6. Create a Budget and Deadline for Spending (Promotion & Content Generation)
- This is to force some action in this area, not get to it when I get to it.
7. Publish your Site
- Register a domain name (I may or may not keep it under BoundlessThinking.com)
- Find a web hosting service
8. Start promoting your site (this one still needs some flushing out when we get here)
- Re-read the five best way to get leads to a site (see Product Launch Tips.xls)
- Buy Advertising
- Go to newsgroups and talk about the issues
- Buy an Autoresponder to keep in touch with subscribers automatically
- Submit your newsletter content as articles on-line
- Do press releases online
Here's my complete To Do list as it stands today (an excel spreadsheet with this list and a little more detail, comments and tidbits on resources to help with upcoming stages)
As you can see we are working on steps 3 and 4 right now. 3 is almost done, it just needs a few tweeks. 4 needs to be organized so I am writing articles that matter to this niche market, not just things that interest me. That's what I'll be working on this week.
Daryl
One last thing, here's an archive of how the site looks today so we can look back and laugh later. Cheers.
The easiest file backup system I have ever seen
It's been a few days since I posted anything. We had a bit of a family emergency that we needed to attend to. The flexibilty for this type of thing is great with your own business. I ended up taking thursday off, and working 18 hours on friday. The work still needs to get done, but the flexibility to do it when you want to do it is great.
Ok, so on tuesday I left off with a web template I had put together that I thought I could work with. What have I been doing since then?
DAY 9: Mar 14, 2006 - nothing too exciting, but something worth mentioning. I spent most of the day making sure I have an automatic backup system working properly. I know we've all heard this before, but I cannot stress the importance of this enough. YOU MUST BACKUP YOUR FILES REGULARLY OR YOU WILL BE BURNED BY IT. PERIOD. Just Do It !!!
I won't bore you with the details, but I ended up using FolderShare (FolderShare.com) to sync to an old desktop PC over the internet. It's free and very easy to set up. It mirrors all the files in My Documents, and my Internet Favorites (or whatever folders you choose to sync) on the other PC. There is a little task that runs in the background and keeps track of files you either change or delete, and does the same thing to them on the other PC so there is always an exact copy there. There a few really nice things about this:
Ok, so on tuesday I left off with a web template I had put together that I thought I could work with. What have I been doing since then?
DAY 9: Mar 14, 2006 - nothing too exciting, but something worth mentioning. I spent most of the day making sure I have an automatic backup system working properly. I know we've all heard this before, but I cannot stress the importance of this enough. YOU MUST BACKUP YOUR FILES REGULARLY OR YOU WILL BE BURNED BY IT. PERIOD. Just Do It !!!
I won't bore you with the details, but I ended up using FolderShare (FolderShare.com) to sync to an old desktop PC over the internet. It's free and very easy to set up. It mirrors all the files in My Documents, and my Internet Favorites (or whatever folders you choose to sync) on the other PC. There is a little task that runs in the background and keeps track of files you either change or delete, and does the same thing to them on the other PC so there is always an exact copy there. There a few really nice things about this:
- It just works: it runs in the background on both PCs and syncs whenever both PCs are online at the same time. I don't have to manage it at all. I just need 2 PCs connected to the Internet.
- You can work on either PC at any time: If the PC I normally work on fails and I have to send it to the shop (which I recently did), I just move to the other PC and start working there. All the files are there, same directory structure, everything. When I get my regular PC back I just plug it into the Internet, and viola, it grabs everything I updated on the other PC while it was in the shop. I don't mess with backup CDs, tapes, nothing. Just connect to the Internet, and give it some time to sync up. I have never come accross anything this easy to use as a backup system. Its great if you have a second PC lying around.
- You could keep your backup remotely: I don't do this, but it would be dead simple to put my second PC at my sisters place and have not only protection against hw failure, but theft and fire as well. If she has enough hard drive space, I could just back up my critical folders to her PC, and she could backup to mine. If either of us has trouble, the other persons PC would always have everything we need.
The FolderShare website also talks about how to invite others the share certain files, security, etc. All in all, its a very nice little tool. I highly recommend you check it out.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The Best Web Page Size
One small note from yesterday's exercise. If your web page is too wide, people may not be seeing critical information. Not everyone scrolls around to see what's over on the right hand side of a page that's cut off.
A lot of PC screens are still set to 800 x 600 pixel resolution. I put together a little picture that shows the optimum web page sizes. Use this as a reference to ensure your must-see information is seen by everyone.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Branding the new Web Site
Had a strange couple of days. Friday my son had the day off school, so I made it a short day so we could spend some time together. Today has been up and down, and everything I did took 10 times longer than I thot it should, but looking back I did get some things done. These are some of the reason's I'm pursuing an on-line business: you get to see your results (and failures), and the flexibility is wonderful.
In any case, I scribbled down a few of my next steps on friday, and tackled the first two over the past few days.
Overall, my objective the past 2 days was to work up the skeleton for a reasonably nice web site (IE start to develop a brand) that I wouldn't be embarassed to put my name to.
Step 1: was to create a couple of logos
- a Boundless Thinking logo (my company name)
- a Boundless Thinking web header
- a Customer Satisfaction Guarantee logo
- an Internet Integrity logo (purely a branding exercise that illustrates an important personal value)
Step 2: craft a web template to make it easy to add and post things going forward. Major objectives were:
- clean look and feel
- use of text styles that are easily changable to facilitate future split testing in the future (I.E. that's where you try red headings one week and green headings the next week to see what people respond to the most - this is a exercise in developing effective advertising copy. I'm sure I'll be writing more about that as I go along)
- link it to my Boundless Thinking Blog articles (which are hopefully the start of a book)
I've posted an archive of the site so you can see where I started from even after I change the site in the future. It's not perfect, but I think its a very workable start: http://boundlessthinking.com/oldversions/Mar12,2007/index.html
I did everything here myself, but I also found a couple sites that do very good work based on their portfolios. When I get round to polishing this up, there's a very good chance I'll go to these guys:
Logo Design: http://thelogocompany.net/
Header Design: http://www.minisitegraphics.com/
I've also found that there are a lot of freelance work auction sites out there if you need web design or programming done. If I ever use one, I'll let you know how that works out. You can google "freelance programming" or "freelance design" and get a long list of these sites. Be sure to ask for some reference work before you choose a vendor, there are both very good and very bad designers out there. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
That's it for today.
In any case, I scribbled down a few of my next steps on friday, and tackled the first two over the past few days.
Overall, my objective the past 2 days was to work up the skeleton for a reasonably nice web site (IE start to develop a brand) that I wouldn't be embarassed to put my name to.
Step 1: was to create a couple of logos
- a Boundless Thinking logo (my company name)
- a Boundless Thinking web header
- a Customer Satisfaction Guarantee logo
- an Internet Integrity logo (purely a branding exercise that illustrates an important personal value)
Step 2: craft a web template to make it easy to add and post things going forward. Major objectives were:
- clean look and feel
- use of text styles that are easily changable to facilitate future split testing in the future (I.E. that's where you try red headings one week and green headings the next week to see what people respond to the most - this is a exercise in developing effective advertising copy. I'm sure I'll be writing more about that as I go along)
- link it to my Boundless Thinking Blog articles (which are hopefully the start of a book)
I've posted an archive of the site so you can see where I started from even after I change the site in the future. It's not perfect, but I think its a very workable start: http://boundlessthinking.com/oldversions/Mar12,2007/index.html
I did everything here myself, but I also found a couple sites that do very good work based on their portfolios. When I get round to polishing this up, there's a very good chance I'll go to these guys:
Logo Design: http://thelogocompany.net/
Header Design: http://www.minisitegraphics.com/
I've also found that there are a lot of freelance work auction sites out there if you need web design or programming done. If I ever use one, I'll let you know how that works out. You can google "freelance programming" or "freelance design" and get a long list of these sites. Be sure to ask for some reference work before you choose a vendor, there are both very good and very bad designers out there. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
That's it for today.
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