Category — #01 Business a Week Project

Thank you for stopping by! As you can see, this is an exciting page. My goal is to start 52 businesses in the next year! Yes, these will be generally simplistic self-maintaining and hopefully self-evolving websites; but that's just the point! As with most businesses, some will "fail" and most will only make a bit, but some will hit; and that gamble is what wakes some of us up in the morning.

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I’m still out there, and as I get more money and time I’ll launch any of the ideas I’ve been building.  One I just have to post about, because it frustrates me to no end.

Maybe I’m just a Latinist, but I love watching how products are named.  Nothing conveys a group of buzzwords better than to translate one or more tangentially related concepts into Latin.  Come out with a car that accelerates quickly, and guaranteed it will be named the Celera.  A pill that purports to help heart disease will be named CorSana.  These are examples of “dog latin”, which you’re all familiar with in the form of Harry Potter spells.  Basically JK Rowling takes “hey, rock, fly against that wall!”, translates the phrase into Latin, and then Seussifies the resulting phrase to make it sound romantic and mystical.

I have, however, been horrified lately at the suicidal naming conventions of the pharmaceutical industry lately.  Yesterday I went to the pharmacy to pick up some Zofran for my wife.  The pharmacist told me there was a generic, and when I asked its name, she started giggling and, after a moment, said “ondansetron.”  After spending a billion dollars to bring a product to market, the pharmaceutical companies have no better sense than to name their pills “ondansetron?”  That sounds like a generic Dance Dance Revolution rip-off, not a $25/pill anti-nausea medicine.

Anyway, so company #16 or 17 or whatever will be to name companies, products, etc.  I’ll post more stupid pill names as I see them–and I’m sure 15 minutes of any news channel will show me at least 3.  In the meantime Bethany’s pregnant (hence her desire to get on dance uh tron), and I took a new job and am moving to San Francisco in two days.

It’s been hard to keep it up lately.  I’m working on a few things, but none of them are launchable, and missing my deadlines is not appropriate.  I’ve just been so overwhelmed by trying to live off a teacher’s salary this year, and more than that, being in an apartment (while I own a gorgeous house).  I’m the type of guy that really would have thrived as a classical “client.”  The patron-client relationship was the medieval and renaissance lord-artist relationship you picture from the movies.  A rich “patron” (yes, same word as “padre,” but with the -on attached to mean “super-father”) would hire a “client”–basically an artist-in-residence–who would just be a sugar daddied artist.  That’s where we get a lot of great art.  And that’s what I need, because I’ve done a lot of amazing things for a lot of people, but really can’t thrive until I have some security.  So I’ve gotta’ really build an empire of bread-and-butter so I can start using my real gifts.  Maybe it’s just the beginning of mid-life-crisis #2 (or 3, depending on how you count it–but the one you get when you’re 35).  In any case, I promise to have some businesses up soon and to upgrade some of my earlier ones.  There’s demand, and I’m just not filling it, and that’s not right.  ScriptureForum.Net is on track to get 1200 uniques this month (in it’s 3rd month!), and it only has half its chapters live.

So I again need partners, investors, patrons, and an energy drink.  And I need to get to work–no, literally, it’s 7:57.

Okay, I just posted business #12, and it dawned on me that I am therefore 23% of the way through my Business A Week year!  Yes, I may do it more than 52 weeks, but don’t tell my wife that.  In the meantime, let me update you on where each business is at…

1. Business a Week - 304 visitors making 841 visits, roughly 100% growth this month, 16 site pages on google, 99 total mentions on google, top keyword: enfp.  It’s been a blast, and there are sufficient ads along the side to monetize on its own.
2. RAMPrint.com - I don’t have access to these stats, but I know we have 59 site pages on google, 159 total mentions on google.  People mention it.
3. OfficeSpares - 38 visitors making 39 visits, roughly 100% growth this month, 2 site pages on google, 337 total mentions on google, top keyword: spares.  No mention from anyone, we’ll see how this goes.  I got one email of someone suggesting a place that might have a spare phone system, but they didn’t. 
4. F00Music.com - 113 visitors making 460 visits, roughly 200% growth this month, 4 site pages on google, 28 total mentions on google, top keyword: foomusic.  Starting to get traffic, need to organize the monetization.
5. ENFP Consulting - 39 visitors making 40 visits, roughly 500% growth this month, 1 site pages on google, 7 total mentions on google, top keyword: enfp.  Most of the hits are from mid-life crisis ENFPs, but I have billed about $1000 via ENFP Consulting.
6. The Invitations Expert - 196 visitors making 447 visits, roughly 350% growth this month, 14 site pages on google, 42 total mentions on google, top keyword: wedding.  One of my favorites, and so little traffic relative to its potential.  I guess I need to make the salespitch a bit more overt, and I need to post more.  It is amazing that the highest traffic demographics come from LDS people…
7. ScriptureForum.net - 259 visitors making 372 visits, roughly 150% growth this month, 141 site pages on google, 136 total mentions on google, top keyword: site.  This will take off as soon as I get a few people.  Just a few to volunteer some labor building out the scripture sections, then it’ll go crazy.   It’s too obvious not to.  Anyone, of any religion, looking for a church oriented way to volunteer and build the kingdom from your living room?
8. QD Web Design - 17 visitors making 20 visits, roughly 100% growth per month, 4 site pages on google, 3 total mentions on google.  I’m not sure which of my requests have directly come from this site–probably none, but we’ll see.
9. FilmClean - 41 visitors making 45 visits, roughly 300% growth per month, 2 site pages on google, 4 total mentions on google.  Easy, duplicable, we’ll see.
10. Karate Consulting - 20 visitors making 32 visits, 1 site pages on google, 2 total mentions on google, top keyword: karate.  Again, good energy but too new.
11. Fortibus Es - 44 visitors making 87 visits, 10 site pages on google, 14 total mentions on google, top keyword: es.  One IM, we’ll see if it goes through.
12. The Union Statesman - new as of today! 

I still need to

• create a skeleton… this is all too much based on my ideas, and not a duplicable and perhaps eventually automatable formula
• create forms for said skeleton
• create channels in google adsense
• fill out some of these sites–scriptureforum needs a lot before it’s truly professional
• just put more time into them.  These have been wonderfully successful for having not spent more than 6 hours on any of these businesses, but I’d really like to expedite the enlargement of my efforts…
• find partners
• find volunteers
• find sponsors / donors / investors

Ideas anyone?