Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
I could certainly do with another five or six hours a day to fit in all the things that I want to be doing.
This blog is a perfect example! It used to be the only online place I had and therefore received 100% of the attention. Now it must compete against my Responsive Web Design which now takes up most of my weekly effort and seems to get all the articles and news post there. This blog also has to compete with my new side project business for Pocket Notebooks which not only takes up time online but also other time at the computer at home and on commutes.
My site about the Universe and Solar System is also a work in progress/likely to be never finished as I’m no longer attending Space School in the evenings (substituded out for Cricket training).
There’s a good reason why these get more priority though.
RWD
RWD.is has an associated newsletter with 29k subscribers and a daily visitor count of between 5-7k. Both the newsletter and the site have sponsorship and advertising associated with them and that allows me to cover the cost of Mailchimp and hosting fees (plus a bunch of subscriptions and Patreon support payments to people that write amazing content and should be rewarded for) with a little bit left over to invest in other side projects.
The RWD site has also allowed me to promote conferences that I love through Media Sponsorship which allows me to promote their event to subscribers, and for attendee’s of their events to see that there’s another resource on the web for them.
The site has also allowed me to do lots of experimentation and writing, which has in turn provided speaking opportunities at some conferences which has been an amazing experience.
Back Pocket Notebooks
The Pocket Notebook site keeps me busy learning about Ecommerce and specifically Shopify. The platform and e-commerce sites in general can be quite slow so it’s been fun improving the performance of those sites.
It has also made me more acutely aware of the importance of Social Media and how to take advantage of different platforms to best improve a business online.
The other side of things has been getting better at Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Indesign to create the designs for the pocket notebook covers and get them print ready, as well as getting to know paper really well to find out what works and what doesn’t. This stuff does not come as easy as building websites to me so while it’s been an amazing learning experience it has been slow going.
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Even with this blogpost, the train is hitting the station and I’ve got to run. This is a to be continued and I’ll get into a few more projects that are on and how I’m getting into a routine on how to keep them all moving along while still making sure the bulk of my time is dedicated the towards the Family.