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Where have you been?

October 29, 2009 By Jeff Leave a Comment

Well I guess I am not much of a blogger, so I think I will start calling this my, “place where I try to organize my thoughts”.

I have tried using twitter to do this, but I have found that most of the time I can’t clear my head of what I  am trying to get out in 140 character increments.

589-org

 

The Scene

Let me set the scene for you, my reader, for where I am at and what I am doing.  As you can probably recall from previous posts, I seem to spend some time every couple of months re-grouping.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, the problem is that typically I have a good run then something major happens and I never reached that critical mass.

The latest event that has really hurt is the change that ebay made to their payment scheme.  They have gone from a percentage model to a CPC model.  Basically they are going to pay you per click what they feel your clicks are worth. 

I have read a lot of talk of marketers getting hit hard by this, but they also mention that they were making the majority of their income from ACRUs.  I on the other hand had been making almost all of my income from sales.  The difference was that you get paid a set amount for every new member that you get to sign up to Ebay, the other is that you get a percentage of the fees that are generated when someone that you send to the site makes a purchase.  This was my bread and butter, and because of this I foolishly thought that I would get a decent EPC for the traffic that I was sending.

However that was not the case.  From about February till September my effective EPC was about $0.45, now it is $0.15 and lower if someone happens to come to my site, click an ad not like what they see, hit back and then click another.

 

Where Now?

Needless to say this was one in a line of huge hiccups in my trek. I haven’t given up however, I am flaying around a bit at the moment, but I am starting to dabble in some direct linking with some promising affiliate offers.  If any of them are a hit I will then build a site around it and get serious.  My plan is to go after a bunch, if I spend $50 and not get anywhere I move on, if I see promise I will tweak and let it go for another $100.  From there is when I make the decision whether or not to go for the site.

I will let you know how it goes.

Filed Under Making Money, Marketing, Me Rambling Tagged With , , ,

2009 is going to be exciting

January 7, 2009 By Jeff Leave a Comment

I have some goals for 2009 that I am going to reach.

500 Posts

The first one is to achieve 500 posts on this blog.  Bluenoser.net has been online for years, but I have only around 300 posts and some of those are useless ones that I put up at the beginning just to have content.

MORE PROFIT

In 2009 I have a goal to quadruple my online profits.  This is not an overly ambitious goal, and I think that by the end of January I will be making it a TEN fold increase.  Tim of 4HWW and some of has followers have said that making high goals actually increases your likely hood for success.

More Time

I am in 2009 going to increase my productivity to the point that I can spend more time doing what I want to be doing.  That includes travelling and reading.  This is the first year that I have read less than 10 GOOD books in a year.  I miss reading and increasing my knowledge.

Professional Equity

Along with my various online endeavours I am going to start working on building “professional equity”.  I am not sure if this term has been coined before, if not here is my definition.  Anything that increases your worth to your profession and company which in turn increases the demand in your services.  I have started doing this by achieving my LEED AP designation, and in the first of the year I will be gaining my P.Eng (once I finish my diaries).  There are two more on my list one is to get my FE in April and follow with my PE in Maryland, or another state in the US.

The other BIG thing is staying tight to my chest, but hear is a hint,  it is going to be a teaching program for a tight niche in my industry that I have expertise in, and believe that there is a lack of information available to fellow engineers and industry in general.  I hope for this to be my muse(read 4HWW if you don’t know what this is)

Filed Under Blogging, Marketing, Me Rambling Tagged With , ,

Has it really been a Month

October 1, 2008 By Jeff Leave a Comment

I can’t believe that it has been an entire month where I didn’t write a damn thing on this site. WOW

Something Cool along the HudsonIt has really been crazy around here.  The first week of September I was on Vacation in NYC.  If you have never visited New York, do it soon.  It is really a blast and you can do it on the cheap.  The shopping, Central Park, the shows and the people are amazing.  We have been there twice in the last 12 months.Even for Bluenoses[sic]

After I got back from there I worked a 60 hour week and then headed to the IEEE sections Congress in Quebec City.  This was a great trip, I was able to hang out with a lot of great people and meet some new friends.  IEEE is a great place for Engineers to network and meet people of the same vein.  Engineers are a odd bunch they usually have to have two lives, one geeky one at work and a “normal” one at home.  When at an IEEE event you can sit down with a beer and talk about sports and the LHC.As Seen from the Citadel

I even had time inbetween meetings to tour around the city. Old Quebec is the closest that I have ever been to an old European city.  It has made me decide that I Old Europe is my next adventure.

And then last week I was in Minneapolis to visit a generator manufacturer and get some classes in.  It was a decent trip that involved a very convoluted trip from Halifax to Minneapolis, but that is a story for another day.

As Seen from my hotelI didn’t have a lot of time to spend touring the town.  I was staying directly across from the University of Minnesota, and that place is huge.  I ended up working in a coffee shop across from the hotel, which was a lot of fun.  I talked to some of the students, not locals since I don’t think that I talked to one person who was actually from there.

And then I spent last weekend and this week trying to get everything settled, put out some fires and figure out where all my projects stand.  I finished that by the end of the day today, so now life should be reaching something closer to normal.

So what is next?

Well I am back to developing my business plan.  There are some courses that I have to finish and then I am going to get back to developing my latest project.  I still have the intention of reaching the modest level of $500 of passive proft by end of year.  Currently I am at $200 so it is entirely doable.

Filed Under Me Rambling Tagged With , ,
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