Well it has been very quiet here not because the turtles have slowed down but because I have gotten busy. That came to a head earlier this week when it became clear that it was time for some maintenance on the turtle tank.

Despite having the tank right next to me as I am working occasionally you just try and forget about it. I know that I need to do some regular cleaning of the filters and swapping out some water to keep a good environment for the turtles. When I get busy as I have been for the last couple of weeks with launching Get Referrals Fast it gets pushed to tomorrow. Add in the fact that I don’t enjoy it and it is easy to postpone.

After all it is easy to convince your self that once this big project is done I’ll catch up with it. Well this week it became a necessity. The water clouded up and started to have a faint aroma. So…

I ended up doing a major cleaning job and investing two hours rather than the 10 minute job of changing the filters and adding water the last 3 weeks. Hmmm. A half hour saved over three weeks by postponing versus the 2 hour cleanup I put in this week. Did I gain or lose?

Now this is about the turtle tank but it applies to your business too. When you are working on something to expand your business (and you should be) it is easy to postpone the maintenance tasks.

Some of those though can cost you a lot more than just a bit of time. Keeping track of your email series and how well it is working is a perfect example.

Knowing your results and finding the leaks where you start to lose people can be a big deal. Letting that go for a month or two or three or maybe the last year and not fixing it can really cost you.

Not checking which traffic sources are converting and split testing your offers can too.

Now those types of things are not exciting and can’t get your attention like working on your new project but…

Those that actually do these things regularly and make it part of their routine often generate more profit per time spent than all the new projects.

Finding that balance point between doing the ongoing maintenance like..

• Improving your email series
• Split testing your offers
• Checking your traffic stats
• Ongoing link building
• And similar tasks

and getting all involved in your latest shiny object project is necessary.

Make these maintenance type things part of your routine even when the excitement has you rolling on your new project and your business will improve dramatically.

Other wise you end up like I did postponing 10 minutes here and there into a major project once the smell started. Not the thing to do.

Technorati Tags: maintenance tasks, new project, split testing, tracking

The turtles no I should say Gizzard reminded me of the need to keep up with change. Now I did not get a picture because what he did caused me to react not think about anything else.

Here is what happened. The bigger turtles no longer use the ramp to get to the top of their perch. They climb up from the water right up to the landing from an inch or so below. Now they have gotten quite good at climbing and built up their strength.

Imagine my alarm when I found him trying to climb out of the tank right by the filter where there is an opening in the lid for the water to come back in. Even though the landing is a couple inches from the top Gizzard had his head and part of his shoulder area out of the tank.

Obviously everything is now rearranged so he can not escape. The changes were made ASAP because it is a long drop out of the tank and I did not want a smushed up turtle. (Not sure why he would want to with some one to feed and clean up after him but that is another tale.)

Now how does it apply to online business. After all there are not any chance of smushed up turtle online. (I like that word and it probably isn’t one “smushed” can’t you tell )

Things change with your business constantly. Google changes an algorithm, a new traffic source comes to light, what people want changes. After all things constantly change and if you are not tracking what is happening change can catch you by surprise.

Time spent tracking and testing keep you on top of what is working and allow you to leverage what is working and cut out the items that do not.

This allows you to keep up with change and adapt as you need to instead of being caught by surprise. Grab your free copy of Tracking Your Way To Profits and start tracking today if you are not already.

Now if there was just a way to track Gizzard

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: adapting, business change, tracking

Yesterday was the weekly cleaning for the turtle tank. Not a pleasant job but a necessary one. This always leads to the turtles rearranging some of the items and the war continues each week.

This time I really did them in. I moved the ramp to the opposite side of the tank. Now there was nothing added to the tank just their main seat moved. This created total confusion for over 3 hours.

Normally as soon as I finish adding the fresh water back they are up on the ramp and relaxing. They are never happy while I am changing the water and it tends to tire them out. Immediately getting up and basking is the norm.

It was over 3 hours before they figured out how to get up to their spots. Everything was backwards and it was funny to watch. Just by reversing things it caused some real confusion.

The same thing happens when you try and change things in your business. It may be the same thing from a different direction but it confuses you.

Unfortunately this is why a lot of people just keep doing the same thing over and over. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

You really need to be changing and adapting to grow your business. The way to do this is through testing and tracking. Overcome the confusion and just do it. Not sure how grab my free report Tracking Your Way To Profits.

Unless you make changes and test them you will never improve what you are doing.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: change, testing, tracking, tracking your way to profits

The turtles had their tank cleaned yesterday and are happy relaxing right now. Yes I once again re-arranged things and made it look the way I want.

Did not last an hour before the castle was knocked down and things started getting moved to suit them. An ongoing battle between us.

The question is are you doing the same thing with your customers?

Now I have the control (at least I think I do with the turtles) because they don’t have a choice of where to live. We have our ongoing battle over the arrangement of the tank but the turtles don’t have another option for a place to live.

They can start moving things back but they can’t stop me from changing it back.

Your customers or potential customers do have a choice. Don’t give them what they want and you don’t get their business. There are 10 others willing to supply what they are looking for in the format they are looking for around trying to get their business right now and more coming each day.

This is where testing and tracking are so important. If you are not testing and tracking your results you will have no idea which changes your customers liked and which ones drive them to your competitors.

It really is that important and that is why I revised and released my free report “Tracking Your Way To Profits” this week.

Until I started testing and tracking as many things as I could it was all guess work. Even knowing what the turtles like would be impossible if I did not watch how they reacted. So go grab your copy of “Tracking Your Way To Profits” and start applying the tips to your business.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: testing, tracking, tracking your way to profits

I have come to understand that turtles are not the smartest creatures I have ever had as pets. Not really a big surprise there to most of you.

Here is Gizzie trying to get through the space between the ramp and the wall of the tank. Now the turtles keep growing and the big ones have not been able to get through there for months.

They either go under the ramp or back up and go around the ramp. Despite that each time I add food and one of them is in that area they try to shortcut their way though that space. Now they can be stubborn enough that they could work their way through it. It would involve pushing the whole dock over but in time they would succeed.

They are smart enough to realize that the others will have long eaten the food that I added if they do that. (Not counting how pissed it would make me if they break it but I am sure that is not a factor for them.)

So usually after just a minute or two they drop down to the bottom and go under the ramp. Next time, however, they go through the same routine and waste the same time and effort.

So the question is do you keep doing the same thing and eventually adapting?

In various conferences working with new people I see them acting just the way that Gizzie was. They come in with a problem but have no idea what is working and what is not. They are not tracking anything so they are working blind.

They get some ideas and go make some changes but again they don’t track anything and back they come. You ask for the stats and the answer is again that they don’t know.

See last time I talked about how Gizmo eventually bulled through behind the intake pipe. That can be admirable and a great way to break down obstacles. When the food is on the water though even the turtles despite initially trying to bull their way through know that if they want to eat they don’t have the time to push the dock.

They want to eat so they go under or around.

Your business is the same as I am sure you want to eat (make money) and that you are smarter than a turtle. Grab my new free report Tracking Your Way To Profits and start tracking so you don’t have to make the same mistakes again and again. You can make new ones

Eventually though you discover what works and keep improving your business. Then you can “eat” all that you want.

You are smarter than a turtle? Aren’t you?

Go grab and apply Tracking Your Way To Profits right now and prove it.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: improve results, tracking, tracking your way to profits

The picture to the left is Gizzard’s back paw spread out fully. Now I have yet to figure out why they love to lay on the dock and stretch out like that but seeing the paw fully spread like that did make me understand something about their swimming.

Quite often you can see one of them paddling like mad and not going very fast at all. They almost look like they are stuck in quicksand.

Then all of a sudden they take off like a shot. After watching for a while it was apparent that little changes in the angle they were paddling and how wide their paw was was spread made the difference.

Same effort but vastly different result.

Your marketing can be like that too. Little things like changing a word in a headline can make the difference between paddling and going no where and taking off like a shot.

That is the reason that you really need to be testing and tracking everything you do. I know it is a royal pain at times but…

It allows you to discover those little changes that make you jump forward. It is important that you track everything through to your ultimate action. For doing that I use Hits Connect. There are lots of other solutions available.

Lots of people just track traffic stats but if you can not track and see which traffic source gets you the result you are trying to achieve you will not be able to find those little changes.

Lets take an example of a result. You set up a squeeze page and send traffic from three sources. Knowing how much traffic is good but what you really need to know is which traffic source delivered the people that went to the verification page, then clicked the link in the verification email. That is your ultimate goal because once they have done that much you have a subscriber you can contact.

That is the ultimate goal to know what works to get people to your final result which in this case is to be fully signed up for your email campaign. It would work the same way for your product if that was your ultimate goal.

So take the time to set up your testing and tracking. You never know what will make a difference. I have had a friend get a 10 fold increase in results from changing the title and graphic of their giveaway on a squeeze page.

The Turtle Dad

Technorati Tags: marketing, testing. Hits Connect, tracking

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