I have found as I work on my personal projects, my inspiration and excitement towards my business work grows. Even if it is just 15 minutes a day, I set time aside for myself. It is a means for me to unwind and relax my creativity. It is a reminder of who I am and why I love design and love my job. I set goals for myself and always keep plenty of ideas in my head for the future. It keeps me fresh and ready to tackle any project.

This week has been my busiest yet. I have begun work with a company designing CMS websites. I have spent a vast amount of time training with the technology and I’m excited about its possibilities. I have decided to migrate my Duck of All Trades site over to a CMS system. I hope to have this done in the upcoming weeks. In addition, it will most likely be combined with this blog. The combined site will be put on www.duckofalltrades.com and this site as a mirror site. Nothing will change with my blog and you can still read it here, but it will be more of an integral part of Duck of All Trades. This should be a great example of personal work influencing business.

I will keep you up to date and share my experiences with the new websites I will be producing. In addition, this week should see the finishing of Stromple the puppet. He now has skin! Just not on his body. I will have a big update for him tomorrow and he should be done by the end of the week for an unveiling on Monday. Wednesday I should have a Moo-Pig update for you and Thursday Purple Fish will stop by. Of course Friday’s are always fun and exciting.

Todd Spitting Peas at Jeff

What a weekend! Sadly I must report that I’m still being held captive by Todd Pigworth and his piggy minions. He has me tied to a chair. Currently he is busy spitting peas at me. “Can you stop that?” I asked him. He wouldn’t. So I asked nicer “Can you stop spitting at me? Pretty peas?” *insert drum sound* Apparently he didn’t think this to be a funny joke. If I ever get loose, I’m going to mow his pants down with a lawnmower. Luckily he is allowing me to make an update on my blog…I’m sorry, my BOG. Geeze, who knew pigs could be so particular?  How am I typing with my hands tied together you ask? Simple. I’m really good at typing with my feet.

Last week was a success for Duck of All Trades. First, I was honored to display my puppets at the McDowell County Chamber of Commerce Annual meeting. I had 16 puppets on display. I am very grateful for the opportunity. I made new contacts, had a great meal, watched an entertaining ventriloquist act and won a “bag full of stuff.” Yes, I won a door prize that was touted as a “Bag Full of Stuff.” I could care less what was in it. This is the first time I have ever won anything like this. Maybe I’m starting to get my mom’s luck? 

The highlight of the evening for me was meeting Peggy Miller, a wonderful ventriloquist. You can visit her site here. I was impressed by her puppet skills. She was able to use two vent dummies at once, switching between multiple controls, multiple voices and multiple personalities. If you ever have a chance to see her, please do. 

Business wise, I have a few new clients this week. Adwords seems to finally be paying off. I am still getting a small click through ratio (.06% or one pet gerbil) but apparently it is enough to generate interest. www.duckofalltrades.com stats are also improving. Since starting with adwords, I have gone from about 4 unique visitors a day to an average of 21. While this isn’t great, it’s an improvement. I have also spent time optimizing my site for Google. As a result, my placement has been better and I’ve been getting more traffic from searches. In the coming weeks I plan to work harder to improve the site by adding new content. Some of the ideas I have for content are:

• Original articles taken from this blog, such as the Birth of a Book series. This will show potential clients my process and sell me to them as an illustrator.
• Create a publishing resource directory filled with valuable information from sites and sources I recommend. Not random sites, but sites that are genuinely useful.
• More samples of work.
• Tweak how my work is displayed. Make it more user friendly.
• Create faq page.

These changes will be done over time and the end result should be an increase in traffic. For now, the goal with my site is to begin to tailor it to what people are looking for. Despite more traffic, some visitors leave after viewing one page. This has lead to the question “If I were to show one potential client one page for a minute or less, which page would that be?”  To answer this, I’m going to set up new “portfolio pages.”

These will be pages unique to my different services, crafted with relevant information all on one page and linked to my adwords advertisements. The first page I will create will be a “Children’s Illustration” page. Instead of having thumbnails to other pages, this page will contain a self contained gallery. It will also show an estimate of time and cost, information about myself, links to “Birth of a Book” to show my process, and any information I feel like will sell my services best. I am limiting the gallery to ten images. For these ten images I am creating a new portfolio. Below is the first image I will include in the portfolio. I hope to create 1o new pieces for the page. Just what I need. ANOTHER project. The next update, I hope to have the beginnings of this page as well as an update on Stromple the Puppet (which I have fleece for).  There are many more adventure to come.

I also hope to be freed from peas.

Under the Sea Birthday Surprise

I’m happy to say that after a year, I haven’t failed. My business has shown progress with slow and steady growth and I have successfully changed 875 diapers, 342 which have been rather unpleasant in the smell department. OK, so that’s an estimate. You don’t seriously think I keep track of diapers, right? However, I now realize that it won’t be enough to not fail. I need to thrive, to find my voice and find an audience. I have put a number of measures in place to allow this. I have been tracking stats more seriously for my site. I have it optimized and streamlined. I have started using Adwords to help promote my site and attract new visitors. Most importantly, I have realized what a SMALL window the web is. Most users I have view my site for less than 30 seconds. Most click off after one page. A quick exit. To me, this is scary. How do you sell a customer in less than 30 seconds and after a one brief glance. This is a question I have struggled with lately. It isn’t an easy thing to do. The tough thing about the web is if a viewer isn’t immediately impressed, they can look elsewhere with the click of a mouse.

My remedy for this is working on making my website more relevant. The website as we know it is dead. The web is no longer an album, such as the Beatles’ “Seargent Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band,” meant to be listened to from beginning to end. It is a streamlined collection of all their greatest hits in MP3 format and the surfer has the power to go to any song, fast forward, rewind and skipping to only the parts they want to hear. Like it or not, google and other search engines have led to this. So what works? Relevancy. Controlling what the viewer sees through that small window by using more specific keywords and giving the mythical search engine crawlers what they need: better site maps. Also, I have tailored my AdWords to point potential clients to the information they want, not to what I think they may want after they give me a chance. That way if they only give me 30 seconds of their time, it is 30 seconds dedicated to something that might interest them. I also plan to add more visuals. You can learn much more about a picture at a moments glance than a grouping of words.

So will it succeed? I can guarantee that it won’t fail, at least not in my mind. You see, I believe the only way to fail is to not learn. If you are walking along and you trip because your shoe laces are untied, have you failed? Not if you get up, realize that if you tie them, you won’t trip again and then keep them tied. When you learn from a mistake, that’s not a failure. That is a growth. Eventually you learn to tie double knots and it is smooth sailing from there. More importantly, have I succeeded? I see that answer everyday when my daughter surprises me with what she has learned in her short time on earth or when I pick my son up from school and find out he has made another 100 on his spelling test. That is all the success I need as a father to inspire the success I will need as a new business owner trying to find his way.