Category — #06 The Invitations Expert

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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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?

A niche core competency of mine, a specialization that creates perceived value, is having made wedding invitations for the past decade.  In 1997 I started Middle Man’ing wedding invitations out of my college apartment; soon that evolved into my going to all the bridal fairs; then to working at the bridal fairs, working at a bridal magazine after college, etc…  I should rather start with having parents in printing, so growing up we had exactly this kind of stuff for chores.  And of course my description would be incomplete without mentioning my two degrees in hardcore grammar–that is to say, Latin Teaching and Spanish Teaching.  So I decided I would have an ad-directed business in the form of TheInvitationsExpert.com.  There I will dispense expert advice, adding value to the world, and wait for ad revenue.  There really aren’t too many sites like this, and I don’t believe any with my qualifications.  So check it out and see what happens…