A Dog’s Life

My adwords are rockin, but my conversion is sucking. I’m doing some testing to determine if it’s me or my market. I have a feeling it’s both so I’ll be working on both as soon as I have more data. I love how Internet Marketing is data driven. It’s so cool. You make guesses about what will work and then you test it to see if it really does. There’s no guesswork about if something works or not. It’s almost instant feedback. I totally understand the testing mentality. It’s a really fun game.

Anyway, I’m looking at a new market and I should be making a decision about what my next market is going to be in a day or two. At least now I understand better how to evaluate a market and a product.  I’m having so much fun!

One of the lessons here that applies to the larger picture of life in general is that you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. You’ve got to try new things and see which ones get you closer to where you want to be and not get discouraged about the ones that don’t. Every misstep is a step in the right direction if you learn from it.

Richard Internet Marketing

Ed Dale has a new Thirty Day Challenge starting next week and since I’m working to learn everything I can about Internet Marketing, I signed up. Pre-season has started and I’m downloading and installing Firefox plugins today. One of the plugins is ScribeFire and this is my first post using it. Web 2.0 here I come!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Richard Uncategorized

We all have our comfort zones and that’s a good thing because they keep us from dying of stress.

The problem with comfort zones is that to learn anything truly new means getting outside of your comfort zone and that’s tough to do. And the more time you spend outside the zone, the more stressed out you feel. Eventually, if you keep feeling stressed, you may decide to abandon your excursion outside of the zone and you go back to familiar territory where you feel safe. This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to significantly change your life voluntarily. Moving to a new city. Getting a new job. Creating a new career. Those sorts of things are incredibly stressful and at least at first, you’re spending all your time outside of your comfort zone.

The good news is that if you’re able to hang in there and sort it out, the new territory will eventually become familiar and it becomes part of your comfort zone.

This is what has been happening with my journey into internet marketing. I was out of my comfort zone from the first day and eventually the stress of not knowing what I was doing got to me and I started to lose my way. I lost my focus and started wandering in circles. But I realized what I was doing and I got back into following the training program step by step and within the last few days it has all finally started to come together. I finally reached the tipping point where it all started to make sense and I could see the forest instead of just the chaos of the trees.  The wasteland outside my zone is now starting to grow over with the warm soft fuzz of understanding and comfort and I’m very pleased.

Never give up. Never lose hope.

The man who will not accept defeat can never be defeated.

Richard Random Thoughts

I’ve slowly been converting from time spent to time invested. Investing time is a new thing for me and as such it is something that I’m working up to doing more and more. This is a new habit that will take time to embrace completely, but I have high hopes for it!

Along those lines, my Stomper learning site is finally up and running and I’m about to start my Google Adwords campaign. Tweaking of everything will now commence!

http://www.the-happy-dog.com 

Richard Net Life

The owner of the company I worked for handed me a laptop computer and said, “Here use this at home to get us on the Internet.”

Ok.

The Internet… cool. I’d read about it and heard about it but I hadn’t experienced it. None of my close friends really knew anything about it other than people were starting to talk about it.

So I stopped at a book store on the way home from work and bought a computer magazine that I saw had ads for dial-up Internet connections. About a week later I get the disc that has all the software I need and off I go. That first night was a Thursday and it took me about four hours to sort out the technical stuff and get the lapper connected. By the time I actually figured out that I was connected to a computer that wasn’t mine, it was time to hit the sack.

The next night, Friday, I got on right after work, about 6:00pm and I started exploring the connection software user interface. They had an “all in one” software package that had a browser and a news reader and an IRC client and email and just a total package full of 1990’s technology.

I had read about this text chatting stuff and it seemed right up my alley so I started looking for text chat. I didn’t know it was called “chat,” I was looking for the way to type to people from all over the world.  I found it and I found a channel called “London” and thought what the heck. So I joined the channel and text started going by and I was fascinated. It all seem very chaotic but I slowly started to piece together who was talking to whom and how to understand multiple conversations scrolling by one line at a time.

Suddenly a Window pops open that says “You have been invited to #Exile.” Me? Invited? Cool.

Click “Yes”

New screen, new names, new conversations.

“Hello dogmeat, Welcome to Exile.”

Hey! I’m dogmeat. They’re talking to me.

“Thanks!”

Needless to say, more conversation followed, but that was the first time I ever interacted in real time with another human on the Internet.

The truly amazing thing is that I still know and speak with via mail and occasional chat, that person who was the very first person I even spoke to on the Internet. I’m pretty sure the year was 1992.

My friend, gryphon, Elizabeth, Liz, Betsy, is truly good people. One of the best. Stuck with me through thick and thin and thinner. Gotta love her and respect her. I will always wish her all the best that Life has to offer.

Richard Net Life

I’m having dinner at a friend’s home. It’s a geek’s paradise. Computers laying about like Kleenex. Friends are right up there in the best things in life category. Chicken on the BBQ and a cold Newcastle in hand. Life is a blessing.

Richard Random Thoughts

Sometimes housework feels like a chore but most of the time I actually enjoy it in a quiet way. It connects me to myself, which is the sort of thing you either understand or you don’t because I don’t think there is any way to explain it.

I feel good. I feel hopeful… and I hope you’re the same.

Richard Random Thoughts

I ran into the blog of one of the guys from StomperNet and it was just what I needed to pull me out of the doldrums of feeling sick and uninspired. Ed Dale is an amazing guy and even though I’ve never spoken to him or met him, he feels like a friend. I’ve watched his videos and read his words and once you get a sense of a person, you know if you like them or not and if you like them, they seem like a friend.

Richard Net Life

It’s what you do that defines you.

You are what you do. Everything else is bullshit.

Richard Random Thoughts

“One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”
Edith Wharton

Richard Random Thoughts