Some of you may have noticed the shiny new 125X125 ads in my sidebar. They are the result of upgrading my ads system to BuySellAds.com. The website has yet to prove itself (as I’ve just signed up), but looks very promising and takes all of the work out of managing my ads manually. It basically allows to advertisers to purchase an ad through their website which will automatically be shown on my site for 1 month. I’ve set the initial price at $25 to try and attract earlier advertisers. If you’re interested in purchasing an ad spot then simply click on one of the blank ads in my sidebar.

My traffic’s still at 15,000+ uniques per month, and my Alexa has now dropped to 160k. However, I also realize that I’ve neglected the blog a little in recent weeks. I say ‘neglect’, but as you all know I’ve been hectically busy with final exams. Thankfully these are nearly over, and with summer starting I’ll be able to update the blog regularly and see traffic levels creep up above 20k per month again! Either way it’s pretty great value for advertisers!

More updates will be posted soon, but I can tell you that DiscoverUnsigned.com is getting a complete facelift for the June debut album launch. I’m quite excited about this as I’ve rethought the website/business plan and it should be a whole lot better.

PSDFan.com is coming soon (I just need to design it!). I really can’t wait to launch this project as I predict big things for it. I’ve actually challenged Michael Dunlop (from Retireat21.com) to a little contest. He owns his own tutorials/webmaster website called WebDesignDev.com. You may remember that I wrote a tutorial for him a few weeks ago. Anyway, we’ve agreed to compete against each other as motivation to who can grow their site bigger. I realize that his site has search rankings that are years old, and is achieving nearly 1000 uniques per day already. However, I’m confident that I can grow psdfan past this point as soon as I’m on summer!

Other than that in the works I have a turnkey website, a Wordpress themes shop with a difference, a coding tutorials site, and a lot of offline events to do with Discover Unsigned. As you can see it’s going to be a busy summer, especially combining these projects with my web design work which I’m planning on dedicating myself too also.

Check back soon for updates, and wish me luck for my final exam :).

This is going to be quite a quick update as it’s gone 3am and I have a full day of revision tomorrow for my Thursday exams :(.

I just thought that I would update you with sites and how they’re progressing.

Psdfan.com will soon get designed.

DiscoverUnsigned is taking a back-seat to exams, BUT will undergo a full redesign/rethink in the next week or so. If this seems erratic after launch, especially given the site’s immediate success I don’t feel that it is. I get this with every project that I launch, but inevitably it is only after launching that I see how I should have done things!

With DiscoverUnsigned I was thinking about how the site will make money, and rather than through lame Google ads or affiliate programs the main idea was selling our monthly unsigned album. That’s great, a good business model that isn’t being done everywhere, and interest in the album by many people prior to launching. However, when I looked at the site I realized that to the new visitor it just looks like a blog, a regular old music blog. The main business venture is hidden about 3 pages into the site, only to be accessed via some crappy subpage.

That is just not good business, and it’s a stupid way to try and make money, as well as promote unsigned talent. After reading one of my favourite ebooks (written by 37signals) I decided to rethink the website, and to gear it more towards selling albums. After all, that is what will pay the bills, and is also what will help unsigned artist’s more than a simple blog post. I don’t know why this aspect of the site took such a back seat, it’s ludicrous. This is the concept that has excited me the most from day 1, and I’ve hardly put any emphasis on it!

In keeping with the 37 signals ‘Getting Real’ ebook I’ve decided to strip the site down to it’s bare bones in an effort to focus the business. The new site (coming soon) will have a homepage with album cover, track previews and an option to buy it - simple as that. This will generate far more product awareness and overall sales than hiding the album away on a blog subpage.

I will still be updating the music blog, but not 3 times a day, leaving FAR more time to promote the album and give more worthwhile help to artists through this medium.

My advice in closing is:

> Keep your business as small as possible, it allows you to change things far easier.
> Take away everything that is not vital to your business model
> You may know what your site is all about, but new visitors won’t, view your website from their perspective!
> Always push the parts of your business that set you apart, and are the most marketable.
> Follow your passion, get involved in something that you can’t stop thinking about!
> Aim for something that isn’t time consuming - you’ll have more time for promotion or other projects. Sometimes the more profitable websites involve less work, less updating and less hassle, just come up with a simplistic concept that you can leave to earn for you.

I hope these pointers were helpful, as they really define my business thinking. Apologies if there are any typos, but you’ll have to put up with my unprofessionalism for one day (I’m SO tired from exams I’m shocking myself by writing this update).

More updates soon, and possibly rejoicing when summer officially starts.

I didn’t want to wait until after my exams to update the blog, as I figured that many of you would have given up checking back by that point. I was also feeling guilty about not updating for a week, proof that university is pretty damn time-consuming! With final exams fast approaching I’ve been forced into ‘work-mode’ which typically involves hardly any work, but seeming to have no time due to procrastinating and feeling guilty about it.

I’ll just give a quick update on my online projects, and won’t bore you with exams and things…

DiscoverUnsigned.com is going really well! We’ve got 7 out of 10 tracks that we’ll definitely be using for our debut album, and interest is growing in the site. We’re getting several hundred visitors each day, and have been approached by several record/promo companies, endless bands (some good, some not so good), and many fellow students who like what we’re doing. One of the most annoying things is that we’re both really busy with University, so we want to be doing a lot more than we physically can. I’ve poured a lot into promoting the site, but feel that things are really going to take off when my summer vacation starts and the first album launches. Our content may help to set us apart from the hundreds of other indie band blogs out there, but the album concept is far more unique, and should get us some good local publicity at very least. If anyone felt very kind we’d really appreciate a blog post about the site to help get the word out!

I’ve been thinking a lot about psdfan.com and have high hopes for this site. I won’t reveal everything that I’ve got planned but it will be a lot more than your average tutorial site. I’ll be showing some how of the best designers in the world design, offering REALLY helpful freebies for designers and of course posting regular tutorials for my readers. Not to sound over-confident, but I feel certain that I can achieve 250,000 uniques per month within my first year of launching. If the site flops come back to this post and laugh in my face, but if it takes off then remember you heard about it first!

My other big project for the summer must unfortunately remain nameless, but I’ll hopefully post logos/design screenshots here soon.

I have a couple of other cool site ideas in the pipeline, but feel like I want to get these ideas live before I put even more on my plate!

Exams are over in exactly 2 weeks, and whilst I’m scared, summer is so close I can taste it! Wish me luck, and I’ll try and update again before they’re all over :).

A couple of very quick updates for you,

DiscoverUnsigned has suffered the inevitable delays of the development process I’m afraid. I thought that things would go perfectly, and whilst they’ve gone very well it looks like we’ll be launching tomorrow (I hope!). Not much to say on this front except to look out for the project launch announcement!

A slightly cooler update is that I’ve been featured by Michael Dunlop over at Retireat21 as part of his list of the ‘Top 30 Bloggers Under 21′. I already knew some of the guys in the list, but I’m in the process of going through all their blogs and meeting some new faces :). Anyway, thanks Michael, it’s an honor! I strongly encourage everyone to go and check out the article and Digg/Stumble it to your hearts content!