I do it, too. I enjoy an evening in front of the TV when I can but hate adverts and filler. So I look at the listings and meticulously plan my viewing schedule: ‘Is this programme on a channel that has adverts?’, ‘If so, can I use the Watch Again feature on my cable to see it another day?’,  ‘Can I fill up this 1/2 hour gap with anything I have left over to watch from yesterday when there was two things on at the same time?’.

I think I see it as just another area of my life to strive for efficiency and fulfilment in. And rather than see the entire of TV output as a waste of time I choose to pick out some things that I can justify as being worthwhile, or entertaining. That way I can sneer at people who veg out in front of inane reality shows or vacuous celebrity features while I’m wasting my time more valuably. After all, I’m learning lots about the secrets of our solar system while watching that jolly indie-band professor. And after a few more episodes of Burn Notice I’m sure I’d be able to walk into a job at MI5.

It’s as though me, and the Japanese Tetris-addicts, are scheduling our leisure time the same way as an executive schedules his day. It’s definitely a modern way to relax but I wonder if it really makes for a more fulfilled life. By pushing our leisure activities right to the edges of the time we’ve got to fit them into are we missing time to think? My blogging partner, Paolo, always says it’s good to get out of the office and go for a walk in the park. And while some might perceive that as procrastination (or even, as I suspect, a squirrel fetish) it might just be that he’s pushing back the edges between work and leisure and leaving some time for thought. If we don’t leave any spaces where the mind is free to think, or just wonder, how are the ideas supposed to get in?

Time to think about commutes, or evenings and weekends, as not only blocks of minutes to be managed with ruthless efficiency, but as it used to be known – ‘free time’. Free your mind.

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For business owners that means getting proper invoices from all your suppliers and outsourced jobs. Detail all office expenditure and petty cash. Get yourself a good accountant. If he finds things to claim for that you haven’t thought of that’s probably a good start.

For the self-employed that means equipment, stationary, reference books, travel and subsistence. If you are working from home it also means a percentage of your mortgage interest, council tax, gas, electric, insurance and work done on the house that affects you. If you are in this position and not making an absoulte ton of money then you probably shouldn’t be paying any tax. Get yourself an accountant – their fee is tax-deductable as well!

5 things not to claim for:

1. Moat cleaning (who knew there was a business in that!)
2. Horse manure (unless you are a gardener)
3. Chandeliers
4. Non-existent mortgages
5. Duck islands (unless it is the Duck’s secondary residence)

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Brainstorm

So first, keep a notebook and brainstorm ideas that come to you as you are going through your day. Your goal is to think of niche’s within bigger search groups, or emerging markets that are likely to be bigger in the not-to-distant future.

Over 12 months ago, I could see that netbooks were emerging on the scene, and I thought, ‘well people are going to be searching google for these little things’. Rather than a site on the perhaps larger search term “netbooks”, I targeted a similar meaning but nich-ier target “lightweight laptop”.

So collect your ideas, whether they are “Scottish antiques”, “costa tropical hotels”, “washroom hand dryers”, “garden hoses”, “shitake mushroom kits” or “selvedge jeans”, Really think about anything and then think of a sub-branch of that idea.

Research

So you’ve got a list of say 15-20 ideas to look at. Your goal is to now find out 3 things:

1) Does the niche have traffic from google?
2) Is it crackable? In other words: is it possible to get to first page of google?
3) Would it be possible to monetize, once you have visitors

So let’s take “washroom hand dryers” and type it into google’s keywords tool:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

It says that there are an average of 73 searches a month, and 210 searches last month for this keyword. However, it now identifies related keywords, that might be worth targeted. It illustrates that “hand dryers” has 9,900 searches a month. A worthy target!

So then we go onto checking in it’s crackable. We do 2 basic things, first we check how many results it returns in your countries google. E.g Make sure you select “results from pages in uk”. Put the term in quotes (“hand dryers”) to limit the results to more relevant sites, and you get 38,400 results.

And also we get the web page result that’s 7th- 10th on the 1st page of google, and paste it into yahoo’s site explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ ). This will then give you a guide to how many sites link to this site, and approximately how authoritative google perceives it. In this case, the 8th result in google (www.o3solutions.com/) has 71 inlinks from sites other than itself.

Is it worth it?

Now assuming that you got the traffic, is it possible to monetise this “hand dryers” niche? You could check out affiliate sites like affillatewindow.com or tradedoubler.com to see if there is a commercial vendor offering an affiliate scheme for commercial hygiene equipment. Or you figure, that once you’ve got the traffic you will approach independent retailer, and offer them your leads, for a commission.

Either way you gotta do the math. In the case of “lightweight laptops” 5,000 people a month searching generates 5-10 affiliate sales a month. So that’s a particularly low 1 in 500-1000 visitors produces a sale. So with hand dyers, if you sold 5-10 products a month. Would that be worth it if you were getting 10% from a sale? A hand dryer costs £200, so 10% is £20 x 5 to 10, so between £100-200 a month revenue.

Compile and compare

So you should create a table, or an excel spreadsheet of all your targets and new ones you find as you go through it, and you can then compare and choose:

With all your 20 keyword targets side-by-side, and the new related ones you’ve found, it should be clearer which one to target.

Of course there are some nuances to the tools mentioned above, but they are fairly easy to get to grips with.

So buy a domain & build a website

Now you’ve chosen your target, you should think carefully about the domain, and include the keywords in it if possible. Perhaps handDryersReviewed.com might be a good choice. You then want to set up a site, Wordpress is a good CMS that’s easy to setup, and choosing, and customising a relevant template is easy.

It’s worth at this stage knowing more how google ranks content, this is the best snapshot guide that tells you all about what’s important from title tags to image names: http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

Don’t forget to add google analytics, and a sitemap registered with google webmaster tools.

What’s your content plan?

So, blimey you’ve got a niche a domain and are ready to add content. You could write it all yourself, or perhaps you can place an ad on www.getafreelancer.com, and find someone on the other side of the world that will write for you for $6 an article. So best start as you mean to go on. I mean, are you really going to have the time to write 2-5 articles a month? Best just for you to plan the articles and outsource them to someone else.

Also remember, that genuine content brings genuine visitors. So really do think of real content around your topic.

Link build

You’ve got to now build links. I reckon the best way to start of with is to this yourself, aim for 2-5 links a week and you’ll soon build up inlinks. Some of the easiest strategies are, commenting on relevant blogs and forums or adding your site to relevant directories. Also look at your competitors sites via yahoo site explorer, where are they getting links from

You can then outsource this to someone on getafreelancer.com once you’ve got a style of link building.

Wait….

So you’ll need to keep monitoring your site, adding new content and link building for 4-6 months, but you should see it gradually creep up google, monitor it both in Analytics and Webmaster tools. You can of course start the next project so you are building up multiple revenue streams.

Page 1!

So there, once you are on page 1 of google, it is worth reviewing how you were going to monetize the site. So now plug in that affiliate, or cut a deal for leads from the site, or perhaps even sell it lock stock to a competitor. Good luck.

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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.

- Why did I start my business?

- What do my customers want now?

- What will they want in the future?

- Am I where I want to be?

- Where is the market for my product/service heading?

In answering those questions it becomes simpler to have a focused statement that can act as your companies strategy.

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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:

1) A resource website, which will be going live soon on http://www.business-support-wales.gov.uk/, it will have all kinds of IT and business communication guides. This is designed as an entry level “what is a CRM?”, “how can a network help my business?” or  “what is pay per click marketing?”  This is great for all businesses wanting some knowledge, perhaps before they engage technology companies in helping their business or undertaking an IT change themselves.

3) E-business support. This is where a consultant will be able to help a company research, plan, choose a supplier, hand hold through integration, and guide through company wide roll-out. In reality this could be something small like guiding a small company through installing a network/VPN/email system or something larger and more specialised like installing a new multi-site contact centre or custom built intranet solution. Either way, with support from WAG businesses will have the benefit of having an on-side consultant to ease the pain in any new system integration/

Back to recession proofing your business, it is essential for all companies to examine their underlying ICT if they want to weather the storm of this financial downturn. Having an impartial external consultant come in and help you assess your ICT can only help, and if you need more support having some one on-side, impartial and co-paid for by the WAG, is a step in the right direction for ensuring your business comes out the other side of this gloomy downturn, stronger and happier.

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I wanted to make something positive of the day so I put everything I had to do to one side and completed the following exercises:

2. While changing out of my wet clothes I went through the list of things I could have done while I was out and about and made sure I put a system in place to remember things that I had always left to chance in the past.

3. I spent the rest of the day on one of the projects that sits on the sidelines of my work (like this site).

I have a list of these projects and they make up the sort of things that aren’t part of your everyday work but aren’t purely personal projects – they occupy a sort of middle ground of stuff you’d love to achieve but that are also useful professionally. This could be anything from learning PHP to getting yourself a digital camera so you don’t have to farm out work next time a client asks you to take pictures of their office for the website. All useful things on a professional level but also satisfying as achievements in themselves.

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