Monday – Comets, Bankruptcy, Web Design & Social Media

Today, kind of came and went like the cold breeze that is blowing in off the lake here in North Carolina.  I worked late last night (as always). 

I got a normal start late this morning around 10:30 am after about 7 hours of interrupted sleep. 

Social Media

I did a little work to do some additional tests with SocialSparks new Pay Per Click (PPC) offerings.  I find the platform interesting and think it has a lot of potential, but haven’t yet found what I would consider either the sweet spot for effectiveness nor the comfort zone for communications.  I’m still just dabbling, but learning a bit. 

One of the issues here is that many times in Izea there is little to no collaboration between publishers.  There is no sharing of best practices due to the history of the old system which brought people from Google hunting down bloggers like we were endowed with special powers or something.  Regardless, I learned a little more today, but still have questions about how to disclose an entry in either twitter or Facebook.  This is completely less than obvious.???? 

Yesterday, I spent a good amount of time establishing a new WordPress Enthusiasts Group for the Greater Charlotte area on Meetup.  This worked great and I have already met a number of new WordPress users in the area. 

Today I spent a little more time following up on some networking and organization in regards to the new group.   I’ve been to meetups before and used meetup.com, but this is the first time I’ve organized things before.  So far I’m paying for the group out of my own pocket, but will likely seek sponsors to cover the cost later. ($45 per quarter)

Under Water Houses & Bankruptcy – Business Begets ?

This afternoon, I spent some time going over finances.  Our house in Atlanta is under water these days by about $25k.  If we sold it tomorrow, we’d have to pay the bank $25k and a realtor $12k plus closing costs out of pocket.  That’s just crazy and not likely to happen. 

So we keep making the house payment, and hoping the economy will get better some day.  Unfortunately, I’m a writer and a financial professional by training.  I can see that the government programs rolling out right now are actually making the problem worse and not providing a cure either to the symptoms nor the cause. 

Now, work and business have been strong the last few months, but I’m definitely seeing a slow down the last few weeks.  I’m also seeing costs go up on several levels despite the fact that we have a very very lean budget.  This all means that due to our house and due to the state of the economy, we could sink or swim on any given month just like most Americans.

Now ironically, or maybe sadly, I just finished up a contract last week to offer up a form on one of my websites (Home Loan Focus) that will help people find a bankruptcy attorney in their area.  That may seem a little ghoulish but in reality it helps the economy.  If banks had been more on top of their finances (and more on the up and up cooking the books less) they would have written off their bad debt faster, and gone bankrupt when necessary faster.  That sounds bad, but in a free market if prices are artificially inflated for extended periods of time, that can hold off reality.

Regardless of whether it is a good thing a bad thing or a taboo, I’ve lived through it before within my families business growing up.  I’ve seen the good and the bad that comes of bankruptcy from many perspectives over the years.  All in all, the main lesson that I have learned is not to let a problem fester and there comes a point where bankruptcy is the answer.  Failing to recognize that causes many companies and people a lot more harm than is necessary.

Green Comet – Not a Super Hero

This evening, I just came in from making a trip out to the wood pile.  We keep a wood burning stove burning during the winter time to offset the heat costs and burn up dead wood and fallen trees so that the area doesn’t get cluttered with combustible material that could spur a forest fire. 

I had read about the green comet that is supposed to be visible tonight.  I searched with out result for the comet in the sky while I was walking out in the cold, but couldn’t see any trace of a green comet.

I might head back out towards the lake in another hour (once I have a warmer coat on) and search the sky with binoculars.  The sky is a little darker towards the lake, less light pollution but there is a large hill to one side that obstructs things a bit.

Web Design

The rest of the evening, I’m going to be snapping picks of my web design work across the internet.  I have done a great deal of WordPress theme design for personal, blog and corporate sites.  I want to update my Web design page at Softduit to help show this off a bit, and help bring in some new business. 

Currently, the majority of my business comes from word of mouth, or my direct sale or up sell ability.  I’m not getting to many fresh leads these days from the site, and I’m sure that has something to do with my dated design examples on the site.

In addition to the paid work I’ve done, I have done a great deal of free web design work for friends and family recently.  I’ve been coding and designing as much if not more than I have been blogging, which is saying something!

I have been making some great progress with my designs.  I can do anything, any type of work, any type of job, any task, as long as I am either learning something or improving.  Sometimes improvement and learning come together and some times they are spread out apart.

I’ve been getting a great deal better and learning a bit too. 

So basically the race is on to ramp up business, earn more doing web design, keep up blogging revenues and my profile and avoid bankruptcy myself.    These days the entire world has bad credit and we are all so interlinked that any one of us could easily end up insolvent (more debt than assets), foreclosed, bankrupt or repossessed.  It is an ugly truth, but the reality is there are worse things in the world and sometimes getting through bad times is a lot more important!