Updates and Chinese New Year
February 21, 2008
Originally Written on Saturday the 16th 0f Feb, 2007
Ah, Saturday morning and I don’t have to go to work. I love life. ^_^
This week I made a (very) little bit of money from my gaming blog which has given me a solid perspective at what numbers I need to aim for to make a solid, weekend job filling pay packet. I have a long way to go, thats for sure. But I know that I can make it.
It also makes me more excited about this upcoming site that I have in the works much more exciting. Unfortunately It looks like it will take a bit longer to be released yet. I need my brother to adapt a new custom coded backend to it. He should finish all current projects in 2 weeks or so and from there it will take maybe 2 months. I dunno.
Anyways, I feel as though I have been neglecting DP.com for the past week (date today being the 16th). I’ve been out almost every day this week and I was busy near the end of last week as well. When I have been at home though I’ve been writing and editing a new guest post for RacketBoy’s Retro Gaming blog. I haven’t felt like writing anything else really and have been doing that as well as plenty of Chinese study.
I’m moving into some much more interesting study mediums in Chinese. I’ve wanted to quickly improve my listening ability so I have been listening to more chinese podcasts and I’ve starting learning from a few movies as well as well as the usual articles. Oh, this week I also started reading news from Xin Hua Net as well.
Over the holidays I started by reviewing the past years work, so I did a lot of focused writing using important grammar, then I moved onto applying that into essays which I wrote about 4/5 of. From 500-2000 characters each. This finished up sometime in December, when I started going thru all of the texts in last years text book as well as some news articles. From it building lists of vocab, grammar and general language quirks that I didn’t understand and now I’m working on full news articles, podcasts and movies. Oh, I’m also onto the stage where I am looking into problems with my own translation techniques because sometimes I feel restricted during conversation; its not that I don’t know how to say the sentence in Chinese but rather it is something in english which is upsetting the translation. They are really simple problems that really are doing me up the arse. So I want to iron those out this week. And then before you know it it will be a new year of Chinese at Uni. I won’t be able to complete all of last years additional texts which is a little is disheartening but it is not too bad.
The reason why I have quickly decided to start focusing on my listening is because of two reasons, my speaking does not match my listening skills which is murdering my conversations skills and secondly back when I decided this it was Chinese new year. Well just about Chinese new year.
As you’d expect Chinese New Year is the biggest celebration on the Lunar calender. That week I was invited to two new year celebrations. You know, I’ve lost contact with one of my good Chinese mates and I don’t know if he has had to return back to China or not. Argh this is terrible.
Anyways I was invited to two different dinners, unfortunately I could only go to one because I don’t think that my friend really thought about it when she asked me if I wanted to come along as it was a part of a community group thing and I was out booked. But that was fine. That weekend she did a cool little celebration dance in China town which was great.
Also today is her 22nd birthday party (and I am the only non Asian person attending, so yeah plenty of practice). So there has been numerous opportunities in which I would need to utilize my listening skills, so I figured that it’d be worth catching up.
What else has been going down. Umm been practicing my driving skills. Playing some Sonic Gems Collection which I might post impressions of on DP.com. I recorded an advertisement with Matty Jay to feature in a podcast. We’ve also been tossing up other ideas. I’ve got a list of articles and ideas that I am looking to put into action for DP.com as well. They’ll just take a lot of work..
Can’t really think of anything else that has been going down. Went on a short photography trip the other weekend, networking with more bloggers, working thru DKC 2 with my brother on co-op. Oh and slowly working on this new site and promotion Daniel Primed.com. I’m looking forward to getting back on track with the quality of articles as well. So sorry for the recent, slight dip.
Anyways thats it, you probably won’t read this until at least a week for now as I normally forget about updating this blog. Thanks for reading if you got this far.
DP
Tags: Life
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Theres a Truth Begging to be Told
Originally Written on the 31st of January 2007
A few weeks back I enrolled into my 2008 Uni courses. I would have liked to have said that I had less trouble than last year but I didn’t. I have another unavoidable clash with Chinese which I can’t fix, I also almost flipped out when trying to enrol into Chinese, classes were quickly filling up and I had to wait a few days to enrol while this was going on. I think that in the end I was the second to last person to enrol.
Just yesterday morning I was woken by my phone going off, it was someone from UniSA ringing to tell me that I had to switch a tutorial time as I was the only student in that tutorial. Basically I have another clash, both on linguistics tutorials. So basically I miss out on a 2hr tutorial and on about 20minutes off another tutorial. Great, at least it gives me more free time. ^_^
What else has been going down with me, umm not a lot. I’ve been working hard on this new website idea, I have almost finished a design and am slowly building up content. It looks as though it will take me even longer to build up a strong database of content before I launch. Its not all bad though, it should give my brother plenty of time to work on the CMS.
I’ve also been meeting up with Matty Jay to do more video reviews for danielprimed.com and doing the weekly Chinese tutorials. I probably would have met up with a friends from Uni this week but my mind has been devoted entirely to this new project and has sometimes been occasionally distracted by the excellent Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam on the DS. I’m kinda pissed as I feel as though I have been very insincere by allowing my work load to get ahead of me.
Now that I’ve realized that its going to take a while longer to get this site done, have completely enrolled into Uni and quit my previous job, I’ve decided to relax a bit. I’m looking forward to spending more time with my friends and sleeping in some more as these other activities have been way too time consuming and straining lately. They’ve really distracted me over the past 2 weeks but were essential to what I need to get done.
I think that I’ll try to spend the last month of the holidays getting back into a healthy routine where I balance my spread of: blogging, spending time with friends, gaming and Chinese.
You see last year(at the start of Uni) my uncertainty surrounding my Uni choices, girl friend trouble and overall newbieness to Uni life threw me on a complete discourse which took a few months to figure out. And I don’t want to get back into that mess again, I just felt completely out of wack.
I ought to just throw out some rough goals to keep me on track:
Blogging
Continue the quality blog posts
Spend extra time (due to no job) to bank additional posts and improve overall quality
Advertise effectively through social bookmarking, foruming and continue network with other bloggers
Friends
When Uni is back on catch up more during the breaks
Spend more time at the arcades
Ensure that we continue to do stuff on Friday nights and on weekends
Work on other projects with Matty Jay
Continue to make more friends at Uni this year
Chinese
Spend just as much time as last semester practicing with Chinese friends
Do more intensive reading and listening
Fully understand all of the vocab, grammar, main text and additional texts each week
Website Work
Prioritize the spare time on weekends and days off to work on the upcoming websites
Games
Play more games, increase well being thru gaming
Round of the collection, dive back into eBay buying
Organize import games, arcade sticks etc.
Continue to learn more niche gaming
Personal
Relax a bit more
Keep blogging for yourself
Sleep enough
Yeah that ought to do it.
Tags: Life, video games, goals, chinese, university
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My Plans on Achieving Web Success
February 2, 2008
Back Story
For the last 4 years I have been consistently working out of school and Uni to earn some money to help accommodate my life expenses and also to buy video games (the two factors could almost be considered as one). This started off with pamphlet delivery for real estate companies back when I was about 14/15. I did this for about two years with my brother before I got my first retail position at 17. Over the past 2 years I have been selling electrical goods as part of my job and I am very passionate about doing so.
Unfortunately it looks like my retail work is coming to an end. Since November my work hours have been slashed and for the past 2 months I have had no hours at work. This doesn’t surprise me because this has occurred with almost all of the staff working at my store in my position. What do I mean by ‘my position’? Well back in July the store that I was working for was bought out (just the store, not the company) by another retailer and a few months after the transition took place, many younger staff started seeing their hours reduced to zero.It was strange talking to people about this because as people were getting their hours cut to nothing, I was still plodding along quite nicely. Infact I managed to survive longer that almost all of the other staff ‘in my position’ (which I am very surprised at).
Anyways, since my hours were cut basically right after all of the other Christmas retail job were closing it meant that I missed out on grabbing a new job over the Christmas break (and quite possibly into the next year). As I didn’t know that I would continue not being supplied with hours for the next 2 months, I just assumed that they didn’t need me for the 2 weeks or so and that I’d be back in the swing of things for Christmas. Which didn’t happen. Oh BTW I had to stay on until December anyway to sort out a pay dispute.
So, here I am without a job. Well officially I still work at the place but I just don’t get supplied with any hours. My folks want me to find a new job and then I can quit the current one as judging by the trend, my hours more than likely won’t pick up.
But heres the thing I don’t want to go out and find a new job. I was very comfortable where I was, before this new company came in and changed things. Damn change, I hate it! I realized that if I go back into electrical retail then it won’t be the same. You see, I am soft. When a customer comes in and sees me, ultimately I want the best thing for them, even if it means putting their interests above the store’s. I am all for my customers and pride myself on this very fact. Unfortunately, no electronics retailer wants a softy like me, they want sharks that will convince any idiot to spend cash even if they don’t need to. I hate this, I hate pushy salesman, they are just pricks and only are your friend once you have fed their gaping commission hole. So basically I am not the man for competitive selling which might be why my hours got cut (although I actually did make a lot of big sales).
My conclusion is therefore stacking shelves or crunching sales on a register. I could try and find a more specialized job suited towards my interests but the chances of me finding a suitable job and then landing it are slim.
Now, theres nothing wrong with stacking shelves or crunching sales on a register. Its practically a mix of my past 2 years of retail (mixed in with some customer service). But just for some reason I really don’t want to go back there. For the past 2 years I have always been the least experienced person in my team, it took me a year and a half just to learn the ropes at my first retail job (which was very very stressful because I was basically dumped into my position and had to survive by myself, in the deepend). And I don’t want to go back to being a rookie in the deepend.
On second thought, I want to stress the importance of the last paragraph. I can’t help but think that the underlying reason comes from the struggle that I’ve experienced starting out in retail. It was scary, thrown in the deep end, with no experience and a flood of angry (no joke) customers. In a way I feel that it has traumatized me into not wanting to return to such a position of employment. Hah ^_^
Anyways I should probably get to…
What You Thought this Entry was About
BTW before I go on I should note that over the Christmas break I have been very busy working on danielprimed.com as well as my Chinese language (been doing more tutoring with friends). So don’t mistake me for a lazy bum who doesn’t want to get a job.
So, suffice to say I have been pondering over what to do about work. After some thought I came to the conclusion that it might be worth a serious shot at trying to make some money online. For years I have been thinking about doing this but I myself have never really taken any serious action.
I feel confident that this is the path for me and that the time is now. Over the past few months I have spent a considerable amount of my spare time researching into web development, management and marketing. With all of this I have realized what I need to do in order to succeed and with danielprimed.com I have already started experiencing this first hand. I also have the resources available; I have plenty of design experience, plenty of web space and a brother that is willing to help with the coding and technical parts of web development. I have all the tools for the job.
So with all of this in mind, I started thinking websites. Basically there are two possibilities of new websites that I an make:
A Common Site
Basically these sites have an over saturated market and there is already plenty of other sites filling demand.
Advantages
- easy to think up of the concept (because its pre-existing)
- more of a safe bet
Disadvantages
- takes a lot of work to get noticed
- you need quality content put on consistently on a regular basis
A Niche Site
Niche sites on the other hand are sites where the competition is low to non existent.
Advantages
- you can easily become THE authority for everything regarding your niche
- niche sites are generally more respected
- if you find the niche that “people want but don’t know about yet” then you have a lot of potential for success
Disadvantages
- niche might(and probably does) have a smaller market
- you have to find a niche with a large enough market to be successful
There are also sites that are a mixture of the two. Like video game blogs. ^_^
Basically straight away I decided to go for the niche site because I couldn’t think of any content that I could constantly provide at a high level of quality. So, I spent even more time thinking about an appropriate niche. I wanted to think of a site that “people want but don’t know that they want it yet”.
Anyways, I am pleased to say that after a lot of investigating I found two niches that would make ideal sites and I am definite that there is a more than solid market for the two niches. One of them I plan on working on myself an the other I will be collaborating with my brother.
The first project I want to have up within 2 months. Although it is likely to take a few weeks longer. I have done plenty of research and I can’t find a single website dedicated to this niche. So it will be easy to become the authority site. I also think that there is quite a large market for the site as well. The site’s keywords are in the domain name and it will be very easy to managed with SEO. So there are plenty of positives for this new site.
The second site also will be the authority site for its niche. There are a few other sites in this niche but none in the particular region I am aiming at or with the variety of content that I want to provide. This site will take a lot of work and can easily be marketed off line. I’m not sure when this site will be released. Second half of the year I guess.
So there are my ideas. I feel as though the time is now for me to act. I have the tools, skills and experience necessary for the job. And its something that I have always wanted to try. Although I obviously want to make enough money from these sites to substitute my previous job, I don’t want to become greedy with monetizing my websites. Thats not the plan. Much like my customers at work; I want to provide a quality service to my viewers. But I still want to earn some money in the process.
I’m not going to announce any further details about these websites until they launch. I just wanted to get these ideas off my chest. I have checked all of the legal ramification and am all good to go. So I’ll just be working on these sites from now to release.
Tags: Life
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