Hey… Long time no see!
1st July, 2008 - Posted by Chance -
Yeah, so I haven’t been posting lately. What can I say- I’ve been a bit busy. When you are starting your own business and blogging for dollars is not a key component of your money making strategy, well, you just don’t have much time for hours of useless writing if you are doing it right.
Business Stuff
Secure Delivery is doing well. We’re delivering over 1000 products now and we have hundreds of subscribers. Some of them even pay us! Really though, the free thing is working out well- aside from the normal tire-kickers you get with offering anything for free, we regularly get “upgrades” or people that convert from free to paid plans. Lately, we’ve had a lot of people converting from basic plans to high level advanced and pro plans too- always nice since its basically the same amount of support (our big time sink) for a basic or a pro plan!
I don’t normally do “income reports” like some other make money online bloggers as I generally don’t believe its anybodies damn business, but I’m feeling pretty good about where we’re at so I’ll share a bit.
Our income was growing pretty steadily at a rate of 14% or so a month throughout the beginning of this year- nothing to write home about, but growth to be proud of none-the-less. Recently we signed some big hosting / development / support deals that are going to bring in hundreds of extra dollars a month, so I expect our growth to accelerate from here on out.
Portal Labs is doing more and more contract work and as a result our income is moving in to the “oh my god we’re a real company that actually makes money!” range. My business partner has transitioned to working full time on contracts and Portal Labs interests, and as a result our income is really going up.
We’ve made some major investments in hardware lately, so our costs have gone up, but its not outpacing our income. Honestly, our biggest financial problem at the moment is looking in the PayPal account seeing its back over $1000, and remembering that and we need to drop cash to our corporate banking account (after all, I don’t think any vendor really trusts PayPal, not really).
Home / Personal Stuff
Summer is upon us and I’ve been trying to get away from the computer for at least one afternoon each weekend.
I spent one weekend fertilizing the lawn. I’ve learned a few things from this: First, I really suck at growing grass. Second, it sure is hot outside in Georgia. Third, did I say it was hot?
I spent another weekend digging out, planting, and mulching the flowerbed in front of my house. Here I learned that Georgia clay is too damn hard to dig through. I also learned that while not everyone can be a rocket scientist and the world needs its ditch diggers, well, its not the life for me. Oh yeah, did I say that its hot as hell here?
Lets see, what else is going on… I put some new downspout and splash block thingies on my gutters after I discovered our infrequent breaks in the drought were eroding little canyons around my foundation. We’ve painted the whole house, including my super cool bonus room over the garage (my office, or if you like, my Fortress of Solitude). We hung up some cool floating shelves in the living room that I made from scratch. I divided a storage closet in a shared wall between the garage and the kitchen in to a new pantry and a smaller closet as the builder of the house seemed to have thought we wouldn’t need anywhere to store foodstuffs.
I split a bottle of Bourbon with the neighbor. Ok, maybe 2 bottles. I’ve also split more 12-packs of beer than I care to count with him too. I’ve been grilling out and smoking meat a bit- I love me some outdoor cooked food. This is where the beer drinking came in.
I set up a linux server at home (Ubuntu) to learn more about configuring and installing linux beyond the basic web server management stuff. IPTables, advanced file sharing, that sort of thing. I’ve been studying for my MCSE and CCNA exams which will help with IT type contract work.
Oh yeah, and my wife really wants a baby. I’m going to have to bite the bullet and knock her up sooner or later, but I’m hoping I can keep her ovaries reined in for another 3-6 months (just kidding honey! I love you!).
That’s about it. Whats going on with you people?
Posted on: July 1, 2008
Filed under: General Nonsense
1 Comment
SarahG
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:33 am
Great to hear everything’s going well with business and personal :)
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