A few months since an update? Wow… now what have I been up to?

• No changes to my RSI symptoms, actually they’ve got slightly worse. However, I’ve got better at managing the pain and I’m fairly tuned in to the major triggers. Specialists have no idea what’s going on and had an MRI last week to check for spinal problems. However, overall idea is to just get on and enjoy life. It’ll get better some day.
• Bought DailyEcoTips.com and completely revamped it. You can see the before and after pictures on PowerDosh.com.
• Created and been promoting my eco-friendly gadgets site EnviroGadget.com.
• Annie and I have been having fun raising the kittens that she’s been fostering. The Cats Protection League basically pay for all costs. You simply donate your time. It’s actually great fun, and Annie is slowly getting me fond of cats.
• Been coaching Mike Clark (friend from work) and my Mum in their web businesses. I recently did a major update to Mum’s site Local Greetings Cards. New features for ordering cards are on their way soon.
• Got myself an XBOX for an XBOX Media Center. No question that it’s great fun.
• Went to Zante in Greece with Annie for our first major holiday. They have an ace water park there!
• Visited Tom in Cardiff, visiting the Caerleon Amphitheatre and Caerphilly Castle

Hmm, that’s the highlights. If you want to know more, you really should be getting in touch.

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

There’s been a lot going on in the last few months. The most notable thing is that I managed to develop an RSI in both arms. Basically both arms are really sore and ache most of the time when using a PC or driving. So I have to take lots of breaks from using the PC, and reduce the work I do on the PC as much as possible. So there’s no surprise that it’s an issue for trying to make money from my websites. The pain is very slowly getting better, but it means I can’t do anywhere near as much computer work as I’d like to do.

So does this mean a career change? Well, possibly, but I’d have to find a job with considerably less computer work. In this day and age, a job like that is hard to find. Even harder to find one that pays a salary capable of covering a mortgage. In the meantime, I’ve had suggestions on ways to help, such as using the Alexander Technique (a posture related thing) and deep tissue massage (basically an aggressive massage designed to improve circulation and break up tension in muscles). RSIs are a real annoyance. My recommendation? Don’t get an RSI!

On the website front, I bought iPod Touch Tricks, ran it for a while, and then sold it so that I could rest (due to the RSI). I’ve now got Spy Gadgets, EnviroGadget and PowerDosh as my main websites. They’re all fairly low maintenance, but still require some work from me on a regular basis. I’ve still got £193 to earn until I break even, as I injected some savings into my accounts to get myself started.

So earning roughly -£20 a month until that’s cleared! I think I’ll have broken even by the end of the tax year. Ideally I’ll have little tax to pay as I won’t have made much profit. The point is by the time I’ve reached the break-even point, the income from the websites should be enough to further promote them and keep them going. So no further investment from my savings into the business. It’s how all businesses should work in truth.

But really, making money from the websites is more for fun than anything else. And I’m enjoying it, so they serve their purpose. Any profit is just an extra bonus as well as an incentive to do well.

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

Even with the rather small number of websites that I have at the moment (having sold off Spy Review now), it’s still important to take regular backups. I’ve had automatic website backups going for months now, which I started doing on my Mini ITX. However, I became very frustrated with the Mini ITX as a media centre due to a number of sound volume issues, codec issues and a broken DVD drive. So I decided that I needed a better alternative.

I had a number of requirements for my backup storage that fulfilled all of my requirements, for scheduled backups overnight as well as generic storage for my music and documents. Therefore this is what I needed:

• Some kind of RAID storage for redundancy in the event of a hard drive failure.
• A linux or other unix-based operating to allow me to run scripts over ssh to backup all of my websites.
• A wired ethernet connection with support for FTP and NFS.
• Large disks, in the range of 500GB available storage.
• Costing less than £500

Having done some research, it became clear that there was only one gadget that met all of my requirements, namely the QNAP 209-Pro with two 500GB disks set up in mirror mode with RAID. Costing £440, definitely not a cheap storage device, but worth it if it did what I needed.

I’ve had my file server for about 3 months now, and having spent some time hacking it I now have my own cron tasks running every night taking complete backups of all websites. I’ve also installed subversion on it and use it for my development work. I even have all of my music stored on it and have configured iTunes to use the file server as a network drive rather than a local drive.

My only concern now is the issue of if its stolen or damaged. I have excellent security at home, but just in case of an accident, I need some way of backing up the entire device at a remote location. I’ve yet to decide on how to do this, but I will soon! The cheapest option is to connect it to an external USB drive.

The more expensive and automatic approach is to purchase an identical unit and have it stored at my parent’s house. You can configure the QNAP 209-Pro to use rsync to create a remote mirror over the internet. Aside from bandwidth costs, there’s the cost of another file server. Even still, plus.net offer unlimited bandwidth at off-peak hours with their broadband packages.

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

The last post that I wrote was me brain-dumping my thoughts on what project to do next. I was unsure of what to do with Spy Review, and what I could do with my time… particularly with growing my investments. After a lot of thought, my ideas are starting to form.

I’ve learnt to not worry about too far into the future. I’ve learnt to think about what I need now, and then to have vague plans for the future. These vague plans take the form of goals that I want to achieve at some stage in my life.

Something that’s an issue now is that I’m not 100% happy with my day-job. I think its because I just dislike working for others. I want to be my own boss. That in mind, I’ve started making plans to achieving that, and doing so within 2-5 years. i.e. within that time, have my own businesses that provide me with a salary sufficient to live from and leave my day job.

As a result, I’ve set up a new site called Power Dosh that’s going to chronicle my journey, and everything I learn before, up to and during my ventures. JagoHarry.co.uk will remain to be about me, rather than my business interests.

Wish me luck!

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

I’m starting to reach my limit when it comes to websites now. Admittedly the recent Google rape of Spy Review from a Google Page Rank of 5 to 0 has been an influence. Although I personally don’t place much value in Google Page Rank, many others do, which affects the potential sale value of Spy Review.

I had been toying with the idea of selling Spy Review for a while, but the progressive changes from PR5 to PR4 to PR3 to PR0 was beyond what I deserved. Spy Review did have some paid links (as the drop in page rank is supposedly based on), but I added nofollow attributes to all sitewide links before the latest drop from PR3 to PR0. Google have not even given me a hint to why the sudden drop either.

That aside, Spy Review does have a solid income each month from Google Adsense, and continues to have solid search engine rankings in the top search engines for the most popular spy related terms. However, I am finding it increasingly difficult to find the time and motivation to write high quality articles for the site. I’d prefer to sell it on whilst it still makes money and I can get some value from it.

If I do sell my portfolio of websites, it then begs the question, “what next?”. I’ve enjoyed having the extra cash from running the sites. But I’ve often resented the amount of time I’ve need to dedicate to them to actually make them profitable. You can’t just make a website and hope it brings in cash… it needs active work and promotion.

I haven’t felt particularly ‘fulfilled’ from running the sites either. Sure the money is useful, but money isn’t everything. If it wasn’t for the extra cash that I’ve had through my sites, I simply would not have been able to afford my own place, nor afford the DIY costs needed to spruce it up. At the end of the day, I achieved my target of getting my own place. Now that my interest is weakening, it appears to be a good time to move on to something else.

The temptation to have a complete break from webby stuff is a strong one. Just sell on, take a break, and see what else takes my fancy!

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

It’s taken a little while, but I finally came up with an idea to help Annie run her own website and earn some extra cash. After brainstorming a few ideas, we came up with the name “Heaven’s Paradox“, and Annie came up with the great tagline “Where angels fear to tread…”.

The idea is to use the blog as a bit of a whore and sell reviews and links, etc. I’ve started doing it myself with Peep At Life and it is appreciably profitable. I’m helping Annie using my experience to promote the website, and we’re slowing starting to see the benefits. Admittedly, it is only a week old at the moment!

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

For a new work role, I’m on a First Aid Training course this week to get a certificate for First Aid at Work. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been on a first aid course, but its starting to come back to me.

It’s a 4 day course, but in 2 days I’ve already done CPR, the recovery position and many bandages several times over. Sure, the idea is to ingrain the concepts deeply in our minds, but its getting rather tiresome to doing CPR so often.

With the high degree of practical content, and oodles of time to practice, I imagine that everyone will pass the assessment at the end of the week. Although there are a couple of nervous people in the class who might struggle a bit. It is interesting though, and its a great alternative to the day job!

Update: I passed!

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

Running a PC 24 hours a day is a very useful thing to have, particularly with running daily backups, using it for recording TV programs as a PVR, security and more. However, most PCs along with their broadband internet add-ons guzzle energy, and I’m trying to find a low energy (and therefore cost efficient) solution.

I currently have a Mini-ITX based on the Jetway motherboard, which is meant to be a low power solution. I want to measure its actual power usage with a mains energy monitor. If the power usage is less than 30 Watts when idle, that’s pretty good. However, adding a TV card when I convert it to a full PVR will increase the power usage a bit, particularly when actually recording.

I’ve explored other possibilities, such as a Tranquil PC, but they’re not much use as PVRs. Only really for desktop use. The VeryPC Green PCs are a step in the right direction, but are quite costly. It’s really a surprise at how few energy-saving PCs exist at the moment, but at least some companies are making a start.

My motivation is doing a bit for the environment and cost cutting on bills. But if the PCs themselves were cheaper, that would motivate a lot more people.

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve created a new Firefox 2 and IE7 Search Engine that allows you to check Google Page Rank and Search Engine backlinks via CheckPageRank.net. I found myself using it very frequently, and so decided to release an Add-on for it. If you have any issues with it, or you want me to write more search engines on a similar theme, do let me know.

You can find it in the Downloads Area, in the Firefox 2 and IE7 Search Engine Add-Ons section.

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.

So I’ve now sold another one of my directories (itrcc.net), which was based on a fairly highly ranked domain, but was terrible in terms of being a brandable name. I bought the domain about a year ago, before I had learnt anything about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

However, I did earn some money from it from link sales and from the sale of the site, so it was far from a being a failure. I still have 4 web directories left in my portfolio, and my ideal situation would be to reduce that to just 2. However, .co.uk domains are a pain to sell, since you need to complete a load of documentation and pay a transfer fee to Nominet. This hassle tends to put off buyers too. That said, it does protect domain owners. I’ll probably sell the directories in 1Q2008 though.

I’ve also purchased a new domain and I’m developing a new blog PeepAtLife.com for the purpose of selling paid blog posts. It will take me about 3 weeks to get it to a standard high enough that will derive a profit.

©2008 jagoharry.co.uk. All Rights Reserved.