Congratulations to this weeks geek Matt. This weeks questions are…
1. Who invented the first Firewall?
2. What does it mean to be whitelisted?
3. What worm was the first large scale attack on Internet security?
4. What type of traffic does a Firewall inspect?
5. What is a proxy?
Christmas? Wait that’s 16 weeks away!
Yes I know that’s a long ways away but were going to change gears with our Weekend Projects. Wouldn’t you have a better Christmas if you had an extra $500 to spend? Were going to go through the steps to create an online business that you can follow along with. Like our previous projects this will be a step by step process so you can recreate it yourself.
The goal of our project is to make $500 profit over the next 16 weeks from online sales. So how do we do that?
Step 1 – Determine Product
Before we do anything we need to find something to sell. The easiest way to sell a product is to find companies that drop ship. Finding these businesses is not easy. There are a lot of sites that will sell you a monthly subscription at $49.95 and a few that will sell you a one time subscription at $300+ to access a list of drop shipping companies. After searching for awhile I found one that fit my own needs that lists Canadian Drop Shipping companies. I also liked how the price was only $10 a year which is a low investment.
Now that I have a list of products which one should I choose?
What did you pick?
I found a local retailer that I have a good relationship with that will allow me to do drop shipping through him. He does not normally do it but because we are friends he is willing to give me a good deal. The product I am picking is the Creative Vado which I am passionate about because I think it is a great product. I am also picking my target market to be Canadian parents between the age of 25 and 35.
Next steps?
Next week we will go over getting a site online and choosing a merchant provider.
If you are interested in participating post a comment on what product you are choosing and we will contact you for updates as we go through to see how your doing. This will also allow me to customize the examples to help you with what your selling.
A cartoon created by artist Krishna M. Sadasivam.
If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.
As human beings, we seem to be natural born procrastinators. We may not be particularly efficient in our ways, wasting time on things that don’t require as much attention as they are receiving. With that thought in mind, let’s have a look at a few blog posts that address the issue of wasted time (and what you can do about it).
Chris Bibey, who happens to be rocking a new theme on his blog, talks about whether a freelancer can have too many clients. Are you wasting your time dealing with tiny contracts that bring in more headache than they’re worth? Is it better to focus on a smaller number of large projects?
Bob Jones has a guest post up on John Chow dot Com that discusses what to think about when you sell your blog. You may remember Bob as the previous owner of JohnCow.com and in this article, he writes about some of the wasted time (and bitter headache) associated with the sale. Don’t repeat his mistakes.
Shaun Low is an experienced blogger himself, but he asks if non-writers can become bloggers too. Many people feel the inclination to start a blog, whether it be personal or corporate, but they feel that they do not have the writing ability to keep up such an endeavor. Part of it has to do with proper time-management.
Four (or Five) Reasons Why has taken a rather eccentric take on the nature of open bars and how they’re a bad idea. I’ve never hosted an open bar, but I’ve been to a few parties that had one. I must say that open bars are a great idea… at least for the attendees. Nothing wrong with wasting time at a good party.
Last but not least, we have Visionary Blogging, which posted five ways to not waste time in your blogging. Keeping up with blog posts can be pretty time-consuming, so these five tips should help you shave off precious minutes that you can use for doing something else.
Last night Netenberg updated Coppermine, Drupal, dotProect, Joomla, Open-Realty, TikiWiki and WordPress…
Updates:
- Coppermine Photo Gallery: 1.4.18 -> 1.4.19
- dotProject: 2.1.1 -> 2.1.2
- Drupal: 6.3 -> 6.4
- Joomla 1.5: 1.5.4 -> 1.5.6
- Open-Realty: 2.4.4 -> 2.5.2
- TikiWiki: 1.9.11 -> 2.0
- WordPress: 2.6 -> 2.6.1
If you are using these software’s I suggest you upgrade.
Today we upgraded our helpdesk to the newest version. The upgraded addressed some bugs and formatting issues. The upgrade also made some administrative improvements requested by kayako users.
If you notice any bugs or anything that seems out of place in the helpdesk let us know.
Note: If you are using Kayako and upgrading be sure that you have php 5 and zend upgraded to work with php 5.
Update: Kayako changed the way they handle the GMT offset now. If you have any outside scripts the timezone might be off.