While the name is still a secret while I work out a few kinks and get ready for the launch in about three weeks.  This is the design for my new site: a video podcast featuring free tutorials on internet marketing for small businesses.   The focus will be on quick, afforable IM solutions without the need for techy knowledge.

I have the content about wrapped up for the first 4 months of tutorials (they’ll be released every other Tuesday) and I am just waiting to put the final touches on everything until after I come back from the New Media Expo this weekend.   Something tells me with all the stuff I’ll be learning there, my plan/model with this project might need to be tweaked, so I will launch it officially on either Sep. 2nd or the 9th.

I recently finished up a design project for Bristlecone Realty, a salt lake property management company I found through a friend.  It was a fun project, a clean, simple design with some embedded PHP and HTML elements that they could use with a WYSIWYG editor to make changes on the site they update frequently.

They also wanted some SEO work done and so I have also been tackling that this summer with the most mixed, unusual results I have ever had with SEO.   I am optimizing for the keyword string “salt lake property management” and right now they are sitting at #1 for MSN, #32 for Yahoo, and nowhere on Google.  Yup, one day we were steadily climbing around #45-50 and the next day it was delisted…why?  I have no idea.  I submitted a reconsideration form and am waiting on that.

A weird thing to happen when there appears to be nothing black hat at all about the site.  I scoured over every inch of the HTML and found only a period that was “hidden” to hold space in an area that was showing up differently in FF and IE.  I removed that and am now just waiting for Google to give the page back its proper place.

Meanwhile, you can check out the page at http://www.brgsaltlake.com

Checking the stats for my site today I noticed a few visitors coming from a new URL…this one actually http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/ archive/april2008/ 041708_snow.html which turned out to be an article about yours truly.  A friend of mine had written an aritcle last semester for a project and I assumed it never got published…yet lo and behold, here it is!

Just to fill y’alls in, the Hard News Cafe is a worldwide source for the latest and greatest in news.   Hundreds of people each year pour over the stories…never to read it again.  Well, this found of knowledge is now complete after being graced by my name earlier this year.

Althought a few of the facts are a little bit off, its still fun to see my name up in lights…no matter how small.

I decided to go to my first out of state expo…the New Media Expo in Vegas on August 14-16th. A good friend, Steve Nance, is getting married the morning of the 15th. After the ceremony I will be whisked away by my limo (a UTA bus) to my private jet (economy class on US Airways) where my greeting party (a hotel shuttle) will take me to my private suite (the Palace Station hotel/casino). I am super excited for it. I think podcasting and blogging over the next couple of years will be a key to branding myself and getting my name out there. This conference should be a great way to learn uber-valuable stuff to help my on my path.