You maybe will notice that there has been, even though my keen interest in the topic, quite a gap since I last posted here. This is a resultof a number of different factors, but ultimately it is the direction I was going with this blog was not really what I felt it should be.

The more I read back over some of the posts that I have shared since I started this blog the more it reads like a sales pitch for getting rid of your office. It hardly seems like I have been giving the greatest of examples for how to make the most use of having No Fixed Office. It seems like I have been to a large degree just force the idea on anyone that wants to read.

So this is really not what I wanted, I wanted something that highlighted my experience and such with not having an office. But it turned into something different, which in some cases is what you want to do, just go with the flow and see how things work out. However this is maybe not one of these cases.

I am still not sure if it is something that at this point I want to change in the blog or just drop the idea of being focused on no fixed office, or just use the name for something a little more light hearted and fun. I do have some ideas, but I guess it is something that I have been thinking about for a while and do not really want t just jump into to quickly.

Option 1 – This is basically to leave the blog as is and add more information when I get inspiration. Which to be honest I have not had inspiraton for this topic in months, if not over a year. I did start to put together one or two posts about my equipment again, however this did not really pan out to much.

Option 2 – Change up the whole concept behind the site. There is a few ideas that I have had for a more comical site that may include pictures of strange places to have an office, or just random places I choose to get my laptop out and do some work. Or then it could be something altogeher different just random writings from me or maybe a whole other topic specific that may just fit with the name or be totally unfitting with the name.

Option 3 – I could also consider selling the domain name and maybe even the whole website. There is quite likely someone else or many other people out there that could take the topic and run with it. If you are interested in the potential of purchasing this website please use the contact page and I will get back to you.

Anyway it is something I am going to have to think over and see what the outcome will be. It is something that only time will tell, and while I think option one is the best most inline idea with the original idea, I am thinking that option two may end up being the way that things go.

Potential changes to the Office Equipment

One thing that I have worked with but not really been that fond of is the netbook that I tend to use as my only computer while traveling. To be honest while it has served well and does get the job done, I would like something with a little more power that can get things done and multitask without so much of an issue.

The biggest issue with the computer is that by virtue a netbook uses an underpowered processor. This of course is not good for doing more then one thing at a time and will often lead to graphic work taking a lot longer then it should. So as a result I am looking at really two options.

Option 1 – Buy another Laptop, which runs on windows. This option is kind of difficult in the range that I am looking at as there are not as many 13″ laptop’s around. There is one or two, however most of them are not really as powerful as when you step up to 14″. While most people would say get the bigger one, I am trying to avoid this as I do carry this laptop around ALOT.

Option 2 – Buy an Apply Macbook PRO. This is sitting slightly ahead as my preferred option, however there are a couple of reasons I am hesitating. The first one is that from the time I have spent playing with one in the store, I am still struggling to ensure that it will do what I want it to do out of the box like the PC versions I am looking at. Spending extra on the laptop to begin with to get an Apple is one thing but then to have spent more money to get software that will do what I want it to do is another thing. The other point is that I really do not think it the wisest move to be making such a big change (from PC to MAC) with so little time between purchase and travel.

Anyway the Laptop problem, will probably end up getting left until my return from my next trip anyway.

Work Changes

After my last trip which really tested the idea of a Portable office for me while traveling, I come to the realization that travel is something I want to do more of. As such I actually resigned from my job. Which became effective in the second week of January. However I have continued working part time for the same company, which has definitely allowed to continue adding a bit of money to the savings, but has also hampered some of my efforts I was wanting to make to get an income coming in and clear out a lot of my stuff.

What this means

Ultimately this means that I will be looking to make a better use of my portable office, to the extent that I will be using it for more then just my blogging while I am traveling. In fact in the last few weeks I have started a course, which will help me to work through my writing and photography styles and ultimately enable me to be a better writer. The end goal here is to become a Freelance travel journalist. Which should hopefully help to start that income stream, as well as give me another purpose for my travel as well.

This was not really the direction I was seeing things going 6 months ago, however it is a direction that I am fairly happy to work with at the moment and just see how things pan out really.

The time that you dedicate to learning can be as little or as much as you like. There is only one sort of need that i figure should be placed on this time. That is to ensure that you are learning something that is going to be worth the time to you. So you may be thinking what is worth learning and what is not worth learning. A lot of this decision comes back to What your most valuable task is. Because in reality what is the point in learning something that is not really worth your time.

A good example of this may be the manager of a reasonable size company, wanting to learn how to create websites, so that he can create one for the company, and save money. In reality this is not the most important thing that he could be learning. The first point is that his motivation to learn this is misplaced. The reality is the time he may dedicate to learning this and the final result is very likely to not show the value for what his time is normally worth. As a thing to learn, it would be a good start, but not really the best use of time.

Making the best use of your time is also a big consideration when you are learning. Using your time a little more effectively can not only increase the potential value of your time, but it can also potentially save you time dependant on what the task is.

Although all of these things often create artificial reasons for why you are in business. The original idea is really just something that guides what the business does, or what products it offers. The goals that you set, are a target and will mostly be guided by what the business does and what the expected work load will be. Finally the people around you that may have invested or be offering support otherwise are a guiding part of the business as most people don’t want to let these people down.

All of these things though are not specific to your believes. What you need to look for and be aware of is the specific things that guide what you do. Why you do it. How you do it. The way you make decisions. Essentially what makes you want to be in business, how you actually come to be doing what you are doing.

These guiding principles are something different for just about everyone. Of course there is going to be overlap, just like in appearance of people, everyone is different, but many people share similar features.

For often a smaller group of people when they walk past these stores, they know what has gone into getting those stores there, some own these stores, some own similar stores, and some are the people in the corporations that own the stores. Then there is a smaller group, a group that used to own these stores or stores like them. Some of this group sold their stores and benefited from it, while others sold the store to just break even, or closed down because they could not afford to continue on.

While there are people going by these shops in all different capacities, there are probably few of them that are thinking how does each of these stores survive as a business. How does a store actually generate a sufficient profit to pay a lease, pay staff, pay the bills, and generate a profit to make it worth the investment of the owner. This is a question that i tend to ask myself a lot. Not because i am an owner of one of these stores. But because i like to analyze why, of how businesses manage to survive based on the minimal knowledge you can usually gain from looking at a business.

I am not so interested in the idea of how a large chain store makes a profit, as this is often rather easy to deduct. Based on the ability to place themselves as a draw card tenant to a shopping center, they achieve relatively low lease prices for the space. Then you expect that being a chain store they do have buying power which often means much better wholesale prices then other smaller stores. Finally the concept of pushing a lot of small sales through is one that works for this type of store, purely because of the scale they work on.

What i am interested in though is actually trying to work out how and more so why some of the small businesses can manage to survive. The type of costs that are associated with the business that they are running just seem to be beyond the ability of such a business to sustain over the long term. This is one of the reasons that i am very adamant in my preference for No Fixed Office, you can eliminate so many of these costs that are in my opinion a hindrance to a potential profitable business.

What you often tend to find is that the costs that these business incur are not what you really may imagine. Just an example, in a smaller area outside a major city, there is an area with a shopping center and shops along the main street. To get a store in the shopping center at around 50sqm, will cost a business over $40,000 for the lease. The same store in the front of the center on the main street, comes in at over $50,000 a year.

Unfortunately this does not appear as the end of the expenses for a business, Staff (just one person for 30hrs per week, could easily exceed $40,000 per year including all costs of staff). Utilities, or sometimes included as outgoings in your less, can vary from $30-$60 or more per sqm per year (or for the above 50sqm example $1,500 – $3,000). Then there is an ever growing list of other things, telephone, stationary, cleaning, and the list goes on. It is not hard to imagine the total exceeding $100,000 a year in costs for even the smallest of stores.

The most difficult part to work with though i believe comes from how these businesses derive their profit. It is the same as just about any other business a little bit at a time. Not only are these business at one disadvantage by needing to hold sufficient stock to make a sale. They also only sell a little bit at a time. If you were to consider an average sale of around $40.00, even at the best case scenario of maybe a 50% average profit margin, this equates to an average profit of $20.00 per sale. So how do you get from $20.00 per sale to $100,000 in expenses to cover, with over 5,000 sales. Or a little under 100 sales per week.

What i find interesting in some cases is that some of these stores may not even get this many customers walk through the doors per week. Then there are the stores that have a vast majority of products that sell for less then $20.00 alone. So it will take many more sales just to reach these levels.

Even though i have this preference for no fixed office, i can understand there is a number of businesses people traditionally see as needing a fixed location. Especially in retail sales many of the products that are sold rely on a store that potential customers can visit. However the way things seem to have traveled, it is almost a requirement for some stores to seek prime positions which cost them so much more then they really need to be paying in leases. If the owners of these stores saw the potential of a slightly less prominent location, and the potential that the extra money saved could provide in ability to market, and extra profit.

This is of course not to say that these business owners should not also consider the potential difference in sales. However often the consideration is fairly black and white, and is only tainted from this straight forward one or the other by information that does not necessarily actually count. For example is it worth paying three times the lease price to get a prime main road location over a position in an arcade, if at best you may only produce double the sales.

This is one of the fears that i dread seeing the most is people who are working their guts out to pay a lease, and staff and rent to operate a business that was suppose to be a fun and freeing experience for them. Which actually turns out to become one of the most challenging and difficult experiences that they have ever had to undertake. While I can see the need for many of these businesses, they are really almost nothing more then a fairly low paying job for their owner. They are working for an ideal which is almost not something that they are able to actually achieve on this path.

I do implore you to consider this, which i have shared today if you are planning to start a business which will require not just long hours, but the type of financial commitment, that i foresee you would need to put yourself in a prime location. If you can create a business alternatively which provides a product people want, that you can provide, but most importantly that you can provide from anywhere, either electronically, by delivery or by some means which eliminates the need for the excessive costs of placing your business somewhere you hope will provide what it is worth.

I realized that this was an issue when i slowed down my usage of Twitter. With the way that things were going with work, and the different hours that i was doing, i did not have the time or motivation to jump on Twitter as much as i had. Over the last two months this saw a drop in traffic of about 16%. Which is no huge deal, it could even just be normal fluctuation.

So far this month things have been moving along nicely, with a week off work, I was looking at a fairly good come back on traffic. This was for me assuming that i maintained how i was traveling so far for the month for the remained. Well, that was where things were. Late yesterday my Twitter account was suspended, with no reason, no explanation (to date) and no recourse but to send a support ticket. Which i did.

Reading the rules, i know i have not blatantly done anything against them, and cannot see a single one that would have been an issue at the actual time of the suspension. Even checking the @spam account of twitter shows no reference to my account.  At this point it is going on close to 15 hours that i have not been able to perform any actions with my account, and the effect is showing, followers are down, and as i am sure you can guess no activity means nothing good usually.

Now at this point i do not know what sort of affect even a day will have on traffic, but i know that over the period of a month for me it will have a drastic effect. Unless i can replace it somehow. Which is not a task i envy looking at, right now. I mean yeah there are plenty of places to post links, to build networks and such. But pretty much every option i see a few months to develop it to the level that i was at with Twitter.

While i can understand a need to be vigilant, and to keep a close eye on people abusing the system, i see almost every day anything up to half a dozen if not more accounts that deserve to be suspended for major violations of the rules. As opposed to accounts being banned that it does not even appear to be something specific if anything more then an accident even. Of course if they can offer some valid reason why my account was banned, i will more then happily accept the consequences.

So anyone that relies on Twitter as their sole source for traffic, start now, look for something else to use for getting traffic to your site as well, so that you are not left open to a potential problem like this.

1. On your car – Do it yourself magnetic signs, or stick on lettering for windows, is available from stationary stores, or possibly auto stores. For not a lot of money you can make your card a driving advertisement for your blog.
2. Community Notice Boards – Many area’s have community notice boards around, at shopping center’s or library’s, just create a small leaflet and pin it up, just remember get permission first if required.
3. Business card for your blog – There are some really good quality do it yourself business card products around now, and for less then $20 you can create a customer business card for your blog, and start giving it out when you talk about your blog.
4. Write a Press Release – Or better still write a relevant article about the topic of your blog that a newspaper could potentially publish, with your details including blog link at the end.
5. Bumper stickers – Almost better then the first option above, as you can more easily give them away and get them in more places
6. Information Booklet – Depending on the topic of your blog, you could create an information booklet on the topic, that has links to your blog for more information. This could be made as a free download others can download, print out and give away as well.
7. Create a Newsletter – While you do have your blog online, sharing the same information in a hard copy newsletter may get people that are not as tech savvy interested in getting online and reading your blog. You can share just the first few paragraph’s of an article and then share a link to the rest of the article online. Again make this available as a free download for others to print and give away.
8. Start a club – While not suited to all blog topics, it can help for some to create a little more community atmosphere, especially on a local level. Who knows you could start a trend, and see clubs connected to your blog popping up all over the place.
9. Letter to the editor – If something happens locally that you could respond to relating to your blog, then send a letter to the editor, even better if you can share a relevant link to your blog.
10. Sponsorship – Sponsor an event or a stand at an event, or something similar. This wont work for everyone, but if you have a music blog sponsor a local band event, or a nutrition blog, then sponsor a local health event.  There are a lot of options and don’t always require a huge sponsorship to get included.

There we go, just some of the potential options that you could use to promote your blog offline. Please feel free to share any more ideas that you may have in the comments.

1. Write a post – Ok so this is not so easy, as just saying i will write a post. However if you even take just 5 minutes, and think about what you have been doing recently, in relation to the topic of your blog. You are bound to find something that will spark an idea, if even for a very short post.
2. Reply to comments – If you have people that have commented, on your blog, then reply to those comments, while not everyone subscribes to updates, the one’s that do are possibly the people that you would like returning, and a reply to their comment will get their attention.
3. Post a Video – There is a chance that if you are really interested in the topic of your blog that you may from time to time see a video on a site like Youtube, that would be of interest to others, so why not share it on your blog.
4. Share some Links – Just like the video’s you probably visit any number of sites related to the topic of your blog, so why not share them as well.
5. Answer a Question – So maybe someone did not actually ask you a question, but just about every topic has questions that new people to the topic want the answer to. So why not answer the question on your blog.
6. Share a tip or trick – Everyone has some sort of tip or trick that they know about something, and while maybe others have shared the same tip or trick you may have it in a little different way.
7. Help promote a forum – Like many people with an interest there may be a forum that frequently visit that relates to your blog. So it could be a benefit for all to share about the forum and to invite your readers to visit the forum.
8. Share your Twitter – If you are using twitter then let the people reading your blog know you use twitter, like wise when you are on twitter always be looking for post ideas.
9. Have a poll – Maybe you are not sure about what direction to go with an idea, why not ask your readers. Especially if it is a topic you will be writing for a post for them to read who better to get an opinion off, better still you can still write the final article but also a post about your findings from the poll.
10. Give yourself a Challenge – A lot of people give themselves a 30 day challenge, to try and improve an area of their life, or to learn a new skill, or any number of other things. You can talk about the lead up to the challenge, and also post progress reports, along the way, and keep your blog active for over a month, just with one idea.

Well there you have it 10 ideas on what you can do to get something happening on your blog. So don’t waste time wishing you knew what to do next, just get in and choose an idea and get something happening.

While you do not want to get into the habit of short posts to often it can be a good way to keep you blog alive and active.

In the changes that i made, i know i achieved the 2nd and 3rd points to a level i was happy with. The 1st point is something that i believe worked based on user feedback. However there was something that was just not sitting right with me. It was the advertising. Exactly what about it was not sitting right i was not sure, as i had it all set up how i was happy with. This was also confirmed by some of the feedback i received.

So far in just 18 days i have gone through 6 different stages with my advertising, eventually resulting in the current ad free result.

1. The first stage that i went through was before i even started, at the beginning the layout i choose had spaces for 7 ad blocks. Right off i decided to only use 5 of these. 1 in the header and 4 in the sidebar. This was mostly because i felt at the moment 6 spots in the side bar was to much.

2. The second stage i decided to cut the size of the header ad in half, from 468 to 234 wide. This was after some feedback mentioning that it was to over powering compared to my own header.

3. The third stage ended with me moving the sidebar ads, from being the main item above the fold in the sidebar, to one of the two columns in the sidebar. At the same time i dropped one of the ads here was four was maybe a little to many i started to think.

4. Stage four saw me finally decided to cut the header ad altogether. This opened up my mind to using the whole header for my use, which took me from 2 images to 5 images across the top and allowed more space for the tag line.

5. I was still wanting to keep some ads near the top of the page at this fifth stage. As such i inserted a group of link ads between the header and the main page. While not as grabbing as a normal link box. It could potentially serve it’s purpose.

6. Finally as of just an hour ago i decided to do away with the ads for the time being. This doesn’t mean i may not bring them back sometime in the future. However they really were not serving the purpose i was expecting them to.

As anyone that may have read this blog for some time, may know there have been ads on it since day one. My initial reasoning behind putting ads on straight away, was mostly for the idea of conditioning. If they are there straight away then they are not really going to shock anyone, if i had suddenly just plastered them all over one day. While it probably did not make a lot of difference really, there was a difference in my head.

In reality i eventually came to the decision the ads were not serving their purpose. As it stands today it is exactly 6 months since i made the first post on this blog. In that time the ads that i have placed on the blog here, have generated less then one third the cost on hosting the blog each month. Maybe it would be wise to consider leaving them in place, if there was something to support it. However the more i looked at the stats the more i realized it is no pattern, they are purely random clicks, one here two there and days on days with nothing.

So while not meeting the purpose that i see in placing ads, the final decision was more in a different direction. It was the thought that maybe this project at this point in time should not be about making money, but more providing a valuable source of information. Just to not worry about the potential income and how many visitors to how many were clicking, but to just worry about giving the best posts i can, and let the income appear in whatever form i may see it in the future. Maybe this will be ads, maybe it wont but i am sure it will be one of those things that will take care of itself, when it needs to.