Adiakritos Journal

I'm reviving this thread!

Where I've been all this time?

Well, for a few months I started to think "Fuck it. I'm just going to finish college, pick up chicks in my free time, and then get a job somewhere in some firm's marketing department, save my money, and then start a business."

Then a friend of mine knocked some sense in to me. He was like "dude, you really want to make $50k for the rest of your life? Learn to develop for the web and in 8-9 months of full time learning you'll be making $80/hour like my friend. I make $200k+ a year with a few investments here and there..."

I started learning Ruby on Rails in addition to continuing to get better at the basic languages, like CSS, HTML, Javascript/Jquery...

My friend who I mentioned got me a freelance job with one of his clients and for several months I made some nice money on the side while I started my first Rails application.

After some time I decided that I needed to spend more time working on my app (that's my priority, after all) instead of spreading myself so thin between working freelance, school, and my app, which got hardly any attention.

So now, I left the freelance job, got another long term freelance job with someone that needs less hours and pays a lot more, leaving me with plenty of time to work on my app.

I'm also purposely going to school part time to make room for my internet shenanigans.

So NOW, my app is taking form. Its like I'm giving birth to something awesome, and I can't wait until its ready to be unleashed unto the world :D

I'm undecided as far as the monetization goes. At the moment my focus is on making the app as great as possible.

Some ideas are to keep the app its self free, and provide a store, or a wiki of information users can check out, and leave a lot of affiliate links in there.

I don't know how often users will check the site, I personally have a spreadsheet that I use now in place of the app (which sucks balls, I can't wait to use my app for myself) that I check one a week. Other anal users would probably check it more than that.

Anyways, I'm still 22, so I hope to be rolling in dough by 24. I SHOULD be by now, had I stuck with pretty much any of my previous projects until today. I guess that's the point of living.. I had to learn persistence.
 


I read this book called "Getting Real" by 37Signals. It's really good for anyone who wants to build a web application.

I was going to go "feature" crazy on my app until I read that book. I realized I'd be making a huge mistake and waste a TON of my time.
 
I realized that there's not much to share right now other than the little victories I get every day from developing my app.

Like, I finally figured out how to render this popup box with jquery within this complex controller I've created, and I feel like a boss!

I'm still looking for the appropriate place to tell the world "Fuck yea! I get XYZ thing working in my app!"

It should get juicy when I get into the marketing part.. when I speak to bloggers in my industry and see if they want to try out my app and then promote it on their blog. Or when I get into writing copy for it, creating ad banners, thinking of a monetization strategy, testing...etc
 
My app is becoming more and more awesome every day.

Every second spent with college textbooks becomes harder and harder... nearly impossible for my brain to switch away from building my app.

I can easily spend from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed (without leaving the house) for 3 days straight working on my app and only peaking at my textbooks.

I'm either working on it directly to taking a break from coding to think about:

- How I'll market it. With a sales video or with regular adcopy. Will I use paid advertising or SEO, or both? If I go with paid advertising, where would I promot? If I go with SEO, what topics will I blog about, and how can I generate content automatically? These are the questions my brain will just munch on endlessly.

- Monetization strategies I could take. Subscription based, or sell lifetime memberships once for a single price and then focus on backend sales, building an email list to promote more products, selling ad space, and building an affiliate program to bring in more traffic.

I read a story from this one guy who makes over $100,000 every MONTH, starting from 0 all within 8 months with affiliate products!

LOL Imagine how much the creators of those products are earning, thanks to him?!

And then another dude who went with an ecommerce model and it took him I think 2-3 failed businesses before hitting his $100,000 in sales in a single month.

These guys can't even writing english that well and they sell to americans primarily.

All this is leading me to want to drop school, damnit. Once and for all I want to break free from school and work on my millions. At least I have a plan. At least I spend my time, day in and day out working on it. At least I don't sit around working as a waiter and spending my money on clothes and weed or guns alcohol or w/e bullshit like my friends do.

Ok, I bought a gun too, but that doesn't discount all my hard work. I turn pale from my lack of sunlight. My family knows the back of my head (because I'm on the computer so much working) than my face. Of course, I do spend quality time with them regularly. But still...

They tell me they believe in me, but I'm not sure they can handle me saying "I'm quitting college with 1.5 years left."

If I could afford to leave my house, and THEN quit, so I don't have to see or hear my mothers bickering and crying and what not... that would make it so much easier to focus.
 
Yea, no I'm not gonna quit school. I'm gonna just keep doing what I'm doing, that is - school part time, working freelance, and building my app.
 
Ok so I have a master plan.

I want to build a list of people who might be interested in using my app so that once it's ready to launch I'll already have a whole bunch of people I can contact who have expressed interest.

I can send an email out to the first 50-100 of them to test the app, and from there I can work out any kinks that will be there and then once those are worked out and the site is ready for a full blown launch I'll blast the rest of the list.

I can use the cash I earn from my freelance work for paid advertising to my list building lander.

Of course, in addition to blasting the list I'll contact any established bloggers in my niche who may find my app something of value they might want to share with their following.
 
I bought a book recently called "Thick face, Black Heart". It's probably the best book I've ever bought, and I doubt there is a book that can come close to it in terms of self help.

I first heard about it from a success story I read in a thread on a different forum where this guy made $350,000 in 8 months with CPA ads.

His story focuses more on the struggle to make it than the success. He then mentioned the book in a reply to someone's question and I bought it immediately.
 
I've started building my landing page. All the copy I learned a while ago is nearly gone form my mind! Fak!

Luckily I put sticky notes everywhere so I can quickly jump around the books from headlines to handeling objections to w/e it happens to be.

I was thinking to myself if I should build custom landing pages, or if I should grab a wordpress theme, tweak it, and utlizie the WYSIWYG editor so i can type copy and format it quickly instead of doing it manually or w/e... so that's what I did.

From working as a web developer I've come across some nice commercial wordpress themes for free which I've saved :) So I put the best one to use here.

It's always a question of which method will be the most productive in the long run.

I recently bought a custom designed logo from one of those free logo creators for $1. lol It looks kinda cheap, as any logo would.. although I figured that it's most important that people sign up than to create the 'perfect' brand image.

Sure, I want people to have a good impression, and I realize how powerful a logo is in that it gives you an impression of the entity it represents in an instant... So I'll have to keep my eyes open for a way to create a better one, or look for objects and symbols that could represent what it is my web application is.

It would be nice to have some extra cash I could dish out to logo designers and what not so I could focus on what matters the most here... building the product it's self and the advertising.
 
You know what. fuck the landing page. It's taking too much of my time to write copy and figure out adwords and all that while I don't even have a finished product. Oh how I long for a partner in crime....

I'm just gonna get this damn thing built and tested asap before I invest too hard in marketing time and cash.
 
Oh yea. I've also just finished reading "How to get rich" by Dennis Felix. I REALLY liked that book. To say the least I don't think I'll be reading much 'self help/how to get rich' material anymore after that book. Only things that teach me something functional. I'll more than likely be returning to that book for reference or inspiration the way you go back to your wise uncles or mentors for advice.
 
So I realized that I'm much closer to completing my app than I thought!

I avoided creating a table of things to create because this causes me to stress and procrastinate. Go figure. Deadline dates help, but not really.

I have a GREAT marketing idea that I'm definitely going to execute once the app is launched and I've gotten some feedback to make the app more "Alpha" ready.

Basically, I'm going to create a series of youtube videos documenting my progress and make mini vlogs between 3 miles stones (beginning, middle, end) giving tips and other useful or entertaining content to build a following. In every single video there will be a link to my app as well.

I've seen others do it just because, and they got hundreds of thousands of views, and I'm sure they're at millions at this point. I will do the same.
 
My web development referrals are moving in at a snails pace.

I was getting more work than I could handle and then all of a sudden it's like I have a inkling of an income stream.

Gives me time to work on my application, but if the income stays this low for too long I'm going to have to get a job somewhere serving tables, telemarketing.. or something.
 
****I figured out how to balance my time.

I decided to schedule a kind of default set of time blocks that I fall back on when general life activities calm down. That way I always know what to do and can work on everything that needs to get done with confidence and consistency.

Because right now I am:
1. going to school part time
2. improving my web development skills
3. building a web application
4. taking client work for web development tasks
5. bodybuilding (only demands less than 3 hours of my time per week)


Each time block is 3 hours long.

First block I work only on my web application. Second is either client work or web development related activities that help me deliver higher quality work aka. improving my skills and efficiency. Third block is working on my school homework or assignments, projects..etc Then I spend 45 minutes in the gym. Then if it's a school day I go to class. If I don't have school I work in 4 hours blocks instead of 3.

I put timers in my phone to ring at the specified times throughout the day, signaling when it's time to change activities.

With some structure to fall back on and work with I'm getting much more done in a much more even manner.

****I also figured out how to stay productive

Basically I needed to analyze how I spend my time on the various things I need to do each week. So I decided to write out
1. the things I need to be doing
2. what is blocking me or making it hard to do
3. what conditions or structures I can put in to place to overcome those blocks or frictions
4. what immediate actions I can take to integrate those conditions or structures.

as a result of doing that I came up with the time balancing thing I wrote about first.

*****Measuring progress

I decided that I wanted to quantify my progress in a measurable way. After reading a section of my textbook that talks about this breifly I came up with something that, hopefully, works for me.

First I write out my specific goal. Then I write out the 'critical success factors' to that goal. Like what needs to be true in the most broad sense to accomplish that goal.

So for example I want to earn $1,000/week doing web development as one of my goals. Critical success factors for that are 'exceedingly happy clients' and 'sharp personal skills'.

Finally, to quantify my progress I have the key progress indicators.
- I ask for client feedback on a scale of 1-10 on a few different factors like communication, work quality, timing...etc and do my best to have clients want to answer with something like 15 because they are so pleased.

Then no brainer stuff like
- Referrals increasing each month is an indicator
- Being able to charge more per hour with each new client
- Increasing hours each week
- The time it takes me to do routine tasks decreases

Finally, ways to accomplish these indicators are some personal rules like, respond within 15 minutes no matter what, check my work 3 times before submitting it, always go the extra mile or 2 to deliver above quality expectations, aim to deliver work a day early, keep client updated at least once each day, Consistently learning something new each day if I'm not working on client tasks or projects...etc
 
Recently I've been organizing my life in a way that lets me attack everything I need to do in an even and consistent way.

And so day in and out I work on my web application, hit the college text books, and learn development stuff directly related to client work.

It's easily a 13+ hour day of absorbing information Monday through Saturday and a few hours on Sunday.

Naturally, I begin to wonder if I'm doing this 'right'. If the path I'm on is going to prepare me for a prosperous future. If it's worth sticking with the freelance work an getting paid $150/mo on average for now. If it's worth forgoing time talking to chicks around campus to work on my web application. If it's worth going to school if I don't yet see how this eduation fits in to my plan...etc

And then there's a few things that keep my going:
1. two millionaires say the same thing regardin control. Both say that having learned to develope for the web made the difference between being #1 and being 2nd best because of his ability to implement changes quickly. This is why I don't give up learning Ruby on Rails on my own.

2. Even though I'm making like $150/mo on average doing freelane work, I know that 6+ months from now I'll be able to comman more per hour than I could anywhere else. And that within a year I may very well have more client referrals than I can handle, given that I stick to my mindset of going the extra mile to ensure every project I work on is showcase worthy such that I'd be willing to put my name on it and know it's a masterpeice.

3. Steve Jobs gave a speech before he died, and in it he said that you can't connect the dots of your life looking forward, but you can connect them looking backwards. That, you're already naked in life with nothing to lose. So the take away is to follow your heart. Well, that's what I'm doing with school. I really like what I'm learning. Mark Cuban says that school is the place to screw up. A place to learn to learn. A place to try different things to discover what you love. I'm rationalizing my school with these arguments, and it's why I stick with it.

These things give me confidence in my current activities, and I have to stick with it. I have to keep this plane stable until it lifts off the runway.

The last two peices of advice that help me hold it together are these two:
1. Luck is what happens when preparation meets with opportunity.
2. There's $40,000,000 with your name on it. All you have to do is go out there and collect it!
 
It's important to be focused on work, but I've learned first hand that it doesn't make sense to deprive yourself from fulfilling your non-financial desires. There is no designated purpose to life. Having a seemingly unlimited amount of money in the bank will make your life more enjoyable, but only because of the opportunities it creates, not because of the number listed as the balance.

Personally, my purpose in life is to have the most fun possible and create an impact on as many people's lives as possible. This means sometimes I will fall into slumps because I "wasted" an entire weekend playing video games, hanging with a girl who I probably shouldn't be wasting my time with, or watching an entire season of Dexter on my laptop, by myself in my bed. I accept this, because I know that life is short, and I don't want to wait until I achieve ______ to have fun, or else I'd always be waiting.

If you want to talk to girls, talk to girls. There's no harm in doing what you want to do, as long as you prioritize what's most important to you.
 
I've thought about this from time to time. Your right. Usually I do just whatever when my brain is about to explode. Like watch southpark videos, go for a walk...etc I hit the gym three times a week religiously because I love it.

I think this is why Mark Cuban and Steve Jobs and a couple other dudes like them say to find what you love to do as your work. When you find it you'll almost never feel like work because even if you weren't getting paid to do it you'd be doing it anyways. It won't feel like discipline. It'll feel like being drawn to do something that you just love to do.
 
adiakritos said:
Someone else here made a public journal and it seems to be a solid idea for gaining feedback and advice, helping other noobs like me, and for organizing my thoughts ideas and tasks.

I'm in my 2nd semester my freshman year in college, I'm 19, and I know how to start with nothing and go to creating a blog on wordpress using downloaded themes from the internet and tracking each post with prosper, even though it fucks my theme up a bit.

My goal is to make $600 dollars a day in 6 months and I'm nearly a month behind. So its now 5 months to make that much.

I hadn't realized the importance of researching and planning before moving into the creation stage of my first campaign though I suppose thats the lesson I've learned for wasting my time and hacking around.

I've never created a web page before and so in order to learn I did a 2 week subscription at PPC-Coach for $1 that showed me how to start from scratch.



I'm currently running a wordpress blog on Hostgator that has about 12 different blogs posts ( I discovered I had no idea why I was doing this and that thats way to many to keep up with )

I'm running only one type of offer and one picture on each blog post

I've practiced creating keywords, ad groups

I'm using ads4dough as my Affiliate network

I'm using MSN as my search network

I'm willing to spend $400 total in keyword optimization

Iv'e set up tracking already (took forevvvver)


My current questions are:

How am I going to split test for one of my chosen blogs posts or page?

what is a CMS or WCMS

What tools can I use to have great ease and speed in creating or changing nearly every aspect of my ad groups, keywords, webpages.. ect

Should I pick up a book or two on marketing and niche marketing since I dont know much about it anyways, I'm not aware of to many key concepts on marketing in and of its self.
Click to expand...

WCMS means web content management system... it is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease.... and also used to control a dynamic collection of web material, including HTML documents, images, and other forms of media.... Hope you will understand my terms....

Good Luck!
 
thanks. that was... very kind of you, kindarthur.

---------

I'm working with the guy that convinced me to get into web development on a project he needed help with to save him some time. That last time I worked with him he found so many tiny details that I missed I felt pretty much torn apart. Like in the sense that you thought you just did a badass job and then find out it was just garbage.

So, we're doing another project and I stepped up as much as I possibly could. He saw that I improved even though I missed a handful of small details, the bulk of my work was done well.

But the finer details... this guy is so thorough it's incredible. I've never been so thorough about anything as far as I can remember. I mean, he's been doing this for over 7 years, so yea he's a professional. But damn. The result is something 10,000 times better than what I had originally produced. Granted, he creates websites for celebrities and what not charging like 10k for each site.

So yea. I'm fortunate to have met him. When I'm rich I gotta treat him to something fucking awesome.
 
So it dawned on me that things moved faster when I involve other people. Whether its building a project or learning something. Community is so important in terms of speed of implementation.

I found a passionate programmer that is happy to work on a project with me for fun, and hopefully we can make it lucrative.
 
adiakritos said:
So it dawned on me that things moved faster when I involve other people. Whether its building a project or learning something. Community is so important in terms of speed of implementation.

I found a passionate programmer that is happy to work on a project with me for fun, and hopefully we can make it lucrative.
Click to expand...

What's the project? Demo link?
 
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