Did you know that while four is generally expressed as IV in Roman numerals, it is also acceptable to use IIII? With that in mind, I suppose I could have used VIIII for nine, but I opted for the more common IX. Actually, while I’m sure IIII can be used in lieu of IV, I’m not sure if VIIII can be used in lieu of IX. At any rate, maybe you learned something new today, that being that IIII is acceptable for indicating four.

So, on to the progress update….

Two weeks ago, my goals were to (1) complete a client’s website which I did do that week, (2) clear off my computer desktop which wasn’t completed, (3) remove old computer from my desk which wasn’t completed and (4) organize scattered notes on the aforementioned computer’s keyboard which was, more or less, completed that week.

Number three was carried over to last week goal’s. While did not carry over number two, I pretty much accomplished it last week. Still a few odds and ends, but it’s mostly cleaned up now.

Anyway, last week’s goals were to (1) finish archiving files and move old computer off my desk, (2) take product photo for my eCommerce site and put it online, (3) setup printer/scanner, (4) do some work for the redesign of my flagship website and (5) start getting things together for my antiques’ blog.

Well, let’s see how poorly I fared this past week.

First, I did not complete archiving files and moving the old computer off my desk. But, I did make significant progress in doing so. So, there is that at least!

Second, while it should have been easy to take the product photo and put it online, I didn’t get around to it. I did manage to take other photos, and I should have done this at the same time, but pretty much forgot all about it during those periods the camera was in my hands. I could argue that the camera’s batteries went dead, which they did, so I had downtime when I was recharging them. But, since I had a spare set of batteries, I guess I cannot use that excuse.

Third, nope. Setting up the printer/scanner requires that the old computer be off the desk. Since that didn’t happen, setting up the printer/scanner didn’t happen either.

Fourth, nope.

Fifth, I did start getting materials ready for my antiques blog, including taking some photos! So, at least I remembered that when I had the camera out.

I guess it will be easy to figure out this week’s goals:

1. Finish archiving files and move the old computer off my desk.
2. Take product photo for my eCommerce site and put it on the site.
3. Setup printer/scanner. Shouldn’t be too hard. Once the old computer is off the desk, I can put the printer/scanner in its place and plug it in.
4. Do some work on the redesign for my flagship website.
5. Order a new hard drive for my server. It’s making a lot of noise, and I think I should order a replacement…

Yes, I did copy and paste some of that from last week’s goal list! You would think keeping the list short would allow me to finish more things, but you would have thought wrong!

So, what did I accomplish this past week?

I did manage to make excellent progress cleaning off my computer’s desktop, so it’s a lot better organized. I also made excellent progress in archiving the files off the old computer that needs to be moved. I spent most of Saturday on that alone, as well as some time during the weeknights.

Also, doing some double duty, while archiving on one computer, I was working on blogs on the other. I managed to get dcr Writes dot Com looking more to my liking.

Am I boring you yet? Hang in there, there’s an announcement coming.

Additionally, I did some website clean up, which was mainly deleting one website I had and forwarding its domain to another, similar website. The deleted one had an unappealing domain name–I’m not sure why I ever thought it was a good name–so I redirected it to the one that had the better name.

Oh, and I started a new blog. Sort of. But, I’ll explain that in a separate post. I started it here, but went too long so it’s best to have it as a separate post.

Sabrina posted a great meme today: “What early (before you were 10 years old) ideas did you have about money or finance that turned out to be totally (and amusingly) wrong?”

I’m going to do the same meme, the same way. If you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged. You don’t have to do a blog post and linkback; just leave a comment to this post. Easy!

If you want to see my answer, you’ll have to check Sabrina’s blog.

Everyone who responds here in the comments will get some link love!

I know that some of you don’t read John Chow’s site every day, but, even if you do, here’s a post that’s worth a first or second look: “Earn Money Online Just by Showing Up.” True, it’s not quite that easy, but you have little to no chance of success if you throw in the towel too soon or go about things halfway.

I pretty much manage to do #1, but am not quite there yet with #2. Numbers 3 through 5, well, I guess I need to work harder!

And, don’t forget that the root of all evil, John Chow, is giving away an $80 Waterman pen from the promotional pens maker, 1234Pens.com. To enter, you just have to blog about it, like this. Feeling a little deja vu?

Have you ever noticed that some of the most popular articles that get passed around are the ones that tell you things you already know?

Well, hopefully, this will be one of those, as I share some tips you already know.

Find a Bunch of Fools. If you can find some fools, it is not too difficult to separate them from their money. In fact, I won’t even make any suggestions as anyone with a modicum of creativity can easily develop some fool-proof methods. On the one hand, this may be the least ethical method of earning money. On the other hand, if they willingly fork over their cash without any force or deception on your part, perhaps you may be ethically okay.

The difficult bit here is finding a sufficient number of fools, or one wealthy fool, from which you can earn a decent income. Mind you, we all joke about how stupid people are and the dumbing down of society in general, and we see people all the time spending money on junk that isn’t worth it, yet it still seems hard to find a sufficient number of fools to give their money to you instead of the other guy.

For one thing, the other guy has slick marketing you can’t afford. You can’t afford to run TV ads, especially during prime time, so what shot do you have at getting the foolish masses to mail you checks?

While fools are plentiful, they do seem scarce when you need them. They’re scattered everywhere and, without the resources to reach them where they live (i.e., in front of the TV), it’s going to be an uphill battle trying to secure your income on the cash-dispensing fools among us.

Clearly, we need a better approach.

Create Something of Value. You can build a career out of selling nothing but junk, but it’s not easy. If you’re highly skilled at marketing, your odds are better. But, for the rest of us, in order to achieve some level of success, we need to create something of value.

Mind you, you may lose some of your foolish customers this way. Some fools just cannot recognize quality when they see it, and would rather spend hundreds of dollars on something that will break two years from now than spend a couple hundred dollars on something that will last a lifetime.

Although, you cannot judge them too harshly. They were probably raised in a disposable society where you simply toss things that are broken, instead of fixing them, or throw perfectly functional things away simply because they’re not the right color or style anymore. If you have the storage space, you could pick these items up from the curb and sell them for big bucks a few years from now when they become collectibles. Remember that when you begin seeing some nice looking analog TVs sitting curbside in your neighborhood. Today’s trash is tomorrow’s treasure.

But, I suppose I have digressed a bit, after all, you want to make money now, not years from now. You might want to reconsider that mentality and plan for both the short term and the long term. Oh, sure, you could believe that the world is going to come to an end any day now, but, if you’re wrong, you don’t want to be living in a van down by the river ten years from now when the world did not end and you ran out of cash.

So, what you need to do to separate people from their money is to create something of value. It can be a product or a service. You’re creative. What can you design, do or build that will make someone else’s life easier or better? Or, what existing product can you do a better job of selling and promoting than the next guy? It need not be something new; it can be something old. Heck, even in economic downswings, people still need to eat. There are plenty of opportunities and it is beyond the scope of this post to find that niche for you.

Go ahead and do some research. I’ll wait…

Okay, now that you have figured out your offering, how do you go about separating people from their money and buying it from you? Even with a solid product with a great value, it can be difficult to convince people of the value of that product, especially if they are in a foolish mind that day.

There must be an easier way, no?

And there is.

What you need to do is to offer them something that’s of greater value than the money they are parting with. Most people talk about having a fair exchange, but that’s something that’s difficult to get. Everyone wants a deal! They only talk about having a fair exchange when they’ve been shortchanged on deals in the past.

But, what everyone wants is a good deal for them. You need to offer them something that’s of greater value than what they’re giving you. Don’t tell them that, though! Don’t give them sob stories about how they’re ripping you off and all that. That’ll just make you sound like a slick salesperson, and they won’t believe you.

No, you need to convince them that what you’re offering is worth more than what they’re giving you, but in such a way that they think that you don’t know that what you’re offering is worth more than what you think it is.

That’s not to say that you’re going to try to trick them or anything. No, no, no. That would go back to the first point, and you can’t have a steady business relying exclusively on fools. No, you really have to give them something of value so that, even long after the sale, they still believe that they got the upper hand in the deal–that, if anything, they ripped you off, not the other way around.

Then, they’ll be back for more!

That’s why you’ll see add-ons for many products. Buy now, and get these free reports! Buy now, and get a year’s worth of refills! And so on.

You can add something to the deal that is inexpensive for you, but a great value for them. Imagine the refills cost you $10 and you normally sell them for $20. You can offer them as an add-on for $10 or, if the product markup is good, for free. The buyer saves $10-$20, plus shipping charges and the hassle of ordering later on.

That’s just one example. The point is to offer your customer something of greater value than the money they are parting with. It’s hard to part with your money, even when you know you’re getting a fair price. But, if you know you’re getting a great deal, it’s so much easier to hand that money over, isn’t it?

Because you’re still thinking of money. You’re thinking how much money you are saving in the long run by spending this amount of money now. Makes it easier to justify the purchase to yourself, and makes your wallet a little looser.

That’s the type of response you want from your customers! Once again, though, I should point out that you really must have a great offer. Someone who gets a good deal will tell a friend; someone who gets ripped off will tell 10 friends, their family, their co-workers and possibly the 5 o’clock news.

So, there you go. Start separating!

Last week, I listed four things I wanted to get done for the week.

The first was to finish a client’s website. I did that last Wednesday, which was pretty quick, at least with regard to my task list.

Next was to clear off my computer’s desktop. Haven’t done that yet. Made it worse, in fact.

Third was to remove an old computer from my desk. Did not complete that, but did make some headway. I organized (to some degree) the files on the computer, so that I can archive them to CD and delete them from the hard drives. The time-consuming bit is that I actually used this computer as a network backup drive, as well as extra storage space. Most of that is on a hard drive that is easily removed, and my initial thought was to simply move that to my other computer. Well, seeing that all the slots in the other computer are filled, I cannot do that. I could put it in an external drive case, but the drive may be soldered onto the expansion card that it’s on, but maybe not. In either case, before I mess around with it, I’d like to at least back it up. So, that item is still in progress.

On the other hand, I did clean off a bunch of the stuff that was stacked on top of the computer (a tower case), so at least there is that done. Mostly.

Fourth was to organize the miscellaneous notes that were all over aforementioned computer’s keyboard. That is mostly done, just need to stick them in some envelopes for organization, which I’ll get at the office today. Some of the stuff I am still trying to think of a better way to organize, but at least they are out of the way for now.

So, here are my goals for this week:

1. Finish archiving files and move the old computer off my desk.
2. Take product photo for my eCommerce site and put it on the site. I have had the “models” sitting on my file cabinet for a long, long time. It’s time to take their picture and put it on the site!
3. Setup printer/scanner. Shouldn’t be too hard. Once the old computer is off the desk, I can put the printer/scanner in its place and plug it in.
4. Do some work on the redesign for my flagship website. Started on it a bit a couple weeks ago, but I need to work on it further. It will share some of the templates of my eCommerce site, so it’s like working on two things at once. I know the eCommerce site is going to take me longer to complete, so at least I can have the flagship site running full speed again, and get some ad revenue coming in from it. It’s not been updated in almost three years, so the ad revenue has taken a deep downturn, as well as traffic.
5. Start getting things together for my antiques blog.

Speaking of my antiques’ blog, y’all left me to my own devices here. I asked you for suggestions for a name, but y’all left me hanging. So, retroyears it is then!

I haven’t done a progress update in a while, because I haven’t gotten back into the swing of working on things since the holidays. Yes, I realize it’s mid-February…

So, I am going to go back to posting progress updates again. I’ll put “Progress Update” in the title, so you can skip them if you want, but I feel the need to do them because then, at least, it will provide some encouragement for me to actually get back to work on my eCommerce site.

Over the last couple days (the weekend mainly), I did do some work on the site again. But, before I get back onto it, I need to clear some obstacles out of my way. So, here are my goals for the next six days (which will allow me to post the next update on a Monday, as I did before, mostly).

1. Finish a client’s website. Just have some tweaking to do (tables not cooperating…) and it is done.
2. Clear off my desktop. The computer’s desktop, that is. What started out reasonably neat and orderly has turned into a complete mess.
3. Remove old computer from my desk. I have a computer on my desk that I don’t remember the last time I turned it on. I used it as a network backup system of sorts, but now that I have some blank DVDs, I don’t really need to do that anymore. Well, actually it would be a good idea, but if I get a smallish external hard drive, that would take up a whole lot less space than a full computer. Not to mention that this computer is probably ten years old. I need to move all the files off it, and then get it off my desk. It did good work, and maybe I’ll put it to work again in the future, but right now I need the space.
4. Organize all the miscellaneous notes that have accumulated on aforementioned computer’s keyboard, which also serves to confirm the computer has not been turned on in a long time.

I could go on, but if you give yourself too many tasks to accomplish at a time, you’ll just get overwhelmed and end up doing none of them. If I finish these before the Monday deadline, I can always move on to other things.

But, for right now, these are the things that need doing, as they form some of the biggest mental obstacles right now.

It seems like everyone’s getting into blogging these days. And, more and more businesses are doing it too. Terence Chang had a good article the other day on why you need a blog for your eCommerce store. But, there is also a downside to having a business blog, one that could cost you customers if you aren’t careful. Here are three mistakes that could steer potential (or existing!) customers away from your business site.

1. Complaining About Customers

   Probably all of us have an urge to share stories about “stupid” customers, but, while readers may enjoy the stories, it may discourage people from dealing with you. We’ve likely all done dumb things; in fact, some of us may be other people’s stupid customer story! Despite that, most of us really don’t like being the gluteus maximus of someone else’s joke, even anonymously. Plus, it could also give the impression you are a chronic complainer or difficult to work with. So, if people see that you share a lot of your “stupid” customer stories, they may be apt to just shop somewhere else.

2. Blogging Instead of Taking Care of Business

   If your blogging is standing in the way of customer service, you need to do something about it! Blogging can help you gain business, but if it’s taking time away from doing your actual business, that’s a problem. You need to look into doing some better time management or hiring some help. A blog that brings in business while costing you business is really not very cost effective.

3. Advertising Your Incompetence

   Similarly to sharing “stupid” customer stories, some people also enjoy sharing stories about the stupid things they’ve done. Now, while self-deprecating humor can be effective and allow people to relate to you on a more human level, you have to be very careful. If you share a lot of stupid mistakes you’ve made, you are more or less advertising your own incompetence, which could discourage people from buying from you. You may gain readers that want to hear about the stupid things you’ve done, but if they’re just reading your tales and shopping elsewhere, your blog is not helping your bottom line. Additionally, if it’s costing you existing customers, that’s no good either. This is an area you want to approach with caution!

One should also note that, even if your business blog is geared toward helping other people in your niche, as opposed to reaching out to customers, your customers will (unless you’ve been completely anonymous) find your blog (at least some of them anyway) and you still lose potential business as a result.

Having a business blog can be useful in attracting and maintaining customers and avoiding these pitfalls can help you to achieve a successful business blog!

A local school is having a fundraiser, I heard on the radio this afternoon. For more information, I am asked to visit their website.

I visit their website, and there is no information about a fundraiser. I check “Announcements.” Nope, nothing there. “Community?” Nope. Well, the PTA/Boosters are usually the ones to host fundraisers, so maybe something is in their section? Nope.

Finally, I click on “Newsletters.” That page doesn’t show a current newsletter, or any news for the matter, but has a link you can click on to view the list of newsletters. And, they haven’t had a new newsletter since last year. But opening the last newsletter of last year, in the middle of the newsletter, there, finally, is info on the fundraiser.

But, should it really be this difficult for someone to find something mentioned on the radio, especially since they’re being encouraged to visit your website to find more information?

I think not.

Were this an isolated incident, you could laugh it off as a silly mistake. Like in the old days, when people printed and distributed flyers about their new product or service, and made a very big omission: their phone number.

Instead, this still seems to happen too often these days. Really, shouldn’t people know better by now?

So, I am skipping around with my updates, rather than sticking to Mondays. Oops. Maybe this is the new trend, since I did a Thursday update once. Last update, though, was on a Monday.

I am nearly finished with the last task, which was mentioned in my last update. However, I am skipping ahead to the next part of the project. Why leave a portion unfinished? Because, once finished with the site, I will need to go back for minor fixes and tweaks–things that always come up after you’ve left them alone for a while or started using them more regularly. So, the odds and ends that need to be completed on the last task can be taken care of then. All the “heavy lifting” is done.

Today, I had resolved to complete the next particular task in the queue. That took me all of eight minutes, leaving me free to twiddle my thumbs for the rest of the day. Actually, I am composing this post in between that* and the next task. The next bit involves some thinking, as I decide how to accomplish certain goals. I may go clean something whilst I ponder…

*That being the last task and not the “twiddling my thumbs” part, which I’ve opted to skip for today.

Okay, so I missed a Monday, but I had a Thursday update, so I think that counts.

Anyway, the next task mentioned in that Thursday update is still underway… Plan to have it mostly finished this week. This one is a bit more involved, and includes tracking down some information I’ve had stored but haven’t touched in a while. (”A while” as in 15-23 months when I last worked on this part of the project…)

In any case, I am steadily marching closer and closer to completion.

So, while I get back to work, you might want to check out The Nerd Handbook. No, it’s not a how-to book for nerds; rather, it’s a guide for the people who love them.

It’s the wee hours of the morning on Thursday, and this week’s goal is DONE! And, that’s probably a good thing, since the next task in line is going to take a bit of time. So, extra time is good.

Meanwhile, it may have gotten lost “below the fold” yesterday, so be sure to give yesterday’s first post a read: “How the Hollywood Writers’ Strike Can Help Your Blog.” And, don’t forget about “Out of Touch” if you missed it Tuesday.

Happy Thursday!