Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

About eight months ago I decided to take blogging seriously and devote time to writing out in digital form what was in my head and soul regarding business and entrepreneurship, so others could learn from my experience and studies. At that point I had no clear pathway and I was purely following my enthusiasm. I chose blogging over a few other business opportunities because it felt right, I wanted to do it more than the other projects and all the omens were telling me to take this path.

It’s not always easy to follow a path with no clear destination. It requires some faith, reasonable financial stability and the courage to fail until you succeed. I don’t believe in failure, I believe in experience.

At first I considered the professional blogger path and certainly Darren Rowse and problogger.net were partly to blame. The figures he was putting up were insane so it was easy to get lost in the potential. After further investigation of exactly how Darren was earning, including some conversations with the man himself, I decided against blogging purely for income and attempting to replicate what he was doing. I wasn’t prepared to build blogs around niche topics I wasn’t interested in and that was the only way I could see myself making significant money as a professional blogger.

Entrepreneurship has always fit best with me. I prefer having multiple projects on the go because I enjoy variety and the business of doing business. As long as my projects are driven by my enthusiasm and they work towards my income goals they have a good chance of still being in focus a few months down the track regardless of specific results, intended or otherwise.

I have a clear understanding of what form of income I want to establish - passive, from multiple streams independent of my labor. Professional blogging often relies on the efforts of the blogger, so as a short term strategy while I have enthusiasm to write content it’s fine, as a long term strategy it is not necessarily so sound (unless of course you get a nice fat check when you sell your blogs in a carefully executed exit strategy).

So why blog?

Having earned some rewards I know I’m following the right path by blogging. The networking and exposure for me as a brand has been fantastic. I’ve started to earn passive income from sources that are unlikely to disappear completely and will increase over time as long as stay to this path. I’ve gained experience in an area that is reasonably cutting edge - blog marketing. Blogging in general is new and particularly beneficial to business so just being a part of the wave is exciting.

Waking up each day to a task list that largely consists of “produce great content” is an enjoyable and relaxing state of existence. There is nothing more satisfying than publishing your own creativity and helping others at the same time. I wish you could all feel the same satisfaction and freedom that I do and that is partly why I blog - to bring others the same joys that I experience each day from learning and creating.

Unexpected Results

As I continued to blog I discovered something about myself - I love to write. Starting off 2005 if you asked me what I loved doing I would have said “business” but now if you asked I’m more likely to say “writing” or even “producing content” (can’t forget podcasting!). I still love the business of it all but my entrepreneur senses are highly tuned to the blogging frequency for the moment.

Of course I still don’t know exactly where I am going or where blogging will take me. I have a general direction but the particulars are still falling into place. The story may be quite different this time next year but I’m in no hurry to find out. I’m excited about the journey, not the destination.

How About You?

I’ve already asked what my readers plan for 2006 in terms of entrepreneurship, but what about blogging? Why are you blogging in 2006? Do you have a good reason, a specific goal or a more fuzzy picture of where you want to be in 12 months time with your blog(s)?

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As you can no doubt tell the new Entrepreneur’s Journey is now live. I’ve been testing everything to make sure it is working as it should be but no doubt some errors and design layout issues are hidden away. If you come across any major problems using the site please contact me.

New Features

Besides the overall colour and layout changes you will find a few new features, including:

Audio “play” buttons - In an effort to enhance the usability of this site I have added audio explanations for some key features. I will continue to add more audio descriptions where I believe the extra explanation is helpful. In general the audio buttons are targeted more at first time visitors and novice surfers to help explain the purpose of this website and it’s features. Some people learn better with their ears rather than their eyes and anything I can do to create additional communication channels is beneficial.

Highlighted areas - The two areas above the fold (currently housing the ‘Popular Articles’ and ‘Blog Traffic School’) are specifically placed to give me an area to highlight particular features of this site. Often within a blog topics are ‘lost’ as new entries relegate them further and further into the archives. I specially planned the new design to have an area that I could change whenever I wanted to bring attention to certain products or services or articles etc.

New email updates subscription service - The old Entrepreneur’s Journey subscriber email list has been moved to the right sidebar below the box banner. Behind the scenes I have also switched over this mailing list to the RSS-to-email feature of Aweber, which means I no longer manually have to send out updates when I write a new article.

I’ve set up the system to send out an email whenever three or more new articles are published so email subscribers should receive summaries and links to the latest posts about weekly. Previously I only sent out notification when a new full length article was published but using this new system subscribers will receive notice for every post made to this blog. I’m going to write more about the new Aweber feature in a future email since you are probably a little bit confused with how it works because I know I was before I started playing with it.

I still recommend people learn how to subscribe with RSS but I understand some prefer email so I need to have a robust solution for them as well. If you haven’t yet subscribed either by RSS or through email I suggest you go to the right sidebar now and do so, I’ve got some pretty good content coming up in the weeks ahead.

Blog Traffic School - Since I am devoting most of my time outside of blogging and BetterEdit.com towards Blog Traffic School I wanted to really focus on it and make sure everyone who is interested knows about it and subscribes to the pre-launch list to stay up to date. Hence it is highlighted on every page of this blog. If you haven’t done so yet please sign-up to the email list now.

Banner placements - In an attempt to further monetize my sites I had to develop a better way to include advertisements using the recently installed PHPAdsNew. I didn’t want the site to become overrun with banners so I surfed around a few blogs and blog networks and used them as inspiration to come up with the current general layout here. This design includes an above the fold box banner, as well as a sidebar tower and individual entry standard banners. The banners do not intrude the content but are prominent enough that they generate exposure, either for external advertisers, AdSense links or my own internal campaigns. If you are interested in sponsoring this site visit the Sponsorship Opportunities page.

Better use of space - What I like the most about the new design is that is appears much like the old design, remains reasonably clutter free but manages to cram in a lot more in the same amount of area. It doesn’t quite fit right in 800*600 screen resolutions, which incidentally I learned 20% of net users still use so it’s worth catering for, but all the content can be viewed in that resolution better than in the old design. I like the colour usage better (kudos to Phil, my designer) and with the network tabs down the left side I can keep all my blogs linked together in a pseudo-blog-network. Overall I think it’s prettier and more professional too, which is important given the direction I am heading with my blogging.

Who Did The Design?

Philipp Hartle is the designer that did the new look for Entrepreneur’s Journey. He’s also currently finishing up the look for Small Business Branding. As you can no doubt tell I’m pretty pleased with his efforts. Phil is located here in Brisbane, my hometown, and is a friend of mine. It was really good to have the option of face-to-face communication although we only met once initially to get the overall theme decided and then communicated through VOIP for most of the changes after that point. I recommend Phil for blog design work if you are in need of a fresh and funky design.

Feedback

I’d love to hear what you think of the design so please leave a comment with your opinion. I suspect some people will still prefer the old design and there are always people that hate change, no matter how much it can enhance their lives, but regardless I value all sound judgements. If you think there are some features that could be improved or areas that aren’t quite clear let me know and I will see what I can do.

Yaro Starak
Entrepreneur’s Journey

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I’m presently going over the finishing touches for a brand new look here at Entrepreneur’s Journey. I’ve hired the help of a web designer to create something a bit more polished than I could do myself. Generally I’m limited to hacking themes or templates when it comes to websites. This site is currently running the WordPress Pool Theme that I modified slightly. Thankfully WordPress has over 300 themes to choose from with more added every day if you search around the web (Regulus from Binary Moon being one of my current favorites that I am experimenting with for YaroStarak.com).

Small Business Branding is also getting a once over and is presently sitting in limbo with the default WordPress theme. The new layouts for both my blogs will look relatively the same once all is done but with distinct design elements to clearly identify them. The idea is for these two sites to form the basis for my own “network” although I won’t be calling it a blog network.

Design Is Personal

I’ve wasted time this week. I haven’t been practising the 80/20 rule. It’s because I’ve been working with blog design. Design, by it’s nature, is creative and as such often blurs the lines of productivity vs self satisfaction (how intertwined are those two concepts?). I’ve spent time trying to get a box to align in a column because I wasn’t happy with how it looked knowing full well it didn’t impact the usability of the site.

Usability vs design is one of the age old issues that web designers face every day. As a web marketer I understand that usability and function should come before design. Of course good design enhances both usability and function but I’m sure many a website owner has spent a little too much time trying to make something look “pretty” just because they like the look, not for any practical business or functionality reasons.

Are Results All That Matter?

Pure marketers working online look at the web as merely a communication tool to get across a message. Pure designers look at a webpage as a canvass where they can express their creativity and “paint a picture”. How do we find a happy medium between these two extremes?

For me, results are NOT all that matter. Yes they are a mandatory requirement. I won’t build a website that doesn’t have some purpose and the site design has to assist in achieving that purpose. However I will not make choices purely to maximize results, I will make choices to maximize personal satisfaction, which includes results and other more creative aspects of myself and my ego.

Copy Counts

Of course when we come down to it, the copy, the written words, are the most crucial element of any blog or online marketing strategy. As is well known, it’s the content that carries a blog and the copy that makes a sale. We really should spend 80% of our time working on the content and 20% working on the design, if not even a more disparate ratio.

I find it surprising how many business don’t use the services of a professional copywriter for their websites. It is the words on the site that are responsible for the sales (in an 80/20 sense), yet most people care more about how a website looks. Of course for blogging we are not necessarily trying to make a sale so copywriting for sales may not be relevant, but it’s still important to think more about content than design, and this week I have been doing the opposite.

That being said, if your blog is your hobby, then a design change is much like getting a new paint job for your bike. It’s fun - that’s why you are doing it - so you can spend as long as you like on design indulging in the “beauty” of it all regardless of the audience you might be neglecting by not writing for a week.

New Content

Speaking of content, I will be publishing a new article series once the new blog design launches here at Entrepreneur’s Journey. Last year I talked about an eBook I was producing for this site focused on starting an Internet business. I’ve just about finished it. I’ve decided to release it in two formats, as individual articles for this blog and as a complete eBook package. So stay tuned, there is some good stuff coming!

Yaro Starak
Blog Designer

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Here’s something you die-hard online direct marketers should love - Aweber has a facility to do split testing of broadcast emails you send out. I just sent out an email to my Entrepreneur’s Journey email list (you join by filling in the form above next to the big red subscribe arrow) and I noticed the split-testing option for the first time. I haven’t used split testing yet but seeing how excited some of my marketing friends get when it comes to split testing I know it’s a powerful tool.

What Is Split Testing?

In a nutshell split testing allows you to expose multiple elements to your audience and test them to see which works better. In most cases it’s all about increasing conversion rates. Taking an email broadcast example, if you are going to send out a broadcast email to your mailing list and that email is designed to elicit a response from your audience, you can use the split testing option to send out up to four different emails and see which gets the best response.

This is how Aweber describes the feature -

You may test up to 4 split test groups of varying percentages. For example, if you want a split test with 10%, 10%, 10%, and a final group of 70% it will automatically randomly divide your opt-in list into unique groups. You can then enter your broadcast text into those messages and send them. Send your broadcasts all at once or wait for feedback and results before mailing each group. If you want to create less than 4 groups just enter the percentages for those groups. For example, 25%, 25%, and 50% would great 3 groups.

Pretty cool hey! If your business depends on email lists, and most online business in some way or the other do, this is a fantastic tool that provides the analytical marketer exactly what they like - statistics on conversion rates and a means to tightly control the split testing process.

Keep Your Variables Controlled

The important thing with split testing is to be certain to test each element independently. If you change multiple elements in each test then you don’t have any clear relationship to correlate a change in response, it could be because of any element change.

For example if you send out an email broadcast to your newsletter and you want to increase the number of people clicking a link in the newsletter you can split test the anchor text (link description) in different email broadcasts. If you hold all the other elements constant and send out emails with only different anchor text you can learn which generates a better click-through rate. This information can then be used and refined for future broadcasts.

Statistics Don’t Lie

Marketers love split testing because statistics don’t lie and have no emotions tied to them. It’s simply about the numbers, in particular the conversion rates. While no split test can be 100% accurate because we are dealing with humans, you can draw some fairly conclusive statistics provided your sample is large enough.

Tools like Aweber make this process completely automated providing you with easy to use forms and clear basic numbers at the end. Once your split test is complete you have percentages explaining the results of your test and provided you kept your variables in control your results will be statistically valid.

Yaro Starak

PS - I actually hate statistics - I even failed business stats at university, but I’m very aware of how vital they are to business and how easily accessible they are to online business owners. I’d be stupid not to take advantage of them especially when when we are talking about things like split testing, which is not too complicated.

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I was having a chat with a pretty young girl at a bar near my house last Friday night. We discussed what we both do with our lives and as usual I faced some trouble describing what I do (see What Do We Do For A Living?). After covering the usual pleasantries we moved on to more deep and meaningful discussions and the topic invariable progressed to religion and faith. We shared similar beliefs and while we both don’t ascribe to a particular religion we do have faith.

This morning I was again mentally assessing where I am going with my blogging and business in general and I realized that a lot of what I do is based on faith. I don’t in particular have very specific goals, rather general medium and long term things I want to do and achievements I would like to complete in the near future. I work towards these targets in a very faith based manner, committing myself to certain activities, like writing articles for this blog, that don’t necessarily provide an easy-to-measure return.

I could look at things simply as return on investment in money terms, but that would not be a fair judgement because a lot of the value I derive from my business, and in fact life in general, is intrinsic. Strictly using financial metrics to determine success would be like using someone’s net worth to judge their character and value has a human being, which sadly some people do. This is not a method that leads to healthy relationships and I would never associate with people that were so callous.

Business As A Religion

I have a few friends that I meet with regularly who share my passion for business. In fact some of them have even more passion for business than I do. After one meeting with them you can see that their business is the main focus in their life. For some their business enjoys the majority of their daily headspace, even surpassing the time contemplating sex (yes these are male friends). Business has become a part of who they are. Business is a part of who I am. If you are reading this then business is probably a part of who you are too.

Religion is a set of rules and guidelines to live your life in a way that is positive and rewarding. Religion provides faith, something intangible that can be called on when times are tough or when things happen that are out of our control. Religion for many people is a rock providing support and a map to follow, a means to find clarity and purpose amongst confusion and despondency.

Business provides an entrepreneur with purpose. When times are tough faith keeps an entrepreneur working long after other people, those that could be said to possess less faith, would have given up. While blind faith is not a good thing, certainly strong faith and courage of conviction are vital for any business person to carry on despite whatever obstacles are thrown at them.

Business provides an entrepreneur with meaning. An enlightened entrepreneur works towards building something that enhances many people’s lives, not just lines his or her own pockets. By creating a business that employs people, provides helpful products or services and creates prosperity for many, the sum effect is an expansion of positivity. While this wonderfully positive picture isn’t always the case in our corporate environment I choose to have faith in the humane part of each entrepreneur and will admire only those that give back more than they take out.

When business people get together they share the faith. Entrepreneurs discuss commerce, opportunities and advise each other on the best course of action in a given situation. It’s as if there are a set of rules, some written, some intuitively understood that are guiding these people. When entrepreneurs network they call on their collective understanding and knowledge to help each other and create something greater than the sum of the parts. It’s as if they are divinely inspired.

Keep Your Faith

Fanaticism is dangerous, but a healthy mix of faith and reality work well together. Personally I follow my own ever-evolving doctrine that guides my life and business activities. Living in the moment and focusing on the present gives me satisfaction. Work, or as I prefer to call it - creative expression - keeps me enthusiastic and motivated. Money is a reward for persistent effort and giving more than you take. Other rewards are intangible, such as positive feedback, having a positive impact on other people’s lives, increased personal confidence, clarity of purpose, maturity and the ability to remove yourself from negative influences and thought patterns.

Understanding and balancing your own strengths and weaknesses and working towards your own self improvement should be your primary goals in life. Being a business person, an entrepreneur, gives you membership to a special club of people who share a special religion. Your faith in yourself and your actions will greatly impact what you achieve as a person and as a business owner.

Yaro Starak
Faithful

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