So I decided to start playing golf. Recently, my wife and I signup golf class. We should have done this a long time ago.

Where am I now?

To be honest, I am far from success! My two online stores recently got hacked twice in two weeks. Nothing is outrage at the moment, but the admin password were changed and locked me out. It also doesn’t generate the expect income. So I should either shut them down once for all. My newest project to help local business is getting stronger. Although it’s hard to get local business to pay me, I do get more potential customers interested in using my services to gain the search engine ranking and long term exposures on social network.

Where am I going?

Last month, I discovered the power and the gold mind of using Facebook social search. After implementing the strategy to my website, I can see the referral traffic from Facebook has jumped 970% comparing last month. This is a significant change to the search engine landscape. With the proper implementation, a local business can get FREE traffic from Facebook to their website with just one click.

At the moment of this writing, many customers took my suggestion and recommendations and start seeing the traffic boost from Facebook. It is still too early to tell how Facebook want to use the massive information for their own good.

So my plan is to continue dig into Facebook Graph API and implement custom app to help local business getting massive exposures from Facebook and increase click through rate and conversion rate.

Lately, I also dig into creating custom fan page and landing page to see how people interact with it. That’s the silver mine from my perspective. Many local company start charging for customize fan page and newsletter. It’s an inevitable trend. Gonna catch up with that too.

I encourage my readers to follow me on my personal Fan page.

Last year on December 7th 2009, I decided to focus on my next move and prepare for the best in 2010. Branding is one of the main goal for 2010. You can read my post about my Next Move – Consulting – Branding – Marketing – Outsourcing – Investing.

I have been asked by some new friends and potential business partners to provide them my newest bio. It got me thinking redesign this blog and to offer better personal brand, which is important to me and my business.

To be honest, I have been struggling for years on where this blog will go. I did make money off this blog, but it makes this blog looks like other affiliate marketer blog. I am not saying affiliate marketing blog is no good. I am saying it is not what I do. It doesn’t really represent me well.

I am re-branding myself for the better future for people who look up me as role model. From the technology stand point, there are some challenges when making big changes like this.

My first challenge is to rearrange all the content on this site. I did research on many top notch blogger’s and famous people’s personal blog. I decide that I will start over with a Plain and Simple one. See how simple Guy Kawasaki‘s personal web is. One thing I don’t like is to separate blog into a sub-domain.

Now there will be a new blog under a separate folder in order to keep all the existing content you are reading now. This blog will eventually fade away. Moving and redirecting all the content to new blog is simply not a good thing. So I am not going to move them. I will simply hide them from the home page. In other words, there will be two WordPress blogs running on this site. One runs under the root while the other one runs under /blog/ subfolder. All existing content will stay un-changed to avoid 404 page not found or search engine penalty.

My second challenge is to pick a nice photos and replace it on all my social networking profile. I have been using the above big sunglass photo everywhere, which I took in 2005 on the trip to Lake Tahoe. It’s about time to find something more current. I am not going to show me in a nice suite with tie. I will be showing something that fit my life style.

Are you branding your personal image and blog? Are you proud of your personal blog? Please leave your personal blog URL here and I would like to check it out.

On the business side, one of my site is breaking the daily Google AdSense revenue record. Well. There is nothing to be proud of, since it’s still not a huge amount of the passive income. However, it’s definitely a good sign that I am constantly making good progress.

New year means a new achievement to me. It’s not just for business, it’s also for personal matters. There were things that I hope to achieve in the early 2009. Now many of them are checked and are removed from my wish list.

On the personal side, re-unite with family members are the biggest achievement in 2009. When we are growing older, the true priceless asset are our family members. I am so glad that family issues were worked out well. So we have chance to take a short picnic trip TOGETHER to Fountain Hills and are able to enjoy a cool sunny afternoon. I also totally quit drinking any soda, lowered my cholesterol, blood sugar and getting better shape. Life is going to be so wonderful with healthier body.

Now there are new goals to reach and new action plan to be executed. I list some of them in my Weekend Confession post at New Year + Same Old Goals = New Action Plan. I am so exciting to reach all those goals while enjoying my weekend and vacation with wife. I am also very exciting to travel with my new Canon 7D.

BTW, I love Canon 7D, which allows me take really good photos and HD video. I just post my first HD Video on YouTube. You can watch that below. Still, I have lots tricks to figure out about shooting HD video.

Anyway, the new 2010 will a wonderful year for me.

What’s your new goals and action plan?

First of all, it’s been a while since my last post with a blog post header image. I took this shot in Flagstaff Arizona. It was a beautiful snow day. I had good time with wife in the mountain for two days. Now it’s new year 2010. It’s time to get back to work, so I can enjoy a new vacation next time.

On Dec 11th, 2009, I post my new direction Trade for a better future. While I was in the mountain enjoying white snow, good things start happening. It’s already a good start of 2010.

In the new year, I will continue my efforts to reach my same old goals left in 2009, but with a newly polished action plan. I will also follow my previous action plan focusing on Consulting – Branding – Marketing – Outsourcing – Investing.

What’s my new action plan?

• My consulting job will keep my hands half full. There is a big project coming that will definitely pay my bill. However, getting my local search marketing project stabilized will make me most profit.
• This blog will soon get a face lift. I have this WordPress theme for years and start disliking it. More and more people will visit this site due to my personal branding strategies. So a better looking and professional site is a must. I will also be more active on social networking and local business networking.
• Partner, Partner and more partners. After building the solid foundation on my project, it’s time to build partnership with other like minded people. There are plenty talented people out there who can speed up my progress and get job done right.
• Buying a new investment house is always on my watch list. The house market in Phoenix AZ seem to get back on track.

After all, my current Google AdSense monthly revenue on one of my site reaches new high. It’s is still not a tremendous passive income source for me, but it’s getting better every month.

Here are the new goals for 2010

• Getting 5+ new customers each month starting January
• Boost 50x traffic before the end of 2010
• Reach 10x Google AdSese revenue before the end of 2010
• Revive online stores before January 31.

Of course, they are a difficult goals, but they are feasible. So follow me on my progress and remember to subscribe to my blog.

I have made my conclusion and I want to share with you why Google Sites is good for collaboration, but may not be a good SEO tools.

First of all, let’s face the facts.

• Google Sites is owned by Google
• Google Sites is indexed fast. The new sites I created is indexed less than 24 hours.
• Google Sites doesn’t support Javascript and flash embedded code.
• Google Sites doesn’t allow custom Meta tag. So you can register that on Yahoo Site Explore or Bing Webmaster
• Google Sites doesn’t have root and shell access.
• Google Sites uses nofollow link to external sites other than Google’s sites (Ex. Blogspot.com)
• Google Sites integrates with Google DOC and other Google service (Ex. Google Map) very well
• Google Sites only gives your 100MB space

For people who are creating satellite sites for SEO purpose, Google Sites is not a good choice. It creates nofollow link automatically. Unless you are linking to blogger.com blog, you don’t gain any benefit on backlinks. However, you can still drive traffic to your sites, if you offer quality content.

Now. I have more many Google Sites created. Most of them are private sites for collaboration.

Here is how I get the best out of Google Sites:

• Share Google Calendar on the private sites with other members
• Collaborate and share documents
• Post private blog post and exchange ideas
• List To-Do for other members to follow
• Track schedule
• Create draft article for other members to review
• Share slide show and presentation

There is no need to use those 100MB disk space. You pretty much share photos on Picasa album, document on Google Doc and Video on YouTube. The 100MB is virtually too much!

I am hoping Google Sites can add more features and allow using Javascript. It will be nice to add Google Friend Connect and Facebook Integration.

After all, my experiment is over. I will be using Google Sites for collaboration only from now on.

The second thing that excites me is the success of Groupon, which is very success in less than a year. Groupon is a web site that offer great daily deals in many cities. It’s all about group buying power locally.

So what does those news mean to me? What am I so exciting about?

There is plenty opportunities!

After receiving many complaints from local business owners who have tried Groupon. I know there is a lot of room for me to create something better. Opportunities is out there for me to grab. The good news is that I already built the foundation. I just need to find the right way to make a difference.

There is one common things that Groupon and Yelp have. User Engagement. Without the user engagement, there won’t be demand. Without the demand, nothing will sell.

There is a big difference from what I have done in the past 10+ as IT consultant. I will more focus on location based application, search marketing and mobile integration. Local based application has been on my radar for sometime. I joint web site such as BrightKite, Foursquare and GoWalla. So far, I love BrightKite most. It has an iPhone App that allows me to post where and when I was and what I saw. I don’t really get the points of using GoWalla. I do like what Foursquare has to offer in terms of sharing tips about a location.

To help move my project forward, I immediately need a better article writer who understand how to write formal document. The way I am finding help is to offer help to those who can right article, but don’t know how to optimize their own article on their own site. I will be training them how to improve their own content while getting helping hand from them on my writing. I found one who is retired and doing some amazing work to help AIDS orphans. I will be helping them raise money as well.

The trade off is that I won’t make any profit on this type of trade, since my hourly rate is much higher than those who write article for me. That’s OK. I am looking to trade for better future, which will well worth more than what I pay for. It’s an investment.

Now my hands are full. I have a potential contract that will take 10 to 20 hour a week of my time. This income will be turned over to my up coming investment on a risky move for marketing and advertising for my project. Will see how it goes.

Today! I went to Panda Express and got this from the fortune cookie. I really like it.

How does it know my plan?

That’s for now!

I have lost some confidence on some project I am working and also gain on other projects. Only time will tell if I made good or wrong decision.

First all, I am staying in a healthy shape. That’s the most important thing on this journey. Without a healthy body, nothing will last. Recently, I decided to switch lane from Nikon to Canon. Got my new Canon 7D DSLR that comes with the capability to take HD1080 video. Soon I will start posting some video on my YouTube channel.

In the past months, I have spent lots time networking with other people locally. Since my project involved heavily with local business, I have try many ways to reach out. Here are things I have done.

• Radio Station
• Local Fair
• Local Meetup
• Business Networking
• Trade Show, Conference and Expo
• Door to Door
• Cold Calling

Some of the stuff I have done did not work at all. For example, getting interview on Radio Show only brought me one phone call, which is asking me to buy MLM type of supplement juice. I wasted $300 for a 15 minutes interview.

I have tried different approach to reach out to potential customers at conference, business expo and trade show. I end up sending out business cards, flyers and many other marketing materials without any return. So far the only thing works for me is the local business alliance meeting where I got few customers. I have also tried Barter system, which works OK so far. They brought me 5 new customers in the first month.

Don’t get me wrong. The things I have done above did not work well don’t they won’t work well for you. I need to sit back and review the stuff I have done and find out why they don’t work well.

I narrow down to few points.

• Timing – Timing is the #1 key to reach out to your customers. I have a small success on getting some attention on generate traffic through social network (facebook and twitter), but I lost lots time without getting any traffic from the meeting I went or radio show I was on. Why? It’s a bad timing. I was doing the show at afternoon when most people are driving back home without any computer or access to the Internet. They will simply forget what I said and the URL of my web site. It’s the same to the meeting. If the meeting is late night or early morning. People tend to forget me or leave my business card in their pocket for hours or days.
• Audience – This is very import factors that I wasted a lot of time networking. I need to choose my audience more carefully. Talking to the wrong targeted audience is wasting time. They will never buy into my services or are simply not interested in what I am offering.
• Location – I picked few different locations to meet with people and showing them how I can assist them to make their life or business better. I often picked the wrong place that is as loud as coffee shop or business restaurant, where they lost their focus on listening to me. So I start meeting people at quiet hotel lobby or book store where I also have wi-fi access. It turns better. They are listening.

When I started this project, I was not sure if I can make it to the end and not sure if it will works well. I was also wondering the chicken and egg questions. So I offered many free accounts to the customers. On one side, I am losing money helping other businesses to get more businesses. On the other side, I have statistic data and successful testimonial to attract real paid customers. Now there is no more free trial program. Every new customers are paid customers. That’s a great improvement.

Now I am back to the most difficult tasks. Marketing and Sales. Being a software architect in IT industry for too long, I don’t really do well in the Marketing and Sales fields. There are simply too much to learn.

There are also a fear in front of me. I have no idea how much money I should spend to push out my ad campaign and marketing efforts. I have money to spend, but I am certainly afraid of losing them. It’s like wasting $300 for nothing.

Currently, my direction is to hire a top gun sales and marketing guru in the industry. Partner with them and trade for the better results. I am also working on helping other entrepreneur to get their project moving forward with my knowledge in web development and SEO.

I feel shame. I left my online store behind my back and let my partner to run. As far as economy goes, my online store is going down too. I should spend some time to get them back on track.

After all, my life is good. Got my new Canon 7D and took some test shots! I really love what I see so far! Stay tune!

In the past week, I got a lot of things done. Most importantly, I have moved forward on my project. I am so glad that wife will come home next week after a month family trip to Hong Kong. I am kind of missing her. I am also glad that I was able to control myself to work even harder in the past week.

My entrepreneur journey has been rough. It’s not easy for me to jump into the business and marketing circle from the logical IT industry without any frustration and disappointments.

I started joining local business community and start meeting local business people to understand where I stand and how I can facilitate my business with others. Things are NOT always going the way I want, which is totally reasonable. However, I just can’t believe that I am still too naive. I am too new to the brutal business world.

I don’t really feel upset at all, because I can actually see the real world business operation and how to work with other businesses and learn from them. Here is something I have learned.

• Be honest. Tell people the truth about your businesses. Exaggeration doesn’t make your look good in the competition after all.
• Don’t be too naive. Business world is very cold blood in many cases. It’s simply deal or no deal world. Don’t just fall in love with people, who simply just want to be nice.
• Not everyone take it the same way. I am little disappointed by the fact that everyone takes a statement so much differently. Some people look very nice, but can’t take a simple thing. They take it personally or politically.
• There is no enemy in the business world. Everyone is your friend. They either give your a helping hand or simply give you the good example of who you don’t want to be.
• There is no best friend in the business world. Business is business. Best friend may not save your businesses.
• Mind your own business. It doesn’t mean you should not help other people’s business. It means you should take care of your business before taking care of others. If you cannot do your business right, you will be just one of those in the death-pool history book.
• Never say never.  People always change their mind. Situation always changes. Good thing often come at the worst time.

I am so glad that the web site is getting more and more traffic everyday. Even though I have not made any profit yet, it won’t be to far away. Many start-up companies start making profit in 3 to 5 years. I have few more years to join them.

There are too many things to do. Marketing in the traditional way is probably the quickest way for now. I will also apply the AdWords to bring some extra traffic and hopefully get some conversion.

After all, I was not very happy about the programming progress, but I am happy that I reach out and made some connections. Getting real positive feedbacks is priceless.

The past weekend is pretty much a crazy weeks. Since last week, I stop doing any work on the new niche on 30DC. However, I apply all the knowledge I have learned from 30DC to my current project. All I can say about 30DC is that it’s about learning the tools to create the opportunities. To be honest, it’s a lot of work. Just like all the training videos taught us. You have a lot of writing.

Writing is one of the biggest challenges to me. Here are things I have done in one week.

• Finish Billing module and waiting for bank and processor to prove my application
• Create 3 new blogs and 1 new web site to direct traffic to my main site.
• Changed main keywords on main site seem to help the search engine traffic on those keywords.
• Writing more than 12 blog posts and submit many links to one of the directory alias site. Each one is very much unique, but they all direct the traffic back to the main site.
• Update the links from alias sites to main site.
• Submit the web site through traffic-bug dot com, but don’t know what it will bring to the main site. It’s kind of risky move. I don’t even know what those web directories are. Hope they are not bad sources
• Add 2 news testing account to show case the power of the system and the result of SEO. Fortunately, the new page is indexed and show up on Google at top 5 spot in less than 24 hours. It proves my SEO strategies is working.
• Meet wit some new local business owners and help one of them to get their business on track. Glad to help!
• Design the new window sticker. Like it a lot.

Really like to thank iPhone, which saves me huge time on watching the 30DC training videos. I load it on to my iPhone and watch them while working out in the GYM. It makes the work out much more meaningful and not that boring. So I can walk full hour non-stop.

I am very exciting about the coming week. I only have 15 days left to see if I can get 5 more customers register before the end of August. There are certain things that I am no so sure about.

1. Join local chamber of commerce to get list of target customers. I was told by one of the local business owners who said the chamber of commerce did give them many business opportunities. However, I doubt that most of my target customers are chamber of commerce members. Don’t see the point to join chamber of commerce in they are my targeted audience.
2. Print Flyer. Got a quote from the local printing shop about my new window stickers, and flyer. It will cost me $300 for 100 window sticker and $1000+ to print 500 flyers. It’s more than what I expect.
3. Marketing material. Without the proper paper works and material, signing up offline customer is going to be a problem. Also need a eye catching marketing materials for call to action.
4. Press Release. I am little bit hesitate on going this route, but this one seem to be working the best. I am not a good writer, but I got find someone who can edit my writing into a formal one. Otherwise, it will be very embarrass when TV station or news media read my PR. If I had the good PR a months ago, it will probably picked up by the News Station already.

There are things that I have learned and need to adjust my strategies accordingly.

• Local business don’t know and don’t trust Internet. Some of them don’t even have a web site and don’t have Internet access. This is a big barrier for me to reach out to local businesses and to persuade them to take advantage of my site. In this case, doing PPC campaign to find local business customer is not going to work.
• Local business don’t have time to deal with extra work. Many local business are already struggling with their own operation. They don’t have time to work on something on computer, which they are not familiar with. It gives them extra burden.
• I am not too small any more. Been told by a much bigger company that I am too small to work with gave me the motivation to take them down. By looking at the recent traffic and responses on several social network. I don’t feel small at all. Two copycats are already dead. Two competitions are already giving up!
• Give before take. I truly feel the great spirit between local businesses here. After giving out my helping hand, I was referred by one local businesses to many others. Can’t believe I ran out of business card in matter of 2 days.
• Branding your businesses is equally important to brand your name. I am very much surprised about how many people wants to know who is behind the creation of the site. My first intention is to hide my identity behind all these. So no one knows who created such a wonderful solution. I guess I was wrong. People do want to know when, why and how the site was created. They also want to know who was behind the scene, so they can give the person credit. So now my identity is revealed.

Moving on.

Now I have a lot to achieve. Approval of billing process and merchant is just matter of time. To carry on my goal to get 5 new customers signup is going to be a challenge. Need to implement the following things to make it happen.

1. Get the billing process test on production and get it out of my way
2. Design the PDF signup form for offline process. Ask them to fax back to me and process them manually.
3. Get at least one Press Release out on paper and on the Internet
4. List out 40 potential customers. Call and visit their office. Need to have #1 – #3 done before this. Hope to get 5 signup Otherwise, I will miss the goal for August.
5. Contact college students and ask them to try it out. Should have kept a good relationship with the school board since I graduated. Man. Why I did not think about that before?

That’s for now. Let’s see what I have to confess next week!

BTW, if you read my full post, you must be crazy. Are you a stalker? Indeed, I really appreciate your time reading this far. You are unbelievable. I hope you learn something.