Site Review: iPrioritize

Recently I got in touch with a member from the MindPetals Entrepreneur Network. His name is Adam McFarland and he runs a blog at SportsLizard and a really cool site called iPrioritize. I agreed to do a review on the latter, seeing as I think its such a good internet tool for the entrepreneur (even though I won’t officially include it in the Young Entrepreneur Series!). To quote from iPrioritize.com:

Simple to-do lists that anyone can use: Make a list to organize your tasks. Drag tasks up and down as your priorities change. Mark items complete when you finish. It’s that easy!
Access your lists anytime, anyplace, anywhere: Print, email, subscribe via RSS, and view lists on your mobile phone

The core of this site revolves around the idea of being able to manage your time effectively which for an entrepreneur is essential. By having the ability to create tasks that you need to do for the day or for the coming week you can keep on top of your work and make sure that you never miss another deadline. And what’s more, you can get a Free Account within seconds.

Another great feature of the site which I particularly would like to see on my phone is the mobile website. This means you can access your lists anytime while on the move. Also the interface is very clean and simple to use, another plus! I was also lucky enough to have access granted to a Business Account. Here great features include an executive overview of all your workers, being able to see what tasks employees are still to do on their lists and ability to create unlimited free accounts!

I would definitely recommend you checkout Adam’s site. I hope it will prove as useful to you as it will prove useful to me. Great job on iPrioritize.com Adam - let’s hope your site keeps growing!

Poll Results: More Traffic DOES Equal More Adsense

So here we are. I’ve added a little more time to this current poll to make sure that I had roughly the same number of voters as with the “How Much Do You Make With Adsense” poll. So the results are in - and I think they have produced some very conclusive results.

As you can see from the graoh above - although I was unable to label the axes due to the different sets of data: as the amount of uniques you have to your site increases so too does your adsense money earnt. Im really pleased with the way this has turned out. I’ve seen many sites that say you can make a lot of money with niche sites and with only 50 to 60 uniques per day. While this may indeed be true due to the high bid-value of each click, I can still concur that as the amount of traffic increases you can earn a lot more money, compared to small trafficked niche sites.

You may think that these results are obvious, yet at the same time, I can also see on the graph that the Adsense earnings line has a shallower gradient than the Traffic line. This could indicate unfortunately for Adsense publishers that even if you’re at the top of the paying spectrum, that further increases in traffic won’t affect your results as much as you’re hoping. But I think its safe to say that with only 19% of the voters having 1000 or more uniques, this won’t be such a big problem.

In my new poll, I wanted to experiment a bit more with you as the user giving your own input. Now this may turn into a complete spam-fest but I’m willing to give it a shot. Im asking you, as the owner of the website, “What Program or Affiliate Brings you the Highest Revenue from your Website?“. I will add the obvious ones such as Adsense and YPN but there may be other money-makers that I simply am not aware of, and I would like you to fill in this information for me. Try to put capital letters at the beginning of words to make the Poll look nice! And no Spam please!

Young Entrepreneur Tools: Paypal

First up in this series of tools for the Young Entrepreneur is Paypal (www.paypal.com). When it comes to the internet, the first thing you need (apart from a computer, mouse and internet connection) is a means of sending and receiving money. For every single eBay user out there, and most small entrepreneurs, the easiest and most acknowledged form of payment is Paypal. To quote from their website,

“PayPal allows any business or consumer with an email address to securely, conveniently and cost-effectively send and receive payments online. Our network builds on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards to create a global, real-time payment solution. We deliver a product ideally suited for small businesses, online merchants, individuals and others currently underserved by traditional payment mechanisms.”

As a result, almost anyone can open up a Paypal account. The tricky part for us youngsters is that we will have to have an adult credit card and bank account for us to be verified on Paypal. This is essential, as by being verified, you can form a trustful relationship with whoever you may be dealing with. For me, I just got my Dad to give in his details, and then I added my own bank account, so I didn’t have to rely on anyone else to help me get started on the net, and so I could use my own cash.

Although sending money requires no fee, there is a small charge for receiving. At the highest tier, Paypal charges a fairly small 3.4% + 20p for us Brits. However this can be lowered if you increase the amount of transactions you do.

The reason I started with Paypal, is that everything you do will require the use of sending or receiving money if you want to make it big on the net. Stuff like hosting and domain names can be bought “the Paypal way”, and receiving advertising or money for jobs can also come in through this method.

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Golf Chum in Beta Stages: 2 Testers Needed

Yesterday saw the completion of the Golf Chum program that I’ve been creating for the past 2 weeks. I was very happy with the way things have been going, and managed to find a solution to a problem that I had been facing. With the help of my “wannabe programmer” brother, I managed to package up the program, and allow the first 5 Beta Testers to see if things were good.

All said that the program was impressive! So Im anticipating a good response to the release of GolfChum when it is out in the open very soon. One of the comments about the program was not to release it in a .exe version. I would have to agree that I am particularly scared myself about downloading .exe’s as “you can never know whats really in them!”. As a result, I packaged up my program into a .zip file for quicker downloading and much safer downloads (even though the program has no viruses whatsever, its better to please the public!).

For further opinion though, I would like 2 more Beta Testers to try out the program. This would involve giving generous feedback once the testing period is complete - with suggestions upon how I could improve the program, and what aspects of the program strike you as impressive!

I’ll keep you all updated about the final release of Version 1.00 of The Golf Chum. I havn’t really set any targets as to how many downloads Ill get. I’ll be tracking the success of Golf Chum through the amount of email addresses I receive, as people will have to give this tiny bit of information in order to download the program, just so I can build up a list of the internet golfers out there for future versions and news.

Creating An Income Spreadsheet

Yesterday I thought it would be a good idea if I started noting down my expenses - my outgoings and incomings in terms of revenue. By the way if you are running an online business or website then I would definitely recommend doing this as a means of organising yourself.

Now as a young entrepreneur online, I thought it would be wise to go on Microsoft Excel and start entering my transactions on the net. After reading another “Income Spreadsheet”, I split the page into 2 columns: Expenses and Revenue. Then underneath I made a “Net Profit” section which I hoped would be in the positives!

In the expenses I would recommend you include Domain Names that you have bought along with Hosting. Also any scripts bought, services paid for, advertising online and so on and so forth. In the revenues show your Adsense or Affiliate figures, maybe your income created by eBay sales and even text links sold on your site. For me, this section even included being hired by a blogger to write an article for him!

I ended up getting most of my figures from my Paypal History tab in my account, and that proved to be a great help, as I could see where I was getting money from, and who I was sending the cash to. At the end I totted up the totals for each column, and subtracted the expenses from the revenue. Fortunately I ended up being in the “+” which was a great feeling seeing how I had already paid off 3 domains and 2 hosting accounts for 12 months, and how I have only been blogging here on Blogtrepreneur.com for a little more than 1 month. I can only now go into profit, so Im feeling on top of the world.

I would recommend you get started on your spreadsheet rightaway so you can know where you are losing and gaining money, and whether you know to cut back on expenditure or try and find another way to get some more income.

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