It has been exactly 6 months (and 6 days) since I outlined my goals for 2010. Let’s review my progress:

—FITNESS
1 mile in under 5:30.
*I’m down to 5:44! Should be able to complete this pretty soon.

Run a half-marathon.

200 squats without stopping.

25 pull-ups without stopping.
*At 17 right now, which is really pushing it.

Be able to fall into a push up from standing position, like Christian Bale in Batman Returns.
*Done!

Cycle 100 miles in one day.
*I’ve done three 35+ mile rides. Hoping to complete this goal before July 25th, when I leave on my next trip.

Be able to hold an L-position for 30 seconds.
*How people actually do this is beyond me. Seriously. I’m still trying to hold it for one second. Yep, one second.

Hold breath for at least 3 minutes.
*I’m at 2:20. This could be a funny YouTube video…

—BLOGOSPHERE
the9to5alternative.com

• Redesign and rethink my vision as a blogger. Is this a travel site? A lifestyle design or business site? This needs to be cleared up.
• Write at least 15 guest posts for other bloggers.
• Get at least 500 subscribers.
• Post consistently, at least once a week on Tuesdays. Sundays will be reserved for PMBA and case-study updates.
• Develop a cost-of-traveling blog widget, an idea that I’ve been sitting on for several months.

*I’ve given up on the last two goals; posting consistently, I’ve realized, is more stressful than it should be at this point, and the cost-of-traveling blog widget is a side project I’m going to put on hold, as my plate is already full enough. Regarding my vision, I know where I’m headed, and I’ve synced up with a designer that’s going to help get me there. I’ve written a few guest posts (and have several more to write), and my current subscriber count hovers around 400.

A quick note: The goal of this blog is not to reach as many people as possible. I simply use these metrics to track my progress and stay motivated. That being said–the more people that read, the more people I can interact with and bounce ideas off of, the more fulfilling and purposeful this whole experience is going to be. I’m still trying to find my online spirit. You all have been a huge help.

nepalprints.com

• Redesign and find a cheaper host.
• Sell at least 5 prints.

*Part of my blog redesign will be merging my images from nepalprints.com, which has been temporarily taken down, to the new site. Don’t worry–pictures are on the way! Not sure how many I’ll be selling though…

thecurryproject.com
I set this site up to record my experiences at different Indian restaurants around the world. It could go in a variety of directions.

• Write at least 20 reviews
• Get at least 50 subscribers

*Right now there are 16 reviews and 10 subscribers. Big shout-out to Earl (from Wandering Earl) for stepping up and writing some killer reviews of Indian restaurants in places like Mexico, the U.K. and Australia. I’m way behind with my reviews, considering I ate in six different restaurants throughout New Zealand and Australia this past trip. Stay tuned for more curry.

—LIFESTYLE
Read at least 15 more books on the Personal MBA reading list.
*I’ve read 5, but I haven’t published a new book summary in a while. More Personal MBA reviews are on the way.

Put together a long-term goals/bucket list.
*Done! Check out the list here.

Buy a keyboard.
*My new roommate, who I will be living with in September, has one! Crossing this off the list.

Hike the Presidential Traverse in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
*Doing this in a week and a half, with Nate Damm from the way that you wander and a few other friends.

Score at least a 700 on a practice GMAT and then take the real thing.
*I decided that business school is not for me. I have a multitude of reasons, and it took me several months to come to that conclusion, but I’m happy with my decision.

Make at least $500 in supplemental income.
*So far I’ve made $332.01 from a combination of niche marketing and freelance writing assignments.

Reread I Will Teach You To Be Rich and restructure and optimize my finances.
*Done!

Track all my expenses. To the penny.
*Still on track.

Finish the 21-day No-Complaint Experiment
*I’m going to try this in Africa, during my next survey in a few weeks.

Score at least $15,000 on Jeopardy! using the Coryat method. So far my highest score is $9,600.
*Done! I try and watch Jeopardy at least a few times each week, and lucky for me, twice I have scored above $15,000. Typical Jeopardy contestants score upwards of $25,000, so just to clear things up, I’m no genius.

##

What goals are you working on in 2010?

When I was 15, all the adults I knew seemed to complain, ‘Oh, if only I’d done this or that when I was younger.’ That they had let life slip by them. I was sure that if I planned for it, I could have a life of excitement and fun and knowledge.”

On an ordinary day in 1940, John Goddard, age 15, scribbled 127 bona fide and passionate goals onto a ratty pad of yellow paper. Visit eight world-class rivers. See every country in the world. Climb 16 of the tallest mountains. Ride a blimp, glider and balloon. Teach a college course. And the list goes on. By 1972, Life magazine, in an article titled “One Man’s Life of No Regrets,” revealed that Goddard had achieved 103 of his original dreams. Still alive, he’s currently deemed the “world’s greatest goal achiever.”

To an idealistic (optimistically naive?)  20-something like myself, Goddard is a legend. I only hope that my life is as adventurous and fulfilling as his. Reading his goals, thinking about my own future, I’m inspired to dare great, to live a life of adventure and purpose. To become a modern-day Renaissance man. While I can’t say what I’ll be doing 5, 10 or 40 years from now, I do know that these (constantly evolving list of) goals will help steer me in the right direction:

Alan’s Life List

1. Visit 100 countries and all seven continents.
2. Complete the three legs of an Iron Man triathlon, separately:
a) Swim 2.4 miles.
b) Bike 112 miles.
c) Run a marathon.
3. Learn to name all 192 (or 197?) countries without using a map.
4. Go to a Jai alai match.
5. Take a Parkour class.
6. Spend at least two weeks living out of a tent.
7. Complete a full P90x series.
8. Learn to do a “tree flip.”
9. Take three cooking classes.
10. Climb an 8000m peak.
11. Drink Yerba Maté.
12. Organize at least 100 fellow bloggers to do something engaging and informative.
13. Attend a Toastmasters International session.
14. Learn Adobe Photoshop.
15. Speak conversational Spanish.
16. Jump off an 80-foot cliff.
17. Build a “beverage can” stove.
18. Climb Mt. McKinley.
19. Go sandboarding.
20. Photograph the Northern Lights.
21. Complete a 5000-piece puzzle.
22. Take a vow of silence for at least one week.
23. Write a $10,000 anonymous check to charity.
24. Build a low-impact and sustainable business that generates an average monthly revenue of at least $1000.
25. Start a scholarship.
26. Become a certified skydiver.
27. Become a certified scuba diver.
28. Write a book.
29. Cook at least 50 recipes from foodgawker.
30. Eat at the world’s largest restaurant.
31. Take a survival class.
32. Hear a TED presentation in person.
33. Climb Mt. Kiliminjaro.
34. Go to North Korea.
35. Read the Bible. The Torah. The Qur’an.
36. Go vegetarian for an entire month.
37. Bake my own bread.
38. Give blood.

Further Reading

How to Write a Life List, by Chris Guillebeau
10 Tips for Creating a Useful Bucket List, by Sean Ogle.
How to Create and Manage Your “Bucket List” Before You Kick, from Stepcase Lifehack

A few other bucket lists:
Monkey Brewster, Nate Damm, Sean Ogle, Heath Tulley, Kirsty Henderson

What are your life goals?

It has been exactly 3 months since I outlined my goals for 2010. Let’s review my progress:

—FITNESS
1 mile in under 5:30.
*I ran a 5:57 mile a couple of weeks ago. Hoping to take care of this before the next update.

Run a half-marathon.

200 squats without stopping.

25 pull-ups without stopping.
*On January 1st I could do 7, now I can do 15. Slowly making progress.

Be able to fall into a push up from standing position, like Christian Bale in Batman Returns.
*I can do it, but not as fluidly as he does in the movie. I’ll post a video to YouTube when I feel more comfortable.

Cycle 100 miles in one day.

Be able to hold an L-position for 30 seconds.
*I’ve been doing the P90X ab workouts to strengthen my core. I’ve got a long way to go.

Hold breath for at least 3 minutes.
*At 2+ minutes. Hoping to finish this soon.

—BLOGOSPHERE
the9to5alternative.com

• Redesign and rethink my vision as a blogger. Is this a travel site? A lifestyle design or business site? This needs to be cleared up.
• Write at least 15 guest posts for other bloggers.
• Get at least 500 subscribers.
• Post consistently, at least once a week on Tuesdays. Sundays will be reserved for PMBA and case-study updates.
• Develop a cost-of-traveling blog widget, an idea that I’ve been sitting on for several months.

*We’re getting there! I’ve found the vision for the blog but am still trying to map it out. I’ve only written one guest post, but my FeedBurner count is up to 353. I haven’t been posting consistently. Once a week, yes, but not on Tuesdays

A quick note: The goal of this blog is not to reach as many people as possible. I simply use these metrics to track my progress and stay motivated. That being said–the more people that read, the more people I can interact with and bounce ideas off of, the more fulfilling and purposeful this whole experience is going to be. I’m still trying to find my online spirit. You all have been a huge help.

nepalprints.com

• Redesign and find a cheaper host.
• Sell at least 5 prints.

*Still working on the redesign. I’m choosing between two layouts–should be finished in the next couple of weeks. I haven’t sold any prints yet.

thecurryproject.com
I set this site up to record my experiences at different Indian restaurants around the world. It could go in a variety of directions.

• Write at least 20 reviews
• Get at least 50 subscribers

*This has been such a fun project! Big shout-out to Earl (from Wandering Earl) for stepping up and writing some killer reviews of Indian restaurants in places like Mexico, the U.K. and Australia. We’ve written a total of 13 posts and currently have 7 FeedBurner subscribers. Still not sure what direction to take this, but enjoying documenting my curry-licious experiences around the world.

—LIFESTYLE
Read at least 15 more books on the Personal MBA reading list.
*I’ve read 2. These books continue to be really fun to work through.

Put together a long-term goals/bucket list.
*Done! I’ll publish the list next week.

Buy a keyboard.

Hike the Presidential Traverse in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

Score at least a 700 on a practice GMAT and then take the real thing.
*I’m close…hoping to take the test this summer.

Make at least $500 in supplemental income.
*So far I’ve made $85.87. I’ll talk more about supplemental income in a few weeks.

Reread I Will Teach You To Be Rich and restructure and optimize my finances.
*Done!

Track all my expenses. To the penny.
*Still doing. Amazing how much I spend on food/alcohol each month…hmm.

Finish the 21-day No-Complaint Experiment
*Have tried twice and failed. I’ll keep trying.

Score at least $15,000 on Jeopardy! using the Coryat method. So far my highest score is $9,600.
*Done! I try and watch Jeopardy at least a few times each week, and lucky for me, twice I have scored above $15,000. Typical Jeopardy contestants score upwards of $25,000, so just to clear things up, I’m no genius people.

##

What goals are you working on in 2010?

As I mentioned last week, my buddy Chris and I are working on a new project, Abroad Care. I’m hoping that, with a little extra income I can start to free myself up for bigger and better things.

The idea: to market gift baskets/care packages to students studying abroad.

We still have several kinks to work out, but Abroad Care has officially begun. Chris and I had talked several weeks ago about publicizing our experiences, and we concluded that getting our readers involved would ultimately bring our practices to a higher standard. So, welcome to our project! If, at any point you feel like chiming in, please let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Abroad Care is an experiment in bootstrapping–starting a business without external capital. One of the first things we discussed was how to legalize the idea. You know, get our papers in order. Per the suggestion of Alex King (a veteran entrepreneur and close friend), we incorporated an LLC in Delaware.

Why Delaware, you ask? A good question. Did you know that more than half of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware? Here are a few reasons why:

It’s Cheap. Delaware is one of the cheapest states in the country to incorporate a business. Only eight states have cheaper incorporation fees.

You don’t need to live in Delaware. In other states, you have to operate the business within the state to incorporate.

One person can hold all officer positions and serve as sole director. Many states require you to list separate people as officers and directors. This is an advantage for those running businesses alone.

You can read about some other advantages here.

For the record, here were the incorporation costs for Abroad Care:

$120/year: obtaining a registered agent.
$90: submitting a Certificate of Formation.
$250/year: Delaware state franchise fee.

So, $140 for the first year, then $370/year after that.

In my next update I’ll talk about some of the initial decisions we made, some of our very first mistakes, and how we’re moving forward.

Wad of Turkmenistani Manat
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan 11/08

If there’s anything I’ve learned since stepping outside the college bubble and into the real world, it’s that financial literacy in America is piss poor. Every day, personal budgets are neglected, debts are magnified and irrational decisions are made. Did you know that at the end of 2008, the average credit card debt per American household–regardless of whether they had a credit card or not–was $8,329? Pretty wild, when you think about it. Given that the average interest rate on a credit card is roughly 15%, a household with that much debt can generate over $1,200/month in additional interest debt. Yikes.

Just over ten months ago I wrote Mapping Your Financial Infrastructure, an article about the importance of deconstructing your finances. You know, where money comes from. Where it goes. How much (and in what capacity) you save and invest. It was a good first-step in my adult life–systematically observing how money flows in and out, looking for ways to optimize.

In a continous effort to stay on top of my finances, I recently reread I Will Teach You To Be Rich, my choice when it comes to all things “personal finance.” Yes, the title is scammy-sounding and seemingly presumptuous,  but trust me, the author knows his stuff. Over the last month, I have taken his advice to heart and made a few infrastructural changes.

Credit Cards and Frequent Flyer Miles

I applied for a new credit card, the Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® World MasterCard®. Long after my career as a cost-of-living surveyor is over, I still plan on traveling. This card has a much better airline rewards program than my previous card, the Bank of America WorldPoints Rewards Visa. I get 30,000 American Airline miles for signing up, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. Normally I’m against the idea of an annual fee (in this case $85), but all the best credit card reward programs have fees. Note: I did not close my BoA Visa! It has a really high credit limit ($13,600), so closing my access to that limit would significantly and negatively impact my credit score.

From Bank of America to Schwab

I moved checking accounts from Bank of America to Schwab. Lately I’ve had a couple of situational issues with Bank of America and I’ve been looking for a reason to move on to greener pastures. I chose Schwab’s High Yield Investor Checking account. Schwab comes highly recommended for a variety of reasons; customer service, the fact that they reimburse ATM fees and a strong paperless system, to note a few. I was also attracted to Schwab because they make it easy to set up and fund a Roth IRA.

Opening a Roth IRA

For the last few years I had been investing $100/month into Class-A American Funds. While the American Fund family consistently outperforms its peers 1-2% each year, each Class-A fund has a 5.5% load, or fee. This means that for every $100 I invest, I’m only really investing $94.50. It’s not much, but with so many other no-fee options out there, I want to capitalize on compound interest.

I stopped putting $100/month into the American Funds and chose to open a no-fee Roth IRA instead. If you’re not familiar with the benefits of maxing out your Roth IRA contributions, read this.

##

The point I want to make is this. In today’s digital age, tracking and controlling and optimizing your personal finances has never been easier. The tools are there. The Internet makes it…so…damn…easy.  Over the last month, the two or three hours I spent making the changes above will no doubt save me thousands down the road.

Do yourself a favor this week. Take a peek at your financial situation and see if there’s any room for positive changes. Do a little research. Fill some holes. I’d be happy to entertain any questions you have about credit cards, savings accounts and the like. I’m no expert, but hopefully I can point you in the right direction

What is a Niche Market?

One of my 2010 goals is to make at least $500 in supplemental income. While there a million and one ways to do this, I thought it would be an interesting (and ultimately beneficial?) experiment to focus on online niche marketing.

The core idea, from what I’ve come to understand, is a three-stage process:

1. Pick a niche
2. Build a website for the niche, focusing on search-engine-optimization (SEO) strategies
3. Monetize the website

Matt Kepnes (of nomadicmatt.com) and Kirsty Henderson (of nerdynomad.com) are good examples of people who have made this system work. By creating highly specific, keyword-optimized sites, both Matt and Kirsty generate enough money each month to sustain their world travels. Pretty remarkable, when you think about it. Oh, another thing. Once the site is set up, little to no maintenance is required. It’s a textbook example of passive income.

To give you an idea of what a niche site looks like, check out How To Teach English Overseas. It’s simple, mostly text-based and brimming with relevant information. Throughout the pages you’ll find Google Ads, but on the home page you can also see a small affiliate banner. One website, two different sources of monthly income–good work.

Picking and Evaluating a Niche

No one can tell you how to pick the right niche. There are several different strategies. That being said, the following steps should help get you started.

Step 1: pick keywords
Choose too broad of a niche and your site won’t stand out in the search engine’s algorithm. An example: “water bottle.” Type it into Google and you’ll see 22,800,000 competing sites. Yikes. Think about keywords that are smaller in scope. Instead of “water bottle,” try “thermos flask.” Or “stainless steel flask.” You’ll see why this matters in steps two and three. Of course, if you choose too narrow of a niche you won’t get any traffic!

Step 2: evaluate keyword metrics
Check out Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. Type your keywords into the search box and you’ll see a ton of information. Concentrate on the Global Monthly Search Volume. That tells you how many people are searching for those keywords in Google, around the world, each month. Write that number down.

Step 3: determine competition
Go to Google.com and type in your keywords. In the upper right part of the screen, do you see where it says Results 1-10 of about…? That tells you how many sites are competing for the same keyword set. Write that number down as well.

The key, you might have realized, is to find a set of keywords with high monthly search volume and low competing pages. If you’ve done that, you already have a huge advantage. Of course, there are several other elements to consider, but these are the basics.

At the moment, I’m working on building content for two sites of my own. Here are the statistics for both keyword sets.

Keywords 1: 22,200 global monthly searches / 291,000 competing sites

Keywords 2: 40,500 global monthly searches / 98,400 competing sites

Once I finalize my content (at least the first stage of content), I will show you both sites and walk you through my efforts at SEO, marketing and monetization.

Have you had any experience with niche marketing? Any tips you could provide? Did this post even make sense?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

At age seven, the answer was easy. I was a dreamer. I want to be an archaeologist! I want to wear a cool hat and creep through cramped tunnels! I want to chase bad guys and speak funny languages and eat monkey brain soup! You should have seen me, digging through my school’s playground, claiming strange rocks as fossils, my hands caked in dirt, knees colored brown.

Back then it wasn’t about money. It was about the important things. The lifestyle, adventure and mystery. What invigorated me. What made me feel…alive. Naturally, of course, as I grew older what I wanted to be became harder and harder to define. I made things complicated. I thought about careers and money and having to save up vacation days. This whole growing up thing was serious business. Where would I fit in?

People generate income in all kinds of ways

It wasn’t until recently that I realized something. It’s not about fitting in. People grow up in all kinds of ways. They become doctors and lawyers, poker players and public speakers. Some work one job, others have several streams of income. Some travel, others stay put.

In a post-New Years effort to realign myself and think about the future, I participated in a fun exercise. I thought about all the jobs I have ever had. Maybe, by tracing through my income history I can get a better sense of where to head next.

Early Years
Age 6 – sold origami fortune tellers and paper airplanes for $.05 and $.10 [was stopped by teacher after two days]
Age 8 – sold lemonade with my friend Price
Age 12 – exploited a loophole with AllAdvantage, a short-lived infomediary company and made $200 before canceling my account

High School and College
Maggie Moos – scooped ice cream part-time for one year
The Temple Religious School – helped teach kindergarten once a week
Valet Parking – for a month [they found out I didn't know how to drive stick]
Cutting Onions – a one-night gig for $100, chopping onions for four hours [I was scammed and never paid]
Carraba’s – hosted at an Italian restaurant for a summer
O’Charley’s – served at an American restaurant another summer
Online Poker – FAIL.
Kaplan – taught an SAT prep class and did private tutoring and exam proctoring
KROLL – interned at a background screening company and worked on a data mining project for a summer

Startup Years
homeWUrk – co-founded an e-commerce site (now defunct) for dorm room products, targeted at incoming out-of-state freshmen
Moving Off Campus – helped populate city data into their back-end system

What I’m Doing Now
AIRINC – cost-of-living research for a global consulting firm
Nepal Prints – selling photography for charity

What interesting things have you done to earn income? Do you find this exercise helpful?

image credit to kapgar

Well folks, this is it. The beginning of a new year and decade, for many of us a refreshing reminder to reflect, realign and re-motivate. I spent New Year’s Eve amongst close friends, sequestered from the snow in my apartment. It was just the kind of subtle and low-key night I needed to ring in 2010.

This year has been, to use one of my favorite adjectives of 2009, wild. I slept in 28 different cities and visited several new countries:

• Europe: Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Albania
• Middle East: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, United Arab Emirates
• Asia: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan
• Africa: Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, Djibouti

Some of my favorite 2009 travel experiences:

• Taking a day tour of Chernobyl, the world’s most infamous radioactive disaster zone.
• Pretending to be Indiana Jones while I explored the Petra ruins of Jordan’s desert.
• Darting across the Syrian-Lebanese border.
• My first bribe in Ibadan, Nigeria – Pringles, Red Bull and yogurt
• My second bribe, and celebrating Halloween in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
• Returning to Nepal for the first time since 2006 and seeing old friends and family.

I took 56 flights and read 6,325 pages in 20 books. Yes, I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive. I think it’s my job. Speaking of numbers, it has been exactly one year since I outlined my goals for 2009. Let’s see how I performed:

2009 Goals

1. Run 5 miles in 35 minutes

Close! In my Thanksgiving Day 5-mile run, I finished in 35:20. My body was in shape, but I made two significant mistakes. 1) I did not wear a watch and therefore could not pace myself, and 2) I wore the Vibram FiveFingers on an asphalt course. My calves couldn’t take it. I forgot that most of my Vibram FiveFinger training was on dirt and grass.

2. Read and take notes on 3 out of 95 books on the Personal MBA reading list.

Done! I read 8 books. This has been a great experiment. Even in a few short books I feel like I’ve learned a lot.

3. Clean up my research paper on vertical farming and send it to Dickson Despommier at Columbia University.

Done! He even sent me a short note back in thanks. Swell guy.

4. Reach conversational level in Spanish.

Fail. I let this one slip by. I think the goal was too broad for my psyche, so I was subconsciously afraid to really dig in. Maybe one of these days.

5. Expand my blogging audience to at least 100 RSS subscribers.

Done! Google FeedBurner has been all over the place this year, but as of January 1 I have 182 subscribers. If we don’t know each other, feel free to introduce yourself below!

6. Compose a photo-journal coffee table book of my abroad experience in Nepal.

Done! A sample copy should be arriving in the next couple of weeks. You can preview the book here.

7. Complete the Hundred Push Ups challenge

Done! This was the most fun goal for me.

Not a terrible performance, but looking ahead at 2010, I hope to be even more productive. Here’s what I have in store:

2010 Goals

—FITNESS
1 mile in under 5:30.
Run a half-marathon.
200 squats without stopping.
25 pull-ups without stopping.
Be able to fall into a push up from standing position, like Christian Bale in Batman Returns.
Cycle 100 miles in one day.
Be able to hold a gymnastics-inspired L-position for 30 seconds.
Hold breath for at least 3 minutes.

—BLOGOSPHERE
the9to5alternative.com

• Redesign and rethink my vision as a blogger. Is this a travel site? A lifestyle design or business site? This needs to be cleared up.
• Write at least 15 guest posts for other bloggers.
• Get at least 500 subscribers.
• Post consistently, at least once a week on Tuesdays. Sundays will be reserved for PMBA and case-study updates.
• Develop a cost-of-traveling blog widget, an idea that I’ve been sitting on for several months.

nepalprints.com

• Redesign and find a cheaper host.
• Sell at least 5 prints.

thecurryproject.com
I set this site up to record my experiences at different Indian restaurants around the world. It could go in a variety of directions.

• Write at least 20 reviews
• Get at least 50 subscribers

—LIFESTYLE
Read at least 15 more books on the Personal MBA reading list.
Put together a long-term goals/bucket list.
Buy a keyboard.
Hike the Presidential Traverse in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
Score at least a 700 on a practice GMAT and then take the real thing.
Make at least $500 in supplemental income.
Reread I Will Teach You To Be Rich and restructure and optimize my finances.
Track all my expenses. To the penny.
Finish the 21-day No-Complaint Experiment
Score at least $15,000 on Jeopardy! using the Coryat method. So far my highest score is $9,600.
Each quarter I will update my progress to let you know how I’m doing. I look forward to sharing these experience with you over the coming year.

What are your resolutions for 2010?

Last week’s idea:

Calling all blog ideas! Get those creative juices flowing. Don’t think about the vision, think about the basic idea. Find your content. You can always market an idea behind the content. Start with these two:

• Email From Grandpa – a blog that posts quirky emails from family members. Patriotic, religious, comedic – many chain emails come to mind. Especially current events like politics and celebrities. Start with 3-6 months of content and focus all your time on marketing.
• Infographic Hub – a blog that posts different infographics and categorizes them. Inspiration from this collection, this collection, and all the infographics in GOOD magazine. Same deal as Email From Grandpa – start with 3-6 months worth of posts.

Last week’s comments:
Well, both John and Nate thought that Email From Grandpa would be a good idea. I went ahead and registered the domain name www.emailfromgrandpa.com; if anyone wants to partner up and get this started, shoot me an email! Address in the info box on the right.

This week’s idea:

Promote visual recognition of the world by creating a multiple-choice, image-based geography game. Here’s a rough batching process I had in mind:

1. Collect 150 cityscape images from 150 of the world’s largest cities.
2. Sort the images into three different levels: 50 that are “easy” to recognize, 50 that are harder (or “medium”) to recognize and 50 that are “hard” to recognize.
3. Map out the game. Think about both visual and mechanical elements – illustrate what you want the interface to look like and write out all of the steps that must be programmed. Here’s what I was thinking—the user can play three different levels, where each level has 10 different images (that rotate randomly out of the bank of 50). Each image will have multiple-choice cities for the player to select from. There are many ways to take this from here.
4. Read Source Control.
5. Find a virtual assistant (many different options) and outsource the programming.

This is just what I had in mind. Again, similar to my invitation with Email From Grandpa, if you feel like running with this, get in touch.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. I know I enjoyed Boston’s snow. This week you can expect two more PMBA reviews. I’ll most likely be discontinuing the Sunday Sandbox after the first of the year, so keep your eyes out for my last couple!

Last week’s idea:

Start a nonprofit organization and put together athletic feats that involve thousands of people. Have entrants create small teams in a Relay For Life fashion, raising money and pledging to give to a specific to-be-determined cause. The first event could be a coast to coast walk/run. Create wild and entertaining infographics that show how many people it will take to complete the course, how much money could be raised, etc. Obviously linking all the teams and getting enough support to justify the event in the first place will prove difficult. If anything, it would be an incredible experiment in viral marketing, crowd-sourcing and logistics

This week’s idea:

Calling all blog ideas!  Get those creative juices flowing. Don’t think about the vision, think about the basic idea. Find your content. You can always market an idea behind the content. Start with these two:

• Email From Grandpa – a blog that posts quirky emails from family members. Patriotic, religious, comedic – many chain emails come to mind. Especially current events like politics and celebrities. Start with 3-6 months of content and focus all your time on marketing.
• Infographic Hub – a blog that posts different infographics and categorizes them. Inspiration from this collection, this collection, and all the infographics in GOOD magazine. Same deal as Email From Grandpa – start with 3-6 months worth of posts.

Even if it’s just an idea, just a simple and goofy idea, it’s worth thinking about. Share your best blog ideas below!