Welcome to Smuggle Me

I’ve read a lot of things in my life that talk about the sacrifices that you have to make to be a successfuk entrepreneur. Not the least of which is Mark Cuban who describes starting a business as a 24x7x365 game. He even goes so far as to salute those entrepeneurs who happily choose their business over their family.

I’ve only met one entrepeneur that I think did a great job balancing the 2. I’m sure there are more, but I remember hearing about a guy who did a great job working his butt off at work, but still made it home at a reasonable time to be with the family. He had to plan better and make it a priority, but he did it.

Of course, in true entrepreneurship fashion, when someone tells me I can’t do it I want to find a way to prove them wrong. We’ll see in a couple years how I’ve done, but I think it’s possible to be an entrepreneur and still a good father. It will take a lot of compartmentalizing and planning, but I’m giving it a whirl.

The way I look at it is that the number one key to being a successful entrepreneur is persistence. It may take longer to be successful, but I think concistence persistence can achieve amazing things. Time will tell.

Trying to start your own business is one of the biggest emotional roller coasters you could ever experience. One moment you feel like your idea is the best idea in the world and will be huge. The next thing you know you can see all of the hairy ugly flaws that exist in your idea. .

The hard thing is that this emotion is something that can happen from moment to moment. No wonder they say that you have to be an optimist to be an entrepeneur.

What’s even more crazy is that this roller coaster ride is why being an entrepreneur is so addicting. It’s some of the highest highs you can feel when something you created is used ans appreciated by a lot of people. It’s downright beautiful. That’s why I love being an entrepreneur.

This weekend I had a little bit of fun and installed BuddyPress. YesN I know I’m twisted to think that is fun. Oh well, it is what it is. I must admit that it was super simple.

I’m really looking forward to using it. I’m planning on using it for my next project. I still need to find a good host for it and create some killer plugins. Hopefully I can get it to work the way I need it to work I’m a little hesitant building this project on top of BuddyPress, but at least it can bridge me until I can hire a true programmer to work with me.

I’m doing some research on using Facebook to market. I’m interested to learn more about people’s experience using Facebook to market. I’d love to hear what you’ve found works and doesn’t work.

Some more specifics of things I’ve been considering is the different between a Facebook Fan page versus a Group page. My understanding is that Group pages are kind of the “legacy” pages that Facebook is slowly phasing out and moving to Fan pages. Is this true? If not, why would you use a Facebook Fan page over a group page or vice versa?

From what I can tell, it makes more sense to have a Fan page. If group pages are indeed being phased out by Facebook, then a Fan page is even more important. However, how do you best make the transition from a group page to a fan page? It’s unfortunate to lose all of those followers when you make the switch. Is there a way to keep all your followers and just convert your group page into a Fan page? If not, Facebook should make a tool for this.

One other question is, “does it matter which category your Fan page is in?” I imagine like most people you could put your fan page in all sorts of categories. Sometimes the categories match great, but most fan pages could be in a number of spots. Does it really matter? Seems to me that it would only matter if you were the top Fan Page in that category maybe?

Ok, there is a start for the discussion. Anyone have some other thoughts on engaging people on Facebook as well?

I’m at a really interesting point in my life. I have a decent day job and I’m making a decent amount of money blogging. That is kind of fun to say that I’m making good money blogging. I feel more like a websit guy than a blogger, but that’s mostly semantics. Anyway, I’m quickly approaching a time in my life where I need to make some decisions.

Inside of me I feel like I need to be an entrepreneur. However, I’m likely one the most risk averse entrepreneurs ever.

The nice thing is that I have my blog income as kind of a foundation for doing a lot more. I just wish it was a touch larger and that I could be more certain of its consistency.

I do have 3 possible choices to pursue (at least logical ones). One is fun, but could never be HUGE so that one is out.

The next idea is reliable and could do well,but could likely never go huge.

The last idea has the most potential, but is my least developed.

Now it’s just a matter of deciding how to proceed.

I just got a Blackberry and I’m surprised how much I like it. Today I decided that I’d try out the WordPress app for blackberry. So, this is my first blog post from the blackberry.

I like it since now I’ll be able to do a lot more blog posting during down time. The small keyboard is kind of a pain, but it’s manageable. The only problem I see with blogging like this is that it’s harder to add links to blog posts also.

Are there any other must have Blackberry apps? I already have email(of course) and Twitter. I also use I’m quite a bit as well. I think I want to look into a Mint.com app if there is one. Are there others I should get?

A week or so ago I got an interesting email from my little sister. She wanted to borrow our Asus eee (basically a little computer) since she really wanted to finish a novel she’s been working on for a while. I don’t know if my sister knows what she’s getting herself into. I think I might need to ask my friend in New Orleans to talk to her about writing a novel.

Anyway, my sister isn’t giving me many details about the novel. I think it’s because she’s writing some smutty romance that she knows I won’t like. That said, I do love seeing people live out their dreams. So, we sent our little computer to her. This should be interesting. I’m going to tell her that in return for borrowing the computer I want 20% of her book sale royalties. Seems reasonable to me. I wonder what she’ll think.

Last night I had a second to start reading through a bunch of content. I realized as I did this that it had been a while since I’d really spent a good amount of time just consuming interesting content. I think I’ve been spending too much time creating content and not enough time consuming content.

This isn’t completely true. I think I’ve done a decent job of keeping up with content on So You Think You Can Dance and electronic medical records. I kind of have to in order to maintain those blogs. However, even there there’s so much content out there that I only have so much time in a day.

There in lies the problem. How to prioritize your time between the creating and the consuming of content. Creating content is how you make money on a blog. However, I sincerely believe that the more content you consume the better content you create (old school people say “To be a great writer you have to be a great reader.”)

However, even more than the above is that I probably need to spend a little more time consuming content just because it’s enjoyable. I love reading about the progress of WordPress. I love reading the various venture capital or entrepreneur blogs out there. I enjoy me a bit of techcrunch talking about startups, etc, etc, etc.

Of course, it still goes back to having enough time in a day to do everything. All in all, I have no complaints. I love my life. I just can’t help but wonder if I’d love it even more if I tweaked my balance in consuming versus creating content.

One thing is certain. I love blogging!!

I have a friend that is really good at scouring the internet to find all sorts of ways to save money or even make money in many cases. His wife would always make fun of him for how much time he spends online looking for deals and ways to make money.

My favorite is when he combined a whole bunch of deals from credit cards and ended up with a stack of cash, miles and other benefits. Although, the funniest one was when he made his wife wait 30 minutes to go to dinner so that he could get a discount which would save him $0.80. Shows you how serious he is about saving money.

Well, I was talking to him the other day and told him he should start a blog about all the various deals he finds. After our discussion, I helped him out and setup Mound of Money. He’s already created a post talking about getting discount hotels and Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program. Watch that site and I think you’re going to really like what he posts.

Also, if you like what he’s written do him a favor and stumble some of his posts. Thanks!

Yes, I’m sad to admit it, but I have a problem. I enjoy looking at my stats far too much. I’ve kind of known it’s a problem before, but now it’s just going overboard. Don’t believe me?

I’m absolutely addicted to the WordPress.com stats package. I hit refresh of that screen far too often. With over 12 blogs that I like to watch their stats, I never have one that hasn’t changed. However, I have my 5 favorites that I watch far too closely. I almost wish the stats weren’t real time.

You’d think that would be enough. Nope, I relatively frequently go and check out some of the same stats on Google Analytics. It’s far too fun. I love seeing the traffic grow.

However, that’s not the worst of my problems. Yes, I also have to constantly check Google Adsense to know how much my ads have paid. Yes, this is real time also. Yes, I am absolutely addicted. By day, by channel, by month, by site. Oh brother, the things I could tell you about Google Adsense.

Nope, that’s not all. All my affiliate programs. My favorites are iTunes, Amazon, Ticketmaster and eBay. iTunes being my most common stats checking. Buy.at (which runs that iTunes affiliate program) has the worst reporting of any affiliate program I’ve seen. Luckily, that’s good for me, since there’s less for me to check. Plus, it’s batched at really weird times. However, since it’s weird times I check it too much as well. Ticketmaster has a nice little widget that sits on my desktop like an IV into my veins, pumping stats before my eyes constantly all day. Do you think that’s a problem?

Ok, you thought you were done, right? Not even close.

Yes, I have to watch my feedburner stats too. You’d think just checking the main page to see how many people have subscribed to my feed would be enough. Nope, not for me. That only wets my tongue to get at more stats. Yes, I have to dig into each feed to see how many views it has and how many clicks for my most recent posts. Thankfully this is batched daily too instead of in real time. See the above comment about my 12 blogs and you’ll realize this is really starting to add up.However, I’m not done with the feedburner stats either. Yes, I have to also check how many people have signed up for the email subscriptions as well. I love watching that number grow since how many people really give over their email? They must really like what you’re doing to give you that.

Nah, maybe I don’t really have a problem checking too many stats. It’s probably just a misconception on my part.

Oh wait, how could I forget? Did you know I passed 3000 followers on my @TVBlog twitter account? Watching follower accounts grow isn’t really a stat is it? Just because I look at follower counts on my 4 different twitter accounts doesn’t mean anything does it?

What do you think? Do you think I have a problem?

Yeah, bring on the comments about how much more content I could create on my websites if I stopped checking stats or how much more promotion I could do for my website if I didn’t check my stats. Certainly this is true. However, just think about this for a second. I’ve done nearly 5000 blog posts over the past 4 years. Guess how many posts I would have done, if I didn’t have stats?