Day 6 4 hour Work day

Keeping track of time is crucial to this experiment. I will say I was on the phone a LOT this week and Friday went over the 4 hour time limit if you add the telephone conversation I had about 7 PM. It was business and I was doing a lot of listening! It’s an exciting opportunity, however, I want to have all the information before I get involved.

This week I also launched my crowd funding campaign at  www.crowdfundinglive/acfl   It’s for my new book. So as part of what I am doing to help raise money, I was on the phone. You have to explain to people what you are doing, basically they can pre-purchase the book at this webpage. Also Crowd funding Fridays, kept me on the phone. I tend not to multitask while on the phone so I do not miss anything.

I tried to spend at least one hour in the office very day, however, there are a lot of things I can do at home and internet at the office has been wonky. It’s never worked right since I moved in ( June 2012) and I am tired of being on hold for 30 minutes to try and talk to Verizon about it again. I feel my life draining away every time I call. Read more

IndieGoGo Updates Their Algorithms

The crowd funding websites usually feature some projects on the front page. Those projects have an advantage in that mostly everyone visiting the site will see it and consider giving towards the success of the featured projects. Each site has different criteria for what is being listed on their front pages. IndieGoGo, one of the more popular sites has recently changed how they decide what goes on the front page. Much like Google, IndieGoGo has an algorithm it uses. They feel an algorithm is fairer. The algorithm will take into account how many comments a project gets and how much people are sharing it on social media. This means they are tracking your activity while you promote your project. Updating the pages often will also help. Basically if you do your work, get people to promote your page, view it and fund you, you will get the homepage advantage to help promote your project even more.

IndieGoGo is just one of many crowd funding sites. Many sites specialize in types of projects. For example, there are sites for education money, sites for just films and television, sites for scientists, sites for art only projects. You need to look at the different sites, see what they have to offer and find out as much as you can about what it takes to be featured on the home pages. For some sites, it is as simple as paying an extra fee. With sites that use an algorithm, you to have some understanding of what is being weighed. If the actual formula gets out, they will change it up again to keep it secret and keep people from “gaming” the system.

You have to make good use of your social media to make this work. Updates need to be frequent to keep people interested. As your project goes along, hopefully you can gain Facebook friends and Twitter followers because they got involved. Asking people to share and re-tweet can only help you reach that all-important financial goal. Read more