Running a Site as a Project Management Exercise. (And the contents of my purse.)

Despite the lack of response to my heartfelt entry the other day, I am super excited to actually have a personal project once again! Since launching this site, I’ve been spending lots more time with the laptop and staying up later too. I am concerned that maintaining a site will once again take over my life and deplete the amount of quality time I spend with my family. Mr. Serious and Boa are at great ages where they will usually play quite happily in the playroom for up to an hour at a time. If there was a way to gate off the room, it would probably be more than that! I can sit on the arm chair in the corner and plug away. It’s not without interruption and I do interact with the kids during this time, but it’s mostly free play and up to them to entertain themselves. While I think that’s great in moderation, it’s not great if that’s the only way I spend time with them. So yeah, I don’t want this project to take over my life.

I feel it’s important to tackle this site from a project management viewpoint because: A) I really like project management and think I’m good at it, B) having clearly defined and achievable goals makes this more official than just another girl starting another personal photography website and C) if I treat and manage this site as a project I’ll be able to put it on my resume.

Though I’m not trying to monetize this blog anytime soon (if ever), I do want it to grow and to find an appropriate audience. In the past couple days I’ve taken the following steps to help grow my number of readers:

1. Google Adwords sent me a $100 credit to try out their ads. Why not? Free publicity! So far it seems very affordable and I’ve noticed some of the click-through traffic is reading several pages before they leave. You can set the amount you want to spend per day on each campaign and can put in a lump sum amount for the campaign to draw from. For example, if I wanted to spend $30/month on ads, I could credit my account with a $30 payment and set my budget amount to $1/day. There are some advanced options for keywords and ad placements that I haven’t even started looking at yet.
2. I have asked Pepper of Uniquehorn Designs to create a logo and button for me, probably with some design work to follow within the next several months. I suck at graphic design and her work looks really awesome. I am excited to have something visual (other than my photos, I guess) to brand myself!
3. As mentioned yesterday, I’m going to be announcing a giveaway on Tuesday. I’m rather worried I won’t be able to drum up any interest in it though. That would bum me out.
4. I’ve asked a respected blogger and fellow Project 365 participant to write a guest post on my blog and she agreed! Look for that in the hopefully near future! If you would like to contribute a guest post, please let me know! You could write about any photography tips you have, your workflow for taking and/or editing photos, any editing techniques or tips, how you stay inspired for Project 365 or anything similar.

I do have more plans and goals for global weblog domination expansion, but I think this is a good start. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

So.

The Mommytography 365 project is holding a Photographic Scavenger Hunt which ends tonight. I didn’t have much time to even look at the list, let alone participate, but some of the items make for excellent stand-alone assignments, such as 5 flowers of a different color in one photo. Since it’s a meme that often goes around the internet and I was going to show you my cool microfiber doodat anyway, I decided to photograph the contents of my purse.



Should have used a smaller aperture for this… (Taken at f/3.5. Probably should have used something above 6.)

In my purse, I carry around:

• My Cannon point and shoot, which is what I use to take videos and handy if I don’t want to be right on top of my subject (since I only have the 50mm lens for now.)
• A Fuzzy Fingers Mini Microfiber Chenille. You can see a close-up of this below. I ran across it at Kroger one day and it’s one of the coolest purchases I’ve made under $5! (Though Amazon’s site has it for $8… I’m pretty sure I didn’t pay that much.)
• Mentos. I usually like to have some sort of gum on me though I don’t chew gum that often.
• Money, coins and receipts
• Lip gloss and nail clippers. I need to get an emery board to put in there too.
• ibuprofen and oragel
• my wallet, of course
• hand sanitizer
• pens galore



This microfiber doodat is wonderful! I use it to clean my camera lens, filters and cell phone. The side with the little fingers is perfect for swiping across a computer keyboard to dust it off and the backing is simply great to clean glass or hard plastic surfaces. It’s been so easy to carry around with me and people always find it interesting when I pull it out. I highly recommend one! ^(**)