As with all things this blog has now come to an end, partly due to my lack of upkeep and partly due to my movement to new areas. I will leave it up but will probably move to a clean new domain with a new install/theme etc much more targetted and less sell out

 

A clean slate it is…

What sort of schedule do you run? 8 hour days - 10 hour business days - 12 hour mixed days - 7 day weeks or 5 day weekends? Almost everyone differs but with an intention to make it big in business and entrepreneurship its a common case to work 7 day weeks. Personally I find about 70 hour weeks work best and I am a firm believer in early rising. Getting up at 5 am makes you feel like you have got a ton done before people are even driving to work.

My typical day runs from 5/6am to 5pm (12 hours working - usually stopping occasionally but not really for lunch), followed by a few hours of relaxation and dinner - followed by exercise and a bit of blogging/business in the evening.

And the general concensus when you read websites like forbes or books written by millionaire business men (by the way I don’t suggest it - if you do pick well - business men are business men - chances are someone else wrote it) is long hours definately help - most suggest starting between 4am and 6 and some finish at 12pm or even later.

The trick as ever IMO is objectivity. Long hours are great if they are leading to an eventual profit, goal or anywhere positive. But too many hours can exhaust you and lead your business to fizzle as you don’t instantly see progress for your ‘Insane’ hours, so if working more than 12 hours makes you need to have a week off every month don’t work 12 hours a day! If you think of your business as your corporate personality - the more stable you remain the more stable your business will be!

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If you liked this business post then perhaps you would enjoy reading the following from my business and entrepreneurship categories:

• Opening a Business Bank Account in the UK
  
• Hyperlocal - an investigation into working locally on a international web platform
• Real World Optimising (RWO) - My theories on how SEO can translate into real world business

Online CV’s are common - so this isn’t one of those! A kind of combination of lists of programs/languages/things that may come in useful or I have personally used over the last few years and my opinions of them!.

Ok so its pretty random - but if your looking for something specific it might help - will update as I remember/encounter!

Web-Interest

• Wired - paranoid Americans, but interesting
• Forbes.com - goals are a great thing to have
• Funny funny stuff - cats lolz
• Hack-a-day - an old bookmark but always fun to read
• Hacked-gadgets - same applies

Web-SEO

• Hit-Tail - Excellent site, sign up and use their code - best bit is suggestions.
• Google Analytics - If you ignore them taking over the world you kinda don’t worry as much
• Feedburner - stick your blog on it for easy additions such as html feeds and automatic pinging
• Ping-o-matic - does what it says on the tin
• Garythescubaguy - infinitely useful site for seo
• Oscommerce - simple, free out of the box cart - best bit is contributions community
• RSStop55 - got half an hour to spend? push your rss then…
• Spider-food - good reading
• SEO Chat

Things to learn Before building a website (I mean practice - but to compete, the following are key.)

• HTML
• PHP
• SQL/mySQL
• Basic Javascript
• CSS
• How to install/use blogging tools (wordpress specifically)
• Basic SEO
• .Htaccess basics - mod-re-write is good, file access, custom error pages etc.
• RSS feeds - about them and how to make them

Windows Environment Database/Related

• Crystal Reports - easy to master, once you have your a valuable asset.
• SQL Decrypter - a microsoft encryption was never so easy to crack
• PyCRON - run regular tasks on mysql in windows (python cron basically)

Windows Environment General

•  Remote Desktops - windows remote desktop (type ‘mstsc’ from run) is a good start - would highly recommend gotomypc.com - so insanely simple and universally applicable - for people that want to work out of the office this is the idea solution -worth the £17.99 a month.

Random things I have learnt

• Access accounts
• XML
• Computer Graphic Design/3D (including Photoshop, Quark, Corel, Macromedia Flash and Freehand, some cad, 3dsmax, world hammer, source sdk and a ton more)
• Custom PBX, installed, configured, maintained
• Visual Basic and Visual Studio
• Mental amount of SQL
• Studied Business - still learning today

So I have dabbled around with the net for a long time, written a few blogs in different places that I never really did for more than a bit of seo and general fun. So here goes with the whole hearted attempt.

I semi write for a few other blogs which you might recognize my writing style from but I wont mention them here..fresh slate and all. The basic premise is my life, career and other stuff surrounding that. I run a car related website - which is new (end of first live month this week) and as it is such a young site I do pretty much everything from ground up coding to SEO for it. As a result this blog will touch on website planning, design, coding, content management, viral aspects, SEO and SEM (optimization and marketing too search engines), life, lifehacks, games, films and cars. Basically you could split it into Internet and Cars with a few action/sci-fi films thrown in as seasoning.

I am not a qualified webby - I work from personal experience only and I have a sense of humour! I welcome all comments and constructive criticism - in the end we all just want to progress!

So hello world, I’m Woody (real name before you ask.)