It’s funny, I get all these great idea, and once I get the idea started and can see where it can go I tend to get bored with it. It’s as if what I like to do is come up with the creative aspect of things, then just can’t hack the “boring” part of actually doing the sales and administration. I love to make products. That much I know for certain. I have enough ideas that if I worked full time at producing the products alone, I would be busy for at least a year, probably longer. Of course, now I am too busy trying to figure out how to get the websites up and running and how to get visitors, and so-forth, that I hardly have any products. So, my first goal is to truly get the one product I need to get moving done and producing income. The product is there already. It’s the corresponding completed website and income that isn’t. (Here’s the website: http://personalhomebudgeting.com). So, my second real product is (hopefully) a better success than my first one.

I’ve got to fix the site for my first one. It’s been down for a week now, and getting it fixed is a small challenge. I couldn’t remember everything that I had done to get it going. The sales page was gone, the autoresponder died, the whole bit. Man that sucked! I realise that I probably didn’t really lose anything, since I have only had about 1 sale a month on that thing. But, still, it would have been nice to keep it up! I will be getting that up tomorrow, even if I have to get up at 5 am to do it!

Now that I’ve got the budget site started, I will have to keep promoting it and adding content to the site to get attention to it, including to the advice site (blog), http://personalbudgethelp.com, which I actually kind of like. I think that once people start visiting it and giving me some feedback, including blog responses and emails, then I will be able to really get that site moving. I will add more products as time passes, and I will certainly improve on the current spreadsheet. As well as it works, it does take a lot of memory on a hard drive, so that is the problem with it. I need to spend some time study macros and Visual Basic in order to deal with that issue. I hate bloated software, and now mine is one of those. 

The biggest challenge is time management… I had intended on doing so much this weekend, but with the kids and not feeling well (I’ve been seeing a specialist for my fatigue), I am having a real challenge keeping up to just my daily tasks. There are times when I feel like just giving up on everything, letting the bank take my house and walking away from it all. I’m sure I could rent a place for a lot less than what I’m currently paying for mortgage and utilities (of course it’d be a lot smaller, too). But I think that I’m stronger than that. Or I’d like to think so! So, I’ve decided that come hell or high water I will spend at least an hour a day working on this stuff, even if I have to get up earlier to do it. That is a decision I came to toady. Part of what motivated me for that was the fact that my boss met with me today and told me that HR told him that as a manager I don’t get any overtime or time off in lieu. I get a small bonus each year, instead. I worked it out, and if I got the full bonus, I still would be behind as far as the overtime goes, based on the hourly rate that my salary should pay.  I’m so sick of working for other people! The owners of this company have so much money that I couldn’t spend it in my lifetime. I know, because I did an exercise to see how I would spend, and on what, and I still had money left over at the end. And they owners have more money than what the exercise called for!
So, this week both sites will be up and running. Then I’ll get the articles going more regularly, as well as the blog posts. By next week I want to have another site started and have my budgeting eBook well under way. And I will spend at least a couple of hours trying to figure out a new format for the budget spreadsheet to make it smaller on the hard drive. Plus I have several ideas to make it into a fantastic tool that can’t be beat, even by some of the best commercial programs available in stores. And if I can do that and keep the price down, then there is no stopping me! Actually, I can do it, as I do that with my own now, but making it completely user friendly is the problem. For me it’s easy to do this stuff, but the sheets I use personally might confuse most laymen. That’s why I did a new one for sale.

I will add a few affiliate products to my sites, but only those things I really like. I think that will boost the income a bit, and it also gives my clients and readers more to look forward to.

Next week I plan to start a newsletter for my budgeting niche. And why not offer as part of that some personal coaching? I’ve done that before in a professional capacity, as well as actually doing budget management for people. I think there might be a market for that… Gotta get the right marketing materials together, though. Not sure what to do in that.

My next area that I want to pursue is fitness and weight loss. I have been doing this for decades and never capitalised on it. So I might as well start now! I was thinking that the first thing I could do would be to try and sell fitness plans for people. I’m not sure how well that will go over. There is also that idea of diet plans and advice. Simply studying what people do and how they eat, and seeing if that will go over. So, watch for that! What kind of things would you look for from someone who has 20+ years of experience teaching fitness, eating right, and is just an all around great guy? ;-)

Any and all input is appreciated!!