Starting a move to a couple of Multi-Sites for all my websites.

I love wordpress, I have moved, almost exclusively for everything that I have left and it is great.  Now I am moving all my JMK Webservices sites to a single MultiSite install, and my personal sites (and family members, friends, etc) to a second install.

I am also taking this time to prune my holding, park some sites and do some general cleaning.  However it is taking me a lot of time to get this done.  I can’t spend two days dedicated to it, so it has been taking weeks.  I will be spending my time doing a site at a time over the next few weeks and hope to be clean and clear come May.  When the move is done it will be simple to keep everything updated, I will only have 2 codebases and I can spend more time making money and providing valuable content to the readers of my sites.

But after following a bunch of the actors on twitter, I like them. I think I will give it another shot, from the beginning, and see what happens.

I want to drop 5lbs in the next couple of weeks, and 20 in the next couple of months.
I will spend some time in the near future to change the homepage to something that is not just food pics in the next couple of weeks.

Automate, Automate, Automate

After I made the decision to automate as much as possible, I had to decide on the fulfilment service I would use.  The two biggies based on my research and response to my twitter tweets are E-Junkie and Clickbank.

I have used both Clickbank and E-Junkie as an affiliate over the years and on that front I liked both equally.  Easy to apply, promote, and get paid.  As I am working on the other side now I had more research to do.

The largest difference between Clickbank and E-Junkie is that E-junkie is an online shopping cart, and Clickbank is a full featured online sales site with payment processing, refunds, recurring charges, etc.  This makes comparison a little deceptive, but for now I am looking for a full cart and large affiliate network so they both offer this.

Some of the metrics that I am using include:

• Cost
• Billing options
• Professional look

Cost

Clickbank has a great page about their vendor charges, but I had to do a google search to find it. I am planning to sell products one-off without recurring billing so it is relativeley easy to figure out the cost.

$49.95 to set up the product

7.5% +$1 of every sale.  (If it is a $50 product they charge $4.75)

E-junkie has a monthly cost model based on amount of space and # of products. Currently I have 8 products in mind and all 8 will take less that 100MB of harddrive.  space. The HD space takes me to the $10 a month model.

I suspect that all my products will have an average cost of $20, and at a minimum of 50 units a month. (my goal will be 150 by 2014).

Clickbank cost – $237.5 a month (before chargebacks etc)

E-junkie cost – $10

Billing Options

Clickbank is a full service company and handles all of the billing, taxes, delivery etc.

E-Junkie is  a different beast since they are a cart system ONLY.  This means that I will have to handle all the money business with my payment processor.  Starting out I will be using paypal exclusively, and luckily they have a very easy method of collecting Canadian taxes.  I already have the accounting side mostly automated so this will add very little time into my schedule.

Professional Look

This is personal preference but I have always though of Clickbank of being very spammy, both their site and affiliate network.  That is not to say that they aren’t good, but the signal to noise is not very high.  E-Junkie on the other hand looks cleaner, from researching products to promote on my sites they have a selection that I tend to think is more in line with my market.

My decision

I will be going with E-Junkie for the time being.  For me the cost is what sells it right now.  I don’t want to pay a few hundred dollars when I am bootstrapping this effort.  I am decent at developing my own sites, accounting, etc so the entire suit offered by Clickbank is not beneficial to me at this time.

In a year I will re-evaluate to see what is the better option for me at that time.

What has your experience been?

Not rolling dice on my goals

To succeed at my goals I need to develop a plan. I will make a post that will be edited over the year with a fluid plan.  I don’t want to say that the initial plan is the be-all-end-all, it is better to have a initial plan and then reassess over time. This post is the first set of plans, think of them as frameworks/mind dumps.  They will be updated throughout the year with more clarity.

So what is the first plan that I have in mind.  Well that is the most important one for my mind sakes.  I have a habit of worrying about money, so adding 4 clients and monetizing my niche blog are my top two.

Getting Clients/networking locally

I have spent that last few months stalking Linkedin, the newpapers, etc making lists of companies, and names of people that I would be interested in working with.  My first sub-goal is to spend the first month of 2013 reaching out to people and companies, the goal being emailing/cold calling someone every day.  I started today sending my first email and I have at least 5 more at the top of my list. From this I want to have lunch/coffee/beer with someone new at least 2x a month.

I have started to draft articles, handouts, profile, etc on my business site that I will be using as the base of my sales proposition.  I get asked often what I do, and I need to have a 10s reply that will make people interested, and show my value.

The “blog”

My niche site will be monetized in 2 ways, electronic sales of tools, specs, etc and advertising.  I suspect that advertising will cover the costs and all electronic sales will be profit.

Before I start seriously monetizing I have to do some administration to make the business work.  Set up banking, get off my personal finances, etc.  This will cost a in the low $xxx but will separate my businesses.  I will have this completed in the next couple of weeks, have a new bank account and credit card.

When I am set up I have to hit the road with development.  I have my first ebook about 50% written, I have talked to local companies regarding what is missing in specs in the area, and have in mind about 15 articles.  I will write the articles first, get them scheduled, find some other blogs that I can guest post at, and build traffic.  I plan to use a handsheet to draw in a mailing list and use that list to upsell my future products.

All images purchased at CRESTOCK

2013 is going to be down right dull in comparison, unless I do something awesome.

So I will be working like mad to build my consulting business, and one set of skills that I will be using is my online marketing/money.  I am building a niche blog that will be driving business offline and will be monetized itself with a variety of tools, ebooks, tutorials, etc.

I am also working offline helping a local co-working space become a reality, I can’t grow my business without employees and I don’t want them working in my basement, so a co-working space will help there loads.

I have a couple of goals (personal and business) for 2013 that I will be posting monthly about here:

• Monetize my niche blog to $2000 a month
• Write 5 articles a week (3 on the niche, 2 here)
• Automate
• Add 4 new clients to my consulting business
• Run a 1/2 marathon (but train for a full)
• Talk to family and friends more, in person and on the phone.
• Weigh >240lbs on Jan 1, 2014 (I am at 268 now)

These are all doable, and I will be laying out the road map this month.  The top goal business wise is $2000/month for my niche blog and adding 4 new paying clients.  Currently my business is relying on 2 customers, and would fail if either decided to go elsewhere.  By diversifying both horizontally and veridical I can become more resilient.