Aviation of Business

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Dec 12

I joined ListBandit to help me increase my ability to reach people with my message (won’t it be great when I finally figure out what the message should be?).

ListBandit is an interesting way to take your message to people who otherwise might not hear it… it’s a 3x matrix, infinitely deep (or as deep as you can make it), with a twist.

The twist is this: Every day, the site “shuffles” (or pulls the arm on the one-armed bandit - hence the name ListBandit) the membership, giving you the opportunity to increase the number of people your message may go to. Additionally, if you sign up soon, you’ll get the opportunity to increase the eyeballs your message hits exponentially, just by referring other interested parties to the site.

Initially, your list will be minimal, but as you refer people it’ll build quickly. And every day you’ll have another opportunity to be at the peak of the mountain of people who have signed up - meaning your message will reach everyone below you in the downline.

So start prepping your message - THOUSANDS might get to see it very soon! Click below to sign up and give it a try yourself!

It’s Not Too Late To Hit The List-Building Jackpot. Join
Today, and You Could Be Emailing Thousands … Tomorrow!
http://www.listbandit.com/index.php/ahartley

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Sep 17

The following is a paid review, but is completely my own opinion and is not at all influenced by being paid.

I recently signed up for Pay Per Post, a blog marketing site which has been gaining and gaining in popularity with bloggers as a way to use a blog to make a little (or a lot) of money. It’s also very popular with internet marketers as a way to drive traffic to their sites! If you’re already writing, and you already use products and surf the web, why not make a little money while doing so, right? I’ve been experimenting and learning about online business for a little while now, and have not had much success. To be fair, I’ve also had a lack of focus and not spent my time where it might make the most impact. I’m trying to change that, because - as you see from my last post - I am edging my way back to my original career goal (since high school or college) of becoming a professional pilot.

Since flying isn’t cheap (my first flight in nearly four years lasted nine-tenths of an hour - that’s .9 hours or 54 minutes - and cost $115.64!), I’ve newly refocused my online ambitions to help me pay for the cost of flight training. I figure that if I can make $30 per day, every day, from my online businesses, my flight training will be nearly paid for! With that in mind, I am refreshing my interest in Pay Per Post, starting with this post. I hope to be able to use it to get a good start on my goal of $30 per day. If I am able to make more than that through Pay Per Post (and/or other advertising, donations, etc.), I will increase my flight time commensurately.

Up to now, I have found Pay Per Post to be pretty easy to use. It was very easy to add this blog to my account and get started. I actually got an offer for $30 to review a site - which I was pretty excited about, but then I got distracted and forgot to actually post about the site. The offer was susequently rescinded - unfortunately it happened on the day I remembered and was going to post about it! I ultimately would like to add some of my other blogs to my account at Pay Per Post (blogs like environmentastic! and Teacher’s Forum, but Pay Per Post requires that you have 10 approved posts before you can add any more blogs to your account. I wasn’t aware of this (or I had forgotten), and I was a little frustrated trying to find out how to add another blog to my account… you actually have to do that under the “my posts” tab. That was a little confusing to me, and then frustrating that once I found out where and how to add another blog, I wasn’t able to until I did more posts.

Other than that I think Pay Per Post is a really nice site to work with. It’s easy to learn, use, and navigate, and it has already given lots of people another stream of income! I know Tyler Cruz (visit his blog) has had some success with it… I hope I can make enough to start subsidizing my flight training soon! If you’re interested in making some money with your blog (even if only a little), check out Pay Per Post.

Have you used Pay Per Post? What did you think about it? Let us know - leave a comment!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Aug 12

I’ve been kicking around some business ideas for quite awhile now. Third Floor Cards is a site that I started and then put off for a long time… and it’s one that I would still like to see up and running with a decent site and some good business running through it.

But the most recent one that I have started is The Teacher’s Forum. Currently, it is a dull yaBB forum with a generic look, but it is functional and up and running. So far the only registered members are me (administrator) and my wife, Jill. There are three posts. Two are introductions in the “Break the Ice” section.

We’ll be continuing the design of the site to make it look less generic and more eye-catching when people first come to the forum, but this brings up two questions:
1) Is yaBB (a freeware forum software) the right software to use for this forum, or should I use something more “well-known” throughout the forum world like vBulletin? I’d have to buy a license for the vBulletin software.
2) What is the best way to encourage people to be the first ones to post on a new forum? I’ve thought about using a service like ForumShock to jump start it, but is there a better way?

In beginning to answer number 2, I will be offering free “upperclassman” membership to the first 50 people to register and introduce themselves (in the “Break the Ice” section) on the site. However, I don’t have any kind of paid membership level (yet), so they’ll be taking it on my word that the site will, in the future, have that capability. Which begs the quetion laid in 1, above again - is yaBB the right forum software for the site?

I also spent some time yesterday listing The Teacher’s Forum on search engines and free site-listing web-pages to help bring up the site’s “link love,” as so many search engine optimization (SEO) gurus (like Rae Hoffman and Jeremy Schoemaker) call it.

Any other suggestions and help would be appreciated! Leave a comment if you have any ideas…

And if you want to register and be among the first 50 people to get your free lifetime “Upperclassman” membership, I certainly won’t shed any tears over you posting and helping to get the site active!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Aug 6

As I mentioned in a previous post: Re-designing a never-quite-finished-in-the-first-place design, I entered one of my sites (Third Floor Cards) in a contest to win a free site re-design. Lordy, does that site ever need it. We rose through the ranks pretty well, enjoyed a short stint in third place, and then were knocked back down to fourth, where we’ve been sitting for a couple of weeks now.

With a little boost, I think Third Floor Cards can still make it to third before the end of the competition, but second and first are out of the question for our little site.

That being said, Life Blue has offered a second chance to the less fortunate websites out there - like TFC. The remainder of this post is a critique of LifeBlue’s website, which will garner me an entry into their second-chance drawing. Watch for the “web design” link -> that little beauty buys me five entries into the drawing! Talk about a neat marketing trick to improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Life Blue’s website, in my opinion, is quite well-made. It’s intriguing to the eye, as the top banner changes into a new design focus each time you click a link, but the site’s “motto” - Is your life Blue? - stays front and center throughout. Additionally, there is always a form on the right side of the screen - “above the fold” - allowing you give the web design company your contact information so they can contact you for a custom quote.

I found the site easy to navigate and interesting to read. The writing is concise and has some humour, the text is easy on the eyes (as is the rest of the site), and there are a plethora of links to get you pretty much anywhere you are interested in going on the site without much fuss. The only confusing bit to me was on their Portfolio page, where the links in the left column were there to limit your search of their portfolio examples to their design focuses of creative design, application development, search engine marketing, content management systems, and e-commerce. Since the rest of the left-column links on every other page were so similar, I was confused when I clicked a link and it just reloaded the portfolio page. Perhaps a better explanation of what clicking the links on this page does would help… it took me several clicks to realize what it was doing.

Overall, though, I think it is a very well-designed site, and whether I win in the second-chance drawing or not, I may be contacting Life Blue for my web design needs in the future.

I did two “web design” links! Think that’ll get me another five entries in the drawing? naaah.

Fair Winds,
Andrew