360aday.com

OK, so if you’ve been wondering about different systems available online to help you out with making some extra cash, then you’ll definitely want to checkout the Shoemoney System which is set to launch on January 26 around 2:00 PM ET (that’s noon where I live in MT timezone). I had the pleasure of meeting Jeremy Shoemaker at a poker tournament at PubCon in Las Vegas this past November (along with that Lyndon Reid guy) and immediately realized he’s the real deal. I respect him and the information he’s put out there so naturally, I had signed up for his email list a long time ago. It was because of this I got a special sneak look at some of the amazing things included. Not only does the Shoemoney System take you from the ground up, but it is scheduled to include some amazing bonuses.

The single greatest bonus included is over $2000 in FREE advertising. Advertisers like Google, Facebook, MySpace and AOL and that’s just the start. Jeremy announced live on his UStream channel that as an example you’d get $250 from AOL. Or how about $50 from Facebook? Not only can you learn some awesome affiliate marketing and online money making tips from the Shoemoney System, but you’ll be able to actually TRY OUT ADVERTISING NETWORKS–FREE!

I don’t know what you’re waiting for. Go watch the first video, and then the others and signup for the Shoemoney System NOW!

For those of you who know me, you’ll know that I rarely have a shortage of what I consider my “million dollar ideas” to build on. In fact, I fairly regularly add to the list. A while back I wrote a post about thought vs. action. It seemed to me it was a turning point in my thought process…one of turning it into action. Fast forward a little over 6 months and where am I now? For starters, I’m off on leave (that’s really hard to say and hard to talk about). A long story short, I’m a big ass ball of stress. In addition to that my “million dollar ideas” list is larger and not a single one has been checked off anywhere near complete. There are some tiny modules that are working here and there, but nothing impressive at all.

I consistently find myself in a position where I’ve got a great idea and don’t act on it. Years back when the whole Napster vs. RIAA thing was coming to light of being illegal I was chatting with friends and telling them about a different, legal way to do MP3s on the internet and ensure the artists continued to make money. Well that idea is essentially what is now known as iTunes (and many other online music stores). At the time however, there were none…not a single online shop doing it. I’ll stamp that with a big FAIL on it as well.

Last week I was watching episode 9 (second segment) of Dragons Den on CBC. I love the show. There’s something fascinating about watching people do stupid things. But at least they’re up there doing it. I had been chatting with my brother about an idea I had which we were calling BlueBinder (@BlueBinder) and how cool it would be to pitch it on Dragons Den and get some capital, but more importantly the expert knowledge of these highly successful dragons. All five of them would be a valuable asset to the business. Well just the other week, GrubCanada pitched (successfully too I might add) and the thought of BlueBinder flickered and almost died. Then a friend forwarded me an article from TechCrunch about GrabyMyTable and it knocked another dent in the side of BlueBinder…though I’m sure OpenTable will give them a good run. Luckily there is still at least one USP (unique selling point) I have with BlueBinder and I’m hoping to capitalize and honestly competition is a good thing…it gives you someone to target. That being said, action is imminent and required IMMEDIATELY. This idea, is honestly on life support right now but can definitely be revived for huge success. I’d love to find out some information on patenting the idea/process that I have for BlueBinder’s USP.

Referencing these recent ‘insights’ I went back to have a look at the list of “million dollar ideas” and started going down the list:

• SPRY: While not a million dollar company right now, at least it’s in progress and slowly making some income. Most would consider that a good thing and I’m definitely in that boat.
• uPlay: I guess you could make this similar to Pandora—at least from my understanding of Pandora. Since I’m in Canada I have a hard time accessing it to actually test drive it.
• BlueBinder: As mentioned above, similar sites exist out in the market place that are doing certain components and other various concepts but none are actually doing it the way I think it should be done or how I want to do it.
• Community Connection: This one was a huge learning experience. Over $20k of personal cash invested in it (and still trying to pay that off) and a huge education as a result. The publishing industry is definitely an interesting one. The product was ahead of its time and I have no regrets for doing it. There’s a slight twist I’m planning to put on it that will hopefully have it making some revenue when I decide to revisit it in 2010.
• Back 2 School: I can’t take full credit for this one. A lot of the basis of this idea was from my fiancee. A mother in Ontario has done something similar (it took me forever to find in Google), though not the same concept. I even had contacted various people at Staples, Grand & Toy and Office Depot to get communications going. It’s definitely a little bit of a challenge to get high up enough into some of these organizations.
• Hotel Reviews: Again, not a complete idea of my own but the guys at Oyster are doing something similar. This one is moving forward slowly and will hopefully launch in Q1 of 2010.

The best part about ALL the ideas above is that they’re similar, not the same (with the exception of the iTunes one from the mid-90s). What does this mean? Well it means I need to take action. The only way to become successful is by taking action. It goes back to the wonderful grade 11 physics class with Dr. Flint and the whole “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” theory. I never realized how that would actually play over into life as well as the scientific realm.

Of course the list of “million dollar ideas” above is not complete. It also doesn’t give more then a 40,000 foot high-level view of a few of the things I’ve been thinking of. Have you got suggestions on things to add or features you’d like to see on them? Simply comment below.

My thought around this for a moral of the story is take action. And more to the point, why not take action today. Tomorrow is not a promise.

I look forward to hearing about your lost “million dollar ideas” from sitting around with inaction. More importantly I look forward to hearing your stories of success. Please, leave a comment.

Today I was beginning to think of new names for a different business venture I’m considering. I typically go to dictionary.com then use the thesaurus. Of course I could always go to thesaurus.com but spelling dictionary is just that much easier. Based on Google Trends it would appear I’m not the only one who feels this way. Having been to the site just a day or two ago I was stunned for a moment when I was presented with their new home page. Then I realized it was in fact an ad for Adobe.

dictionary.com vs. thesaurus.com

Naturally seeing somethings of this magnitude I clicked the link but was a little disappointed to find it was for CS4 Design Standard – Student Edition. It sucks for someone who’s not a student (like myself) but the point of this post was actually to analyze the placement & ad itself.

The colors and layout of the page are wonderful and consistent with the Adobe brand. It’s consistent throughout the entire process (the landing page on Adobe has it as well) and the use of pulchritudinous in the ad copy was brilliant. I definitely had to type that in to see what it was. Overall the ad was well executed but page design lacked a little common sense. On a 1024×768 screen resolution there’s horizontal scrolling and the ad itself is almost below the fold. It’s interesting though to see this kind of “takeover” on a page that gets well over 100,000 daily unique visitors. I wonder if we’ll see more of this tactic from Adobe and other advertisers in the near future? Who do you think will be next running a takeover page like this?

Recently I had a client that we had come up with an amazing domain name to help promote his local Extreme Pita franchise. The goal was to attract more schools & businesses as regular catering clients. The domain, we thought was clever and simply was extremepitacatering.com – to the point, and key word rich.

Well unfortunately head office didn’t think so. Honestly, it’s not my fault they didn’t register it in the first place. Apparently the franchisee can utilize the Extreme Pita name in their domain, but not other terms. We’re still not clear on this, but honestly don’t want to hold up additional actions around it either. So since the location is in North East Calgary, the decision was to make it simple and still relevant so we opted for extremepitane.com – in fact it’s even shorter, so good for a Twitter world.

The issue came about though in trying to figure out the fastest, easiest way to get the domains redirected without having to copy over code and not losing any (though minimal) search results. A nice Google search for .htaccess forward domain generated a nice lead on a forum. I read through the results and came up with the following solution.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} extremepitacatering.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://extremepitane.com/$1 [R=301,L]

It was so quick and simple and nice to do. Something I’ve never had the experience of doing on a Windows machine. The pure power of Apache is definitely something I won’t sacrifice for clients. Utilizing the power of mod_rewrite is even better, but that’s for another post. BTW, if you’re hungry, go visit Dan at extremepitane.com and tell him we sent you.

There are many forks in the road as one travels through life. I for one am continually identifying them. There are also plenty of distractions along the way. New projects. New ideas. New clients. Old clients. The ever longing quest for money, freedom, time or whatever it is that drives the individual. For me, right now, I’m at a place where I need to take action.

As the saying goes “talk is cheap.” So is thought honestly. Without action, there’s really nothing. So for me now I need to take action and stay focused. That’s where the challenge comes in. In addition to holding a full-time, 40 hour a week job doing web design & development I also do my own gig outside that time and have a desire/need to be the best father I can be to an amazing baby girl. Toss in trying to be a respectable, decent partner and then add a dose of sleep! That really leaves me with very little time to work on the numerous ideas that are already in my head, let alone the ideas that seem to enter every day.

So what am I to do? It’s a matter of maximizing my time, efficiency and remaining focused. There’s being focused again. That’s where I’m at and know I need to take action so I can progress through the current fork in my road. I have a burning desire to break free from the current “9-5 boredom” while being underpaid and under-appreciated for the work I do. I’m confident that I have some multi-million dollar ideas in my head and those who I’ve shared them with see possibility as well. A few days ago on Twitter I slapped up a nice little tweet that really shows a little thinking outside the box. (If you’re trying to figure out the annual salary, just multiply it by 7).

That’s it, that’s all. At just a mere 10¢/second I can easily retire by the time I’m 32. A goal I’ve had for a few years. It’s so close I can taste it, but I need that focus. I need to focus on the four projects currently in progress…not to mention the others bouncing around. Heck, I even had one this morning while making breakfast. There’s no shortage of ideas.

I guess what I need to know is how do you remain focused? What techniques do you use to focus and how are you motivated to do “work for free” that ideally puts a LOT OF COIN in your pocket in the future? I need your help to keep me focused. You can seriously contribute to my success without financial expense or investment…just take a few minutes to leave a well, thought out comment. Please.