When I was just starting out in business, I had the problem of thinking that everytime someone requested something, it was an emergency.  I would work all night on website updates for someone, just because the client said it was important.  In doing so, I found myself working all the time, taking calls late at night for updates that had to be done by morning.  It was a very stressful time, and still to this day I find myself falling into this trap.

There was a comic posted at an office I used to work at that said something to the effect:  “Lack of preperation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine”.  Live by that.  Don’t be afraid to say “no” or that you can’t meet a requested deadline.  Don’t fall into the trap of dropping what you are working on to take care of the “call of the moment”.  Make them wait their turn just like everyone else.

I have clients where everything is an emergency.  How could this be?  How could everything be this important?  It’s not.  It’s just their nature to be worrysome.  On the other hand, I have clients where I sometimes feel bad because their updates took so long, but they call and thank me for “jumping right on it” when they are done.

Being in business is more than managing projects.  It includes managing clients.  If you can manage your clients, then the job will eat you alive with stress.  So, chill out, seperate the truly time-sensitive updates from the rest and tell them to wait.

In my recent trials from trying to sell my house and purchase another, I have learned a lot about selling and buying big ticket items.  I’ll use my house as an example, but this really applies to anything.  It used to be my naive opinion that selling something simply meant that, compared to everything else available on the market, you had the best to offer in your price point.  If you had the best at the right price, it would sell.  This is true, but a slight change in this methodology will lead to quicker, more frequent sales.

The truth is, you don’t need to have the best product on the market.  You simply need to have the best that a potential buyer HAS SEEN.  The key to this difference is that people are lazy, and they don’t always spend the time necessary to look at every available option.  So, if you are pro-active in finding buyers, then whatever you are selling will probably be one of the first items the buyer sees.  If they like it and it meets their price point, then you have a good chance of selling it.

For example, I had a potential buyer I was talking to on Twitter about my house.  He had found another house and was in process of purchasing, but the deal had stalled when the house didn’t appraise for asking value.  Well, I hit him up, talked him into coming to see my house.  He was thinking it over, but had already fallen in love with the house he was trying to purchase.  Even though, in my opinion, my house is better (bigger, recently remodelled, better lot, etc) and at the same price point, he had seen that house first, liked it, had spent the last few weeks dreaming about how he would fix it up, decorate it, paint it, etc and so he decided to not even come by to look at my house after the seller met the appraised price.  In this case, it did not matter that my house was better.  What mattered was what he saw and liked first.

When selling houses, the mistake is using a realtor right away.   I would always recommend you at least try to sell it yourself first, then if you are not able to sell it, find a realtor.  A lot of people look online for houses.  Put it on craigslist, in the local online classifieds for your paper and see if you can proactively go after a buyer.  Talk to everyone you know and push your house.  In this situation, they are pretty much comparing my house to the others on craigslist or in some cases only currently considering my house.  In this situation, if they like my house (not like it better than another, but if they like it at all), it is sold.  If I go with a realtor, my house is being compared with everything in the local MLS system.  The odds of my house being the best a buyer has seen is greatly reduced with a realtor.  The flip side is that realtors have a larger buying pool, but give it a go yourself before you give in and see if you can get it sold.

Lately, I’ve been trying to use facebook ads to drive some affilliate marketing re-bill offers. Well, most re-bill affiliate marketing opportunities do not come close to meeting the Facebook advertising guidelines so getting one approved is proving difficult.

Initially, I thought this was going to be easier.  I built my landing page promoting several offers and submitted it to Facebook.  It was approved in about 12 hours and I was under way (so I thought).  Well, my ad was very weak and I wasn’t getting a good CTR so Facebook increases my recommended minimum bid and I stop getting impressions.  I quickly update my ads, changing the targeting of the one I already have and adding more that are a little edgier.

Well, the Facebook Ad Monitors now decide that my offers are not meeting the guidelines.  Of course, they don’t exactly tell you this.  They give you a hint as to what terms are violated, but they don’t tell you if it is the offers or your site.  So, I spend the next day redoing my landing page to make 100% sure it meets the guidelines but I am still unable to get any ads approved.

Over the last day, “Ad disapproved” has become my new best friend.  I’ve submitted over a dozen ads with none being approved.  In doing so, I have noticed that for the exact same targeting, my minimum recommended bid increases each time one of my ads are disapproved.  I’m wondering if I am beginning to be marked as a “trouble maker” because I am continuing to try to get these ads approved.

It was my assumption that the recommended bids are simply determined by the targeting of your ad.  However, this seems to be  firm evidence that past performance plays into your future advertising recommendations on facebook.

I consider myself a fairly patient person, at least in most cases.  However, when I’m excited about a project or something I am doing I like to jump on it and go while the adrenaline is still pumping.

Recently, I have been trying to get back to spending considerable time and resources on affiliate marketing.  I learned a lot when I was focused on it, and was making good money in spots.  However, big projects came in and my available time decreased and I stopped working on my campaigns.

Yesterday, I started experiementing heavily with Facebook ads. Once I get a number of clicks on an ad, I like to make adjustments and submit another ad.  However, my ad approval time is taking 6-10 hours and it’s really taking all the fun out of testing and finding something that works. If my memory serves me correctly, this is about twice what it was taking last year when I was testing facebook previously.  Obviously, the moderators are much busier now.  It’s just another sign that facebook is exploding as an advertising platform.