Prioritization

I have a full time job and a two kids to take care. The process of balancing family life, career and the on-line business has been a challenge. The only time that I have to work on the on-line business is after ten pm, when my kids has gone to bed. This leaves me around an hour to 90 minutes which lets me work on the online business.

When you are short of time, you would quickly learn about prioritization. The first thing that I would normally do is to read the local papers or magazines about news on food or dining etiquette. I would take note or cut out whatever information which I think it could be useful for the site. Once done, I would see how I can incorporate the information onto the site. My site better-dining is all about food knowledge and dining etiquette. Therefore, information and content is the thing that I spend most of my time on. Layout and link building is secondary importance. In fact, I do not even have a stragety to built traffic to my site. In my opinion, if I have the information and content that people needs, the traffic will eventually come.

For those who are working on your own business. You have to constantly ask yourself what drives your company's growth. If you know what is that, do whatever you can to work on it. Sometimes it is too easy to stray off track because something else is a easier to do. Ask yourself this question "What I am doing now, will it bring any long term benefit to my business?" You have to be realistic with your answers.

Good luck!

Started to Monetize

It has been more than a year since I started the Better-Dining site. Every night for the last 13 months, I spent whatever time that I can to built the site. This includes designs, write up contents and even research.

The visitor traffic was gradually went from 1 a month to an average of 30 a month. A number which I think I can finally monetize it by signing up with adsense.

The code extraction from adsense has been straight forward. But putting it up onto the site can be tricky. You have think about placing the ads without being intrusive to your visitor. Yet, enough to attract their attention to click on it. Just like web design, the placing of ads is more of an art than science.

For now, I will just place those ads on top and at the bottom of my pages. Moving on, besides needing to tweak the site design, layout but also the position of the ads.

Building Better-Dining

As of now, the better-dining site has around 65 pages. The average new visitors are a miserly 7 a day. I am still building contents on a daily basis. Content building is still king.

To drive more traffic, have to go beyond the site. Writing for ezinearticles comes into mind...

Why?

Since young, I have always wanted to start my own business. I have always wondered how it is like to really run my own show. I actually have a decent day job in the IT industry. In fact, if I hang onto the job, I will have a very comfortable life.

Then, why am I doing all these? Family and friends all said I am not cut out to be a good businessman. To me, I am just chasing my own dream. I supposed it is just like having a hobby. Instead, I am trying to built a business.

Money is not really the main motivation. But I just want to do something that I enjoy and tell myself that I have done it. To live life more, we need to take more risk. For me, the biggest regret in life is not about actually doing something but not doing something that the heart tells us to do.

In the many blog entries. You will read about my journey on building the site www.better-dining.com as my core business. I hope that I can make enough advertising revenue to keep the site up and sell some kitchenware through the site as well.

You will read about my frustrations and action plans. My other short term ideas that might make me some quick money and possibly materials that I find it inspiring.

If you are looking for a success guide or success stories, you have come to the wrong blog. I am struggling just like everyone else. Furthermore, I do not have the support of family and friends. Thus I am alone in this. If you want to witness a journey to success or maybe a journey to ultimate business doom. You have come to the right blog.

Let the journey begin....