As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of my goals for 2009 is;
“To develop my trading business to a point where it can become my sole source of income”
In this post I’m going to discuss how I intend to hit this goal.
Developing the trading business beyond simply earning from the markets has been a goal for sometime. I developed equationIT.com in early 2008, primarily as a way of incentivising me to undertake my daily disciplines, the logic being, that if I had an audience following my postings, I would be compelled to continue posting. Two things happened that scuppered this plan.
1. The turmoil in the financial markets effectively rendered my strategy as ineffective.
2. No-one came to the website. Not entirely surprising, given I made no attempts to market it.
Well now is the time for me to work on promoting my business. And I figured if I was going to invest some time and energy in marketing the website, that I’d share on the blog how I was getting on. That way, I may be able to point other webmasters in the right direction. I’m keen to understand which web 2.0 networking products work the best. Can I direct traffic to the site simply by joining all my web ‘assets’ together?
Here’s the outline plan.
1. Complete the re-design of the website – I need to increase the sites ’stickiness’. I’m considering a couple of options.
2. Streamline the business profile – I’m currently blogging as ‘the atticman’, posting in forums as ‘equationTrader’ or ‘aidaweb01′, I’m facebooking and linkingIn as my real name and I’m ‘twittering’ and ‘deliciousing’ without really understanding what the bloody hell I’m doing! It’s clear that I need to come up with a single brand. I need to unify my message!
3. Identify all web 2.0 / social networking options that I can leverage - As well as the above, I can also think of YouTube – to post commentary, creating a FaceBook Business page, developing my Amazon and Ei42 stores (If you are going to buy a book, why not go through my store and earn me some commission – All earnings will be posted here and perhaps contribute to future get together’s.
4. Ensure that I can work out where traffic is coming from - That way my results will be more meaningful.
5. Focus on certain aspects of the website and see what sort of content is more popular than others - I’m keen on developing a personal style trading website – nothing too corporate and presenting myself as the sort of guy that people know ‘an honest question will get an honest answer’ – I want to detach myself from the majority of trader type wa*nkers that belittle beginners and show little respect for people who are honestly trying to develop themselves and their businesses.
6. I’m happy to promote my competition – Not as silly as it sounds, especially in the trading game where ones mans successful strategy is another mans downfall – What I’m saying here is that if my website and advice doesn’t work, then what is the harm in pointing people to other sources of information?
7. Discuss my other business interests – a small business club that I’ve set up with a couple of old friends. We try and meet once a month to discuss and share ideas around our respective businesses. Since we’ve been meeting all our businesses have taken huge leaps forward and we are keen to continue to develop a community around our business club.
First things first – I need to come up with a company name that I can then use across all my web assets. Initially I used equationIT, simply because this was the name of an old IT company I ran. To be honest its a sh*t name for a Trading business! I’m growing fond of The Atticman. I also need to ensure the word ‘Trader’ (or something similar) appears in the URL. So something like TheAtticTrader may work? I’m pondering ideas, I know I need to get an answer soon, but one thing I’ve learned about myself, is that sometimes there’s no need to rush. A well thought out URL should last my business a lifetime and so it needs to be right.
Any thoughts welcome!!
Like what you are doing with the site. Keep it up man and you will be where you want in no time. Don’t get caught up and lost it social medias. Some can be a waste of time, I only use Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter. Then have Digg, Reddit, Stumbleon just to post articles on. Good luck I’ll be following.
Many thanks James – comments appreciated. You are right, there are so many social media options that it can become difficult to develop and stick to a strategy. I use Twitter as my main focus and then ping.fm to post to various networking sites. I look forward to your continued comments. I’ll be reading your blog as well.
Hi…was following centamin on google and came upon your comment, intruiged….I followed the trail to your site…after reading your “mission statement” and a number of posts I thought…yes, I would like to subscribe..(So in my case, you’ve accomplished one of your objectives,”site stickyness”). Secondly, your apparent candour I find refreshing. Thirdly..the overarching interest is obviously trading in which I have a growing interest…Well done, with respect to your site..really well laid out (not that I’m any kind of expert), it seems disciplined and well ordered.Kind regards..and well done…magnus
Hi Magnus, Many thanks for your comment. Interesting to me that a comment I left many months ago on Centamin (which doubled since I was stopped out….) in a google forum, has led you to my blog! Thanks for your comments and thanks for registering. I am glad that you spotted my candid approach to this business, as that is exaclty what I am trying to achieve. Too many snake-oil and hidden agendas in this business at the moment! Thing is, I can not understand why honesty is not the best policy! take care and thanks again for dropping by and signing up.
AtticManTrader