If you saw my last post, you saw that I’ve been off the air for a little while now due to relocating from Sydney to Melbourne. During that time of being removed from the Internet (Yes, it did hurt) but not removed from computing facilities altogether, I started to put together a new site design to help Ditch the Office work a little better. Actually, it’s probably due really to just one comment. And it was a good one. Anyway, as I’m back on the air now, I’ll be making a concerted effort to make regular updates with my initiatives to Ditch the Office and anything interesting I find on the way.

This is the third post in a series of three about my strategy to Ditch the Office in which I thought I’d share my projects.  As a quick recap, my strategy is three fold:

1. Objectives
2. Principles
3. Projects

My three projects in my race to Ditch the Office cover a number of different business approaches and products.  I’ve selected them for various reasons, not least of all that some will be provide me with the ability to get out of the office sooner rather than later.  So brace yourself, here they are:

1. Something small.

I’ve recently been introduced to the fantastic world that is  Internet Marketing.  Internet Marketing is really quite simple, it’s the process of identifying a niche market on the Internet and delivering a product tailored to that market.  This is the world of information products, websites, niches, mailing lists, keywords and, not least of all, Google.  The possibilities here are endless and I’m full steam ahead learning what it’s all about. There are benefits in me learning this anyway as it’s all about hitting the right market with online presence. This is a great possibility as it requires very little money to start and has quicker potential returns that either of my other two projects.  I’m finding it very interesting and I’ll write a post on this shortly with all the resources and my plan on this front.  This is the easy one!

2. Something of interest.

I’m a greeny at heart I would suppose.  I think people should take more responsibility for their consumption, from cars all the way down to plastic bags.  No one can be a saint when it comes to this, particularly as it’s difficult to know what the real impact of each convenience decision actually is.  Saying that, awareness is the first step.  It’s a bit like the current financial crisis.  It’s simply making people think before they spend.  In that way it’s probably helping the environment because if people are thinking twice about buying, there’s.  Anyway, that’s enough of that.

In these times of environmental awareness and, more recently, financial crisis there are opportunities to help people to get second-hand goods rather than buy something new.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for something shiny and new but there’s also a lot of unwanted stuff in homes around the world that could benefit someone else.  “furcle”, which I’ve mentioned before, is a project to try to do this.  This is a fun one!

3. Something I know.

By night, I’m a budding entrepreneur.  By day I work in Information Technology.  Unfortunately, technology is quite often not only complicated, it also complicates things.  Particularly for big business.

One of those complicated and complicating things is processing credit card information.  More specifically, having to do all the things that the credit card companies say you need to do to be able to process credit cards.  Not that long ago, the credit card companies joined forces (in a manner) to try to reduce the amount credit card fraud as a result of misappropriated credit card numbers.  Enter the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).  The PCI DSS is complicated and complicates doing business.  In fact it costs a considerable amount of money to meet the requirements set out in the standard and maintain compliance (dirty word) over time.  We’ll I’ve got another project here with some partners to try to solve that complicated and costly problem for companies.  This is the big one!

So that’s the end of this series.  I hope it was useful to you.  It was definitely beneficial to me because, to be honest, I’ve had this stuff in my head for some time but haven’t written it down. Writing it down has helped to crystallise and reinforce it and in that light, I’d recommend you do it for yourself!  I’ll give a progress report on these projects from here on in.

Make sure you check out part 1 and part 2.

This is the second post in a series of three about my strategy to Ditch the Office.  My strategy is three fold:

1. Objectives
2. Principles
3. Projects

In the first post, I walked through my immediate objectives.  For this post, I wanted to run through my three principles in my race to Ditch the Office.  I have to keep reinforcing these to myself every day:

1. Just do it!

Or just f-ing do it for those with a language a little more colourful.  There are plenty of ideas out there.  Get moving on something.  Take the leap.  Take action.  Be prepared to learn.  Be prepared to make errors.  Be prepared to have a win.  Be humble.  Be this.  Be that.  Be proactive!  There’s no way I’ll find out if I don’t try.  And in this case I’m prepared to keep trying.

2. Commit.

I know the “C” word is hard for some.  In my case this is a commitment of time, sometimes money (as little as possible up front – this comes into the strategy), definitely in discipline.  The biggest commitment I currently have is my time.  I commit time after the day job to getting something started. At this point in time that is totally at odds with the longer term goals.  I don’t currently see any other way than to spend time at this point.  If you’ve got any good tips (no, Lotto is not an option) then let me hear them.

3. Remember the goal.

My goal is to have a flexible life where I can commit my time where I choose – family, friends, society pursuits.  I can’t do this by having to go to the office every day.  I can’t do it by having to work for someone else for most of my waking life. Focus, focus, focus.

And that’s it for part two in the “Ditch the Office” freedom strategy series.  There’s one left to come which I’ll post next week.  You should also check out part 1.

I spoke with Andy, a friend of mine, over the weekend during a downpour of rain while camping* and he was giving me some feedback on Ditch the Office.  He wasn’t sure if some of the posts were relevant to how I was going to ditch the office.  I think I’d agree with him to a certain degree.  I suppose I’m struggling on two fronts:

1. I struggle with creative writing.  It takes me forever to write something that I’m happy with so it takes forever to get content up on Ditch the Office.  I really want to get better at this.  A glass of wine is helping this post.  Enough said.
2. I’ve got a list as long as my arm about the lessons I’ve learnt so far through my experiences so I’m also struggling to work out in which order I should publish them.

So in line with Andy’s feedback, I’m going to make a greater effort to make the posts here relevant so that they’re both inspiring and informative.  Here’s my request.  The following is my current list of posts that I plan to write.  If you’ve got any preference on the ones you’d like to see sooner rather than later, let me know and I’ll prioritise them.  I’d also be grateful for any other topics that you’d be interested in.  I’m sure that I’d at least have an opinion on whatever it is

• The Bookshelf – I think this is pretty self-explanatory.  I plan to list out the books I’ve got on my shelf.  It’s really to provide a list of the books that I’m interested in reading that will eventually become reviews on Ditch the Office.
• To Prototype Or Not, That is the Question – I want to run through the experiences I’ve recently been through with ‘furcle’ and the thoughts I have about another project that I’m currently working on in relation to developing a product prototype.
• Show Me the Money – I hate Jerry McGuire, especially that cute little kid with the glasses that wins over Tom Cruise.  Anyway, this post is about a discussion that I had with Ajay the other day about pricing relating to the aforementioned other project
• Let’s Do the Congo – Anyone familiar with the congo chain?  It’s sure to appear wherever there’s a large gathering of happy people who have usually had a couple of vino’s and are hitting the dance floor – the logical thing is to grab some hip and Da Da da da Da Kick!  It’s just one after another and it’s the same with the business ideas.  You need a pipeline of ideas I’ve been told so that’s what I’ve got.  I’ve found that I’m struggling with working on four concurrent projects and planning many more ideas besides.
• What Am I Really Doing? – Believe it or not, I am actually working on Ditching the Office AND doing something for myself so I wanted to give you a better idea of what I’m actually working on.  I’m still a little sensitive about what I’ll publish until there is a business operating (hey, I’m being honest) but I do want to give further details and one thing I have learnt is that you can’t start a business without talking to as many people as possible.  And speaking of which…
• Poker Face -
• Inspire Me! – What is it that is worth working on?  I’ll humour you with my approach to identifying what it is that inspires me.
• Can’t Someone Else Do That? – Outsource baby, yeah!  Don’t let a lack of skills, time or desire to do something hold you back – I’m not!
• Lifestyle Guru – The end game for all of this.  I’m trying to design/engineer/architect my lifestyle (and my beautiful wife’s).  There’s plenty of things we want to do in our life and working for someone else is going to take up too much time.

I’ve got some other topics as well but if you’ve read this far then you’ve done well!  Either way, this is a request for you to let me know if there’s ideas that you’re interested in reading about.

What I also plan to do is try to post my activities and achievements for the week gone by.  I’m also going to try and provide some more information about my different streams of activities.

* We went camping at The Basin located in the Kurringai Chase National Park.  It appears that it rained the most there across all of Sydney over Saturday night (check out the rainfall for Avalon).  Needless to say there was some tent flooding that resulted in some weary people the next day.

From time to time I’ll try to post stuff where I’ve found that there is a lot of valuable information that I’ve picked up.  It wont always be strictly on topic but will definitely be related.  Please let me know your thoughts.

I’ve been trying to get this journal or blog up and running smoothly so I can begin getting information out there of my experiences.  I don’t want to turn this into a technology blog, but it struck me that there is so much effort in getting something like this working that I thought it would be valuable to share all the steps I’ve taken in case you want to get anything running yourselves.

To be perfectly honest, this journal is a sort or experiment on my part as well as a personal venture.  I wanted to get my experiences “on record”, as it were, while also experimenting with the tools and techniques I’ve seen to create a successful weblog.   It’s not so much learning to blog, it’s learning to blog all over again.  There are so many aspects to get functioning since the days of putting your thoughts on a basic webpage.

I got the blog online sometime over Christmas but it’s taken me some time to get all the things in line so that it functions properly.  The most costly thing is the time it takes to get everything working properly.  So, here’s what I went through.

1. Finding a concept

As you’ll see over the course of the blog.  I don’t really have a lack of ideas.  I have a lack of execution.  Starting Ditch the Office was really quite simple for me as I know that I want to start my own business and it’s very difficult to get access to real-world experiences.  I want to be able to share and have experiences shared with me through the fantastic medium that is the Internet.  It’s sometimes hard to get access to those experiences, either because you can’t find someone you can learn from or you have to filter through so much junk on the web.

Anyway, find something you’re interested in.  I think it will make a big difference and especially with point 2.

2. Learning to write

The jury will remain out on this one for some time, however I do know that there are some people that write in a very engaging fashion.  Take SarahKate over at Abercrombie & Feast.  Writing style is really a personal preference a lot of the time but I think that she writes really well.  I’m hoping that my style will form and improve over time.

3. Finding a name

I plan to write a full post on this point as to naming your real-life business.  For the purposes of this post though, I think naming your blog can be pretty straightforward.  I just picked it to relate specifically to what I wanted to write about.  I think there are probably a few tips that are related.  Try to make it unique.  It should be memorable on a personal level for your readers but I also think that it helps on a technology front like search engines (I could be wrong here).  It definitely helps in getting a domain name (in this case www.ditchtheoffice.com).

4. Finding a somewhere to host your blog

This is really the software that you want to use.  You can either get a web host and pay to have your own web host.  There are a number of benefits to this:

• If you’ve got the skills or the desire, you’ll be able to customise your blog to your heart’s content.

Here’s a quick list of free blogging services – I haven’t really used these but they’re very popular:

• WordPress.com – WordPress also offer their software for free if you have your own web hosting provider (I use the WordPress software)
  
• Livejournal
• Blogger

Here’s a quick list of web hosting providers that I’ve researched or used in the past.  They require you to pay for their services:

• Hostway (I’ve used this in the past – very professional but a bit more expensive)
• Dreamhost (I currently use these guys and they’re great and cheap)

5. Get your blog out there

Now, this a post in itself but there are a few key things to think of.  I’ve included what I currently use to achieve these things but please note that I’m still experimenting:

• Make sure you give your users a way to get regular updates.  I’ve done this through RSS feeds and email updates when I post new information.  To get RSS feeds, I’ve used Feedburner so I can track subscriptions and the like.
• I’ve also included a component to post an update to Twitter when new stuff is posted to the blog .  I use a wordpress plugin called Bird Feeder to accomplish this.  As a side note, I’m going to add the Twitter name to the blog sidebar, but in the interim you can follow ditchtheoffice on Twitter.
• Make sure your blog is search engine friendly (commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimisation).  I use a couple of plugins for this.  Google XML Sitemap plugin for WordPress to send updates of the website to a range of search engines when updates are made.  I also use HeadSpace2 to make sure WordPress is friendly to search engines when they stumble across this blog.
• Make sure people can bookmark and share your posts easily.  I’ve used the AddThis WordPress plugin to put the link at the bottom of posts that lets you share the post with a whole range of services like delicious or digg.

Well, I think that’s enough for now.  I hope that it’s not too technical.  As I said, I don’t want this to turn into a technology run down.  I didn’t really know a lot about blogging before I set this one up so I just spent the time to look for what was necessary to get it going.  I hope you can get something from what I’ve learnt.  Please leave me some comments with your feedback and any questions you might have.  When I get around to it, I’ll see if advertising is something worth putting down here as well.

Happy blogging!