Today I needed to replace some of the water in the turtle’s tank. Swap out about 10-12 gallons once a week to extend the time between the big water changes which takes half a day to totally empty and replace everything including setting up a different tank for the fish and turtles while I do it.

Regular maintenance like this, changing the filters out regularly keep the tank looking good. By the way the picture is just cause I love to see Baby all stretched out on top of Gizmo – nothing to do with this article because there is a down side to that maintenance.

Before I start removing the water I always re-arrange the items they have moved and level out all the rocks they have dug up. This lets lose a bunch of what I’ll call gunk to be polite into the water and allows me to remove some of it with the water.

Then things get stirred up a bit more when I add back the water. This means that right after the maintenance the tank looks like crap. Now in a couple hours as things settle down it will look much better than it did but there will be that time frame when it doesn’t.

The thing is that can be true about your business sometimes but you still need to do it.

The maintenance falls into things like backing up your data bases for your blogs and scripts, checking your stats and reacting to what is working and what is not.

Then you need to actually take the time to change and test things. Sometimes this temporarily hurts your results when you are split testing but over time it improves your results. Not everything you test will work but if you keep improving your process it will grow your business despite the little bumps along the way.

This will allow you to find the things that work for you. Marlon Sanders new book Ockham’s Razor Income System has some great ways to improve your system when you apply them. Strongly recommend it as a resource to give you ideas to improve your business and improve your maintenance of your business.

Well, in about two more hours I will be able to enjoy the better looking tank (at least until the turtles once again start their re-arranging).

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: back up, maintenance, Marlon Sanders, Ockham's Razor Income System

Well it is that time again to do a major tank cleaning for the turtles. This will involve removing most of the water, cleaning both filters and replacing the filter media for both filters.

Not one of my favorite jobs but a definite necessity if you are raising turtles. Much prefer the time I spend watching them interact and chase fish. Watching some of the things they do like stacking on top of each other which are quite funny looking. In this picture they are in their train formation stacked like connecting cars.

Cleaning the tank is yucky, messy and often postponed.

Okay how does this lesson apply?

There are certain maintenance tasks your business requires too. Not fun like launching a new site or watching payments come in but necessary none the less. Here are a few and some are for protection and some will actually improve your business.

Maintenance items

If you have a blog you should be backing up your data base. In fact every data base you have (examples – blogs, membership sites, trackers, etc.) should be backed up on a regular basis. In my case that is Monday.

I can recover if I lose a couple days data but lose a blog like Mike Paetzold Recommends with over 400 posts and I just lost a lot of traffic. Yes I know quite a few hosts back up your data bases but I want a copy for me if there is a problem.

Same with your web site files even if they are not dynamic. Keep an off site back up or use an off site service like Carbonite or any of the others that will back up your computer automatically.

This way they have a copy, my computer has a copy and my server has a copy. Guess the turtles have made me paranoid but if that stuff gets lost my income is gone.

Download your autoresponder list too. Hey I use Aweber and have great confidence in them but…

That list IS my business.

Now to the things you need to maintain not for maintenance purposes but for improvement purposes.

Going back to the autoresponder. Check your stats regularly. Is there a specific email that your unsubscribes are significantly higher than the others? Think it might pay to change that one?

Which offers in your series are working? Which aren’t?

If you have built good traffic systems improving these things can add to your wallet.

How are your traffic systems working? Still getting traffic that is converting and which sources are converting best? Think that could help improve the bottom line if you add more that are?

In summary maintenance for the most part sucks but…

It is necessary and needs to be a regularly scheduled part of your routine. I hate cleaning the turtle tank but do want to be able to see the other side of it so it gets done. Maintenance will pay off in various ways but is easy to overlook so DO IT even when you don’t want to and make it part of your routine.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: backups, database backup, maintenance, tracking