Progress when there's time off the day job!

With Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday off the day job, I got some good work done on the niche content. Then total wipe out on Wednesday between the day job and family errands.

The content writing is going, though. Also as I get more and more expert in the niche, things fall into place better.

Now how to get more time off the day job...

Niche Content Creation

Holidays are gone and done, and I'm only slowly getting at my content creation. There's been a serious case at work almost every day. I come home and after chores and making dinner hit the computer.

It's going, but I think I'm going to take a day off the day job and make a shopping comparison day -- photos, videos, come home and put it on my external hard drive and make it fun.

Content Creation for Niche Marketing

That's where I am, but, ahem, have to do a lot of holiday preparation at home and had the day job eating up the rest of my time lately. So early next week I'll be organizing full steam on all my content for the site launch.

EFQM - The Europoean Foundation for Quality Management -- defining excellence?

Had to attend a lecture on the EFQM process that is being undertaken at my day job employer, and was piqued by the mission they have.

In the late 1980's Europe found itself being outdone in the business sector by Japan and the U.S. They decided to win back market share by promoting excellence in business.

What I liked about the EFQM model is that is based on facts and measurements (as Jeremy says, "If you measure it, it will improve"), and process is a large part of the level of excellence as well as results.

So the lecture I attended adapted the EFQM concepts to a medical environment. Hmm... so really we could adapt this concept of "defining excellence" (or measuring excellence and the processes necessary to achieve it) to running a website. :).

Here's a PDF of the 2010 EFQM model . I think that this would be a great way to measure excellence in a content website. If it can be adapted to medical care, it can be adapted to niche marketing!

Granular tasks for Site Launch

I've had affiliate accounts for over 10 years, though I closed my LinkShare account in about 2005. For the Partner Project I need a new Google Account so I can share this with Jeremy's team for analytics, Adwords, etc.

For some reason, I was having trouble getting the new Gmail address. Not sure why, and after two tries, Google informed me that my cell phone number (they wanted to send a verification SMS) had opened the max number of Google accounts allowed. Grr. So then I tried at the day job, since I could at least send and SMS to a friend's phone. Low and behold the verification was sent to my Yahoo email address that I put in as my contact. Okay.

Then after adding my billing information to AdWords, I remember that you can invite others to your AdWords account. That makes a lot more sense to me than giving a team of people my Google account password which would access all things Google in that account. I sent off an email to Jeremy inquiring about this option.

After signing up at Commission Junction, I recalled that there also is the option of adding users with their own access to the same account. Again, much more sense than giving a team my log in information, it would seem to me.

Then on to ShareaSale to open an account. Late at night, after my full day of work at the day job. Okay, at the end they want to send a verification to an email address at the domain itself. Fine, I had set up one POP box on top of the default. Just to be sure, I put in the default address.

No email from SAS. Okay, dufus, did you test your email? No. So I send from my new Gmail account to the default email address. Bounce. Oooof. I had not been able to set up my Windows Live Mail with the information on the site, but I figured it was just some glitch... now I realize that there's a serious problem with my email on the hosting account. I send an email to the host with the error message generated in the bounce, and get a copy of the inquiry from an email associated with Jeremy! The email says, "Your inquiry was sent to the server administrator because no contact information was configured on the server. Attached is a copy of your inquiry for your reference:". Oh, man, I don't have access to the domain registration, that's Jeremy's part of the partnership.

Maybe this is a problem with cPanel? I try setting up a forwarding and still get a bounce. I can log in by webmail to both email addresses, but nothing has arrived.

By this time I realized it was time to get some sleep and see what the next day will bring. At this point I do have the new Google account and Commission Junction set up, and most of the tasks for the WordPress install accomplished. I want to double check my categories before checking it off of the task list, though really they can be changed later also.

And here we are in the middle of March. I think we are going to need to extend the Partnership to three years. ;)

Starting the Site!

Woohoo! Access to my cPanel (oh, good, it's improved a lot since the last time I had to deal with a cPanel host. I generally host at FutureQuest.net, who has their own proprietary control panel), domain name set up, email address set up (no autosetup for Windows 7 yet, and I'm not getting it set up right, will just probably forward to a gmail address), first draft of site design approved.

Another good discussion with Jeremy about the importance of excellent content (check out this article on fast food content) and going over the website design. Cleared using a Squidoo page as a temporary landing page for some ezine articles, later to use the Squidoo page primarily as a funnel to our partner website.

I also have not yet opened separate advertising accounts and affiliate accounts yet for the partnership, so I need to start doing that. Now that I have a web address to call home, it's time to start getting to that, too.

In the mean time, I had a cold last week and didn't get much but basic slogging through the day job and trying to get well again. Still coughing a bit, so hopefully I'll be totally better soon and have more energy. Thinking about how best to start getting some time to go and do some video and photo shoots for our website, too. To fully research this niche hands on, I need to get out of my little town and into a big city. Good excuse for an excursion!

Excellent vs. Good Content

A bit of an eye opener webinar last night. Admittedly I have been a "back burner" affiliate for over 3 1/2 years now since going back to a day job full time. In that time it has become nearly impossible to make money with what Google considers to be "thin" affiliate sites, and even "good" affiliate content has a lot of competition.

Jeremy emphasized the need for excellent content rather than just good content. It's a lot of work. On the other hand, it's doable. Unlike having to learn a new programming language every few years or the newest internet traffic trick, you can learn to produce excellent content once and continue to do so for the long run. Sure, you may have to learn a few new skills as time goes by (video was NOT a viable media for common use 10 years ago due to bandwidth and storage limits, for example), but the general skills learned are constant.

I actually realized how much more I could build up the content on my remaining affiliate sites. The original content is there on many of them, not all, but mostly it's good content, not excellent content. And one site that has some excellent video content really needs more excellent written content to support it.

But right now my main focus is the partnership site. With a full time job and a commitment to 10-12 hours a week for the 2010 Partnership, I don't have a lot of time to fiddle with my remaining affiliate sites right now. That's okay. It's never too late, and I've only kept the ones that I felt I could eventually commit to developing in terms of content.

Excellence is a far more demanding goal, but in many ways, it's a far more worthwhile goal.