Day 17: Incubator – Half-full Website
The arrival of good news gave me a big adrenaline boost to start my StomperNet hours. My Paypal issues with StomperNet appear to have been resolved. I just need to make some calls on the next weekday to confirm that I can use the software tools. I can’t wait.
My 17th day as a StomperNet Incubee finds me cramming everything I can learn about Joomla. Out of 10 web pages, I now have finished 5 of them. My Newbie estimate of catching up with my classmates by Monday still looks about right. Tomorrow I finish the remaining 5 then on Sunday, I work on the daily Incubator concepts I got behind on. I’m really excited for Monday. I get to ask for feedback on my spanking new website.
![[del.icio.us]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[MySpace]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Twitter]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Email]](http://businessteligence.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
Day 16: Incubator – The Hard Way
Ha ha ha! So Mambo and Joomla are more or less the same. And Weebly.com takes up to 48 hours to setup if you already have an existing domain with another host. 
The Thesis theme under Wordpress is not free and neither is Semiologic. Through a friend’s laptop, I got to play around with XSitePro. It has lots of Newbie-friendly themes but they don’t look very professional. XSitePro does have better looking themes but Newbie-friendliness goes downhill when you want to do customizations. I can see how XSitePro can be useful for creating those Squeeze Pages and sub websites quickly. But it does not look like it can give a good foundation for your main website.
Day 15: Incubator – SEO
Sigh.. I am officially behind. Day 15 of StomperNet Incubator’s lesson gave a surprise by presenting a 45-page PDF file full of tips and how-to’s on how Ross Goldberg does SEO. The surprise is appreciated. From the comments I am reading, it promises to be a practical, meaty PDF file. But when I started reading it, the words just went by my head as I don’t have a website to apply this on yet.
Day 14: Incubator – Usability Introduction
This StomperNet Incubator video lesson on Usability closely mirrors the message it tries to convey – What works is not as paramount to what looks sexy. This lesson does not leave you with lots of ooohs and aaahs. But it does leave you with lots of important things to think about since the cost savings from what you can apply from this lesson can go as high as 80% after launching your website. This 80% is more telling if you are just starting out and you drop all of your budget into getting your E-Commerce site launched; only to find out that it is not converting due to Usability issues and you need to spend more to get it up to speed. For a subject that asks you to expend joules and joules of brain power, the faculty John S. Rhodes, manages to get his ideas through.
Day 13: Incubator – Site Building – Where do I start?
StomperNet Incubator’s Day 13 starts and ends on the wrong foot. It must be the number 13. Bound to give an honest diary of my days as an Incubee, I have to recount that an ongoing issue with my account keeps me from completing the job. Erik Stafford’s first response to the question highlighted in the title is to build a foundation by doing research using Market Samurai. 
Market Samurai is a recommended tool here in StomperNet. With Incubator, you get free usage of this tool as well as several other tools. The unresolved issue on my account prevents me from doing Erik’s first recommendation. The issue seems to stem from the fact that I had paid using Paypal. Whether it is an issue with Paypal or StomperNet, it is not clear to me. It could be an honest mistake on the billing system implementing Paypal payments on StomperNet systems… I don’t really know. I just know that I have used Paypal for years both to pay and to receive payment for consultation and it has not given me issues before.
Day 12: Incubator – Action Plan
StomperNet’s Day 12 Incubator video lesson summarizes Days 1 – 11. It emphasizes what was taught, why it was taught and what is expected to have been absorbed by “incubees” each day. It includes a worksheet that needs to be filled out. The purpose of which is to make the incubees self evaluate where they stand.
While I miss the abundance of information from Audrey Kerwood, I understand why this summary video is important. By now, I have seen how rich the StomperNet Video Archive is. In addtion, we were given several spanking, new bonus videos on top of the videos for StomperNet’s Incubator Program. Each of those bonus videos aren’t for light consumption as they are over an hour long each and they demonstrate step by step on the video how the faculty does it themselves for their online businesses. In one video, Ross Goldberg even goes so far as to show how he writes his articles quickly from scratch on the videos. Yes, it is that detailed and helpful.
Day 11: Incubator – Site Building – Outsourcing or Software
Audrey Kerwood continues to stamp her organizational skills on her videos. I now have a name for this kind of StomperNet
Incubator video lesson. I call it a TODO Video. The video is so very organized into bite-sized chunks of what you need to have on your E-Commerce website. And then each chunk has the steps either textually itemized or visually demonstrated or both. As she goes through these steps, she drops you kernels of experience like tips or insights to save you time or avoid headaches both in the short term and the long term.
Day 10: Incubator – Site Building: The Basics & Your Options
This nitty-gritty StomperNet Incubator video lesson on Site Building delivers. The faculty, Audrey Kerwood, stated that, “E-Commerce is much more than just a numbers game. A site that is setup to convert will save you money, time and stress.” Everything about the content of her lessons – the tips, the itemizing of what is minimally needed to start, the steps to take to get from point A to point B… all of it screams EXPERIENCE! She runs 4 successful online stores. All of which she custom-built herself. This is one of those video lessons where care and preparation shines through and is the meatiest lesson so far.
Audrey starts out by using just 2 sentences on what the video is about. That’s it. No fluff. This is great I tell you. She dives straight in and gives you the low down on choosing the right platform for your E-Commerce business. She addresses the issue of price and argues the benefits of including other considerations besides price in choosing a platform. She then lists 5 must-haves for your platform and tells you why. This early, you already get a sense that you are being given kernels of experience which you can use to avoid looking like age 50 while still being only 35.
Day 9: Incubator – Autoresponders & Email Marketing: Following Up & Planning
I’m on the receiving end of a lot of these spammy emails. I’m not sure about how my StomperNet Incubator classmates feel about this one. But for me, this is a sensitive topic as I have missed my fair share of important emails on account of spam. I remember the first time that happened years ago, I was so angry that I deleted the email account and just started over and created a new one. 
The StomperNet instructor, Erik Stafford, immediately soothed my sensitivity to the topic by driving up from the road to the camera and telling a real life story about his jeep. His story made me realize that it is only spam if the reader doesn’t want it and doesn’t look forward to receiving it when it arrives. So good points there immediately.
Day 8: Incubator – Outsourcing – The Basics
I have to make a disclaimer before doing the Diary/Review for today’s StomperNet Incubator lesson. Today’s topic is one of the things I already do. So I can’t make an honest review from the perspective of a Newbie on this one. I used to build 3rd-party teams for client companies before migrating to Canada over 5 years ago. In other words, outsourcing needs were outsourced to me. It’s really a big topic on how to duplicate the most important person in your business – You.
Day 7: Incubator – Affiliate Marketing Game Plan
I got schooled by a 15-year old and came out humbled but inspired.
Like a blind date from online dating services of yesteryear, you dread if the picture you were shown is really her latest picture and not some denture-chewing old crone – I exaggerate. But when David Wilkinson’s picture was shown at the start of the video, my first thought was that it was an old high school picture. Then I heard the voice that came through and knew, I’m listening to someone special. I called my wife, had her drop whatever she was doing and restarted the video so she too can hear a 15-year old who makes 
5 digits each month. Here I am with a 90-day goal of getting an extra $800 each month when there is this 15-year old young man who makes 5 digits each month! It is very humbling. And I am inspired to get more out of this endeavor.
But this is an honest review. So I have to be objective and evaluate today’s StomperNet Incubator lesson as if it were really done by a denture-chewing old crone.
First off, I liked it when he itemized what we should have accomplished already as students going into Day 7. It made me self-evaluate the results of a week’s amount of free time channeled into StomperNet work.
Day 6: Incubator – How Affiliate Marketing works and why you should be one
At 7:16 mins, this is the shortest StomperNet Incubator video so far. Compared to yesterday’s 2 videos that presented information that just blew me away, this video lesson left me hanging. To be fair, StomperNet explained that it purposely made this Affiliate Marketing video short to allow tomorrow’s faculty to shine on the same Affiliate Marketing topic.
My take on this is that yesterday’s 2 videos filled and satisfied the right side of my brain with lots of data. Today’s video on Affiliate Marketing targeted the left side of my brain by addressing my mindset. The problem for me here is that I personally feel that setting up people’s mindset works best as intro for any topic or undertaking. This video did. But I got so used to mindset preparation being done as an intro, that when the video ended quickly, I was left wondering where’s the rest?
On all the previous days, I usually post the next day because I want to apply what I learned so I can include them in this diary. This is specially true if there are any insights that arose out of that work. Today, like StomperNet, I post really early too since there is not much to apply with the target being my mindset. I can tell you right now… my mind is already set. I’m doing this.