Seven Years Later

Time moves too quickly as you age.  It accelerates with each passing year until years seem to pass as quickly as month did when you were a child.

A lot has changed.

I have a tiny but valuable real estate portfolio.  I have stepped away from product creation and affiliate marketing in favor of web development and video production for other businesses.  That decision has been good so far.

Oh!  And I no longer work as an employee for someone else.  I left my job just before the "retirement" date that I had set as a goal in my teens and 20s.

Life definitely did not go down the path that I expected, but it has been a good one.

One Year Later

It has been a year since the last post.  A ton has happened, of course.

Had a baby.  Bought a new house. Etc. Etc.

The fat loss site has been up for awhile but monetization has been slow and it has been completely my fault.  I think that part of it is that I have had so many things fall apart that I have developed a fear of failure that is holding me back.  I am pushing past it, though.  I have a great site and the fat loss program I developed is very promising.

I have spent the past few weeks doing things that I should have been doing long ago - essentially foundation building.  Things like shifting to a responsive theme, creating better social media profiles, and incorporating plugins to make content promotion more solid.  Content promotion is going to be my primary focus so that the traffic can start flowing.  The site has not had consistent traffic growth but that is going to change.  What you focus on and measure will improve, right?=)

Content Week Update

This is content week for the membership site.  There are three main sections to the site that need to be populated.  So far, I have one that is mostly ready.  I just need to add a video describing why they are using this particular technique and add some cosmetic touches to flesh out the section.

Unfortunately, it does not look like I will make this week's deadline.  It may seem early to say so but we will be out of town this weekend so that knocks a few days out of being able to make content.  I will be able to write on the road and do research but I may not be able to add the content to the site.  I definitely will not be making any videos.  We will see.  Maybe I will be able to find some time and a laptop (mine bit the dust a long time ago) to be able to keep working.

I will say that I like how the site is coming.  I think it looks great and everything seems to be coming together nicely.

The Deadlines

I just had the weekly call with Roger and I established a set of deadlines for the weight loss site.

Sunday, March 1 - Complete Final Design and Structure
Sunday, March 7 - Finish Initial Content
Sunday, March 14 - Finish Marketing Materials
Week of March 21 - LAUNCH!

This is not overly aggressive but I do think that splitting the milestones in this way will help a lot.  In the past, I have found myself worrying about varying aspects of a project so much that I would lose focus on the tasks I was actually working on.  This way, I know that I do not even have to think about making a marketing email until after March 7th. 

That will relieve a little bit of stress at least.

10 Years

Yes, it has been ten years since I started this game...

And I'm actually more hopeful than I have been in a long time.  The membership site is coming along.  It's going a bit slowly but it is coming along.  I was hoping to have it ready by the end of the month but that seems like a pipe dream at the moment.  Between work, trying to close on a house, and other things, I have not been able to get nearly as much done as I had hoped this week.

The good news is that I have tamed the Optimizepress beast and may have Digital Access Pass (DAP) ready to submit.  The structure of the site is set.  I just need to apply that design to all of the pages and figure out what I want on the home page.  I may just use a really big image on the home page like a lot of modern sites do.

I have some of the content ready to be fleshed out but there is still a ton that needs to be made and posted.  There are also videos I need to make and a full salesletter video to do as well.

The plan is to start the program off at $9/month in order to test the system, gather feedback from users, and get testimonials.  I know this program can get results so once the testimonials are in and I am ready to go to a full launch, I'll raise the price to $25-35/month.  Making the shift to membership sites is going to make things so much easier.  Gone will be the days of feeling like I was starting from scratch at the beginning of each month.  I will actually be able to build on the success of the previous month and that is something to be excited about.

My buddy, Roger, and I have decided to do a weekly call to discuss our businesses and keep each other accountable.  I foresee that I may be up late tonight in order to have progress to report.  That's a very good thing.

Preparing for the New Year

2015 is coming... already.

For SLD, conversions are still a problem.  I have actually paused the PPC campaign while I address the issue.  The funnel leaks, in part, because I'm not hitting the right message for the market.  I need to get more accurate data on what they want so that I can tailor both the product and the funnel to those needs.  I picked up Survey Funnel Formula about two weeks ago to help.  As the name suggests, you use surveys to build your funnel. 

The new funnel with surveys that I want to impliment will need to incorporate Prosper202 tracking so I cannot simply use the tools that are available now.  I spent the last two weeks figuring out what it would look like on the front end.  Flowcharts are extremely helpful with this process.  I know exactly what I want it to do, I just need to have someone with MySQL experience build it for me.  The biggest thing that it must do, besides incorporating Prosper202, is it has to add survey data both to my own database and also Aweber so that I can segment my list for specific promotions. 

Conversion Funnel Leaks

Last time, I mentioned that the sales funnel for SLD was leaky.  Nearly every step in the process is underperforming - from the squeeze page to the actual emails.  I went back yesterday and took a look at some of the emails and realized that they really didn't "sell" the click.  It was mentioned but I really didn't do a good job of convincing the reader that they needed to click the link.  I took three of the emails and retooled them.  We will see how it goes.

With the funnel being leaky, I am hesitant to throw more traffic at the system.  I'm not sure if it would help by providing more info more quickly or if it would hurt by burning my available budget.

SMF is suffering from something similar.  The squeeze page is only converting at ~7%, compared to the 15-20% it used to get years ago.  I need to rethink how to change it for better results.

That's all for now.