Lesson 12

Wow what a week... I dont think I have washed my hair since monday... This has been a nightmare!

Still no one recycles... so that has been a huge failure. The goal to raise $100 bucks has been trompled on. I definitely did not succeed on that one... unless I am allowed to buy my own product and give myself a huge tip!!!!

I missed a ton of deadlines in some other classes, and probably a few in this one!

On a brighter note, its almost over!! This has been an incredibly rewarding, and yet incredibly difficult semester. I have had successes and failures, and am incredibly thankful that even though many of the things we used in this class were entirely unhelpful for my current business plan, I will probably be able to use that information in the future!! I feel that because my business was not compatible with things like adwords, etc, I have a better perspective on what makes the system work and what doesn't. I have a better handle on when to use it and when not to. I am not going to just jump in and assume it will be helpful, which could save a lot of money in the long run!

Lesson 11

My $100 challenge is going about as well as I thought it would be... zilch in profits. But my fudge business is nearing $300 in the first week.... I just can't afford to give those profits away unfortunately... I would have loved to do that for this class. It is enough to get me by in the slow months of my other job, and it is incredibly fun to do.

I think that this week it was interesting to read through all the ways people use social media. I didn't post much to that board but it was nice to read about others. I participated in a toys for tots collection day today and without Facebook, getting the information out to everyone would have been much more difficult. It is nice to have everything all in one place. I decided that using for my business would be good once I get some customers posting to my page.

I think that for me, eventually I will use facebook, instagram, and twitter. These rely a lot on visual aids, like video and picture. I want to use these because my business could really work a lot better if I had customers talking about my fudge as well as posting pictures. Pictures are worth 1000 words right??? What about 1000 happy people?

Lesson 10

This week was a good week, not so much for my $100.00 challenge, but because there was a holiday, and I got to have two of them!

No one recycled.. again... this week. I ran into a few of my neighbors personally and reminded them. They all said they totally would, as usual, but never did.

So far I have basically lost money in this little endeavor because I spent money to make all the flyers... and no one has paid me. Can I pay myself and be my only customer? I would basically have made $30 bucks by New Years then... Which would give me a profit of $10 bucks....

I think it was super interesting to learn about landing pages this week. We briefed on them last week, but got into optimizing them this week. I found that the key to a good landing page seems to be simplicity. You dont want to overwhelm your potential customer and possibly scare them away before they get a chance to even look around your website! I changed the landing page of my website from the home page, which is kind of busy, to the page where they sign up for the service. This is a very simple page, which might even be a bit too simple. I need to add a little more of an explanation to that page, but havent had time this weekend.

I wasnt really impressed with the SEO portion of my coursework, but that is mainly because I felt that some of the tips made it seem like I had to have a very generic site and kind of cheat the system on how to get noticed by search engines. I think it is not right to make bogus sites just so that your own site can be linked from somewhere else. I also think that having the title of your page closer to the generics of what you are doing rather than a fun catchy phrase is sooo not me. I would like to have the title of my 'contact me' page to be 'get in touch!' I kind of tried something weird. The title of my contacts page is actually "Get in Touch! Contact Me" See what I did there?? Sneaky Sneaky! So the words are in the title, but no one can really see them!! I have no idea if that would work, and I feel a little like I cheated.. but Im not really sure what else to do!!

Lesson 9

I was filling out an application for an internship this week and on it, they encouraged anyone with a disability, ethnic background, or other minority profiling to apply... because they are determined to be equal opportunity employers.. so what that basically means to me is that if I am equally, or even a little more qualified than some other person who applies, and they haven't met their quota given by the state of CA, then they will hire the other person... the only advantage I have is being a woman, and even that isnt that helpful these days. I just wish it could be strictly based on merit and academia or experience, rather than having to be based on some set of rules that create racism rather than help to eliminate it.

Anyway, enough of a rant. I failed again this week to encourage any of my neighbors to recycle and now we are starting an ice storm, so any hope I had of putting out signs in my neighborhood is gone. I cannot wait to get rid of my adwords campaign. I do not think it is going to help until I can someday expand past my neighborhood borders. I have paid for like... 30 clicks and not a single sign up has occurred. My return on investment is zilch. I think that since my husband is going to be gone tomorrow, and hopefully the ice will be gone by tomorrow afternoon, that I will go door to door again, and make more signs for the neighborhood.

This week has been tough. No doubt about it.

Lesson 8

This week was a dewsy!! The workload between all of my classes was more than usual and I had less time to do it all!!

This week we talked about relevance and quality scores. I have found that I really need to broaden my keywords. I was worried about it at first because I did not remember that I had already done the geographical part of things before I even made the ad. I was worried that if I used too broad keywords that I would attract way too many unusable clicks. Then someone reminded me that I had already basically geo-fenced it and should not have to worry too much about it.

I have still not made any money. I am becoming very discouraged. I am going to make signs this week to put up around the neighborhood. I wanted to make them this past week but it did not happen. I need to decide if I want to do painted wooden ones, or just pay to have some printed. I will have to price that out at Kinkos or something so that it can be printed on some kind of weather proof plastic board or something.

Lesson 7

This week seemed very low key. Not a lot of class work to do. This gave me more than enough time to devote to my business. Sadly I was working during all daylight hours at my regular job, except for friday. I was able to go out door to door to more of my neighborhood on friday, but do not expect to have any of them put out their recycling until at least next week.

I just want someone... anyone... to take advantage of this!! I am willing to bet less than 25%of my neighbors recycle, and that if they got into the habit of saving their recycling, there would be a lot less waste going on. I'll bet that nearly all of the neighbors who do not recycle are only neglecting to recycle because of how inconvenient it is to do so.

I really want to make a few signs to put up around the neighborhood to remind people to recycle. I need to talk to the city to see if this is okay. I really want this to work out. I haven't made a dime yet, but still think it is worth it.

We talked about google ads in our discussion board this week. I got a little bit of feedback, but not really anything helpful. My brother is the only person I know who is always willing to give an unbiased, and unemotional review of anything. When you ask him to look at your resume, he really looks at it and finds things you can change. But everyone else just glances and says it looks amazing. Well we all know that it isnt possible to have a perfect resume... especially me!! I might get the design spot on, but I tend to write far to much information! I give it all away right up front! hahaha

Anyway, all in all it was a good week.. I just hope I have recycling to pick up on Saturday!!!

Lesson 6

This week was hard. Between working at home to be ready for Halloween, I have to deal with a neighborhood that is less than Jazzed about the whole recycling thing. No one seems to want to recycle and sometimes I wonder if they would recycle even if it was a free service!! I think I need to expand my service area to capture enough people that I can get business from at least some of them who care!!

It is frustrating to think about all the money I probably spent on the flyers and the time I spent walking door to door, and to only have.. ummmm NO ONE recycle! I feel like I spent so much time making a nice website, and probably no one has bothered to go to it! I feel like if they would just get to my website, they would take me more seriously!

Anyway, I watched another action hero video. This one was about Ben 'Bud' Brigham. He wanted to always be the best he could be. It is interesting that he always knew he would be an entrepreneur... I still don't feel like one, and I am trying to! I never considered owning my own company when I was younger because it looked way too hard! Bud seemed to have had a difficult life... he sounds like he has the kind of life my dad experienced, and it reminds me that there is success on all levels, that comes out of the dust. Success can be a man making a ton of money, or a man raising an amazing family and making enough to provide for them. Bud suggest developing a core vision and core value system. It helps us to overcome our obstacles because it defines who we are, and every decision comes down to the simple question, "Does following through with this bring me closer to the person I want to be based on my core values.. or farther away?"

Making customer service an important part of my future business is what is going to make it or break it. I feel like there are very few companies in this world that can get along without good customer service... We would like to believe that all it takes it bad customer service to go out of business.. but the truth is that you either have to be really great at serving customers, or provide a service that the masses cannot live without... Take, for example, WalMart... people hate their customer service... but if they were to go away, a lot of peoples standard of living would decrease because their dollars buying power would decrease. They woud no longer get as much bang for their buck... And I know that WalMart's products are inferior.. but a coat hanger is a coat hanger... it would have to be extraordinarily crummy to be incapable of hanging a shirt... And bread is bread... People want a sandwich, they get two slices of bread... if Walmart is cheaper and they dont really have other options, then they will go with that.

Lesson 5

This week, I got my little business on the internet! It looks great and will hopefully make it easier for my recycling customers to get information about recycling days, fee's, unexpected recycling center closures, and general information about making the transition to a more green lifestyle.

I am thankful that this class has given me the opportunity to help my neighborhood and I truly hope they take me up on this offer. I plan to expand slowly outward from my street to adjoining streets until I have roughly 30-40 customers. This way, I will not become overwhelmed by the volumes of recyclable goods.

When I first put out flyers to use while going door to door in my neighborhood, I do not think I did a very good job. They were unprofessional, and probably hard to read. But I have now updated the look of them and plan on using the same format. It is a spin off of the theme on the businesses website. I did this so that there would be a solid visual link between the two so that perhaps they would feel more comfortable using the website. I sent those out this morning and am hoping to generate more prepayments using that.

Lesson 4

This week was good. I felt very rushed because I am visiting family that I haven't seen for over a year. I hate being away so long, which is part of the reason I want an internship with Southwest so badly... anyone who can guarantee me an inexpensive mode of seeing my family will have my loyalty forever... My family is everything to me, and we are all so spread out that it makes it difficult to see everyone. I miss them all the time.

Anyway, I worked on designing my site this week. I researched a few cool sites, but none were really selling the same thing as me, but were about the general topic. I am starting a recycling program for my neighborhood because we have terrible recycling center hours... three hours a week... yep thats right. three hours and its on a Saturday morning... no one wants to get up that early!!

Anyway, I enjoyed playing with the site features. I had some trouble with the social media part of the site because I accidentally turned it on and couldn't get it back off. It was wanting to basically have me make a tiny facebook out of my site!! NO WAY!!! Yikes!

Lesson 3

I watched another Action Hero video this week. This one was about a guy who is in the real estate business. He probably isn't an emotionally compelling as the previous ones I have watched. He did have trials like bankruptcy and divorce, but not quite as amazing as a man who moved into the dorm of his college to keep personal costs down with the intent to give more of his money away. Paul Robshaw, the action hero this week, was very driven and has had a lot of success and a lot of failure in his life. It is nice to be reminded that even if we lose everything monetarily, we can still recover and succeed in life.

I also read about some tips for starting a business. The article I read was a bit hard to follow because he would tell you to one thing but then tell you not to do it in the same breath. The underlying theme seemed to be to have mediation in all things. The writer seemed to want you to walk a fine line and know where it is at all times. This is probably why a lot of start ups fail.. there just is no way to see this line all of the time and constantly be on top of it. 

I think the case study I read this week about Heather Evans was interesting. She is a designer of womens professional apparel in New York City. Through the case study I learned about perseverance, and hope. Heather was very close to beginning her new business, but had not secured funding. She was nervous that things would not line up in time. I can't imagine putting out that much personal money with the great potential to lose it all so quickly.

Lesson 2

This week was difficult for me. I do not like to put out money until I know all the facts and know what I am getting myself into. I did not like that the drop shipping lists cost money. I hated that to even begin getting information I would have had to put out money, and not even be guaranteed that it was a valid site with up-to-date information!

I watched a video this week about the guy who founded Dominos pizza. He is incredibly inspiring and I hope that I can, one day, make a difference like he does. I just don't know if I have the commitment levels like he does. He gave up everything... I mean everything. He lives in a dorm to save money so that he can give more of the money he earns to the college he started.

http://www.actonhero.org/celebrating-heroes/stories-of-heroes/index.php?hero=tom-monaghan

I think learning about affiliates was really useful to me because I am hoping to do that stuff on my regular blog. In the past month I have gotten nearly 90 views, which is a big step up from the 5 I started with a year-ish ago! 

Lesson 1

I think the biggest thing I learned this week was to figure things out for myself. I could have cried about the schools tutorial being wrong for a particular online tool... or I could have read about that websites updates and figured things out on my own. It took me less time to simply read about the websites updates and do things on my own, than it took for the teacher to get back to everyone... This is not how things are going to be in the real world when I am done with school. I do not want to get trapped in a bubble of helplessness because I am unable to reach outside my instruction manuals to get the answers I need. This world changed to frequently, we should assume all printed tutorials are outdated!