Back to my roots January 22, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Work , 1 comment so farI’ve got an idea for a Facebook app, so it’s back to my programming roots. I haven’t done any serious programming since high school. PHP, be gentle.
I put together a “Hello world” Facebook application with the assistance of Facebook’s tutorial. It only took about four hours, though a bunch of the time was due to discovering the hard way that my webhost’s online document editor is buggy. Damn you and your GUI, siteground.com! I think I’ll be switching to bluehost eventually…
Your thoughts?Outsourcing my life: step zero December 10, 2007
Posted by Niels in : Work , add a commentBetween my speaking engagements, my semi-weekly seminars in Seattle, and other assorted events, it is well past time for me to have a professional website. Something a little more professional than a personal blog where I discuss my battles with food poisoning. And with all the professional networking events I’ve been attending, not having business cards is really inexcusable.
I could probably find a friend to set up a website for me at little to no cost, but I figured a project this simple would be a great opportunity to explore outsourcing. Within the next year, I hope to be outsourcing a lot more of my life, from various web issues, to hiring a virtual assistant, to customer support for whatever business I end up creating. And for a few hundred bucks, a clear-cut, closed-ended project like this is a great way for me to learn the ropes.
So, within a month, I should have a nice, professional website up and running. Link will be posted as soon as I have it.
Your thoughts?My career as a professional model begins: the trials and tribulations of being professionally really really good looking September 25, 2007
Posted by Niels in : Personal, Work , add a commentSaturday marked my first day at a professional model.
Alexandra’s agency sent her info about a hair modeling opportunity downtown so I tagged along for the auditions on Friday. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived they’d chosen models for most of the cuts they needed and Alexandra’s features were too “dominant” for the remaining cuts. But apparently no other guys showed up, so they asked me if I wanted a free haircut and $300.
Umm… yes.
I came back the next day to get my hair dyed. They elected to dye it the same color it already was, the end result being that about ten grey hairs on my head are now black. And a lot of my scalp.
I committed to five hours on Saturday, but fortunately it only took 90 minutes to dye my hair the color it already was, so I got to leave early and go to a concert, followed by Bellevue Fashion Week, of course.
Sunday was the real workday, though. 9 am to 9 pm. I had to wake up at 7:30 in the morning! I didn’t even know there was a 7:30 in the morning!
But I arrived at the venue right on time, where I then waited and talked and waited and read and waited for several hours. At one point I overheard the following conversation: “And is Niels ok?” “Yeah, he’s just about done.”
Just about done? They dyed my hair the same color and hadn’t even touched it with scissors yet!
In the end, I got about a 5-minute trim before we went down to sit/stand for about 2 hours in front of a few hundred hairstylists.
Whatever. $300 in my pocket, met some cool people, added a new experience to my list. Good day.
Your thoughts?Recommended copywriting books September 20, 2007
Posted by Niels in : Life, the universe, and everything, Personal, Work , 5 commentsI became interested in copywriting only about three months ago. I’d spent the past year traveling around the world teaching people to improve their relationships, but there was still something missing in my life.
The drive to learn and grow has been a constant force in my life, both on the personal side and in my work. Even though I struggled with depression in graduate school, I did get a lot of satisfaction from constantly pushing my the boundaries of scientific knowledge, as well as my own intellectual boundaries.
The whole point of doing research is that the answers are always new. I knew that at the end of every day at work, I would know something that I didn’t know that morning.
I love helping people improve their social lives, but after a year and a half of teaching, the problems I saw every workshop were the same. All the students struggle with the same issues, which is great, because I’ve seen the problems before and I know how to fix them, but at the same time - I get bored.
When I’m not challenged at work, I look for new outlets.
The other instructors and I had thought that one outlet could be the creation of new workshops. So we came up with the Advanced Art of Attraction workshop, which was incredible. I’ve never had a group of students get so much out of the workshop.
Unfortunately, my boss’s viewpoint is that additional workshops do not add any value to the company. Creating content, whether in the form of a product or a workshop, is easy. Each customer has a certain amount they’ll be willing to spend on our products, so if they don’t spend it on our latest kickass workshop, they’ll spend it on a new kickass product once we eventually come out with it.
The end result being that additional products or workshops aren’t really worth anything to the company. Lance turns down opportunities to market other people’s products all the time. What is worth money to the company is getting new customers. And for that Lance needs people who can write sales copy.
So it seemed like a good time to start learning copywriting.
I’m beginning to get the hang of it. I’ve got a long way to go before I’m as good as I’d like to be, but apparently I’m good enough to sell my trash on eBay. Which means I’m good enough to write a sales page for my own products, whatever they end up being.
At this point, I’ve given up on any monetary rewards from Pickup 101, so I’m focusing more on gaining skills that will help me in my own business. And from selling my desk and bed on Craigslist, to getting rid of my old junk on eBay, to using Google AdWords, copywriting has been fantastic.
First of all, anything by Dan Kennedy
Lance pointed me to Tested Advertising Methods
But my favorite book so far was also recommended by Lance. Cash Copy: How to Offer Your Products and Services So Your Prospects Buy Them
The thirty day challenge begins again September 15, 2007
Posted by Niels in : Work , add a commentThe thirty day challenge isn’t about sales. Ideally you’ll make a few dollars, but it’s really a full month of market research. Find a niche, find traffic in that niche, see if that traffic consists of buyers. My old niche didn’t have enough buyers.
In that light, the market research was actually quite successful. Craig and I learned within a month that our niche wasn’t worth pursuing, before we invested a single dollar and before we invested large amounts of time. Ed Dale says that every internet business he starts begins through this process.
So, we don’t really have a choice. Thirty Day Challenge, round 2, here I come! Craig and I did some preliminary niche research yesterday and I found a few ideas I liked. One of them actually had a huge payout and terrible looking AdWords competition, so I threw up a few Google ads while I was at it and hopefully will even make a few bucks on the side off of that.
Your thoughts?