So a lack of recent updates here is either indicative of me being massively busy or lazy; fortunately in this case it’s the former! I’m currently working hard on one project in particular which is doing a fantastic job of taking up all of my spare time, it’s amazing how focussed on something you can become when you’re excited about it. Seen as this site is meant to catalogue how I try and make money on the internet I figured it’s about time I get around to telling you what I’m up to (warning: silly project code names may follow!).
Project Penguin
I’ve codenamed my main focus at the moment project penguin (how James Bond…), a website I’m planning to launch in the near future with a friend of mine. We’re planning to go the whole hog with this site, I’m talking about a proper business, bank funding, advertising… the whole shebang.
We’re currently in the process of polishing off the business plan and doing feasibility studies. I’m truly excited about its prospects and it’s going to involve a steep learning curve, so I intend to post frequent progress updates once we get further down the line, watch this space.
Operation Tangerine
Operation Tangerine is another site I have in the works which has taken a back seat whilst I get project penguin (I’m regretting these daft names already) up and running. I’m developing this site with another friend, however, although I’m certain I can make it into a profitable website, I don’t believe it has quite the same potential as project penguin so it’s been relegated to second place in my priorities list. Once the first site is up and running I’ll look into getting this one going and it will hopefully be a nice little earner.
This Blog
Although I’m mainly using this blog to track my own progress I do want to try and build up the readership so people can benefit from my observations. So far I’ve been reasonably successful for such a young blog, receiving a large amount of traffic from a website called Stumbleupon (do check it out, I plan on doing a proper post about it in the future). I’ve also gained a few followers (which in my view are more important) so things appear to be going in the right direction.
Gizunk
Gizunk is the first blog I ever set up; based on technology it’s gone through a number of modifications and focus changes over the years but has been largely neglected by myself for the last twelve months. However, due mainly to the large number of posts it has it is still receiving a fair amount of traffic so I’m hoping to revive it in the coming months. The reason I haven’t been active on the site for a while stems from the niche it was focussed on. As I’ve never been in the situation where I can work on a site like that full time it’s next to impossible to compete with other sites unless your focus is pretty small. This lead to me becoming pretty disheartened when things weren’t going as well as I initially hoped. In hindsight, trying to be all encompassing was an error, I have a number of ideas for what I can with it in the future but it is fairly low on my to-do list.
The take home message
Informing you of the silly code names I have for my projects isn’t particularly useful to you, whether you find it interesting or not. One thing you should take notice of however is that I’m spreading my efforts over a wide variety of projects, aka the many eggs and many baskets approach. It’s impossible to guarantee that your current focus will be a success, or will continue to be successful, no matter how good an idea it may seem.
Talk to or read about nearly all successful businessmen and you’ll discover that they’re all well acquainted with failure as well as success, it’s par for the course. The trick is to keep experimenting until you find that thing that works (and to make sure that you never give up too early, some things just take time). My hope is that out of everything that I’ve outlined something will really take off and if not… well I have other things in the back of my mind I want to experiment with as well!
P.S For the uninitiated OMTI stands for Operation Milk the Internet… yes I agree, I need to get out more.
