Archive for March, 2006

My Weaknesses

Sunday, March 19th, 2006

• I am easily distracted. I tend to drop ideas before I complete them.
• I procrastinate.
• I am too timid. It takes a HUGE amount of effort to get me to act.
• I can be antisocial.

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My Strengths/Skills

Sunday, March 19th, 2006

• I have great web development skills. I dig xhtml, css, php and mySQL.
• I am a pretty good web designer.
• I have a self-deprecating sense of humor.
• I am a decent photographer.
• I love brainstorming original business ideas.

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Passive Income

Friday, March 17th, 2006

People that have jobs or businesses that provide services are cuckoo, cuckoo for crazy puffs.

I was talking to my barber the other week about his recent vacation. He told me that he doesn’t even like taking one. After working as a barber for 20+ years he has found that if he takes a week off, people just wait a week to get their haircut. He knows that any time off means that he will have twice as much work when he comes back.

While I realize that not all service jobs are as literal as this… cutting a head of hair and getting 10 bucks, it is fair to generalize that service jobs do take more direct work or at least management than other jobs.

I love the concept of creating something once and re-selling it multiple times. Microsoft has made billions of boatloads of cash using this model. 37 Signals is a more recent, less evil example of a company that uses this model and applies it over the web. That same analogy also could be made in the publishing arena. With books representing Microsoft and blogs representing 37 Signals.

Right now we all have a tremendous opportunity to create, sell, distribute original ideas and products that have the potential to make us each our own personal boatload of bucks.

So come on kids, stop cutting hair and lets go make an AJAX cookbook.

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Domain Name Search

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

After I think of a business idea, one of the first thing I do is I check for available domain names. For me, finding a great domain name is one of the most fun parts of starting a project.

Lately I have been using NameWidget (or instant domain search) to do all my searches. These new AJAX search tools are by far the fastest and simplest way to check to see if a domain is available. They are also really really fun to play around with. You enter in a search term and you get immediate feedback.

Did you know that flanface.com is available? Can you believe that?

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Wiki

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

My wife and I have a wiki that we use to keep track of our projects and our business ideas. It’s a great way that we can collaborate anytime/anywhere over the magical global intarweb.

We have a section for each of our active businesses as well as an area that has a laundry-list of all of our potential ideas. Its also a great spot to keep lists of potential domain names.

If you need more info about starting a wiki, wiki books is a great resource. They even have a list of sites that let people create a free wiki. If you want to have a password protected wiki, you could try PB Wiki.

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