Launched tips.bizzArtic.com

Like I promised Tips-for-Tips has been entirely transfered to tips.bizzArtic.com. I have done that for many reasons, which I will explaint a few lines later. New website design has been insoired by my previous tips page on my blog and some other websites:

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/ (sidebar widgets)

http://www.37signals.com/ (Simplicity)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ (Icons, hr images)

Original image by: p_c_w

Now let my briefly present what has been changed in relation to previous Tips page.

• I have added customized footer of web page to explain more about services I offer.
• Added some appealing facts from recent social study  2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study.
• Gave 10% OFF for first 5 customers that sign on
• Explained more about WordPress I use in sidebar widget
• Striped pages from all unnecessary links, content, images
• Changed AdWords advertising to new targeted location

Reasons for change

• My previous site that is currently still active http://bizzartic.com/tips-for-tips/ was build inside my blog that doesn’t necessarily talk just about my freelance projects from Tips section. Thus customers might get confused and get impression they encountered some cheap service.
• Next reason is that I want to have custom wordpress accounts built just for customers, so that data doesn’t get erased while I update my blog (that is quite often).
• I am also preparing affiliate programme for users to recommend my services and get paid for it. I have a plan in my head but it is still quite buggy as I also need to go throug some various scenarios (e.g. how to pay users, how they track their earnings etc.). I am willing to pay 10% of the final price that customer pays to me so if you have a customer for me already, we might strike a deal even before affiliate programme launches. Just contact me on my webmail.
• SEO also improves as the site is dedicated to specific terms of use, so my  meta tags will be much more compliant with conent. In other words, search engines will target my tips site as a website dedicated to web development services with no blog posts to distort its spceific terms of use.

What’s next

More development on Affiliate programme, Customer accounts, Advertising, Pricing and Payment methods.

Visit to see changes in action: http://tips.bizzartic.com/

How to Define Success?

If you don’t know what you want to achieve or don’t know where you are heading, you’ll never know when you’ve reached it. Your idea of success may also be quite different from that of another business owner’s. So how to set up goals that would mach your personality and your own professional preferences?

Original image by: csitscenter

But if you do define your goals, what to do when’ve gotten it? It sounds like a never ending circle thus let me give you some possible goals you might pursue and reach with no trouble at all:

Money as Value

Most of people define their/others success by the amount of money they have. Well if you are doing business only for the mere bucks you’ll fail 99%. You could set a goal how much money you want to earn to feel great about but you’ll soon find out that you want more and more and more…(I won’t write more word further on as you’ve got the point now:). I won’t say that setting amount of money earned as goal is always going to be a failure but problem starts when you reach that goal. How will you motivate yourself to keep going? I gues you see my point.

Beeing your own boss

I am really amazed how much money people would give away only to be on their own and have their own business. Have to say I am bit like them but still take decisions on my common sense. I have a friend (won’t say the names as you probably don’t care anyway) that mutually agreed with his boss to take over a business  to become a director. It sounds great but now he pays himself the amount of money he thinks is the best for the company. That amount is much lower and he has to worry about tons of things he never imagined would be his responisbilities. I asked him why he’s done that and he said it is only temporarily and that he knows what he’s doing,…eventhough I’ve piscked from his words that he is much happier now than ever before.

Work first family next?

A married small business owner with a family may have the intention to make a substantial living, but his or her personal definition of success may revolve around the family. Finding a happy balance between all aspects of life is often found as the driving force.

Personal vs. Professional goals

Before you outline what would make your business a success, take a moment to think about your own definition of success – both personal and professional. Remember, you are on a journey. Your success may be found in that journey. Success is not simply an end point; once you reach one goal or benchmark, there will be others to pursue.

Lessons learned:

• Do what you like and leave if you’re not happy – now!
• Empower your employees but not yourself!
• Familiy, friends first, business next!
• Combine your personal goals with professional ones, if that is not possible than chose your personal ones!
• And do business for money, favours for others will hit you back like a rock (I meant that in business practice, so no hard feelings)!

If your definition of success is owning your own business and working from home, read article 10 Steps to Running a Successful Home-Based Business for tips on how to get your dream off the ground.

Making Money Without Lying?

Sometimes I think how is it possible to make money and not lying about it. For instance, I am really trying to put all my efforts to show you how I make business, but on the other hand  I already had two customers but didn’t write about. Well I didn’t lie about it I just didn’t tell and also this blog is ’bout a week old so it doesn’t matter really.

There are often heard words from people that are accusing marketers of lying – of selling ‘get rich quick’ products, taking advantage of hopes and dreams of the average perspective bizzmen just to take their money and then move on to the next sucker without really caring about the success of their customer. Thus let me put some lines on my commitment to fair and square bizz I stand behind.

Original image by: zen

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So how will I do business and not lie about it?

• Gaining Trust

Writting and informing my customers and readers about all the bizz steps I take is probably most notable effort I am doing to make them/you feel more comfortable to do business with me. My posts don’t include any financial information about individual projects but in future when I start a commercial project, I’ll include reports with all the info you want (in other words that means I’ll probably give you overall information about my monthly revenue from all projects – see, I am not lying:)

• Being Honest

I will sell my customers the best services and products in the whole wide world. They will get everything cheaper than they would with the comeptition and eventhough all the products will be just the best.

Now how many times you’ve heard those words? People often tell lies and throw lots of nonsense to make you feel better. I’ll put it this way: I will sell you a product/service on a fair price that is probably bit higher than you expected and you’ll probably have no idea what on earth costs that much. But on the other hand you’ll get the best expirience I can give and you’ll go away happy – see, I am not lying:)

• Being Myself

What I found out while reading blogs and articles over the web is that people often don’t like to expose themselves. Even if a blogger is the only one behind a website, he/she starts a lot of sentances with WE, OUR,…US…but why? Are they affraid to take responsibility for their actions (posts), are they just fencing themselves from possible failures or just want you to know that they are worth more than one individual?

I am the only induvidual behind this blog, and with only one I mean there’s just me and nobody else (except possible experts I’ll have to outsource if demand rises)  – see, I am not lying:)

• Privacy Concerns

Privacy is an increasing concern and a big issue for all business in the marketplace. Although enterprises promise sound privacy practices to their customers, there is no technical mechanism to enforce them internally. Access decisions are extended with obligations, which list a set of activities that must be executed together with the access request. Grantors allow to define a separation of duty between the security officer and the privacy officer…(Text used from Computer Security Foundations Workshop).

Now let’s talk for real. I managed to put my privacy policy and terms of conditions together but who really reads it? So I am lying that I care about your privacy or am I putting it all together just to prove my merit in a ‘secure’ online environment? Yes, you guest it, I would care if I had enough money to do that, but now I used Digg’s stuff to make all legal and to satisfy the minors – see, I am not lying:)

• Final Advice if You’re a Bizzmen

Take a bit of time to craft the words together whell selling stuff, believe in what you write and focus on products you know that will provide value to your customers. Be honest, and don’t lie, in long term you’ll have your dignity if everything else fails!

Business Registration

I promised to keep you posted on my career and bizzArtic development as a business…I made a new step today, because I formaly registered my business practice with Slovenian Authorities. It wasn’t hard as it took me a couple of hours and a fletingly visit to a pleasant assistant.

Original image by: richardscalza

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So What’s Next:

1. Development of http://tips.bizzArtic.com instead of http://bizzartic.com/tips-for-tips/
2. Getting first customers
3. Starting a commercial project online
4. Paying out first 20% of revenue share

A Print

Google Project 10^100 (10 to 100)

Today, Google announced Project 10^100 on their official blog.  The company is gathering ideas for projects that have the potential to change the world and help as many people as possible, thus they named it project 10^100 (pronounced “ten to the hundredth” or “10 to 100″). Google is set to select the 100 best ideas submitted to the project and then ask users to vote on which ones to fund. These votes will determine the 20 finalists and a group of judges will then choose the five best ideas from this pool. Google has committed $10 million to fund these ideas.

Text used from: ReadWriteWeb

Google announcement: link

Project 10^100: link

Google idea examples: Hippo Water Roller and First Mile Solutions

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BizzArtic will Participate

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Idea name: DREAMS NETWORK

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6 small boxes, 1 great idea…

1. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

Establishment of social network where people with same dreams would help each other reach them

2. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)

Everyone would post 10 childhood dreams or personal goals in their lives. People with same interest would participate and help each other reach it. Everyone would post twitter-like post about their progress with each dream.

3. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)

People have dreams but don’t know how to reach them.

4. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)

Simple, young or middle-aged people with little money to play with

5. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)

Establishment of facebook-like (but much simpler) social network that is all about dreams.

6. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)

People would reach their goals in life and make friends doing it

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Submission for Project 10^100 are due by October 20.

Logo Development

I personally think my logo is now looking quite nice, but in order for you to get full point of view (it also rhymes:) what work was behind it, I’ll paste a few snapshots from my hand-drawn ideas and design drafts.

After that I’ll also paste some comparative images to show how my bizzArtic logo got darker after finding just the right color to match my eyes…

Original image by: ijustine

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First Drafts

Second Draft

Logo Getting Darker…

Hunting Projects with AdWords [update 1]

A day has pased since the start of my AdWods campaign to promote my tips & services. Have to say that I expected much more from it so I have taken time to go over the whole concept.

Here are some conclusions:

A Bid of 0.05€ is Too Low

Thus I increased it three times to get more effect, now it is 0,15€.

Change Daily Budget

Still quite low but good enough for my pocket.

Improve Quality Score

Optimization is the best way to increase my keyword’s performance without raising costs.

I’ll keep you posted how my AdWords adventure goes…

Hunting Projects with AdWords

Today I decided it is time to target some customers for my Tips-for-Tips programme. My first aim is to spend about 25$ to see how people will respond to my simple but yet intuitive website for customers. Don’t know if its smart to do so beause I still need to transfer Tips site to tips.bizzArtic.com so I can manage my customers within their online accounts and give them a place specially accommodated for them. Now it might get confusing because there are links that point to my blog and everything I do with it – but on the other hand trends show that web designer firms tend to put their own blogs just next to their service offers, to name a few: http://www.viget.com/, http://www.moxiedesignstudios.com/, http://theblogstudio.com/ etc.

To go back to AdWords,…because its my first advertising campaign I decided to play safe and just tap the market with mere 25 bucks. Its almost nothing but if it gives me one customer it would be a huge success. I don’t expect that, because my main aim is to get some feedback from them and make same improvements from it. I also want to learn how AdWords works and what is average ROI on short term.

My Text Ad

Looks

Keywords

Regions

I decided to pick only regions that will probably get me most customers. I did not do any kind of analysis, my perception was my only guide.

Activation

On this final step I must ask you not to click my ads as by reading this article I probably made my point to you;) TNX

Follow My Career

As you probably gathered from the words I spoke in about section and this post, my/yours blog/website will talk about my career in business informatics.  This is the field I am specialised in and got a degree just last week on September 11th. I know, it’s a sad day for many people but sure cheered me up when I stepped in a new era of my life. Though my college days are not ower as I have signed in for another two years of tough work.

Original image by: mainmanwalkin

To go back to business,…you’ll go through all the steps I’ll take and hopefully learn from my mistakes instead of yours….

All the way up I will need your help on varius topics. I would appreciate any of  your business advice and help you can provide. You can do so with submitting comments on published posts and contributing some ideas and proposals in board section of this website. If you have some business you want to discuss privately with me, drop me some lines here or write me an email to admin@bizzartic.com.

But please note that in no case I will take your money as donation or anything related. I am not running for president and don’t like that kindda bizz. My way of doing it is openly, clean and rewarding. Still on the other hand don’t think I am starting as a millionaire as I have maybe just 1000$ to play with. Let’s se what might we make of it….so my career begins now – and for the archive, today is September 17th, 2008.

Here are two photos from my graduation day:

Advertising with AdSense

Today I just updated my advertising space with Adsense. If some of you are interested, it took me just one day to get approval from Google, otherwise everything took me about 5minutes or even less.

As I am new to this, I did not know where to place my ads to get the best effect so I did the following:

• Placed two units in the sidebar section, one 120×600 and other 160×600 side by side; both of units are simple image banners as I think, they’ll get the most effect.
• Placed on 468×60 unit on top of comments section; this is text and image ad.
• Signed up for Google custom search engine and applied for AdSense for Search, try the search engine, you’ll see more if you’re interested.

I would love to hear from you what methods of advertising to use, where to place ads, which ads (text, image) etc.