Re-mired.

Definitely mired again, with the processes required to build the website.  I think I mentioned in my last post that I had come to the realization that I needed to get a design for the page, before I completed the webpage building.  I spent some time with Corel Draw, but decided that as a busy professional, I didn’t have the time to learn the program.  I have spoken with a few people about designing the page for me, but no professionals yet.  For some reason, I am having trouble following through with that idea.  Not sure what my internal hold up is….

So this week was a wash in terms of the webpage build.  I did do some work on the retail piece, tracked down some wholesalers and opened some accounts, started compiling lists of pricing so I could more efficiently plan the expenses related to the business.

I’ll get back to it on Monday, as I am going camping this weekend and will be without computer and internet for a while…..

Nothing much today

I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon working with my concepts of a website in XSite Pro . Found it to be a little more complicated when I wanted to make the concept my own….had to go into the advanced features to discover some more interactive features, which appear to be limited and won’t allow me to do what I want to do. However, I may just be too unclear on what I am doing and need to dig deeper. I spend a lot of time yesterday trying to work with one of the templates and to modify it to suit my needs. Not that effective so far. Then I started working on learning Corel Draw 9, which I have, but have never used before.

Oh, I also have not yet figured out how to make the site have different page layouts.  There seems to be only the option to either have a page layout that applies to all pages, or to have no page layout at all, which is inefficient for my concept.

More tomorrow….

XSite Pro initial thoughts

I downloaded XSite Pro last night and spent about two hours with the tutorial.  I have to say, it looks like a REALLY clean program!  One issue I have realized is that now I have to DESIGN the site, literally get a drawing program and design the website, then split the picture up into zones that are essentially pasted onto the pages.  So that is why the site was always so slow!!!!!  I used to do everything in HTML, and it took forever to load!

Back to X-Site Pro.  I am finished with the first 8 tutorial lessons.  All very point and click, simple to understand, and similar enough to Microsoft type programs that there is no learning curve.  It seems to have some pretty advanced features that I am just getting into now….breadcrumb trails, SEO Wizards, automatic keyword loading, link management, pop ups, site maps and some standardized pages for your privacy page and contact me pages.  All making this seem very simple.

My next step will be to take what I’ve learned so far and start to apply it to some simple concepts on my concepted site.  I’ll work on the design at the same time, hopefully it won’t interfere too much with the site build, and I can upload the design bits later.

XSite Pro

I just purchased the Xsite Pro software. www.xsitepro.com I’ll download it onto my personal computer at home this weekend and play around with it.  I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Interesting thing about downloaded software like this.  You can find lots of really exuberant reviews about something like this, but generally they are affliliates so you just don’t know if they are telling the truth.  This one seemed to have some reviews that were other than affliliates (though not many and most of the sites were either dead or difficult to get in to….), so I figured I would try it out.  Here’s the link:  http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5478

Cost of this program is $197.  When you look at the grand scheme of things, I spend $197 in a weekend going out to dinner, etc, so I just won’t go out this weekend and I’ll make the money back already!  (Funny logic, huh?  My boyfriend doesn’t understand it either.)

Mired.

I am.  Totally mired.  I’ve decided to start my own business, get off the corporate dole, take the red pill.  But now I’m stuck.  Lost.  Mired in the miasma of the process.

So, I thought:  Why not get it out of my head everyday, write it up, post it….if nothing else, I can let the bad stuff go.  At very best, someone may read this and a comment may catapult me out of the mire.  Can’t hurt to try.  Besides, I need to get used to blogging anyway, as one of the components of the business includes a website with a blog, etc.  And as I’m doing research on this, I’m not finding the information I need, so maybe this will help someone else who is in the same boat.

I started the process by taking a class which is aimed at entrepreneurs( http://www.weda-atlanta.org/) and it was a great class to get me started asking some of the questions that I needed to answer before I could truly move forward with this! 

I have about 85% of a business plan pulled together and ready to go.  Then I became stuck on one faction of the business, sourcing wholesale vendors for the retail store.  I’m just not getting very far with this.  How do I get the idea out of my head and find a vendor supplying the product I’ve decided to sell?  Big problem there.  So, I have a couple of emails out to people I’ve met, hoping to get some push from the outside.  And I’ve moved onto another piece of the grand scheme.

The second component to the concept, which is also mired, is the website.  Now, of course, being me I couldn’t just come up with a basic website.  Oh no.  This had to be a social portal, with so many different bits and pieces to it that it has taken me three months to figure out what I was actually getting myself into. 

First of all, I met with a friend of mine who really wanted to do the site for me.  Not a professional, but someone I thought might be able to put something good together for me.  We had a meeting and gave him some scratchy drawings of what I envision to a web designer, then spoke with him at length, describing my grand vision.  He took notes, and I walked away feeling pretty good about my descriptions, everything I had given him so far.  However, over a month later, when I spoke to him again, expecting some sort of update, he hadn’t started it.  Damn.  I fired him in my mind and decided to submit the request to a local web designer used by my gym.  Sent him the same sketches, spoke with him for about 20 minutes.  Felt good about everything until I received the bid.  I OBVIOUSLY had no idea what I was asking for, because I didn’t even recognize most of the stuff he bid! 

So, I told him I needed to get some education before I actually bought his services and I started doing a lot of internet research, and I’ve learned a lot.

I learned the most from Yaro Starak at www.entrepreneurs-journey.com and Allen Gardyne at www.associateprograms.com .   They both present a large amount of free educational columns along with links and downloads that have been very helpful to me in learning about monetizing the site.   I probably know too much now. 

Most of the information emphasized the fact that you aren’t going anywhere with a website until you have good content on it.  Makes perfect sense.  Absolutely.  So now, it is obvious that I don’t have any need for a website until I get serious about writing my content.  Damn.

I feel really self-conscious about my writing.  It’s not funny.  It’s not engaging.  It’s not cool.  I don’t feel right about putting it up on the web for all to see.  So, I contacted a few people I know about ghost writing for me.  A couple hundred bucks and I’d have at least some starter content, right?  Wrong.  I have not received any content from either of the people I contacted.  Granted I was contacting people I know rather than the many links on the web, but I thought I would use local networking to get the work done.  So maybe not a great idea.

So another month gone, and I’ve decided that I probably just need to bite the bullet and start writing.  So I did.  My first “article” was not as inspired as I had hoped, so I stopped in the middle.  Maybe I’ll go back to it in a while, see if I can get more inspiration on it.  The second article is better, still incomplete, but I feel better about it.  Now I just need to get it off the handwritten page and onto a digital one (for some reason, I can’t write online, have to write it down by hand).  So, there I am.  Two (ish) articles and no place to put them.  But I dont’ think I can put them anywhere until I have a lot more to add to it. 

I get emails every day from so many sources of information, now I think I might have too much info, not enough substance.

Well, I’m off to read up on the latest bit of info:  Article Marketing Automation http://www.articlemarketingautomation.com/