Cheap Ways to Market Your Site - Part 15

Today's tip will not help you market your site or business, and will take less than a minute to do

Print up business card sized flyers and put them on the windshield of the cars parked next to you.

The flyer doesn't have to be anything extravagant, probably just a catchy line and your site's URL would do the trick. Even just your URL may be enough to pique someone's interest.

Most people have learned to tune out the sheet of paper sized flyers and don't even bother looking at them before crumpling them up into a ball. However, people will take notice of a flyer if it is the size of a business car.

Certainly, if you had more time and energy, you could put these cards on more than just the cars parked in the immediate vicinity of your car. The more the merrier.

The nice thing about marketing this way is you can carry the cards in your car or even your pocket, and it doesn't really take much time to leave a card on the four or five cars that are parked next to you.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site - Part 14

Today's tip really isn't a way to market your site, however it does give you a place where you can go to lots of information from marketing experts, all for free!

Use your local library!

Your local library is probably the single greatest resource you have as an entrepreneur or website developer. Where else can you get pages and pages of advice from world renowned experts, all for free?

Over the past six months, I have probably checked out 50 or more books from the library on topics ranging from marketing, running an online business, Adobe Photoshop... you name it, I probably checked it out.

And as an entrepreneur, I always have to be thinking about the bottom line. You know how much all of those books cost me? If you guess free, you're wrong - I did have a $.75 late fee.

But you catch my drift.

In addition to all of the books and research materials available to you, most public libraries will periodically have free seminars that may be of use to you and your business or site.

All things considered, your local public library should be one of the most important resources you use while you are starting a business.

In My Memories Update

First off, thanks to everyone who has sent me emails regarding the "Cheap Marketing" series. I appreciate your feedback and thoughts. Hopefully the ideas have been of use to you, and if you have tried some of the ideas I hope you're getting more traffic to your site, blog or business.

Today I don't have much time to write, so I just thought I'd give an update on my business, In My Memories.

Things are going slowly but surely. The site itself is still under development and we are currently in the process of finding a graphics person to help us make the site nice to look at. I am also in the process of drafting several press releases to send out to local newspapers and news stations to help get the word out about the site when we are ready to launch.

The business plan is close to completion. Thankfully the core of the plan has been done for quite some time, I'm just in the process of fine tuning everything.

I wish we were farther along than where we are, but all things considered, I'm satisfied with our progress.

Who knew starting a business could be so tedious?!?

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 13

Today's tip may be pretty difficult to pull off, but if you're able, it will certainly be worth both your time and effort.

Create a press release and send to all of your local newspapers.

The reason why I say this is hard to pull off is because you have to essentially create a news story out of your site. If you send a press release into a newspaper without a story, it becomes obvious that you are just looking for free advertising.

Newspapers don't mind you advertising with them... as long as you pay for it!

On the other hand, if you do give them something news worthy, they may be more likely to run a story on your business or site and what it provides to the community at large.

To give you an example, I have sent an email to one of my local newspapers to tell them about Daily Fuel Economy Tip. With gas prices soaring (news item) drivers are looking for the easiest ways to get the most miles out of their gas (another news item). One place people can go to for free information is Daily Fuel Economy Tip (my site).

Granted, I have no idea whether or not I will make it into the newspaper, but at the very least it's worth a shot. It took me a total of 10 minutes to find the newspaper's contact information and to draft an email, so I'm not out much if the release never makes it to the paper.

If it does make it to the paper though, that 10 minutes will probably net me hundreds, if not thousands, of hits.

Creative Ways to Market Your Site, Part 12

Today's tip will not only help you bring in new customers but, more importantly, will help you retain all of your current customers or site visitors.

Have great customer service.

I know, this is probably one of the more obvious tips I've given, but the fact remains that it's hard to get customers or visitors, so once you do get them it's in your best interest to keep them. The easiest way to do that is through great customer service.

Regardless of whether you have a business, a website or "just" a blog, you need to have top notch customer service. Some examples include:

• Returning emails and phone calls as quickly as possible
• If you make a promise to a customer, keep it.
• Over promise AND over deliver, but be careful to not go overboard on your promises.
• If a customer asks a question that you don't know the answer to, be honest and say so. Then get busy finding out the answer.

My high school basketball coach used to say, "Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves," which is true in customer service as well. Great customer service typically comes down to your willingness to do the little things that your customer expects or wants, like delivering a product when you said you would.

While your customers may not always remember the great customer service they receive from you, all it takes is one slip up to lose that customer, and in some cases their referrals, forever.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 11

Today's tip requires a lot of thinking and creativity (and probably some software as well), but in the long run, will be a great way to help you brand you business, website or even your blog.

Create a logo.

This is something that I'm working on for both The New Business Blog and In My Memories. Actually, let me rephrase that, this is something I've asked others to work on for me.

Unfortunately for me, I don't have an artistic or creative bone in my body, but with programs like Adobe Photoshop it's becoming easier for people with a little bit of skill to come up with very creative and endearing logos.

If done well, a logo can be something that you can use for people to instantly recognize your business or site. Think about it, I bet you could tell me what the logos for Microsoft, Pepsi, AT&T and the NFL look like without batting an eye.

A logo that is instantly recognized and associated with your product, business or site is worth its weight in gold, so regardless of whether or not you think you need a logo, it's worth looking into.

Even if it's just different lettering, if you or someone else can come up with an idea that differentiates your business, you have to go for it.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 10

A lot of people feel that today's tip has gone the way of the dinosaurs, but I'm not buying it.

Get yourself some business cards and hand them out to everyone you meet.

You don't have to hire a graphics designer or even pay someone else a lot of money to print up the cards for you. Just something nice and simple that you can print out on your own printer should be more than adequate.

For example, a couple of weekends ago I bought business card paper from Office Depot, downloaded some card templates from Microsoft and ultimately spent $15 and a little under an hour creating 300 business cards.

Now when I go out, I carry a couple of cards in my coat pocket and hand them out to people when I talk about The New Business Blog or In My Memories.

Granted, even if you hand out a lot of cards, the effort probably isn't going to lead to a huge increase in the number of hits to your site or business, but I guarantee you it will bring in some new traffic.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 9

Much like yesterday's post, today I'm going to talk about an item that isn't necessarily an act of marketing your business, blog or site, but in the long run, implementing this strategy will help you expand your business or site.

Get feedback from everyone that contacts your business or site.

This is critically important in helping you tailor your business or site to what your potential customers want, not what YOU think that they want.

Whether that is giving your customers or visitors the opportunity to leave comments (such as what I do with each post on The New Business Blog), giving out your contact information (such as an email address or phone number) or asking that each customer complete a feedback form, you have to create a way where you can hear what the customer wants from you.

For example, you may have noticed that the number of posts on The New Business Blog regarding In My Memories have become less and less. A lot of that is because of the feedback I've received from readers, who have asked for more resources for starting their own businesses and not so many updates regarding mine.

The reason I'm okay with that is because I want people to come here and read my business blog and use it as a resource. If they want me to post less about In My Memories, I will gladly do so.

In order to be successful in business, or in anything for that matter, you have to be flexible and willing to adapt.

There's no point in being stubborn if it's ultimately going to cost you visits to your site or decrease the number of sales your business makes.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 8

I have to apologize in advance; today's "Cheap Way to Market Your Site" really isn't a way to market your site, but ultimately it will help you in marketing your site.

Confused? That's okay, keep reading.

Keep a daily journal of your marketing activities

Much like writing a business plan, many people don't log their day to day activities when they're starting or running a business or a website, probably because they are either to busy actually running the site or think that logging activities is a waste of time.

Not logging what you do is a terrible mistake!

By logging your daily marketing activities you will be able to quickly and easily identify which strategies that are working for you and which strategies need to be reevaluated or dismissed.

Your "log" doesn't need to be anything extravagant. For example, just write, "Today I added my URL to the signature line of my email accounts." Nothing elaborate, but detailed enough to jog your memory when you come back and look at it.

By using this log, if you have a sudden spike in the number of hits your site receives each day, you can go back and look at the recent marketing activities and focus on those ideas, considering they probably account for the spike. Or, if for some reason, you find yourself getting less hits each day, you can quickly correct any marketing "errors" you may have made.

Logging your marketing activities doesn't have to take a lot of time, but it will certainly help you save a lot of time when you're trying to figure out which strategies are working for you.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 7

Thanks to the positive response I've received for the "Cheap Ways to Market Your Site" series, I've decided to continue it.

Magnetize your URL and take it for a drive.

What do I mean by that?

The other day while I was waiting at Jiffy Lube to get my car's oil changed and the vehicle in front of me had a magnetic "sticker" across its trunk. And, you guessed it, on the magnet was a company's URL.

Because there was nothing else to do while I was waiting, I wrote down the URL and then visited the site when I got home, which of course got me thinking about how great that magnet was.

Think about it, how many different cars do you get stuck behind when you're driving down the road, waiting at the drive thru or sitting at a stop light? I would imagine it's over a hundred different cars each day. That's a hundred different people you can expose to your website and even if you don't get all of them to visit your site once they get home, if you get a few people each day, you're really going to see a spike in the number of hits, and sales, your site sees.

Also, with proliferation of cell phones that are web accessible, you can even reach people that can access your site immediately (but let's hope they're passengers, not drivers).

From the quick research that I've done, it looks like you should probably be able to get a relatively simple car magnet for less than $20, which would definitely be money well spent.

Don't Make Me Think

While I've been reading a lot of different articles and books related to Search Engine Optimization, I recently picked up what many will argue is the best book on web usability:

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krugg

This book should be on the must read list of anyone that plans on starting an online business or even just a website in general.

While I currently use the Blogger.com templates and software to publish my blogs, at some point in the future I would like to be able to design, create and maintain my own templates and sites, independent of Blogger or WordPad. I think this book will give me a good start when I start to map out what I would like my sites to look like.

While many of Krugg's points are just plain common sense, the way he lays everything out makes it easy to see how you could implement the changes throughout your site.

The most important thing I took away from the book was that a website (specifically an e-commerce site) is set up in pretty much the same way as a store; there are lots of different ways to get to the product you want. The key is to make the shopping experience as simple as possible, so simple that you shouldn't even need to think about it. If the customer has to think, they'll go somewhere else.

Make sure that you pick up a copy of this from Amazon and add it to your "must have" collection of business books.

Google AdSense is the Greatest Thing Ever

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I'll be the first to admit, I was wrong to resist the power of Google. I never had any intention of including Google AdSense on The New Business Blog. I really didn't.

I also didn't know how much I would come to enjoy blogging and how my longing to be a writer, mixed with all of my interests, could all be taken care of by by simply starting many, many different blogs.

Unfortunately, I also didn't know how expensive it would all turn out to be.

I figure, with my latest round of domain names and hosting plans, I've spent probably over $100 on items dealing with blogs. Thankfully, Blogger.com is still free, otherwise we could be talking about even more money.

Anyway, back to the point.

Google AdSense has given me a quick and easy way to try and earn some of that money back.

By simply placing a couple of AdSense banners around my various sites, I'm setting myself up to make enough money to hopefully cover the cost of hosting and maintaining my sites.

I don't really have any grand illusions of being one of those people that make $10,000 per month from their sites (to be honest, I don't know if those people really exist, but I'll let you know if I become one, trust me). A couple of bucks never hurt though.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is if you've had any reluctance to add Google AdSense to your site or blog, get over it. It's easy and as long as you get some traffic that pokes around and clicks on the ads, you'll make a couple of bucks, too.

Not a bad deal for essentially doing nothing, huh?

Business Plan Update

I've received a couple of emails in regards to continuing the "Cheap Ways to Market Your Site" series, so in the next couple of days I'll start to post ideas 7 through 10. If there is continued interest after that, then I'll keep posting "Cheap Ways to Market Your Site" until I run out of ideas.

In the meantime, I wanted to give an update as to where I'm at in regards to starting my business and my business plan.

Last week I went through and edited the first rough draft of my business plan. I'm pretty comfortable with where things are right now, but I obviously have some holes to fill. Once I take care of those and run the revised plan by my business partner, I'll feel much more comfortable with the finished product.

I haven't heard back from the State Corporation Commission regarding the legal name of my business, so I'll probably go ahead and give them a call tomorrow just to make sure there weren't any glitches. You'd assume that if there were any problems they would go ahead and contact you, but you never know.

Anyway, that's about it for tonight. I'm glad to see that people have taken so well to the "Cheap Ways to Market Your Site" series so I will come up with more ideas to continue that as well as figure out additional series that will be of use to people that are starting a business.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 6

Sometimes there's only so much that you can do on your own to promote your site or your business.

When you're starting a business or a site, most of the word of mouth (the easiest way to grow) is going to come directly from you, if only because you're the only one that really knows about the business or site to begin with.

Once other people find out about the site though, you need to get them to do your work and pass on the site to everyone else.

Tell people to tell others

What I mean by that is remind people to spread the word about your site.

For example, if you collect email addresses on your website (which you should be doing anyway) every day, week or month (depending on your content) send out an "exclusive" email to the people who've submitted their email addresses to you. This could be a tip of the day, thought of the week or an article you can only read by email.

At the end of the email, write another statement that simply says, "Did you like this tip/thought/article? I bet you know three people that would benefit from it as well. Please pass this email on to them!" and have your site's URL directly under the paragraph.

Even if only 10% of the people who received your original email follow through and forward your email, you're going to increase the number of visits to your site or business by a couple of people each day, which will lead to more customers and ultimately more money for you.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 5

Why should people visit your site as opposed to another one?

Probably because you do something better than anyone else or, at the very least, you put a fresh perspective on a relatively generic topic.

Be bold. Promote your uniqueness.

If you're site is the same as everyone else's, what's the incentive for people to come to yours? There isn't any.

But, if you make your site different, if you put a new perspective on a topic or you are bold with your ideas, people are going to take notice and continue to come back for more.

Don't try to write the way you think people want you to. You'll just end up coming across as insincere and phony.

Granted, this is going to vary regarding what sort of site you have. If you have a blog, you can get away with being a little more controversial than if you were running a book store. Not to say that you couldn't find ways to be creative and "out there" while running a book store, but I don't think you'd have the same amount of freedom as someone who was trying to promote their blog.

Write in your own voice and bring your own bold perspective and I think you'll be surprised at how much this will help you promote your site.

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 4

You can file this tip under the obvious department, but to be honest, I don't know how many people are actually doing it.

Cross promote your site!

What I mean by this is when you see another site or blog that you like, send an email to the person that runs the site and let them know you like their work and you'd like to link to their webpage.

You should also let them know that they should check out your site and if they like what they see, they should feel free to go ahead and include a backlink to your site on their webpage.

Here's where my advice will differ from most people's; don't just try to promote your site on similar sites, but branch out to other sites that are seemingly unrelated.

I'll explain. If you were to ask me what my interests are, I would tell you in no particular order sports, business, music and movies. I would imagine that I'm not the only person in the world with multiple interests.

Should you concentrate your cross promotion with similar sites? Yeah, that would probably be a good idea. But at the same time, don't limit yourself. If you read a movie blog that you really like, but you have a business blog, go ahead and try to cross promote anyway.

As long as you have good content, it doesn't matter how somebody finds your site!

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 3

For a lot of people, this is going to be the hardest way to market their business or site, I know it was for me. But, you have to overcome your fears because this is probably the best way to market your site.

Run your mouth!

By nature, I'm a very shy and reserved person, so even after I started The New Business Blog and In My Memories I was reluctant to talk about them. I always felt that if I brought my sites up I would be imposing and would end up jamming it down the throat of the person I was talking to.

Then I realized, this is the stuff I should be talking about because it's what I'm passionate about.

Not only will you feel good talking about your business or site, but that passion is going to rub off on the person you're talking to and it's going to make them that much more interested in what it is you're doing.

If you don't toot your own horn, nobody's going to do it for you!

Getting Some Publicity

Looks like my ramblings have caught the eye of someone else!

Yesterday afternoon I checked Technorati to see if there were any new blogs that linked to The New Business Blog. Usually when I check, it's usually just my posts that include a link to The New Business Blog somewhere in the writing.

But, yesterday was different - there was a completely different blog that included a link to my business blog. Turns out, Denise O'Berry (author of Just For Small Business) read my Added Perk to a Business Plan article and included it in this week's Carnival of Entrepreneurship (my post is the fourth bullet on each page).

Needless to say, I was thrilled to see that someone else is getting something out of my business blog! Hopefully I can keep it up.

Search Engine Optimization Update

This morning I checked my search engine rankings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN and was pleasantly surprised.

My rankings really haven't changed much in Google and Yahoo!, my business blog still isn't coming up in the major keyword searches. The New Business Blog is still coming up mostly only if you add "Brian Carr" to the keyword (ex. "business blog brian carr").

But, when I went to MSN, I typed in "new business blog" and The New Business Blog came up number three in the search!

Then, I tried "starting a business blog" and The New Business Blog came up on the bottom of the first page.

Now that may not seem like a lot, but I think that means that the things I have done regarding search engine optimization have started to pay off!

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 2

You and I both know that when you start a business, a website or even a blog, you aren't going to have much of a life for the foreseeable future. You probably won't even have time to do much laundry.

That's okay, because you really only need two or three shirts.

Get a shirt (or two) that has your company name and URL on the front and back and wear it everywhere you go!

Okay, well maybe not everywhere, but anywhere it would be considered appropriate (the mall, grocery shopping, the movies, etc.), wear that shirt!

Think of all the people you interact with on any given day, or even the number of people you just walk by. It's probably hundreds of people per day. Even if only 2% of the people that see your shirt visit your site, that's an extra 4 or 5 unique hits each day. That adds up.

You have to wear clothes as it is, so you may as well make them useful in advertising your business or your site.

To get a couple of simple shirts made should cost you less than $15 or $20, or you could probably even do it yourself for even less money.

Better yet, get a couple more made and pass them out to your friends and ask them to wear a shirt out every once in a while.

You should be proud of the work that you're putting into starting your business or website, so why not show it off?

Cheap Ways to Market Your Site, Part 1

I figured it was time to add some more substance to my blogs; less about me and more about you.

On that note, I've put together a 6 part blog on cheap (and creative) ways to market your website or blog. Here goes the first one:

Add your URL to the signature of every one of your email accounts!

How many emails do you send each day? 10? 20? 100? By adding your website's URL to the signature of each of your emails, that gives you that many more opportunities to remind people to check out your site.

Granted, it may not generate the most amount of UNIQUE traffic, but it will remind everyone you email to visit the site. However, in a round about way, it may generate unique traffic through word of mouth or even by your friends forwarding on your email to their friends.

Best of all, it's free and it takes about 5 seconds to do.

To give you a real example, when I started The New Business Blog, I wasn't getting as much traffic as I had hoped. I was averaging about 25 hits per day, which by most standards is pretty low. So, in order to help get the word out, I added http://www.thenewbusinessblog.com to the signature line of each of my email accounts.

Slowly but surely, I began to notice that each day I was getting a couple of more hits to the site.

While adding the signature line to my outgoing emails wasn't the only thing that helped to increase traffic, I know that it accounted for at least a couple more hits.

Now, go take 5 seconds out of your busy life and add your website to the signature line of all of your email accounts.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

If I was a Mets fan, I'd be thrilled. 7 to 1 is a pretty good win.

Too bad I'm a Nationals fan.

I take that back, it's not too bad that I'm a Nats fan, it's actually a great thing. It's nice to finally have a hometown baseball team.

All things considered I don't have much to complain about; it was a nice day for a baseball game (sunny and warm) and I got to go to the game with my dad.

Oh well, I guess there's always next year's home opener.

Let's Go Nats!

Tomorrow I'm going to take a break from everything. No waking up early and going to work, no coming home and working on In My Memories and probably not even posting to my business blog.

Tomorrow I'm taking the day off from everything to go to the Nationals' home opener!

I went to the Nats' first home game last year and it was absolutely awesome. I had never been at any of the big Redskins' games at RFK, but I can imagine they were much like the Nats' home opener. I'm going to miss that stadium when the team moves to their new stadium.

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow the weather will be nice and the Nats will get a win.

Hard Work Pays Off

The other day in my Driving Traffic To Your Blog post, I talked about how I had submitted The New Business Blog to over 150 blog directories and how it was starting to pay off.

It looks like the hard work is continuing to pay off; when I checked my Feedburner stats this morning, I saw that the number of subscribed readers has increased from 25 to 36!

Granted, that doesn't seem like much of a jump, but when you look at the fact that a little over a week ago I had 6 subscribed readers, to have increased that number SIX TIMES is pretty remarkable.

That being said, if you want to do the same thing for your blog or your website, you have to be willing to do the leg work. I know I spent over 6 hours submitting The New Business Blog to all of the blog directories, and that's still probably only a fraction of the amount of work I need to do to get to my goals.

But, it is nice to see the hard work starting to pay off.

Name of my Limited Liability Company (LLC)

Today was a big day in the history of my business - I sent in the paper work (and the $100 check!) to get the business' legal name. The registered business will be the "owner" of both In My Memories and The New Business Blog.

I was surprised at how easy the process really was. I just went to Virginia's webpage, followed a couple of links and then printed the documents out. I would have figured the process would have been a bit more cumbersome.

I'm sure no matter which state you are in, the process has to be pretty similar to what I've done.
I know there are websites out there that will do this services for you, but they didn't seem that cheap. I figured I should be able to register my business myself and keep some extra money in my account.

While I was driving home from work on Friday I called the Clerk's Office to check on the availability of the name, which, thankfully, wasn't taken.

Once i get confirmation that the paperwork has been processed, I'll go ahead and share it with anyone that will listen.

Driving Traffic to Your Blog

One of my goals for my business blog is to have over 200 subscribed readers (a subscribed reader is someone who reads your blog through an RSS feed. You can do this by clicking on the orange and white button on the right side of this blog.)

Unfortunately, I'm never going to make it to 200 daily readers unless I get The New Business Blog out there, and that is going to require a lot of leg work.

The other day while researching the subject of driving traffic to my business blog, I came across RSSTop55, a site that lists close to 170 blog directories you can submit your blog or RSS feed to. (I actually mentioned this subject in a previous blog, but didn't go much in depth).

Last night I was able to submit The New Business Blog to 50 additional blog directories. While it was time consuming and redundant, it definitely helped my stats.

This morning when I woke up, I checked my Feedburner stats and saw that the number of subscribed readers had jumped from 12 to 25. Granted this isn't anywhere near my goal, but it's a start.

I guess the moral of the story is, much like starting a business, growing your site or blog is a something that takes time; you have to be willing to put in a lot of work and have a little bit of patience (and luck).

Hopefully this will be good training for when In My Memories is finally launched.

How to Become a Marketing Superstar

Apparently I drank too much coffee yesterday because I wasn't able to fall asleep. So instead of editing my business plan, I read another book.

Last night I read How to Become a Marketing Superstar by Jeffrey Fox. It was pretty much along the same lines as Purple Cow but, as the title might indicate, Fox's book was more geared towards marketing your business as opposed to differentiating it.

I thought Marketing Superstar was a good read and was better to read before I start marketing In My Memories.

There were a bunch of interesting points regarding advertising (never use the word "we" and don't tell the customer what they're gaining, tell them what they're not losing) but the most important thing I took away was the important role good customer service plays in your advertising.

By simply having good customer service and sending a nice thank you note, you will create incredible word of mouth advertising, something that will probably increase your sales more than any other form of advertising.

Take care of your customers and they'll take care of you.

Creating a Purple Cow

I want my business to be different.

The other day I picked up Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin in the hopes of finding out ways to differentiate In My Memories from similar sites. While I don't have any other books to compare against, I think Purple Cow should be on every entrepreneur's must read list.

The book was a quick read (it took me an afternoon to get through it) and it had several helpful points. But there was one point in particular that stood out above the others:

Your business can't be everything to everybody. Focus on your target market and then make your product or service the best that it can be for that particular group.

Don't worry about trying to make your product for the masses because it ultimately won't be good enough for anybody; tailor your product or service to your target market and it'll end up being great.

Added Perk To a Business Plan

Last night, I finished up the very first rough draft of In My Memories's business plan. Aside from the feeling like I was actually well on my way to starting a business, I found another benefit of being able to review my business plan:

I felt reinvigorated about my business.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not lacking in passion for In My Memories, but going back and reading over the first draft of the business plan was like a breath of fresh air.

So, I guess what I'm getting at, make sure you don't run yourself into the ground while you're in the midst of planning and starting your business. Make sure you take time to sit back and enjoy what you're in the process of accomplishing.

It'll help keep you out of a rut and push you to get more out of your new business.

More Regarding In My Memories And The New Business Blog

For those of you who have already visited In My Memories, I want to say thank you.

For those of you who have yet to visit In My Memories, I want to say: What are you waiting for?!?

Thanks to the work of my business partner, Doug, the coming soon site is looking much better. It certainly looks much more professional and presentable which hopefully will help continue to drum up interest.

Also, I have a nice announcement regarding my business blog. The other night, I submitted "The New Business Blog" to over 100 blog directories hoping to increase the amount of people reading this blog by a couple of hits.

I was absolutely floored to check my stats this morning to see yesterday I had over 200 hits to my business blog. So, thank you for continuing to read my blog and for sharing it with people you think might be interested.

Keep it up!

Announcement of In My Memories

Here it is folks, the announcement of my business idea and my business' website (well, sort of).

In My Memories will be the premier site for creating online memorials and celebrations of the lives of your loved ones.

The premise behind In My Memories is simple; we wanted to create a website where people would be able to create meaningful and lasting online tributes for family and friends who have passed away. We wanted to give people an avenue to create a memorial that is easy to share with family and friends throughout the world, but is in depth enough to capture the essence of the loved one they are memorializing.

In My Memories will offer several packages, ranging in price, but the most common features of each package will include:

• An unlimited page biography
• Pictures with captions and slideshow capability
• Audio/Video upload
• Timeline/Milestones
• "Personal Favorites" lists
• Guestbook where visitors can leave notes of sympathy and personal stories of remembrance.

In My Memories will also offer several secondary services in relation to the online memorials, however I will go much more in depth regarding these services in another post.

I have to apologize for the current coming soon page on the In My Memories page. I'm not very proficient with web development, so this was the best I could throw together so far. A new and improved page will be up soon.

In the meantime, feel free to bookmark the page for future updates, continue to check out my business blog and submit your email on the In My Memories page for emailed updates.

I really think that this business has the potential to help a lot of people through a difficult time in their lives, and I'm looking forward to launching the fully operational site in the (hopefully) not too distant future.

If you have any suggestions, comments, etc. please feel free to email me or to leave a comment on this post.

Finally, A Day Off

Have you ever seen the movie Office Space? Pretty much, it's about a guy who just decides to stop showing up to work. Anyway, I'm bringing this up because there's a line in the movie that sums up my day yesterday:

"Yesterday, I did nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be."

So, for the first time in a long time, I didn't do anything business related yesterday. I didn't write in my business blog, I didn't do anything with the business plan, I just sat outside, enjoyed the weather and did nothing.

I highly recommend today you do the same.