David Pitlyuk

I personally use Outlook 2007 for my calendar application, so I’m going to write what I personally do here, but note that it will pretty much work with most calendar applications.

I’ve recently started using Outlook in order to better manage my posting schedule for this blog. It helps me get a grasp of what I should be posting when, and hopefully better manage the long list of post ideas I have that are in draft mode. This way I can make sure that I have enough time to write a post as I can see in a more visual way when I planned on making it go live.

What I do is going into weekly calendar mode, and on the bottom of there is a section for tasks due on that day:

You can see here on the bottom I have a full schedule of posts that will go live on each day of this week, including this one. Again, this is a nice way to visually see what you are planning on doing, and it’s very easy to move things around should you have to adjust the schedule.

In the mail section of Outlook you can see when the posts are due in the “To-Do Bar”:

I wrote this after 12am, so that’s why it says that the using calendar post is due today. Once I finish writing a post and adjusting the timestamp in Wordpress, I simply click the flag next to the task and it’s considered complete.

You’ll also notice the green box next to the post tasks. These are categories. I’ve made a category for the blog, this way I can filter them in or out as needed. Sometimes I have a ton of tasks for all sorts of things, and I may not need to see the posts in there.

Another benefit of doing this is because I use a Treo 700w as my cell phone, which of course syncs with Outlook. This way I have my posting schedule on me at all times, and can even take the time to write a post from my phone if I felt like it.

What do you use to help manage your posting schedule?

This was a guest post by Brandon Hopkins. Brandon is working as a call center consultant and blogger. Brandon owns over 100 websites and is a full time webmaster.

Most times during the day I would like to be able to have a clone of myself sitting next to me. I would focus on the things I enjoy doing like marketing and make my clone do things that I don’t like doing such as calling customers and working in QuickBooks Pro.

Until scientists get the whole cloning situation figured out, the next best thing is to outsource those tasks you don’t like to do, or the tasks that take up the most of your time and are the least profitable.

When contemplating outsourcing a portion of your business you must realize the costs. First you’ll need to spend some time giving clear and precise instructions. If you hire a normal local employee, this is called training. This cost is hard to measure as a dollar figure, but it can’t be avoided whether you outsource or hire a local employee.

However, that is where the similarities to local and outsourced employees end. The last time I hired someone to do work for me, I paid her $10/hour. The beauty of this is that the $10 per hour was my total cost.

With a local employee I would also be paying other overhead expenses such as a computer and desk for her to work at, health insurance, workers compensation, legal fees and of course my accountant would want a piece of the action. With all of those fees and expenses combined I would be paying her closer to $18 per hour.

For that same $18 an hour I could almost hire a second outsourced person.

Before you decide to outsource this work, I would suggest the following:

1. Clearly state the work you want done.
For me this was mainly copywriting. I needed someone who could write on topics I gave them quickly and competently.

2. State the time you think it should take.
I set a time of 30 minutes per 400 word article. These articles didn’t need to be well researched and I didn’t want my new employee to spend 2 hours writing the best article when I just needed the content.

3. Work with a company, not an individual.
In the past 3 years, I have hired about 20 different people, none of them local. In those 3 years I’ve learned that individuals can’t be trusted as much as a company and companies cost more than individuals. So for the most part I’m willing to pay a little extra to see that the job gets done. If that individual I hired through the company quits, the company finds me a new employee and he or she starts where the last one left off.

4. Place a value on your time.
For me, I take the amount I earn per month and divide it by the amount of hours I work. That is how much I am worth. If that number is $30/hour and I can hire someone for $10 an hour to do the mundane data entry tasks, I can spend more time focused on projects and tasks that allow me to earn that $30 an hour. Hopefully by outsourcing I’m enabling myself to work on the profitable, which I enjoy, and avoid the boredom, that I despise.

Outsourcing may not be for everyone. For me, it has revolutionized the way I work. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do and can have my personal assistant (also outsourced and currently living in the Philippines) handle anything I send him. On top of that, he has every chat program, so I can just send him a message any time I need to get in contact with him. If that wasn’t enough, he has Skype and is willing to talk whenever I need to clarify something.

Start with a small task and compare how much that tasks cost to get completed and compare that with how long it would have taken you to do that particular task. I can almost guarantee that you will double your productivity in short time!

I love reading stories of successful young entrepreneurs, but these twin 8 year olds bring it to a whole new level. They’ve invented wedgie-proof underwear! They work by being tear away, so when that awful wedgie is given, they actually only get your underwear. It’s not something I would buy, but it’s great to see kids at such a young age getting into business like this. Check out their interview with Fox News:

A woman by the name of Quantina Moore-Perry utilized an exploit on QVC’s website to scam them out of over $400,000 worth of product before getting caught.  The site flaw was pretty simple, Quantina would order things like handbags, jewelry, and electronics, but then cancel the order right away.  She would then get credit for the item, but the flaw caused the items to still be delivered to her.  She ordered over 1,800 items like this, and would resell them for profit on places like eBay.

QVC found the error when two of the people on eBay bought items from Quantina that came in unopened QVC boxes and tipped QVC off.  Quantina pleaded guilty and agreed to forfeit the $400k+ that she made.

This is a great reminder for those of us doing online transactions to ensure that security is a top priority.

I’ve written about one product ideas before, and how I love them.  If I find anything that I really like, I will share them with you guys.  The latest one is the Anti-Ticket Donut.  The anti-ticket donut is a gag gift for those that want to hopefully make that police officer that pulled you over for doing 80 in a 55 laugh it off.  Present him with either a chocolate or rainbow sprinkled anti-ticket donut:

If it does its job, hopefully you’ll get out of a ticket for a mere $8.75 + shipping.  While tasty looking, don’t try and eat one of the donuts as they are fake.  The products are produced in the USA, and apparently 75% of the purchases so far have been from police officers themselves.  I wonder how many have been sold?

Back in May Google released a major redesign to it’s Analytics software. I think the new version is a big improvement, and I love a lot of the new functionalities. When it first came out, one of my main gripes was that you couldn’t click through to external referral sources. This was fixed about a month after release. Now I’ve had much time to play around with Google Analytics, and I have one more major gripe about it. I don’t like how you can really only look at data on a daily basis. For example, if I look at the past year of data for pageviews on this blog, my chart looks like this:

In this instance, I want the option to see my data in a month to month comparison. The way it is done now, I can essentially see the data in a day-to-day format. We can see here that there is one huge disadvantage to looking at the past years data in the daily format. In April I had a huge spike in traffic, and it’s a big enough spike that the chart is pretty much useless to look at…Especially with the thick line that is used. Luckily, if I really needed the data in the format I want, Google allows you to export it, which I can then import into Excel and run the reports I really need. It shouldn’t be this way though. I feel like Google can make some fairly simple adjustments to make this much nicer:

1. They can allow adjustment of the thickness of the line in the chart. The thicker line is great when looking at a chart for the past months data, but any sort of spike can cause the chart to be unreadable.
2. They can allow for zooming capabilities. Maybe I only want to x-axis to have a smaller range because I know about the spikes.
3. They can add a few shortcuts like they use in Google Finance for common timeframes, and adjust the chart style accordingly. In Google Finance a 1 day financial chart looks this (Note: I’m using the stock charts for Adobe (ADBE) as an example):

Google offers their “zoom” shortcuts on the top left of the cart:

When you change the chart to 1 month for example, the chart zooms out, but also smooths out the lines:

On top of smoothing out the lines, it also changed the y-axis to daily vs. hourly. Changing the zoom to 1-year does the same thing, but the y-axis changes to monthly. It makes for a much cleaner and readable chart. As a side note, Adobe has been doing great over the past month, glad I picked up some stock back at 38!

Given that information, daily data over the course of a long period of time can be useful, so Google shouldn’t get rid of it…but they should add more options. Another feature from Google Finance that I like is the way that the timeline functionality works:

I really like how it’s available underneath the chart for easy access at any time. Google Analytics has a timeline feature as well, but it’s more of a pain to use when the idea behind it is for quick data viewing. To utilize the timelie feature in Analytics you have to expand down the date tab, click the tab for timeline, and then move the box to the date range you want. On top of that, it only shows you about 3 months at a time, so if you want to use it to see the past year of data, you have to scroll it over for 9 months of data…it’s just a pain.

I think if Google can do a mixture of Google Finance and Google Analytics to re-do their Analytics chart system, they could dramatically improve the interface and usability of Analytics. Don’t get me wrong, Google Analytics is an awesome tool, but I think these improvements can make it so much better.

Do you find this frustrating you just as much? Are there any other major improvements that you think Google can do?  If you feel the frustrations like I do, please Digg this article so that more people will know and Google can do something about it.

Back in my days of owning SLCentral.com, there were a few bigger sites out there that did similar content. One of those went by the name of SysOpt.com, and was run by Scott Wainner. I had communicated with Scott a couple of times while he was an owner of the site (not sure if he remembers me). His site ended up being bought out, and he made a good amount of money in the process. Now Scott still works in the web business, and he recently launched a blog where he discusses making money online.

He recently made a post entitled “Don’t Strive To Be Rich” that made some good points about the type of goals you should really have to be successful. At the time of writing this, pretty much all of the comments to the article were in agreeance with Scott, and I am surprised that I am one of the only ones that didn’t quite see eye-to-eye. I got to writing a comment on the blog, but it started getting a bit long, and I thought it would be a great topic to discuss here on my blog instead.

Scott basically talks about the average vision people see when it comes to making money online…big houses, fast cars, etc. He found himself doing the same thing, after selling his sites to EarthWeb, Inc he did things like moving from his $700/month apartment to a $5,000/month rental house on teach bay. Then the dot com crash came, and he lost a lot of what he had made, which also gave him a much better understanding of how money should be spent and what is really important to him.

He felt that the payout he received for SysOpt was “just nuts and disproportional to what he had built”, but now feels that the internet businesses he has are solid companies that that deserve to make what they make. He feels that this life lesson allowed him to “feel sad” for people striving to be rich, striving for big houses, striving for fast cars, etc because ultimately these things will not make them feel happy. Part of that reasoning was because people always strive to get something better than what they have…buy a 3-series, you’ll want a 5-series, buy a 2,000 sq/ft house, you’ll want a 3,000 sq/ft house. This is a natural mindset that we will always want more.

That part of the article was the part where I was thinking to myself that I don’t exactly agree with Scott. I agree that spending money that is out of proportion to what you have and what you make is not smart. I don’t agree that you shouldn’t have goals of “material” things like expensive cars and bigger houses. Many times the action of striving for the next step up is one of the sole things that can help you “succeed” that much faster. You could manage to live in a cheaper apartment, or drive a crappier car, but I’m sure you chose something more manageable but still nice to you. If that level meets your personal goals of happiness, that’s great, but I think we’re all different in that aspect.

I can tell you from personal experience, if I can proportionately afford to have a Lamborghini in my garage, I would be happier. But I am also a huge car fanatic. I also do agree with the statement about always wanting the next level up, and never really being truly satisfied, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with having goals of better things than what you have, as long as you are smart about “upgrading”.

I think there should be two types of goals. Your main life goals, for example being able to work from home and spending more time with your family, and then a perk goal, for example driving that 5-series instead of the 3. Both types of goals are important to have as they are the main reasons why people work hard for themselves and try to be successful.

What are your opinions about having material things as a priority goal? Do you tend to agree with Scott, or do you think that material things will make you happy?

Revver is a site like YouTube where you can upload and share videos online. The main difference is that they allow you to make money on the videos you upload based on views. They give video owners 40% of their ad revenue. You can even make 20% of the ad revenue by just sharing other people’s videos.

This provides a great opportunity for people to make money, on top of a great reason for people to promote and grow Revver.

To better help grow themselves, Revver created their own Wordpress plugin that essentially creates a personalized video sharing solution made easy. You simply install the plugin and you have some awesome features at your fingertips:

• You can post videos by simply putting in their video ID
• The entire Revver library is available through your admin. This means you can find and post videos with just a couple clicks
• You can see exactly how much you’ve made through the Wordpress admin
• When your readers create an account on your blog, one is automatically made through Revver, so they can post video responses directly through your blog
• All video responses moderation are done through your Wordpress admin

This is an awesome all-in-one solution for anybody that is especially interested in having a blog to create and share their own videos.  It makes things easy for site owners, and it makes it a no-brainer decision to go with Revver.  That is why this is an ingenious idea for Revver to promote growth of their network.  I would love to see YouTube/Google Videos do something like this, but without a revenue share platform, it may not be as popular.

The richest person in China is Yang Huiyan, worth over $16.2 billion, and only 26 years old. Yang is worth so much due to the boom in stock and real estate that is happening in China. She is the majority stockholder of Country Garden Holdings, a property development company which her father started. He had transferred 70% of the companies shares over to her right before its IPO.

On top of only being 26, a billionaire, and the richest person in China, she’s also pretty cute:

Not bad, eh? Too bad she’s married!

Yang now sits on the board with an executive director title, and works in the companies logistics activities.

The growth in wealth in China has been very dramatic over just the past year. If you look at the combined net worth of the top 40 richest people, they were worth $38 billion in 2006. Just one year later, that number grew to $120 billion.

Of the top 40, 12 of them are real estate developers. This just goes to show you how fast real estate is on the rise. Unfortunately that is a potential problem for the country:

Their rise reflects a sharp rise in Chinese real estate prices over the past year despite government efforts to restrain a boom that it worries could ignite a debt crisis or leave the country’s poor majority without affordable housing. CNN

By comparison, the youngest American that makes the top 40 list are Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google and 34 years old. They are both worth $18.5 billion.

There are a few contests by some fellow bloggers out there that you guys should know about:

John Chow - ShoeMoney RSS Competition

John and Jeremy are having a nice little competition for who can get the highest increase in RSS subscribers this month (John’s post, Jeremy’s post). Jeremy hasn’t brought the heat yet, but John is offering up $1,800 in prizes for people subscribed to his RSS feed. He’s giving away a bunch of stuff from pizzas from Domino’s to a $750 Wordpress design from a pretty good designer.

While I know John, I’m a reader of both blogs. So if you’re not subscribed to either of their feeds, I recommend giving them a shot.

ProBlogger - Birthday Bash With $54,000+ In Prizes

Darren has really done it this time, he’s compiled close to $60k in prizes to give away as a birthday bash for his blog. You can win all kinds of stuff like redesigns, cash, technology (iPods, LCD’s, etc), and much much more.

So far he’s had a couple of the prizes go to the first X number of people that e-mail or post a comment, so make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to get your best chance of winning.

YoungGoGetter - 5,000 Business Cards…Designed & Delivered

My friends over at YGG are offering their design services to help you make an awesome business card. They teamed up with Orange32 to print out the cards in double-sided, full-color, UV coated goodness. On top of that, they’ll ship em to you for free, and you get a text link on YGG.

All you have to do to win is write a post about business cards. YGG came up with a bunch of topic ideas, so give the contest a look, and good luck!

Zac Johnson - Free Affiliate Summit Pass

My fellow New Jersey’ian Zac Johnson is giving away a free pass to the 2008 Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas.  One pass is about $1,000, so it’s a nice little giveaway.  Zac speaks at the conferences, and boasts how it’s a great way to learn new things and make some great contacts.

You have until December 1st to enter, and doing different things gets you different number of entries to win.  Just posting a comment on his post gets you 1 entry, but writing a review of his blog and mentioning the contest gets you 25 entries and a free t-shirt.  I probably shouldn’t even mention this one because I’m trying to win!