Client: J&G Automotive
Website: www.jandgautomotive.net
Work: Design, content creation, photography, management.

This is a site done for my local mechanic. We basically brought his business online and opened up a new channel. The yellow pages are outdated nowadays (who still reads that?). It’s how he’s been advertising and now he can just send people to a website that lists all of their services.

I bought my first s2000 part today…and no, I don’t have the car yet. Yes it is expensive, but I decided that I’m going to go balls to the wall on this car.

I picked it up from Evasive Motorsports today.

“Full hand-made 4-2-1 equal length header. 7-10whp gain.”

I am going to be picking up an Invidia 70mm test pipe and Invidia 70mm single exit catback exhaust from them this week. Stay tuned…

I’ve always had a hard time when it comes to selling a website. The problem is POTENTIAL. Have I gotten the most out of a website that I could have? Is there still potential left in it? And if so, can I reach it?

I’ve always sold my websites when I felt like there was nothing more to be had in the niche. Maybe someone else could take it to the next level, right? Selling a website does not work like selling cars/houses and other things, because you can’t just “sell when the demand is high”…You sell when you don’t see a clear future for it anymore. Will the niche die down in a few months? For examples, proxies are generally sold before summer comes because traffic is literally dead come summertime (in comparison to the rest of the year).

The New York Times has an article reporting that Google Maps has gained a bit of market share. They are now reaching…1/10 the audience of mapquest.

But why? Clearly Google’s interface is more intuitive, easier to use, and it just works better. Plus, I don’t even remember the last time I went to mapquest.

The thing is, Mapquest came out so much earlier that their name is now associated with online maps. When I’m on the phone with someone looking for directions, I always say; “give me your address and I’ll just Mapquest it.” And each time I say this, I know in my head that I am not going to use Mapquest. I know that I’m going to open up Firefox and type in maps.google.com

Brand association is really hard to build. It takes a lot of time, money, and great brains. One great example I have for this is that in Psychology class last year, my teacher said to a student “…just go to the nurse’s office and get a bandaid.” And then he did a double take. “What is the proper term for a bandaid anyways? An adhesive strip?” I silently chuckled and said out loud, “bandage!”

I have always had a hard time maintaining this blog. I have moved servers countless times and not bothered to retain the old archived posts. I just end up starting with a fresh install of wordpress and I’m off again. I think the reason why I haven’t kept the old posts (even though many of them were extremely informative), was because I never bothered monetizing this blog. I have never had ads on here. I think that if I could see a visible stream of money coming in (basically passive income), then I’d be motivated to continue posting useful things. Even if it’s only a few dollars a day, that’s all the proof I need that the time I spend is worth it. Unfortunately, when I am working online, I only see things in $. That’s more gas for my car, more food for my belly, and more money in the bank.

blogaboutyourblog.com has a post up about his blog making $1200 in 10 months of inactivity. This is more than four times the amount that he made in his five months of active blogging. I assume the income was all from adsense, and with his poor ad placement, and only 120 uniques/day, these numbers are very surprising.

I am going to implement adsense sometime soon.