George Blogs!

The single most important element of any successful business is its ability to manage its pipeline. Of course, we are not talking about the sewage system connected to your home office (although that’s pretty important too), but, rather, about how well you are able to manage simultaneous projects at any given time. And, if you are involved in site flipping, you will quickly discover that the real money lies not so much in high margins but, rather, in volume. Unless you are flipping established sites, you are unlikely to ever earn any meaningful returns with a single project a week.

So, how do you manage your army of outsourced designers and ghostwriters? To be sure, you can write it down, but there are only so many places on your monitor where you can stick those post-it notes. Sooner or later, you will find yourself looking for a better way to do things - and, if you are still in the start-up phase, you will probably be looking for something that you can set up on a budget. Luckily for you, professional solutions are available - and they will not cost you an arm and a leg unless you really want them to!

The simplest one - and the one that you may or may not already have - is Microsoft Project. It’s a bit expensive, but it will get the job done. However, if you are not looking to spend a small fortune on project management and workflow software, be sure to check out the Wikipedia listing of free open-source project management solutions here. Some of the solutions - mostly web-based - are available as a 30-day trial only, but some of the desktop solutions are 100% free. So give it a shot - and watch your profits skyrocket as you manage your workflow more efficiently!

This is just a quick heads-up to let you all know that I’ve pretty much finished tweaking the design. I’ve spent the last few hours working on the header (eventually decided to add a bit of bling to it – can you blame me?) and I’m more or less satisfied with the result.

Is this design permanent? Not likely – as my income improves, so will the design of the blog. My next step is to order custom blog design for this – but that’ll have to wait for a bit.

In the meantime, enjoy the new look of “George Blogs” – you will notice that it is much more readable than the previous iteration and is generally much cleaner as well. There will be ads coming up shortly (as soon as I’ve found the right 125×125 widget), but, other than that, the current look is here to stay, at least for a while.

Here’s a fair warning to all Internet Marketers looking to hire a ghostwriter – don’t trust them! Now, don’t get me wrong here – I am not saying that ghostwriters are crooked and will take your money and run, or that they will intentionally do a lousy job. If anything, as a former ghostwriter myself, I have nothing but respect for men and women who do their best to create value through the power of the written word.

My point, however, is simple – just because you now have a ghostwriter does not magically mean that your problems will disappear. In fact, keep the following in mind – just because your ghostwriter isn’t sitting in the same office as you doesn’t make them any less of your employee. And, as with all employees, things sometimes go wrong, even in spite of the best intentions.

For example, I recently outsourced a project to a person who looked like a brilliant writer, with an extensive resume and a record of accomplishment. Everything was fine and dandy, and I even allowed myself to take the afternoon off, reasoning that I’ve earned it.

Guess what? I came home to an e-mail from my ghostwriter that read that she will be unable to complete the project due to a family emergency (speaking of which, my thoughts are with her and her family – I won’t go into details, but it’s a tough break for sure).

Luckily, I anticipated in advance that something like this might happen – so when I posted the vacancy the other day, I waited to receive PMs from several interested people, some of whom I shortlisted for future references. As such, I had a backup writer working on the project within an hour.

In short, my point is simple – never, under any circumstances, assume that, simply because you have a ghostwriter, the job will always get done. Murphy’s Law is a dreary old bugger, and you always need to have a Plan B for dealing with emergencies such as these.

Incidentally, it’s also one reason why I always work with multiple graphics designers – even though some of them are somewhat better than others, I know I’m not putting all my eggs into one basket when one of them can’t take on the next job for whatever reason (not to mention, it enables me to have multiple projects in the pipeline simultaneously).

GeorgeChernikov.com now features a brand new – and, at $70 per single license – rather premium look.

Unfortunately, it’s not working entirely as intended for the time being (as you can see, the graphics of the “About Me” section of the sidebar are completely off, and there are some compatibility issues with IE 7 to boot), so I will be tweaking it over the next few days.

In short, if you are a first-time visitor to my blog, don’t hit that big red X button just yet – the design is still a work in progress.

As promised, tonight I would like to go a little bit into detail on the lessons learned from my latest SitePoint experience. It is – I hope – a very informative post, and I hope you will find it interesting and relevant as you consider your own career in Internet Marketing. The lessons contained in it apply not only to site flipping alone, but virtually to every single aspect of your business that requires some measure of marketing (which, in IM circles, is pretty much everything).

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