TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Why hello there fellow readers! Yes, this is a new update. Enjoy.

• Pictures/beautiful day
• Blog layout changes
• Project updates
• The power of attention
• Blog link exchanges

Pictures/beautiful day

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day so Lisa and I just had to go out and enjoy it. I took some pictures, but admittedly lacked in the quality and number of photos as we were too busy enjoying the day and shopping.

In fact, today is absolutely gorgeous again. See, where I live, it’s usually very cloudy/rainy most of the year, from around October through to late April. Then, it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world – literally; Vancouver Island has been regarded as one of the most beautiful places in the world. Spring is here, and it’s just awesome. I actually think it’s getting me to work with more energy and to be more productive!

Below are a few photos, although due to my poor photographer skills, they didn’t do the day full justice:

This is a shot of my bedroom. I added it here because some people asked to see some photos of my apartment.

A shot of the view from my apartment balcony. At night you can hear all the millions of crickets chirp and it’s so soothing and puts you to sleep.

A shot of me driving. It’s sooo beautiful out..

A shot of Lisa. I think we’re in the parking lot at the bank, as I had to drop off a cheque.

Westwood Lake. I was too lazy to actually get out of the car and take better pictures 😛 A random picture of the surrounding area. I live a few blocks from here. We’re on our way to do some more shopping.

Another random shot. Look at the sky 🙂

When looking for a new table at some furniture stores, we found this one place that had the most AMAZING couch ever. There were two we liked, in fact, and were both really similar. I really should have taken a picture of it, but felt weird going out and coming back in to take a picture. Basically it was a couch that curved around a bit and each ‘seat’ was so comfortable and you could recline in them at various levels, and each ‘seat’, because it was a glorified movie theatre couch, had armrests that had drink holders in them. And inside the armrests you could place anything like a bottle of wine or a bag of chips. It was amazingly comfortable and would have been the best thing ever.

We talked to the East Indian salesman, as it was run by East Indians, and he was really friendly, and a damn good salesman. lol.. he somehow almost got me out of the door with one… even though I was looking for a new kitchen table.

The thing was, these were both on SALE. Mega cheap. The one was on sale for $1999, and the other for $1199! This is Canadian currency too! The only reason I didn’t buy it immediately was that I already have a couch, and buying a new one wouldn’t make sense, even though it was the world’s best couch.

I’m definitely checking out that place again when I move (I’m planning on moving out in around 6 months or so and buying either a house or a bigger and nicer apartment).

Since it’s so beautiful out again today, we’ll probably go out and take more photos, or else tomorrow or the day after. I’ll try to do a bit better job of taking more scenic ones. I reached out to Zenith Clipping, a clipping path service provider company in Bangladesh. They offer the best quality clipping paths. They are a well-reputed top-ranked image editing company serving since 2010.

Blog layout changes

I’ve made a few small layout changes on the right hand side of this blog, basically breaking up my sites into main, developed, and under development categories.

Project updates

I know I’ve been lacking in the amount and depth of project updates lately, but the truth is that there really isn’t much to tell. I’ve been spending pretty much all of my time lately, when working, on either answering e-mails and dealing with advertisers or finishing off items of my last ‘todo’ list.

MMAForums.net’s skin is FINALLY complete. You can view it out here. Once my current ‘todo’ list is completed, I’ll get to work on customizing it a bit more (the ads and whatnot) and start marketing it.

The marketing campaign for MMAForums has halted as I need to figure out some better communication methods with the hired help. It’s partly my fault for not being 100% ready and prepared before contacting him as I usually am when I hire people.

Now that Terrorist #1 is pretty much done with MMAForums.net (I still need the PSDs, images, etc.), CookingForums.net’s skin should be up fairly soon as well.

MovieForums.org will follow suit fairly shortly.

ProjectAA and Replayer.org are still being plugged away on by my programmers. Unfortunately I don’t have anything new visually to show you guys yet. However, there should be something significant to show by next week.

The rest of the projects are not forgotten, but try to think of my projects as a tropical canvass, with the tallest and biggest trees, or projects, stealing most of the sun and energy, with the smaller plants and prospects getting the remains and leftovers 🙂

The power of attention

I work a little bit here, a little bit there, when at the computer. However, I only usually spend an extremely small percentage of the time actually working. To help compensate for this, when I feel I have a fair bit of energy, I make myself to ‘work sessions’. I’ve done this for a long time, but have neglected to do it for quite a long time. Basically what I do is set my stopwatch on my watch, and work for exactly one hour. During this time I must do work and only work. No recreational chatting or browsing the web. I can’t have the TV on or anything to distract me.

I always put on some music, put myself on Busy mode on MSN, and only attend to new e-mails that are work-related. I then work on my ‘todo’ list or take care of any e-mails I haven’t attended to before.

I find that by forcing myself to work with no distractions for a set amount of time dramatically increases the amount of work I get done. I think the main thing it does is force me to get things done I don’t want to do and am putting off, usually difficult or time-consuming items on my ‘todo’ list.

And when I’m done my session, I feel great. The sense of accomplishment is high, and removing one of those items I’ve stared at on my ‘todo’ list for a long time feels great. Basically it helps break procrastination on things you need to do but don’t want to do.

I then reward myself with either taking a break and watching some TV or going out and doing something, or by grabbing some food and playing a computer game or by chatting online.

The key is not to overdo these work sessions. On a day I’m quite energized and focused, I can usually do around 3 of these work sessions. Sometimes 4. However, on average, I can only handle one or two. Only do these work sessions when you have energy and are awake and focused. That is when you should work.

Blog link exchanges

I have gradually been removing links to other entrepreneur blogs. I remove any blog that has been neglected to stay updated. Many of the past blogs I’ve linked to had only been updating once every three or eight weeks, and I don’t want to link my visitors to such sites.

My number of external blog links has now decreased a lot as a result so I am now accepting new link exchanges with other web entrepreneur bloggers.

Here are my prerequisites – I don’t care how much traffic you get or how much money you make:

1. Must be web entrepreneur related (web designer/publisher who makes money or is trying to make money)
2. Must be updated frequently (at least once a week)
3. My link should appear on every page (i.e., not on a ‘links’ page)

If you’re interested, e-mail me at tylercruz (at) gmail.com