Thatch Mound

So, Google News apparently started indexing The Naked Loon today, which has led to a few hundred people landing on various stories through a host of different searches.

Here’s my favorite (available here—at the moment):

Click to Enlarge

Awesome. The Naked Loon at the top of the heap of over a thousand stories.

Update: This one is pretty sweet, too (search link). 6-year-old me on Google News = Pure Awesome.

Bleh. June was not nearly the comeback month that I was hoping for. Not at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Read on for all the gory details…

First up, the total revenue versus goals:

See the purple bar over June? See how it’s not only lower than May, but also lower than April? Yeah, that’s not good.

Here’s the breakdown of where the money came from:

Nothing particularly noteworthy about the mix here, other than to point out that the fundraising drive carried over into June with moderate success, but clearly still not enough to make up for my apparent total laziness on the business side of things.

July will bring some interesting changes, as my wife Jeni will be getting in on the business. With her training in visual art, photography, and interior design, and my experience and contacts in the local real estate market, we realized that real estate photography would be a perfect fit. I’ll be assisting her with my real estate knowledge and also by setting up a website to sell her services.

In order to help me get things moving, allow me to lay out some very specific goals for the month of July.

1. Launch the Seattle Bubble Quarterly Newsletter by July 15.
2. Set up a basic website for Jeni’s photography by July 15.
3. Sign up at least three new advertisers to Seattle Bubble by July 31.
4. Sign up at least one advertiser to The Naked Loon by July 31.
5. Open merchandise shop for Seattle Bubble & The Naked Loon by July 31.

I’ve also got some major improvements in the works for Seattle Bubble, as well as a couple of entirely new ideas that I think have great potential, so I’ll be sure to post updates here as things progress. Hopefully I’ll get back on track in July.

Dang, sorry I haven’t been updating here as often as I’d like. But here’s a fun update regarding The Naked Loon. I was on the local AM news radio station today for a good little in-studio segment. Check it out:

In order to help me get more done in a week, I’m trying out an upgrade to my basic weekly To Do list. This week I’m trying out a more structured list, where I’ve chosen a specific day for each of the items on the list. Basically it’s daily checklists, but created at the beginning of the week.

This week’s list looks a little like this:

Monday

• 1 Seattle Bubble story
• 2 Naked Loon stories
• Add sidebar to Seattle Bubble Forum
• Make 1 ad contact

Tuesday

• 1 Seattle Bubble story
• 2 Naked Loon stories
• 1 Thatch Mound post
• Make 1 ad contact
• Work on Seattle Bubble maps database

etc…

At roughly halfway through the week, I admit that I’m a bit behind. Clearly I didn’t make a post here yesterday, and adding the sidebar to the Seattle Bubble forum took a little longer than I had hoped it would. However, I was intentionally aggressive with the week’s goals when I made the list, and I’m mostly satisfied with where I’m at so far.

Working for yourself without the “threat” of disappointing a supervisor, it can sometimes be difficult to find the motivation to do more than the bare minimum. Making aggressive, detailed lists like this is my method of self-motivation. I’ll update you in a few weeks to let you know what kind of results I’m getting.

Yikes. May was a busy, busy month. Unfortunately, it was not busy with business-building activities, but with personal business and travel galore. We drove down to Vancouver, WA three times to assist my parents with a move and to attend a wedding, plus we flew out to Boston for another friend’s wedding, and stayed for five days. As a result, not a lot of productive work got done on the larger goals for Thatch Mound.

However, thanks to fundraising drive at Seattle Bubble (which I admit is a bit of a cheat), I was still able to meet and even exceed the raw revenue growth goals for the month. Let’s have a look.

First up, the total revenue versus goals:

Revenue in May was over 1/3 higher than April, which is a slower growth rate than the prior month, but still totally acceptable in my book. Especially when you consider that we still came in 20% over the minimum goal, and even slightly (5%) above the moderate goal. Nice!

Here’s the breakdown of where the money came from:

Obviously not the ideal mix, and definitely not one that can be relied on long-term. However, the fundraising drive did help tide me over through a month in which it was difficult to be very productive.

The real challenge will be getting back into the swing of things this month, and growing revenue with a renewed passion.  I’ll be looking into making better use of Google Ads, finally getting a subscription newsletter off the ground for Seattle Bubble, and also sending out as many advertising contacts as I can to try to get more direct ads going.