Wednesday, May 31, 2006
ABC of SEO
Ok, so the only way I am going to make any money selling personalized children's books on the web is to get the big search engines to realize that my website exists. And the more I mess around on forums for webmasters, the more I began to get a feel for this thing call Search Engine Optimization or SEO. So I stumbled on this book The ABC of SEO quite by accident. I clicked on an advertisement on another Blog (not sure which one now, but it does go to show that some ads do get clicked on), which took me to a page by some guy who wrote a book about how humans are consious robots controlled by our genes. I didn't buy his book (so maybe advertising doesn't pay after all), but his website did take me to Lulu, the website where David George published his book the ABC of SEO. Anyway, long story short, I purchased the book (admittedly as much to check out the quality of lulu.com publishing as to get help understanding SEO.) But it's a good read- I was able to read it in bed for an hour last night without falling asleep, which is saying a lot. And I was pleased with the publication quality from Lulu...
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Home Business Blogs
So I have been browsing blogs to see if any offer some good information for us newbie home businesspreneurs. There seem to be a lot that are gateways to every internet home business scam out there. But I did find a few that I want to keep an eye on.
Work From Home Mamma has some good advise that I could relate to even though I am a WorkFromHomePapa.
Chuck Huckaby from Work At Home Business Oportunities seems to spend his days surfing the web looking for what else - Work At Home Business Oppurtunities. Most of what he finds appears more or less legit - I don't think he makes any promises.
And finally, Des Walsh's Thinking Home Business is at least a very well organized site with an index and keyworded posts. I probably need to spend more time there to figure out all that it has to offer. Maybe it was that "Thinking" part I didn't like.
Of course no one had anything to say about the wonderful world of personalized story books.
Work From Home Mamma has some good advise that I could relate to even though I am a WorkFromHomePapa.
Chuck Huckaby from Work At Home Business Oportunities seems to spend his days surfing the web looking for what else - Work At Home Business Oppurtunities. Most of what he finds appears more or less legit - I don't think he makes any promises.
And finally, Des Walsh's Thinking Home Business is at least a very well organized site with an index and keyworded posts. I probably need to spend more time there to figure out all that it has to offer. Maybe it was that "Thinking" part I didn't like.
Of course no one had anything to say about the wonderful world of personalized story books.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Timeline Part 1 - Before The Beginning
I want this blog to be a journal of my complete journey in setting up my home business , but since I started MadLuck Books Personalized Books back in September of 2005, this post will be a timeline of everything I've done up to June 2005. Well probably not everything. (I know I got link happy back there but I just discovered the little link button on the toolbar - so much easier than going in and editing the HTML.) Next Post will be the timeline from June 2005 to the present.
Summer 1996 - I quit my job to stay home with my first born child, Maddie, while my wife goes back to work as a teacher. I am supposed to be finishing my Master's Degree in Environmental Science and Engineering (I had completed the course work and "just" needed to finish up the Thesis.) Instead I spend most of my free time (you know, when I am not changing diaper, feeding, reading to, playing with the rug rat) doing one of two things - 1) Writing fiction and dreaming of publishing that bestseller novel. 2) Thinking about starting a home based business (hey, I liked this staying at home thing, what can I say.)
Spring 1998 - Second daughter, Lucia is born. I go back to work, my wife stays home with the kids. I get a job that pays me for 40 hours a week but only takes about 5 hours of my time. I just about finish the Thesis during the "free" time.
Fall 1999 - Real job as an Environmental Health Specialist, doing ambient air monitoring. Finish thesis and get M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech.
1999-2005 - Work, work, work; commute, commute, commute. The commute is only 25 miles one way, but with traffic, the drive can take up to an hour and a half. I begin working earlier and earlier - 8:00 start, 7:00 start, finally 6:00 am start. I get up at 4:00 in the morning to get to work by 6:00. At 5:00 am the traffic is often bumper to bumper. They keep building more houses and the commute gets worse and worse. The job's ok, as far as jobs go, fairly low stress, boring at times, for a while there I actually found time to write fiction on my lunch break (the novel, no best seller, unpublishable at least for the moment.) They cut our work force from three to two which cuts out the time for writing. Blah, blah, blah.
June 2005 - See The Beginning
Next Post - Countdown to Quiting the Day Job (Timeline Part 2)
Summer 1996 - I quit my job to stay home with my first born child, Maddie, while my wife goes back to work as a teacher. I am supposed to be finishing my Master's Degree in Environmental Science and Engineering (I had completed the course work and "just" needed to finish up the Thesis.) Instead I spend most of my free time (you know, when I am not changing diaper, feeding, reading to, playing with the rug rat) doing one of two things - 1) Writing fiction and dreaming of publishing that bestseller novel. 2) Thinking about starting a home based business (hey, I liked this staying at home thing, what can I say.)
Spring 1998 - Second daughter, Lucia is born. I go back to work, my wife stays home with the kids. I get a job that pays me for 40 hours a week but only takes about 5 hours of my time. I just about finish the Thesis during the "free" time.
Fall 1999 - Real job as an Environmental Health Specialist, doing ambient air monitoring. Finish thesis and get M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech.
1999-2005 - Work, work, work; commute, commute, commute. The commute is only 25 miles one way, but with traffic, the drive can take up to an hour and a half. I begin working earlier and earlier - 8:00 start, 7:00 start, finally 6:00 am start. I get up at 4:00 in the morning to get to work by 6:00. At 5:00 am the traffic is often bumper to bumper. They keep building more houses and the commute gets worse and worse. The job's ok, as far as jobs go, fairly low stress, boring at times, for a while there I actually found time to write fiction on my lunch break (the novel, no best seller, unpublishable at least for the moment.) They cut our work force from three to two which cuts out the time for writing. Blah, blah, blah.
June 2005 - See The Beginning
Next Post - Countdown to Quiting the Day Job (Timeline Part 2)
Monday, May 08, 2006
Families can be a pain in the ...
I had not planned on this being the next post on this blog. I expected to go into the promised timeline or maybe the expenses of setting up my business. But a single phone call can change everything...
If you haven't read The Beginning, or even if you have, you will not know that I started my business selling personalized books back in September of 2005. I finally quit my day job on April 25th. I sent an email out to my extended family (brother, two sisters, dad) this past Friday to tell them I had quit my job. My brother should have known - I told him six months ago that I planned to quit in April. My one sister knew it was coming soon, my other sister in Texas had no idea. My dad...Now that is the difficult one. I had not told my dad either that I was starting up this business or that I planned on quitting my job.
Why not? That is a tough question, and the answer has a lot to do with father/son relationships in general, and specifically the relationship between me and my father. First of all neither me, nor my father are particularly communicative. It was actually my wife who told my one sister about the business, not me. And after the phone call I spoke of above (which came from my brother, not Dad) I raged to my wife that if my father dared (he wouldn't) ask why I hadn't told him, that I would say, "If you had once asked how my job was going in the last three or four months I would have told you about the business. But you didn't so I figured you didn't give a damn." Something like that. But of course that is not all there is to it.
Some info on my father is needed here. Dad grew up a poor Wisconsin farm boy during the depression. He worked his way through college (probably the first in his family to go to college) earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. He spent time in the AirForce, met and married my mom, and ended up settling in Mom's hometown in Virginia. Worked fulltime, earned a Master's Degree in Engineering, helped raised four kids (all four of whom went to college, three of the four, including me, getting Master's degrees themselves.) (My mother was the typical Super Mom of her generation, by the way - worked full time plus single handedly handled every household chore and child rearing duty.) Then Dad decided to start his own business. And of course succeeded readily. Dad's owns a small engineering firm, with million dollar contracts, and twenty or thirty employees. A far cry, he must think, from my sad little personalized books business.
I am forty-one years old. I should not need the approval of my father anymore about the decisions I make in my life. But that, I believe gets back to the nature of father/son relationships. I didn't tell my father about starting the business because I did not think he would approve. Of course, I knew he would have to find out sooner or later. We live only thirty-five miles apart, we see each other regularly. He comes up for the kids (his grandchildren's) birthday parties where my wife's family (all whom of course have known for ages about my business) attend. So I sent the email Friday, before telling him became too awkward.
And than the phone call yesterday. The call came from my brother. My wife answered because I was out happily walking the dog. So I didn't get to/have to talk to him. So Dad had called Steve (my brother) and got him all worried about this horrible thing I was doing with my life. And Steve called me. What are they worried about? I take it they think I am going to drive my family into deep debt by trying this stupid business venture out. I must be wasting my time and money on a foolish internet scheme. I am obviously too stupid to realize what a silly thing I am doing.
I love my wife. She has supported me, if not 100%, than at least 99.99%, through this whole process. As she talked to my brother she got angry, and she let him know her feelings. Her view, and she is probably right, is that they, my brother and Dad, believe that there is something demeaning in selling personalized books. That it is somehow beneath me, or beneath someone in their family. "Whatever," to quote my ten year old daughter.
Dad I understand. He has always been a self-absorbed elitist. I love my dad dearly, but I also see and accept his flaws (as I hope he sees and accepts my many flaws.) My brother, I am more surprized and disapointed in. He is the one who has studied Buddhist Philosophy, who spent two years in the peace corps in Africa, who has traveled throughout Africa, Asia, etc. I thought he would have accepted and appreciated someone who decides to try something different with their life. Who doesn't want to follow the same path as everyone around them. I guess I was wrong (he said dripping with self-pity.)
So I spent the rest of the day yesterday angry, sad, struggling with oncoming depression. It didn't go away until I coached my eight year old daughter's soccer team to a 7 to 2 victory. I love my family.
If you haven't read The Beginning, or even if you have, you will not know that I started my business selling personalized books back in September of 2005. I finally quit my day job on April 25th. I sent an email out to my extended family (brother, two sisters, dad) this past Friday to tell them I had quit my job. My brother should have known - I told him six months ago that I planned to quit in April. My one sister knew it was coming soon, my other sister in Texas had no idea. My dad...Now that is the difficult one. I had not told my dad either that I was starting up this business or that I planned on quitting my job.
Why not? That is a tough question, and the answer has a lot to do with father/son relationships in general, and specifically the relationship between me and my father. First of all neither me, nor my father are particularly communicative. It was actually my wife who told my one sister about the business, not me. And after the phone call I spoke of above (which came from my brother, not Dad) I raged to my wife that if my father dared (he wouldn't) ask why I hadn't told him, that I would say, "If you had once asked how my job was going in the last three or four months I would have told you about the business. But you didn't so I figured you didn't give a damn." Something like that. But of course that is not all there is to it.
Some info on my father is needed here. Dad grew up a poor Wisconsin farm boy during the depression. He worked his way through college (probably the first in his family to go to college) earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. He spent time in the AirForce, met and married my mom, and ended up settling in Mom's hometown in Virginia. Worked fulltime, earned a Master's Degree in Engineering, helped raised four kids (all four of whom went to college, three of the four, including me, getting Master's degrees themselves.) (My mother was the typical Super Mom of her generation, by the way - worked full time plus single handedly handled every household chore and child rearing duty.) Then Dad decided to start his own business. And of course succeeded readily. Dad's owns a small engineering firm, with million dollar contracts, and twenty or thirty employees. A far cry, he must think, from my sad little personalized books business.
I am forty-one years old. I should not need the approval of my father anymore about the decisions I make in my life. But that, I believe gets back to the nature of father/son relationships. I didn't tell my father about starting the business because I did not think he would approve. Of course, I knew he would have to find out sooner or later. We live only thirty-five miles apart, we see each other regularly. He comes up for the kids (his grandchildren's) birthday parties where my wife's family (all whom of course have known for ages about my business) attend. So I sent the email Friday, before telling him became too awkward.
And than the phone call yesterday. The call came from my brother. My wife answered because I was out happily walking the dog. So I didn't get to/have to talk to him. So Dad had called Steve (my brother) and got him all worried about this horrible thing I was doing with my life. And Steve called me. What are they worried about? I take it they think I am going to drive my family into deep debt by trying this stupid business venture out. I must be wasting my time and money on a foolish internet scheme. I am obviously too stupid to realize what a silly thing I am doing.
I love my wife. She has supported me, if not 100%, than at least 99.99%, through this whole process. As she talked to my brother she got angry, and she let him know her feelings. Her view, and she is probably right, is that they, my brother and Dad, believe that there is something demeaning in selling personalized books. That it is somehow beneath me, or beneath someone in their family. "Whatever," to quote my ten year old daughter.
Dad I understand. He has always been a self-absorbed elitist. I love my dad dearly, but I also see and accept his flaws (as I hope he sees and accepts my many flaws.) My brother, I am more surprized and disapointed in. He is the one who has studied Buddhist Philosophy, who spent two years in the peace corps in Africa, who has traveled throughout Africa, Asia, etc. I thought he would have accepted and appreciated someone who decides to try something different with their life. Who doesn't want to follow the same path as everyone around them. I guess I was wrong (he said dripping with self-pity.)
So I spent the rest of the day yesterday angry, sad, struggling with oncoming depression. It didn't go away until I coached my eight year old daughter's soccer team to a 7 to 2 victory. I love my family.
The Beginning
When is the beginning? Was it back in June 2005 when I first told my wife that I wanted to quit my job and set up a home based internet business? Or was it back in 1996, when I stayed home with our first born child, supposedly to finish my Master's Degree, but instead wrote fiction like a madman hoping to publish something, anything, that would lead to more publishing, mayby a novel, whatever so I would not have to go back to work. I also messed around with a book indexing correspondence course back then, but was too bored to complete it. Or was it even further back in time...
Ok, I'll start with June 2005. That is when I told my wife that I wanted to start a business. I even had the business picked out. I would sell personalized books over the internet.
Why personalized books? Several reasons really. First, I had been perusing a book on the best home based businesses (don't ask me what it was call - I have regularly checked out one book or another on starting a home based business for the last 10 years or more), when I saw a listing under the publishing section for Hefty Publishing, Create-A-Book Personalized books. I was interested in something in publishing, probably because of my so far failed attempts to get my own fiction published. And even though selling personalized children's books is not really publishing (though my eight year old daughter, who wants to be a writer herself, expects me to publish her first novel, The Magic School), it is at least related to the publishing field. Secondly, the start up costs didn't seem too high (I'll get into expenses in a later post), I could always sink some money in and than get out without losing my shirt if things didn't turn out ok. Thirdly... I don't know, maybe there isn't really a thirdly, and maybe, probably, I didn't really think it through that well.
So then, I had a plan (or well an idea), I had a business that would be easy to get started. What more did I need? A name, of course. And the winner, after very little competition was MadLuck Books.
"Why 'MadLuck' Books?" you say. I can answer that one by quoting directly from the FAQ section of my website- "MadLuck is a play on the first three letters of our two daughters’ names: Maddie and Lucia. But it also refers to the crazy luck you have when you discover a magical world in a great book that you open up for the first time, and the crazy luck which has allowed us to be able to start this business." I know what you are thinking, "How corny can you get?"
The truth is, MadLuck, or MadLuc, or Mad Luck were the names I had given all my imaginary ventures - you know MadLuck Farms, MadLuc Enterprises, Mad Luck Publishing. So now we would have MadLuck Books. And for the internet madluckbooks.com.
So that is where we will end for today. Coming soon - Spending Money, and A Countdown to Quiting the Day Job.
Ok, I'll start with June 2005. That is when I told my wife that I wanted to start a business. I even had the business picked out. I would sell personalized books over the internet.
Why personalized books? Several reasons really. First, I had been perusing a book on the best home based businesses (don't ask me what it was call - I have regularly checked out one book or another on starting a home based business for the last 10 years or more), when I saw a listing under the publishing section for Hefty Publishing, Create-A-Book Personalized books. I was interested in something in publishing, probably because of my so far failed attempts to get my own fiction published. And even though selling personalized children's books is not really publishing (though my eight year old daughter, who wants to be a writer herself, expects me to publish her first novel, The Magic School), it is at least related to the publishing field. Secondly, the start up costs didn't seem too high (I'll get into expenses in a later post), I could always sink some money in and than get out without losing my shirt if things didn't turn out ok. Thirdly... I don't know, maybe there isn't really a thirdly, and maybe, probably, I didn't really think it through that well.
So then, I had a plan (or well an idea), I had a business that would be easy to get started. What more did I need? A name, of course. And the winner, after very little competition was MadLuck Books.
"Why 'MadLuck' Books?" you say. I can answer that one by quoting directly from the FAQ section of my website- "MadLuck is a play on the first three letters of our two daughters’ names: Maddie and Lucia. But it also refers to the crazy luck you have when you discover a magical world in a great book that you open up for the first time, and the crazy luck which has allowed us to be able to start this business." I know what you are thinking, "How corny can you get?"
The truth is, MadLuck, or MadLuc, or Mad Luck were the names I had given all my imaginary ventures - you know MadLuck Farms, MadLuc Enterprises, Mad Luck Publishing. So now we would have MadLuck Books. And for the internet madluckbooks.com.
So that is where we will end for today. Coming soon - Spending Money, and A Countdown to Quiting the Day Job.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)