I thought that I’d do a post on how I made www.lightweightlaptops.co.uk number 1 in Google’s search results for a niche, and as such it generates me up to £200 a month in revenue. I take you through the steps so you too can create nice little side revenue streams. Which should be welcome in this economic climate.
It was only when I went to a workshop on Strategy and Risk last week that I realised: I didn’t have a strategy.
I have values – the moral framework that I take with me into the work I do and the connections I have with people – and I have goals – things I want to achieve within the world of work. But Do It Properly didn’t have a strategy. The guy leading the course was calle d John Hector and he defined this as a list of actions to take, a game plan, a vision, a unifying definition.
I’ve been questioning some local small business owners and hearing how they are changing their products and communication methods, to retain existing customers and gain new ones, in this upside down economy. Hopefully, there will be some inspiration in here for you.
More Wordle fun – this time with all the blog content to the beginning of March. Still fascinated by the way they convey information. Personally I expected more soup in there.
I’ve just got back from a 2-day Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) E-business consultants’ briefing. I’m now happily up-to-date on the consulting products that we are going to use to help businesses, from an ICT perspective (Information & Communication Technology) throughout the glorious country of Wales.
Apart from meeting some really hot (technically) consultants, some clued-up (and friendly) WAG staff, and having a few beers (at our expense, rather than the tax payer), I’m stoked and ready to move from my role as a consultant and delivering agency, to an objective E-business consultant.
My first impressions are that the E-business WAG team headed by Michael Groves, have really got their onions together. It’s out with all the multiple confusing funding brands inside the Welsh Assembly and they’ve bought in 3 shapes of ICT product that will help business in Wales, in a Flexible Support for Business (FS4B) package:
A great new toy – www.wordle.net. I’ve always found tag clouds a bit pointless and gimmicky but applying the same rules as a way to express a body of text gives a really interesting result. The post I’ve used to create this one is instantly recognisable.
You might have a day like I had yesterday at some point: the kids were being rude, both morning meetings were cancelled at the 11th hour, the lunch meeting was cancelled by text (20 minutes after it was due to start and just as the food I had ordered while waiting turned up at my table) plus it rained (on the day I had decided to walk). The meetings were all efforts to attract more business and I could have been doing something far more useful with my time than wondering round in the rain feeling despondent.
Ray Hammond has been kind enough to send me a link to a blog post he has written on the recession.
This week I was fortunate enough to see the futurologist Ray Hammond speak. He used to live next door to Steve Jobs dontchaknow. He managed to cover pretty much the whole of life within 45 minutes from the past to the future, the local to the global and the real to the virtual.
He touched on the recession, which is why I’m mentioning him here, and he said a few interesting things:
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Paolo - glorious leader of South Wales web empire Refresh Creative. Paolo also reviews cheap laptops for his other website.
Andy - runs a web consultancy based in the sunny city of Bath. He has been working in the online industry for 13 years. His mission is to get his clients to "improve their business, achieve the results they want and not get suckered into spending money on things they don't need!".
