update on the 30×3 Challenge
Day 5: 2008/12/05
Revenue: $0.03
Well, I actually didn’t expect for there to be anything to report yet. Even though it is less than impressive, I’d say it is still enough to keep me motivated. After all, pennies become dollars.
So only 2,997 pennies left to go!
No real new site development, just started promoting one that had AdSense on it that I had neglected for a long time. Just getting the word out there for that one.
December 1, 2008
Day 1: Throwing Down the Gauntlet.
As I perused the net today I ran across an interesting idea: The Thirty Day Challenge.
The concept is that people who sign up will get email instructions on how to make money online and the goal is to make $10 at the end of 30 days.
Our at least that is all I get from the video. I’m not going to sign up since I smell some kind of multi-level program at work. But the idea itself is interesting and something I’ve wanted to accomplish. After SES San Jose in August, I had told myself I would make enough online to get myself to PubCon, but that hasn’t happened - but I didn’t really try.
So I am making my own 30 Day Challenge-
The 30×3 Challenge: make $30 in 30 days, but only spend 30 minutes a day doing it.
And one more catch: I can’t spend any money up front. So no new domains, no paid listings, no paid services. Just me, myself and I and the resources I already have.
I have a full time job, Christmas is around the corner and am pretty much starting from the ground up.
I’ll spend a few minutes outside of my alloted 30 posting status updates here.
And in the effort of fairness and keeping this reporting as objective as possible, I will not use this site to in any way to help me out. I’ll discuss what might be working and what isn’t and maybe why, but I want to keep the experiment as scientifically clean as possible.
The Plan
Well since I can’t spend any money, the first thing I will do is take a look at the long-neglected and unfinished projects I hadn’t done anything with.
I’ll see what I can come up with and keep everyone posted. Subscribe to the RSS feed to see how it is going.
Status Report:
Day 1 - 2008/12/01
Revenue: $0.00
Well, the Google folks have officially announced that Google Image Search is now showing banner ads, a little something I discovered about two months ago:
If you’re based in the U.S. you may already have spotted or clicked on the different text and image ads we’re testing on the results pages of Google Image Search.
What’s even more suprising is, when I tried to find the earliest post and rumblings of anyone else mentioning the banners in image search, the earliest one I could find was about 2 weeks AFTER mine.
Great post on Problogger.net that gives some tips on what to do when you get burnt out trying to keep up with the latest Web 2.0 and Social Media flavor of the week.
Feeling Overwhelmed by Social Media and Web 2.0? - Here Are 5 Tips For You
Especially #4. That’s the kicker. At least for me.
As what I call a “web generalist”, I have to try to keep up with just about every new trend in web development, design and marketing. And then decide how, why, when and if it should or could be used. And the decision is getting almost impossible to make.
Jquery or MooTools or Prototype/Scriptaculous or Spry?
PHP/MySQL or Ruby on Rails or Cold Fusion or ASP.net?
Joomla or Drupal or ModX or Custom Built CMS?
Twitter or Tumblr or Pownce?
Facebook or MySpace or whatever new will overtake these?
Of course the only real, true answer for these or any other question like these, is this:
“Depends.”
Depends on what you know, depends on what you need to do, depends on the client, depends on the server, depends on if Mercury is in retrograde, depends on if the shake machine is broken again at McDonald’s.
And therein lies the problem -with so many options now available and potential case scenarios, the decisions we need to make are getting harder and harder to come to, much less have a significant amount of confidence in.
So with all the options, and the lack of clear solutions, how do you know that if you head down one road that at the absolute, least opportune time, you might find yourself at a dead-end and need to turnaround, trudge back to where you began and start all over?
Basically, you don’t.
But, the trick is to not get bogged down in the decision. And the tips in the ProBlogger post are great for those.
Remember #4 - Focus on the Goal, then choose the tool.
Look at #3 and focus your energies on the tools you have. That will probably make the big part of your decision right there. Ruby on Rails looks really interesting, and I see more ASP.net and Cold Fusion jobs out there at better salaries, but I know PHP and have invested several years in it. If I can do what I need to with it, why stress myself out and choke on a project just becuase all the cool kids are using Rails or the guys making 6 figures are using ASP.
Their #5 - “Have Fun” - always encouraged, but sometimes, just not likely. Sometimes ajob or task just won’t be fun, but knowing what you need to do and how you are going to get through it, will make it a lot less miserable. To quote Depeche Mode “just hang on. …Suffer well”. But a word of caution: do not fall into the Tinkerer’s Trap, where you make the foolish decision to take on learning a new tool for a project as a method of learning it. Deadlines are not your friend when learning a new skill set or understanding a new system. I have done this very thing under a project deadline and had my successes (Joomla and ModX) and had collossal failings (Flash + XML + PHP - stil haven’t cracked that 3 yrs later.)
And #1 - “You are not alone”.
Right here with you. I’ll save a seat on the breadtruck for you.
With the recent attention Google wanna-be “cuil” is getting, I thought it may be time to take a look at some of the other websites that try to pawn off the lack of ability to secure a strong domain name by using a ridiculous spelling of a normal every day word.
(and I know how hard it is to get a good domain name nowadays, so I understand trying something different, but really…)
1. Cuil.com - pronounced “cool”
Ok thank goodness som article explained it becuase I never would have guessed. Of course, everyone knows that available 4 letter domains became non-existent eons ago (in internet years), but this is really stretching. Whoever came up with this one was probably smoking a little too much Web 2.0 “kraq”.
2. Kuler - pronounced “color”
Adobe must not think much of their built-in spell check to let this monstrosity out into the wild. Plus, it is just a SUBDOMAIN at adobe.com. If you are only using it as a subdomain, why not just call it whatever you want.
3. Sphinn - pronounced “spin”
SEO is one of my focus areas so I always run across this on and it just “phisses” me off. Any reasonable person would likely read this and think it was pronounced closer to “Sven” and hey, who wouldn’t be interested in a social linking site to articles for and about about dudes named Sven.
This one always reminds of the dork quiz bowl team I faced off with (and obliterated) that called themselves “ghoti” a.k.a. “fish” (explanation). But for the life of me, I dont’ know what the usage cases for a silent “h” are when preceded by “p”. (and yes, it is possible to be on a cool quiz bowl team)
There are more out there and I’ll update this post as I run across them.
Got some you want to share? Post in the comments!
But right now I am hungry, so I think I will kuk some dhinnr.