Taking Sabbatical!

I looked up the word Sabbatical and its definition pretty well describes what I am going to be doing.

A sabbatical year is a prolonged hiatus, typically one year, in the career of an individual taken in order to fulfill some goal, e.g., writing a book or traveling extensively for research.

Well, I guess it is time to finally fess up that none of this stuff out here on the internet really works. I would like to say it is just me, but unfortunately there are a large number of us out here that are now realizing that None of this is really all worth it.

I will be taking a sabbatical to work on my next book that I will be outlining all of the fallacies of the internet…until then you may want to check out my other book to catch up on what is going on.

You can check out the periodic blogs I will post over at my main site, IBGS Blog. Hope you enjoy the archive of blogs I have posted here.

Played in the first day of a three day golf tournament…not a good day. Hope tomorrow is better.

I started looking at my stats over on IBGS. Now that I cut out the spiders and search engine hits I can see some true numbers. They are not pretty.

Out of 5000 hits I got 43 real people to hit my survey on what it is they are looking for and would like for me to write on the IBGS site. So far only 45 people have looked at my book, and 25 have looked at my seminars.

Now you can say or ask, Is This Really All Worth It? Well you tell me.

MySpace: I’m Not Sure Midas Touch is How I Would Discribe it!

I still find it very interesting how there are still people saying they are using MySpace for any reason and I am hurting from laughing so loud at the people who really think that there are some Presidential candidates who are REALLY using their MySpace account to talk to the people…what people?

I am sure their 15 year old staff members are using the site and writing blogs and so forth for the candidate, but as far as the actual candidate using the site, PLEASE! How stupid would that be, especially with all of the recent reports of the level of perversion increasing on that site…I really doubt that anyone running for the highest office of this country is going to want to be associated with that site when it comes crumpling down.

Now I plead guilty to having a MySpace account…and I am not hiding the fact that I am over there, but I am only over there so I can factually report what I am seeing is going on over there…which, so far, really is not much more than a bunch of dudes on the west coast trying to meet chicks anywhere in the world….and the chicks on the west coast trying to meet dudes with a lots of money…

Rex Dixon’s recent report on MySpace Midas touch cost FIM $250 million… is also interesting. His report on the girls on the elevator is riveting…

Girl One: “Yeah, I’m going to blog this tonight.”

Girl Two: ”You have a blog?”

Girl One: ”Well no, but I blog on MySpace.”

Girl Two: “You have a MySpace account? Hit me up girl!”

Give me a break…I will take it that they were on the elevator going down…since that is where MySpace seems to be going.

MySpace is not a site I find where communicating effectively with other real people is where offliners want to go to meet other real people online…there are way too many other options to consider than jumping in the untrusting world of the MySpace community.

I am still looking for the real people…in MySpace…I am sure they are out there if I am out there…come out, come out wherever you are…

Seven Days A Week!

If you are like me, if something is not working, I can’t just walk away and take a break…I have to fix it before I can rest.

That is what I am doing with my sites, my business and my golf. Everywhere I go I am asked to fix something.

I was out at local home improvement warehouse earlier this evening picking up supplies for my next project when one of my wife’s clients saw me and come up to ask where my wife was. After taking 10 questions related to my wife speaking at a Franchise Conference this week here in Dallas, the real reason she came over to me came out…she couldn’t find any help in the store who knew anything about anything…go figure.

So here I am solving problems….fortunately the problem she was having was more of not knowing where something was and I pointing her to the right department and showing her the bin the stuff she needed was in…then I was back to my stuff. I got out of there and I was back to the house to watch what I was watching live earlier in the day, the EDS Byron Nelson Classic…

Anyway, I am now back here in the Bagroom Studio editing video’s and working on keeping a few contact updated on my new Business Operations Consulting I am offering.

The problem I can’t solve is getting my new web-site launched…seems I need to sell more copies of my book and take on a few more retainers for client consulting before I can get the new site launched…a little of a Catch 22.

I am sure there are many out there who are in the same shape. I would love to hear what others are doing to raise the capital they need to get the site they need developed and launched.

So, I am now working on some business templates for processing out clients business operations and getting things in file for when I start snagging some clients.

I have a few speaking gigs coming up and usually I get a client or two out of the speaking I do. There are a ton of business golf outings I have been asked to review…so here are things coming up, but who knows what will happen by then.

So there are always things that are in the works that makes all of this not worth it, but, I am still here so I guess it is worth it…to an extent…buy my book, that makes it more worth while.

Give Me A Break!

I just got this account set up, so bare with me…I’ll be back to tell YOU if all of this is really worth it or not!

Surveys

Since I came from a background of operations management I took to the concept of providing by viewers a surveys like someone on vacation in Palms Springs in July would think about jumping into a swimming pool filled with warm water. Sounds inviting, but I could use something a little more refreshing.

I have used thousands of surveys and even created as many during my 32 years in corporate America. In the early 90’s you could not get through a day without someone wanting you to fill out a survey.

Surveys are used today for the same reason….to gather information. Unfortunately, getting people online to take them seriously is usually a challenge. The good news is, it is easier now to take a survey. A Click here and hit Enter and you are through.

I am not a fan of long surveys. I feel you can get the same information out of five surveys with ten questions that you can from one survey with 100 questions.

That is why I produced the short survey I have on my site for viewers to fill out. It is short and to the point. And from the information I gather I can get the first step of what direction to take to provide my viewers with what I know about Business Golf and provide what my viewers want to know. Plus it also will provide all of my viewers and the business people who stop by my site an opportunity to see what I other services I offer.

Well it is worth the try… so let see how it works.

Click the Graphic to go to the Survey.

Twitter-Dee Twitter-Dumb

This blogging stuff is getting harder to do. The time it takes to find a decent tune in Itunes that producing anything to write about is getting longer and longer. Then to sit down and strain to find some words to use that have not been used before is pretty hard work also

Today, I ventured over to my buddy Rex Dixon’s site to get some new words to use. A while back it seems all I got over there was Twitter this and Twitter that.

Some time ago, RD was all worked up on Twitter. He wanted me to go over and try it out. He claimed it was pushing more traffic to his site than other sources. I went over and checked it out.

I went through the rig-a-ma-roar of signing up and then trying to figure out how to use the site. While I was plowing through the help section to get an answer to my question I gave up and I just started hitting buttons to see what they did…well I hit one that was asking me, What Are You Doing? Crap, what does that mean?

I answered it by saying something about looking for the Grill Master or something like that. I call RD the Grill Master because he is always working on someone’s home page..

Heck I didn’t know that I just set up the slogan that will be on my profile that is what everyone will see when they come to my profile…

Well, I had some other stuff to do and didn’t get back to the Twitter tab on my FireFox for about five minutes.

When I hit the tab there where these two messages. Not very friendly ones I might add. Both of the authors seemed to know each other because they using the same words ‘Old Fart’, in the broken sentences people use on Twitter, to tell be to ‘get off the friggin system if I didn’t know what I was friggin doing’…

Well, that was a find How Do You Do!… Obviously they took the time to go to my IBGS Site to check out who I am… but what called for that greeting…

I fired a gmail message to RD to report that Twitter sucked… He didn’t blame me for my reaction and tried to convenience me to go back. He said to send him a message and he would get things started. Seems the way it works is people just eavesdrop in on other people’s conversations.

And since most of the conversations are held over cellphones, Blackberrys, Blackjacks and PDA they tend to be short and incomplete sentences usually resulting in someone to ask, “WTF are u saying?”

So, I did send RD a message which I got a response from him and then….

Well, it has been about six weeks and still nothing…so WTF. Guess this could be another waste of time for something that is suppose to drive traffic to your site…

Now it might, but I can’t thank anyone on Twitter because nobody answers the threads I put out there…

So, moving on to something that is more productive or was supposed to be.

As you can see, I changed the Header Text on the site today to show Is All of This Worth it?. I am probably going to change the theme once I decide what I want it to look like.

I might get some input from the Golf Girl since she has a keen eye for fashion, she might have some input on a web design.

Speaking of web-designs, Sheehan May over at TigerCreations.net, a web-site design company contacted me about linking to his new creation TheGolfApproach.com.

Now this is a pretty cool site that EVERYONE needs to check out…even non-golfers. It shows what Sheehan can do and is the way a site should look…super clean…then check out TigerCreations.net…WOW, he does some great stuff.

Now I think it is going to take a little Humble Pie to get me in the mood to talk about MyBlogLog…something like “Com’on Everybody”…might do the trick…be back to hammer MBL later.

Is This Really Worth It? From the Beginning

I have been a little tardy getting this out to everyone on what I have been working on over on my main site. As I mentioned, I am going to use this site to address all of the stuff I am doing out here in cyberspace to make a buck that is not working or is working.

So let’s get started.

So I can get everyone up to spend on what I have been doing online for the past three years let me just throw a blanket on it and say…obviously nothing profitable.

I started out in 2004 with getting eminence help from some of the veterans of the internet who I will not mention their names because they would not let me, so that tells you where I am with them. But they have been around as long as the internet…some over 15 years. So you would think that they should know where the money is…well they do, but they are not sharing it. Kind of the theme of the internet as a whole

The help I got was in the form of “Here Is What I did to make $100k the first year”….well that got my attention and it was even more intriguing when they told what they did to make it. There secret was to write eBook cook books…. Heck I could do that, but I am not interested in doing that.

I am interested in passing on my wealth of experience that absolutely nobody else has. Just as simple as that….what I know I want to sell. IS hat so friggin hard?

Well that is what I have been trying to do for the past three years, obviously along with a thousand other things I have tried.

Is it all worth it? As my good friend Ed Barker told ya on his site, Yes it is, or I would not be here to tell ya about it. Stay tuned. I will hit on some other stuff I have tried to get work and it didn’t. Maybe you are the one to tell me why it did not work.

Is This Really Worth It? Music to Bomb Social Networking by..

ess-golf-straight-up-small.jpryone I have talked to tells me you have to blog and blog and blog to drive traffic to your site. OK, I have been blogging and blogging since late 2005. So where is the traffic? I have three different sites including this one.

And then, back I 2005, I was told that I needed to join social networking groups to promote the blogs that I am blogging. My reaction was WTF. In about two months I found out that the social networking advice was a bunch of crap.

Besides, after producing over 500 blogs in two months I was running out of stuff to say or talk about.

Sometimes it gets hard to find something new to write about. So what I was told was to listen to music. “It will stimulate you to think of something to write about”

I thought that was a great idea so for Christmas I got a IPod Nano from my wife. This was a great gift and she was so thoughtful she even placed a couple of Podcasts on the IPod from some well know news journalists she found online that were telling all about what the heck is going to happen to the internet if sites like MySpace and Facebook had it their way.

More or less they hammered the issue of how social networking is really not social networking as much as it is a place for social predators to hide out and slither around looking for victims to pounce on for their warp perverted pleasure. This led me to start looking into this issue and believe me, I found out there are plenty out deviants out there.

Those professional journalist’s podcasts were great and lead me to looking for others who had the opposite opinion so I could get bother sides of the story. But what happened, the 20 or so so-called experts on the power of social networking groups, who supported all of the crap the big dog social networking groups were doing, all started their own social network groups blowing their credibility completely.

So who is remaining to tell the truth? Answer: The mainline and online journalists who have to report a balance look at things to keep their credibility. Yaw these guys and gals who are providing the truth about these social networking sites that are festering with members with anti-social attitudes have probably joined the social groups to see for themselves what these sites are all about.

HUMM,, wonder how many 100’s of thousands or millions of other real live people have gone in, filled in a profile, got stung by some perverted individual or computer BOT, left and is not going back to cancel their account if they could.

I am sure my buddy Ed Barker will agree with me on what is working and not working..

I read an article from a lady who is a leader of a Hispanic organization who reported that there is a Hispanic saying that translated goes…

“Tell me who you are with and I will tell you who you are”

..I love it…I am going to use that phrase to carpet bomb some the issues on people are saying on that being in a social networking group is a good idea or who are telling people that if you not in a social networking group you are a loser.

I firmly believe, and have proven it over and over again for the past 32 years, that it is important if you are going to do business online or offline to think of Who You Are With, because from that association your customers will then know Who You Are…love it…I feel a strafe bomb run coming on right now…where is Rex Dixon when I need him.

Anyway, back to the music to simulate writing blogs…yaw, I can agree that that works...my current favorite ITune artist is Nickelback ..,yaw they might be “so 20 minutes ago” for some of the younger set, but I am after quality. Being a musician I look for tunes that have some outstanding mixes and instrumental productions even though they are slicked up by some outstanding engineering. A good guitar lick to start off a song just turns my brain on.

As an example, I got the inspiration to write all of this while listening to NIckelback’s ‘Animal’ .

I am now going back to listen to Slash wear the frets off a Gibson with his Velvet Revolver tune ‘Slither’

Stand by for what the frig that might produce.

Online Losers

You know, there are a lot of losers out here on the internet. Since I am going to be writing on all of the crap out here that doesn’t’ work, I am also going to talk about the stuff that people are doing that really causes problems. Some of the mistakes people make provide such a negative image of their site that it triggers the site to be called a Loser.

I am just as guilty as some of the other losers out there with some of the crap I have posted for my viewers that probably didn’t reflect well on me, but that is content and content can be corrected. There are some mistakes people make that is the Kiss of Death for a web-site and for the person running it.

In particular, recently I was talking to my old friend Rex Dixon about his site. Not having his site up on my screen and forgetting his URL, http://rexduffdixon.com I keyed in technicallyspeaking.com

It was an honest mistake. I am sure a lot of people have done it since Rex’s site is known as the Technically Speaking blog site. What happened when I called up the technicallyspeaking site was I got a message that the site had a Trojan virus.

This is the Kiss of Death for a web-site. It is like getting bite by a vampire. For someone who is not online very much, like many people are, when they get that scary message in their face it doesn’t hold well for their impression of the internet as a whole, much less for that site and its owner.

What is happening in this situation is people are getting the wrong image of Rex and Rex has not done anything wrong. A matter of fact Rex has done a great job of branding the name Technically Speaking and probably has more to lose for what the other site has done than the person who owns that URL.

Whatever, I am not making that mistake again or going back there and I don’t want you to go there unless you just want to see the error message or want to see a loser… see how that works? That is what people are going to be saying…

I am sure there are many others sites, and owners of sites, out there who have a good brand going on their site like Rex has and someone else goes out and ruins it by becoming a loser.

Be careful out there…don’t become a loser ..

Let me know how I can help.