Harrowing Experiences = Learning Opportunities November 21, 2007
Posted by Stray Dog in : Self Development , add a commentHello again. Been awhile for me. The past few months have been harrowing but I hope to be able to post more frequently in the months to come. The situation is certainly one of those ‘life moments’ where you need to step back and look at things and wonder exactly what you should be learning from this. Definitely one of those times where I can say “That which does not destroy you only serves to make you stronger”. I almost have an odd sense of invulnerability. I may shed more light on my experiences in future posts. Suffice to say now that I’m sure all of what has transpired recently is a minor setback and six months from now I’ll be moving forward again towards riches.
So let’s focus on some items I should have been working on or need to do more of:
- I have taken several Project Management courses certified by the Project Management Institute. I need to get my ass in gear and complete the program and get my designation.
- I had a client that had a substantial ad-words spend. During which time I should have completed my Google Ad-words Professional exam. I totally dropped the ball and that could have been a great benefit to me. Certainly an opportunity wasted.
- I need to continue to build relationships with people in my industry and ensure I work to maintain the ones I already have. You can never underestimate the power of networking.
- I need to do more self-learning. I am fortunate as I am a good self-learner. I can pick up a book and easily understand and apply concepts. My problem is just doing it or setting aside time to do it.
Ultimately as I write this post I realize this; having been working full-time, teaching part-time, taking on freelance web development projects and spending time with my family I have left no time for self-development. Now at a crossroad in my professional life I’m not as good on paper as I would be had I managed to do better at any of the four items I mentioned. And in reality all four could have been accomplished without me having to take too much time away from my family. And that time spent then would have made the time I have now better overall.
Perhaps realizing that I need to be more dedicated at learning is the best lesson my harrowing experience has taught me.
Let’s Rock This Shit! November 9, 2007
Posted by Lyndon in : Partry Like A Rockstar , add a commentLet’s start by addressing the contest requirements:
- You’re leaving me with 6 hours of down time. I am good to giver with a lot less. I say we cut down the resting time and go until 4:00am. As far as the pictures go, I’ve seen them before and they fill me with jealousy as I know I’d fit right in and we would have a blast!
- Flying to Vegas is not a problem. As a matter of a fact I’ll take care of my own airfare! See you in a month! Let’s spend the flight savings on booze!
- This is the blog post and official contest entry.
I’d like to take a moment and address the judges individually
Dax Herrera:
Dax my man don’t worry dude - I can rock SEO with my pants off! And as far as calling shots like I’m bailing out of a sinking canoe goes - That’s how I roll – err paddle. Here’s a pic of me shot callin and ballin (after a few too many drinks) from a canoe in the middle of the night with all of my belongings.
The 500 large?
I ain’t bringing $500.00 home and I ain’t spending it on Adwords or some silly bet at a table! We are going to drink it so fast you’ll think Chris Angel slipped in and made it disappear. You guys don’t even have to give it to me it can go straight to our waitress along with the flight money.
Rebecca Kelley
Let’s rock it! I can take the jokes and I can dish the jokes. I’ve spent my entire life laughing at myself – yeah I’m a sorry son of a bitch. Though I am not rocking a stash this picture should demonstrate my ability to rock a 9 piece getup that is desperately missing a stash. If I can wear tight Zubaz I can laugh and be laughed at with the best of them.
Neil Patel:
Late hours of the day wee hours of the night call it whacha want. I’ll be by your side laughing, drinking, (maybe even funneling), just having a great time! You’d be proud to know that your little apprentice (me) won a funneling tournament held by a bunch of crazy Texas Longhorns the last time I was in Mahzatlan! I am a firecracker – I love to party, stay out late, and get loose!
Greg Hartnett:
I feel like I keep repeating myself but I have a sense of humor and love to party! I can party to the wee hours. And don’t worry I’ll be up early raring to go at it again! And you need not worry – I’ll play a little cards as long as it doesn’t cut too far into our extreme drinking plans!
Dave Dellanave:
What if I am funny witty AND cute jk 
? I’ve nearly overdosed on Viagra a few times though I’ve never ranked for it – How is that for Rockstar? What is assembly – A lego knock off? I drink like a fish and though I am not much of a fighter, you are still welcome to beat the crap out of me. I won’t be falling and I won’t be left behind.
(long after the others had fallen - I was up and doing fine 
So What Else Can I Say?
I Have Expereince:
I’ve been sneaking away for long weekends of total debauchery all of my life – I am well versed in the art of hitting up another city for a weekend of inordinate amounts of alcohol and laughs.
The Last Time I was in Vegas:
You’d all be proud to know that last time I was in Vegas (Independence Day) I nearly died on the flight home. After 5 days of complete debauchery in 124 degree weather (the last 52 hours were spent with zero sleep – I didn’t even make it to a hotel room) I had a minor dehydration induced heart attack. My doctor asked me to have a few glasses of water every day when on bender of three plus days. It’s been working for me ever since. That’s Rockstar!
I’m Offically a Loser and Easy to Bug
Finally – my bosses ran out of money and told me they aren’t paying me anymore just last week so I am officially an unemployed bum – that means I need this – and you need me as I am an easy target to bug
Below are a couple of things you should take a look at:
- 6 more pictures demonstrating I can let loose and have a good time
- A video of the last house party I hosted. The entire city is longing for the next one and you 5 are genuinely invited to come down for it. It was themed “Smokin Martini” based on Playboys “Girl Next Door” – I hired the cities best DJ (he has opened for Kayne West and is opening for Method Man) and basically propelled myself to true rockstar status in my city.
“Smokin Martini”
Boys and Girls. I need this win. It will be a win for all of us! I am a super outgoing 26 year old male who lives to have a good time. I love to party and I love to work. And I am even a good person – I think Jeremy will attest to that (I am the guy that snagged that domain for you as I thought it had expired on you).
“The Rockstar Costume that got me all the Attention”
“This is How We Roll”
“Shooters Rockstar Style”
“If this doesn’t SCREAM ROCKSTAR I don’t know what does”
“Passsed out Passport on Lap and All”
“The Way We Get Started”
VOTE ME FOR ROCKSTAR STAUS!!!
PS: In 2006 I stated that my goals for 2007 involved meeting Shoemoney, and attending PubCon amoungst others. I’ve hit all my goals except - meeting Shoemoney, attending a conference like PubCon, and earning a million a month, I didn’t retire but I did get laid off :S
Another G… May 22, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : News, Forums , add a commentJust a quick update…
Another G… as in $1000.00
The growth of my forums has brought in its first two sponsors. One at $600.00 for a year (a 115×60 image on all pages) and one at $350.00 for six months (same ad size).
Exciting times
PR What? May 22, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Domain Names, Forums , add a commentI had been working on adding a blog to one of my sites - the forums. My goal with the blog is two fold, it will give me a spot to post how to articles and I believe I am more likely to get links to the blog as I think web masters are hesitant to link to forums (not sure why, but I really feel that way).
It has backfired a little so far as there is a little less action in the forums as the user is not ending up in the forum off the bat. However I think Google will index the forum home page and things will level out.
At the same time I switched my domain from “.net” to “.com” as I snapped up the “.com” when its previous owner had let it expire.
I placed a 301 on http://www.xxxxxx.net/ and xxxxxxx.net and xxxxxxx.com to http://www.xxxxxx.com/ and immediatly my homepage PR went from PR2 to PR4. The .com had sat parked at godaddy for at least 6 months and had no PR rating so I was surprised and thrilled to see it jump (even though it doesn’t really matter).
As far as a stats goes:
Friendly URLs May 8, 2007
Posted by Stray Dog in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google , add a commentI wish I had kept better track of my usage stats from years gone by for one of my sites. I’ve moved hosts a few times and never thought back then about potentially trying to monetize the site. It is full of original content on learning about web development and I get a reasonable amount of traffic. But I’m sure I used to get far more traffic.
The site started with static HTML pages and that was the way I went for several years. Then I got interested in Content Management Systems (CMS) and decided to roll my content into a Mambo setup. It worked well enough but has SO much going on I spent more time fidgeting with tweaking the interface than developing more good content. Last year I decided to roll my own CMS that provided me with exactly what I need and nothing more. I’m very please with where I have it now except that I was feeding an id number to my application page via the query string and the URL had no reference to all the juicy good content contained on the page. Bad Dog! Bad!
So this week I set out to fix my bad. I used a rewrite within my htaccess file for my site and updated my links site wide. Since the site is fully database driven this was easy and quick to do, although for all images and relative links within my own site I needed to change the path to stem from the sites root directory. This took a bit longer to do but not a big deal.
My stumbling block for not having done this earlier was getting my mind around how to setup the htaccess file properly with the rewrite rules. Fortunately I found a site that allows you to enter a dynamic URL and converts it to a Search Engine friendly one. It also spits out what you need to include in the htaccess file for all of it to work. Once I saw this I was able to get my mind around the process.
Now my content rich site has Search Engine friendly URLs and I look forward to seeing what sort of traffic increases I may get as a result. I will keep a better archive of sites stats as well as I move forward with this.
More on Hostway and ‘Mash from the UK April 11, 2007
Posted by Stray Dog in : Web Hosting , add a commentOK. Since the previous blog post of mine in regards to Hostway the email situation has reared its ugly head once again. This time taking nearly a week to resolve. Something to do with being on a newer server I was told. Hostway suggested moving me to an older ‘tried-and-true’ box. I said whatever gets the email notices working again. Shortly thereafter email was back up. Not sure what they did or how it was ultimately resolved. The support person told me that once a support ticket is sent that they do not contact the customer until it is resolved. That works fine for quick fixes but not so shit hot when it takes several days to resolve and you are left wondering what the hell is going on.
My recommendation to Hostway customers is to ensure you are a Gold Plus account holder so you can pick up the phone and call their support. Once you get a person on the phone (which is actually easy to do) they do tend to look after you alright. But man - emailing support really blows - my opinion.
Now - as for ‘Mash at Hostway in the UK. Thanks for commenting on my post. To be honest there was a period of time when my original discount offered by the Lovell’s was more than what I was actually paying for the accounts I had with Hostway UK. I might have felt bad about that but not after having my initial deal with IARNA/Hostway UK pulled on me in the manner it was. IARNA and the Lovell’s had it right. I even called support at IARNA mid-evening here (3 am in London) and I spoke to Rob Lovell directly (pretty sure it was Rob). He had my issue resolved immediately. That was quite spectacular.
Currently I look after hosting for 30+ sites. Not enough for Hostway to make it or break it obviously. Still though that would make me a decent customer and the value of all those hosting accounts over time would be fairly significant.
So ‘Mash — If you wish to respond further feel free. My situation was likely somewhat unique. For what I spent on hosting with Hostway UK and what I made by reselling it was likely a wash. So I’m just chalking it up as a lesson learned.
Progress - Growth and a little rebound March 26, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Affiliate Marketing, Forums , add a commentJust a little bit of a status update.
My forums which I have spoken about a few times and offered up stats here have continued to grow, with March being a big traffic month. I get huge volume spikes when other related forums link to me but nearly 5000 visits about 60-something-thousand page view makes March an exciting month for me. I am not monetizing this site yet, I am going to allow in to continue growing before I start throwing ads up.
Meanwhile the one site that I a monetizing had a great run in terms of Google placement, was earning nicely, then it dropped a little, now it seems to be crawling back up for some relevant search phrases. I posted about the Christmas Rush here.
Here is a screen shots of my earning since - you’ll see it had been doing quite well until March but it looks like it may be on it’s way back up.
So there you have it, as requested, and update on my sites growth. I am satisfied with their growth considering they have been a little neglected as of late.
There Is No “I” in Team March 8, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Ranting and Raving , add a commentYesterday, I had a meeting with my business partners regarding “the project”.
This morning, while shifting a few pixels on a Web site, I had the opportunity to reflect. I realized that we have assembled a great team, and we will accomplish far more together than any of us could ever accomplish alone.
It can be a tough decision to get others involved, why share the profits? The simple fact is partnerships are often more successful then sole proprietorships (I think I read that somewhere once – but I am rolling with it until someone proves otherwise).
Let’s take a look at some of the reasons, using our team as an example:
- We are smarter together than we are alone.
- When we combine our minds in an effort to solve a problem or make a decision our dynamics and different backgrounds often bring forward an ideal solution after some discussion
- Responsibility to each other
- if I don’t carry my weight, I am letting down not only myself but three of my partners
- Individual Skill sets
- We have an Information Architecture / Usability Expert
- A great programmer
- A business major
- And a finance guyCombined we bring to the table the skills required to ensure that each aspect of business in run well.
- Shared Work Load
- While one partner was writing a 60 page business plan I was free to do what I do best, get started on the development of the product. We’d never get this done with a one or two man team.
- Shared Costs
- Getting up and running costs money. We spent about $1200 on a domain name and while trying to get going on a budget there are a lot of small incidental costs.
I am pretty wonderful, but contrary to popular belief I am not perfect , and there are things that I am not that good at. This is fine because I have partners or “teammates” who have the skills to take care of the things that I can’t and vise versa.
Cheers, to our team!
Today I Discovered: Inside AdWords March 7, 2007
Posted by Stray Dog in : Google, Adwords , add a commentNot that this is a startling or unexpected discovery but I was glas to find it and thought I should share it. There are so many great resources out there and so little time. As you can tell by my lack on any recent post I’ve been quite busy and neglecting my Filthy Jack duties. So this post is a quick one but a good one. Please recall that one purpose of Filthy Jack is to document the things we learn as we move on down the road - even if they are bloody obvious…
So yes, Google’s AdWords team has a blog called Inside AdWords. The Blog focuses on:
Updates on enhancements made to the AdWords system
Thoughts on things that advertisers have been asking about
Tips on getting the most from AdWords
Details on tools we think you’ll find useful
Links to articles you might find interesting
If you are looking at becoming even more entrenched in the world of AdWords you should definately be spending a part of each week on this site. I plan to from this point forward.
Forum Moderators - Get Some Now March 6, 2007
Posted by Evil Green in : Marketing Forums , add a commentA while back, I talked about the increased spam on one of my forums. I decided I needed some help with the spam problem, I just wasn’t around enough to deal with it. I’d wake up from 6 hours of sleep and there would be 6 spam messages.
I asked two of my top members to help me out by becoming moderators. Both were excited to help so I set it all up. It has been one of the best decisions I have made. Between the three of us spam rarely last more than minute before one of us gets it. Not only that but they are posting more than ever keeping the forums busy.
They are contributing to the growth of the forum which remains small with about 200 threads and about 2000 posts but continues to show potential.
I suppose the purpose of this post is to get moderators early on for your forum, they will work hard at growing your forum for you, at least that has been my experience.