ROW80 Check in – Not much to Report

For those of you who have been following our ROW80 progress over the past couple of months you will know that at present we are moving home.  So far, we have completed the full packing up of all of the downstairs of our 2 bed property, we have also made a start on the packing of the upstairs, however there is still plenty more that needs to be done before we move on Friday the 18th of February 2012.

Yesterday, was Valentines Day, so as we’re sure you can imagine our property was filled with romance and love… and 16 large size boxes which made great tables whilst eating a Tesco packet pie.

On the job frontier there hasn’t really been much positives here, we have applied for a further 20-25 jobs this week and we’re getting no responses at all, or the responses we are getting are saying no due to experience and a couple of them are saying we’re too over qualified.

On the business frontier we have had to stop all work on the project for the past couple of days due to our focus being on getting the property packed up, we’d also like to point out that the children are currently off on 1/2 term  so as you can imagine our house filled with boxes and 2 children running around the place does not make a constructive environment for working in.

Anyway, let’s get down to this weeks check in, as always you can find a copy of our initial goals by clicking here, you can also find the latest updates and amendments to our goals by clicking here and visiting our dedicated ROW80 category.

Blogging

1. Blog at least 10 times a week: Bit of a slow week on the blogging frontier this week with only 2 blog posts done thus far.  We hope we will be able to find some more time to carry out some blogging.
2. Guest Blog Posts: No new developments this week, although we have thought of a few ideas we could use for guest blog posts.
3. Pages: No new changes here either.
4. Comments: Non here either

Bit of a slow week overall this week on the blogging front – we hope we will be able to get ourselves back on track after the move.

Business

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: Unfortunately we have not been able to even open our business plan let alone work on the goals
2. Have at least 5 new users signing up a day: No new progress here.
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com We still have not got round to launching Add Deal Babies.com – we’ll be spending sometime working on the project as soon as we have moved.
4. Make Arrangements for Cards to be Printed:
5. Develop Add Deal.TV: No new developments here
6. Set up Business Bank Accounts No new developments here
7. Offer Add Deal for free or here
8. Start work on Add Deal CP none her either
9. Build Brand Recognition: We have however made further movement here with the start of 2 or 3 challenges, these include the Google+ Challenge, the Twitter Challenge and the SEO challenge.

As we said previously there hasn’t been a lot of developments on any of our goals these past couple of days, we’ll be spending further time on them once we have moved.

Exercising

Nothing new to report on this frontier, unless you count packing up boxes and lifting boxes from one part of the house to another??

Autobiography

For those of you who are also following our owners personal blog he has recently changed the URL.  Initially the web address was http://www.adddealceo.wordpress.com, this has now changed to http://robhaylor.wordpress.com – this web address will now be used on a permanent basis.

There will be a couple of updates to the blog as and when this week.

Open University

Nothing new to report on this frontier as yet.

Other:

E-mail: We had fallen a bit behind on the organisation frontier, however we are happy to report that all e-mails have now been filed in the correct folders and we now have a clear inbox.

Music: We have found sometime to purchase a couple of new songs including: Bruce Springsteen, Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen, Dancing in the Dark.

Film: No new films this week.

TV-Series: Apart from the usual Whitechapel, and Being Human we also managed to find the title of the TV Series we watched last monday that was business related.  Alex Poliziski – A Family Business… essentially this lady went to family ran businesses and picks holes in them and then repairs the business from the ground up.

So as you can see there isn’t a lot that has been going on this week, which is a shame, however, due to move we have been unable to focus on anything else other than the move.  As soon as we have moved we will be in a better position to begin blogging about our goals and progress.

Notice of Possible Delay

As with any move there always comes that one phone call that us UK people hate.  The dreaded phone call to BT’s home moving team, the phone call that you know when they say 2 weeks its going to be 2 months before you even see an Open Reach van on the site.  So because of this we may have some delays with ourselves posting blogs online, we have made arrangements to make use of a 3G dongle, however this will only provide limited coverage.

We will be back online as soon as possible.

Don’t forget you can always find out latest developments in our dedicated ROW80 category, you can also find a copy of our initial ROW80 goals by clicking here.

Add Deal Babies Support Blog – Now Online!!

If like us you have been wondering whether Add Deal Babies.com will ever be launched we are pleased to announce that we have launched the first online blog for Add Deal Babies.  Over the weekend we had some problems with the website and as such we thought it would be a good idea to provide you all with a place which you will be able to get the latest news, gossip and of course web hosting status of the website.

The blog is now online and you are free to come and visit us whenever you are ready.  This week will also see a lot more work on the website frontier being complete.  We are hoping that by the end of this week the website will finally be going live and that people will be able to share and post local offers and deals using our website.

To visit our support blog click here.

Member of the Month

As in incentive to those of you who use Add Deal Babies to share your local deals we are pleased to introduce you to our member of the month competition, its pretty simple really we feature your profile on our blogs and we tell everyone about the latest deals and offers that you have shared through our website in your local area.

The reward for you, apart from publicity is of course a FREE goody bag full of mummy and baby gifts worth a staggering £30, we’re all about rewarding those who share local deals in their county after all it’s for the better of your local economy…

Get yourselves over to Add Deal Babies.com and register your interest..

ROW80 A Week of It!!

Right, this week.. well let’s start off with the end of the week, which is obviously today.  Had a great night last night, totally got ourselves bladdered which we don’t usually do, so this was a one off for us?  However, although we had a great end to a rather up and down week we’ve still managed to find some time to also complete this week’s check in.

This week has seen a lot of interesting developments including a 2 hour motorway lesson with our driving instructor, a dedicated Add Deal Babies support blog, a couple of down time periods on Add Deal Babies.com and finally the boxing and packing up has started in preparation for this weeks move.

Amongst all the chaos that is the moving we have also found sometime to manage and contact a local business advisor relating to our old company as well as signing off of the companies accounts for the period ending Feb 2012.  There are a lot of interesting developments relating to the old company that we’re hoping could prove interesting in its survival.

More on this soon.

Anyway, lets get onto this weeks check in, as always you can find a copy of our initial goals here, and if your looking for previous check ins and other amendments relating to ROW80 please visit the official dedicated ROW80 category.

Blogging

1. Blog at least 10 times a week: Well after an excellent start on this goal, we have to say that this week we have only been able to blog 8 times…  We’ll be making more of an effort to carry out our blogging on a daily basis.
2. Guest Blog Posts No progress here, however we’ll be organising and writing a new guest post this week.
3. Pages: No change here, we still need to complete the FAQ page, and we have made a start on this goal, however we need to finish it and get the new page published.
4. Comments: We’ve been a little less social this week – please bear with us.  We’ll be spending sometime on this over the coming few days.

Business

We have completed our social media strategy and over the next couple of weeks we will be implementing this strategy and adjusting this according to the needs and requirements of the business.

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: No new progress here
2. Have at least 5 new users signing up a day: Add Deal Babies.com has been receiving a lot of new user registrations, if you haven’t registered your interest yet you can do that by clicking here
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: We haven’t launched the main website, however due to some technical issues regarding our web server we have launched an online support blog which can be found here.
4. Make arrangements for cards to be printed: We have had it confirmed we can have customised numbers on our cards.. so we’re really pleased about this
5. Develop Add Deal.tv: No progress this week
6. Set up business bank accounts: One of the problems we have been facing with this is that we don’t have a full driver’s license, this has changed this weekend with our new driver’s license arriving… we’ll be making an appointment with our local bank manager this week
7. Offer Add Deal for Free: No progress this week on this frontier
8. Start work on Add Deal CP
9. Build Brand recognition: Integration of our social media strategy has started on the social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter.  This will also begin to assist us with the development of our online brand.

Exercising

Currently on hold due to the move – should be back on track by next Sundays check in.

Autobiography

No new developments here this week.

Open University

We have still to fill out the financial forms, this is one of the goals to be completed by Wednesday this week, amongst the packing and stress of the 1/2 term period.

Other

E-mail: All e-mails and messages were stored in there relevant folders… no new folders created this week.

Music: New songs this week include: Alyssa Reid Alone Again, B.O.B & Hayley Williams Airplanes, Nelly Futado Promiscuous and Take That, The Flood.  This has taken our current track count to 110/200.

Films: No new films this week.

TV-Series: This week sees us carrying on watching Being Human on BBC3, Whitechapel on ITV3 and a couple of new business programs we will be looking to get the titles of these series so we can share them on here.

So this about rounds up our check in for this week.

How well did you do??

Where do you think of business??

Ok, so we imagine a lot of you are probably wondering what on earth are we doing asking a strange question like this on our blog.  Well the answer is quite simple, whilst carrying out our normal husbandry duties this evening we found ourselves drifting off into the land of business, ideas, strategies and goodness knows what else flew through the mind like an F-16 at an Air Show, suddenly a lot of what we were planning on doing all started to become quite clear.

We weren’t even thinking about business or even where we see it going in a couple of years time.  We were simply doing the dishes after tea.  Once the dishes were done we then clicked the kettle to on, and again a similar concept happened with a wide range of different business ideas and developments for Add Deal wooshing through our minds.

We thought how strange to be thinking of business ideas whilst completing the washing up.  So we’re wondering how many of our readers also find that they think about business at some of the most inappropriate of times.  Throughout our owners business life (8 years of it) he has thought of business ideas at the following times:

• In the shower or bath
• On the toilet – now that was interesting
• Washing Up
• Having Tea
• Having dinner
• Having a pint
• In a meeting
• And another inappropriate time….

So go on, go ahead and tell us where do you think of business??

 

On the Move

We’ve not really been talking about this much however, we are pleased to announce that this month will see us on the month for another time.  In May last year we had to leave the property towards which had been our home for a good 2-3 years due to the landlord declaring himself bankrupt. Add Deal has since been running out of  a 2 Bedroom property in Torquay and from the middle of February we will be moving back into a 3 bedroom property.

Due to the move, as we’re sure you can understand, we will be heavily focused on getting ourselves boxed up, boxed out and organising Internet access for the new property.  We would therefore like to apologise for any kind of delays that you experience whilst trying to contact us over the coming few weeks.

We hope to have normal service resumed by the end of February/ beginning of March 2012.

Add Deal Babies – Now Open For Registration

We are pleased to announce that Add Deal Babies is open for registration, all people can sign up to the website via an online form that has been available since the website has been live.  Add Deal Babies, currently has its very own server through the use of a VPS server, this server has been specifically purchased forAdd Deal Babies, we will be making use of this server over the next few months.

We are also pleased to announce that we will be launching the brand new website in just a couple of weeks time, so it is imperative that you get yourselves registered on our holding page.  Once our website has been launched you will be able to make friends with the owner and developer of the website as well as communicate with him through the website.

Add Deal Babies, provides all of the best local deals in one central location.  These deals are not only local to you but the adverts that we put in the website are all relevant to the products and services that you use.  We are also looking forward to developing the website further and we would like to make you all aware that the website is simple to use.

Our website will be online in the next couple of weeks, we’re aiming for the 24th of February 2012.

So come on, get yourself over to Add Deal Babies.com and get yourself subscribed for a FREE profile and access to plenty of local deals, spotted by other mums.

You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@AddDealBabies)

ROW80 – The Strategy Complete – Checking In

Well interesting couple of days since our last check in, not only has this week seen some massive improvements in our Social Media activity but it has also seen the completion of our social media strategy.  However like all weeks there are a few negatives to it all, this morning, unfortunately, my application for a new car has been declined due to my full drivers license not coming through from the DVLA, so they have asked to see a copy of this before we go any further.

Also, this week we have started the long process of packing up our current property in preparation for the move that will be taking place on the 18th of February 2012.  This not only means that there is quite a bit of stress in the household but it also means we won’t be able to blog as much over the next few days.

Elsewhere, things are moving in the right direction in the OU department more on that in its relevant area, we have also made a start on getting the word out there about Add Deal Babies.

So let’s get on to today’s check in. As always you can find a copy of our initial goals here and please come and checkout all of our previous check ins and  goal amendments in our dedicated ROW80 category.

Blogging

Lets have a look at how we’re getting on here:

1. Blog at least 10 times per week:  Great news we have achieved a massive 4 blog posts this week thus far, and with this check in that makes it 5.  We’re working quite hard towards ensuring we meet our blogging goal each week.
2. Guest Blog Posts: Nothing new here, we will be writing a new guest blog post shortly.
3. Pages: All pages are currently up to date, however, we have yet to work on the FAQ page, we will be completing this over the coming few days.
4. Comments: Sorry guys we haven’t really been commenting as much, we have a lot going on at the moment and hence why we haven’t been able to get round to it.  We will be making a more decisive effort over the next few days.

Business

As we said last week that the title of this category will be changing from work to business, you can now see the alteration and we’re happy to go onto discuss our goals:

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: Only goal completed this week is to ensure we have a social media strategy in place.
2. Have at least 5 new users signing up a day: No movement here
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: Still not launched, however, development has increased in this area, we have also purchased a new VPS server specifically for Add Deal Babies, the website should be going live in a couple of weeks.
4. Make arrangements for cards to be printed:  We have spoken to our card manufacturers relating to card numbers, i.e. the numbers on the front of the card.  We’re happy to confirm that these will be of any numerical order we wish…
5. Develop Add Deal.tv: No movement here
6. Set up Business Bank Accounts: No movement on this frontier as yet, due to us focusing on other areas of the project.
7. Offer Add Deal for Free: No movement here either as yet
8. Start work on Add Deal CP: Holding page is online – however no further movement
9. Get Add Deal into 10 online stores: No movement here
10. Start and complete Social Media Strategy: The social media strategy has been completed and we will be making a start on ensuring the continuous development and implementation of the strategy.  We won’t be publishing our strategy, however it will form an essential part of our marking plan.
11. Build recognition of the brand: Lots of movement here with the securing of 4 new domain names including: adddeal.net, adddeal.org, adddeal.info and adddeal.eu.  This will ensure the continuous development and security of the Add Deal brand.

Exercising 

Due to the move we are going to leave our exercising until we have moved into the new property.  The move will be taking place on the 17th of February 2012.  The Wii and Wii Fit have already been packed away so will not be coming out until the end of the move.

However we will still be walking to meet the partner from work etc.

A blog post will be published to explain all of this in our dedicated weight loss category.

Autobiography

Unfortunately we still haven’t got round to doing this just yet, however it is on our list of things to do over the coming few days.

Open University

This week we have not only completed our financial forms and been informed that we are entitled to a full award, but we have also started researching some of the material required for the completion of the module.  Our official degree title will be BSc Computing and Psychology.

All we need to do now is send in the completed financial forms to the OU along with relevant evidence of our income and finally get someone official to sign it and all being well we should be starting our first module for the Open University in May 2012.

We’re really excited by the new developments.

Other

E-Mail: All of our e-mails folders and the inbox is looking pretty tidy, everything is being filed away nicely and we have quite a clear and concise inbox.

Music: No new tracks this week – funds have been a little tighter than normal.

Films: We still have to watch Hanna – which is the last of the films that we rented on Friday night.

TV Series: As always we watched the first episode of Being Human – which was pretty good although quite a sad ending.  We also watched Whitechapel – which is an excellent series if you like thrillers/crime themed programs.  Finally, last night we watched our first episode of a business program, the name unfortunately has eluded our memory.

Quite a lot of interesting developments on the TV series frontier.

Phew!!! Quite a lot of developments and certainly plenty of things going on.  We’re quite sad that the car has been delayed, however we suppose this can’t be helped.  We’re also quite pleased about the packing away of the house in preparation for the move in just a weeks time.

Next week is half term week here in the UK, which means the kids are off school.  Packing + Children normally does not equal a stress free half term.  However, we’re hoping that with this blog and the various attributes that go with it we will be able to ensure we have some form of calm within the week.

So, as always you can find a copy of our initial goals here, don’t forget to visit our dedicated ROW80 category and all that’s left for us to say is we will see you on Sunday with hopefully more great news.

.co Domain Finds a New Home

As we’re sure some of you are aware we have an online company website located at our Add Deal.co domain name and for those of you who did not know come and visit our company website here.  The reason for the move is because we want to have all of our important domain names with one provider, Add Deal.co is just the first part of an entire domain name transfer and revamp.

All of our websites are located within a variety of different providers from GoDaddy.com in America all the way through to the small local company of Open Mind Solutions.  We’re looking to move all of our domain names over to one provider based in the UK and therefore giving us the ability to host and have all of our domain names within the UK.

Come and visit us..

Securing the Brand (Part I)

Well one of our goals for this week within ROW80 was to begin the process of securing the brand name on a wide range of different social networks.  We did a quick check on a 360 Name Finder and we discovered that our name, Add Deal has been taken on almost all of the most popular social networks – it has been taken by us.

So with our social networking name brand almost fully secure we are now making a start on completing and purchasing most of the important TLDs (Top Level Domains)  for Add Deal.  The first part of this has begun in earnest with the purchase of the two essential domain names .co.uk and .com.

Last week we purchased, .net, .org, .info and .eu domain names.  These domain names will not be used for anything other than redirecting people to our main website, adddeal.com.  They are also being used to ensure that our brand is protected online and giving us the ability to create an online presence that is essential for the development of Add Deal online.

So the first stage of this process has been completed we are now working towards completing the second stage of our online brand.

This securing of the brand will be our main focus over the next couple of weeks.

The Add Deal Swipe Card Reader

We said we had been talking to a company about supplying us with card readers with the ability to scan a script that enables the shop owner to log the products purchased and the number of points that was awarded into their own account on a customised Customer Relationship Management System or CRM for short.

By doing this it would enable the shop owner to be able to see what products are selling well and what products could do with less or more investment.  It also enables the shop owner to reward the customer for their buying as well as being able to track buying behaviour.

We think we have found the right card reader for the job. The card reader shown in the above picture is light, small and connects to a PC via a USB cable or simply put it is easy to set up.

The other reason for choosing this card reader over others is that it is an affordable solution that can be mass-produced, meaning that the Add Deal subscriber will only need to pay a small monthly fee to be able to become a member of the Add Deal loyalty card scheme.  This monthly cost will also cover the cost of the cards and also entire access to our customised CRM (Custom Relationship Management System).

The Add Deal Swipe Card Reader is expected to be available from the beginning of May 2012.