ROW80: The Evaluation

As promised we are going to do an evaluation, a sort of summary of how we got on with this being our first round and our first ever attempt at anything like this.

So here goes,

ROW80 in Numbers:

1. 80 Days have passed
2. 105 Blog Posts Published
3. 146 New Music files downloaded from iTunes
4. 5 New WordPress Followers
5. Over 100 new comments from followers, readers and the like
6. 23,275 Words Written (Yes we really did add them all up, and it doesn’t include this post)

Blogging

Throughout this entire process, which has been an exceedingly enjoyable one, we have done all we can to ensure that our blog posts are interesting, informative and provide you all with a clear understanding as to what we are trying to achieve both in business and personal life.

Over the course of this round, there have been blog posts filled with almost everything and anything, and then there are posts that are filled with nothing.  Blogging is certainly something we enjoy doing, and at the start of the round we were looking to write at least 5 a week.

Some weeks we found ourselves doing a lot more and so we pushed this to 10.  How did we do??  Well not too badly, we usually hit the 10 target, with occasions where no posts were published or just a couple but most of the time the full 10 were there when they were meant to be.

Business

You may remember this used to be called work, we renamed it to business as that is exactly what we are working on.  We’re looking to launch a new business using the ROW80 check ins to mark and evaluate our progress.

With all things considered we haven’t done too badly, cards are being printed, business cards are being printed, we have a meeting with a town centres company and we’re making great progress on our business plan, websites and design concepts.

There is still a lot more to do and we’re a little bit disappointed that we didn’t get round to completing the self employment registration or the application for bank accounts… however, we’re confident this will all happen in due course.

We have seen some pretty amazing things, a 6ft by 4 life-size Add Deal man, an excellent display of colours for our t-shirts, all rounded off with an excellent design on our loyalty and reward card.

Branding will always be a focal point for us and we will continue to work on the branding side of Add Deal until such time as the business is ready to withstand the onslaught of the customer.

Open University

Not one of our original goals, however, we decided we wanted a change of pace.  Of course there is the business side of things, but we want to keep it separate.  Therefore joining the OU was a great idea.

We have registered our interest to study  BSc Computing and Psychology.  We have fallen behind a little and as such haven’t done too well here. However, this is all about evaluating and changing things for the better… the OU side of things is certainly something we will be changing and getting done.

Exercising

We’re always conscious of our weight… we’re a pretty big chap… around 6ft 4 and probably got a few more pounds than we should have.  ROW80 has seen us try the Wii Fit and also seen us join a karate lesson..

Is it enough?? Well who knows… we’re joining Karate at the end of the month and we aim to achieve a more toned body by the end of the year..so only time will tell on this goal.

Autobiography

Again not one of our original goals.  We decided it would be a good idea to put online a little bit about us.  Who we are, what we do, what we’ve experienced etc.  It is a shame we haven’t been able to keep on top of this… but we will look at it in the very near future.

So how did we get on here.. well we would say not too well.. need to do more on this front in the next round.

Other

We’re not going to bore you too much, we did excellently on all of our other goals, and we’re quite pleased with this… they will certainly be a feature in round 2.

So Will you do it again?

Yes, we will be back in a couple of weeks time, hopefully with a new set of goals and a new overall objective.

 

ROW80: The Final Check in

So here we are, we’re at the end of the first round and despite missing a couple of check ins due to the move back in February we have been checking in ever since the dark mornings of January and February.

Yesterday saw the beginning of Spring, or in more commonly known terms the equinox.  Some of our goals have been achieved, some haven’t, some have changed and some new ones have been added to the ROW80 round as we have gone through this round.

Straight after this blog post we will be writing and publishing quite simply an evaluation of our ROW80 progress.

So let’s get down to this weeks last and final check in,

As always you can find a copy of our latest check in by clicking here, you can also visit the dedicated ROW80 category, and finally you can see a copy of those initial goals that started us on this ROW80 round by clicking here. 

Blogging

1. Blog at least 10 times per week: We have done a bit badly on this goal this week, managing only 3 blog posts since Sunday, however, we have been very busy focusing on the design of our cards and so on.
2. Guest Blog Posts: We seriously need to light a fire under this, and as such we will be writing our guest blog post today..
3. Keep pages updated: Not all pages are up to date, however, these will be completed before the end of the round, which is tomorrow…
4. Comments:  We will be commenting on plenty of blog posts before the end of the final round.

Business

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plans: We’re making great head way on our goals for our business, and the business plan is around 50% of the way there, this should be complete by the end of the week.
2. Have 5 new users singing up a day:  We may not have the full 5 users signing up a day, however, we are averaging out at around 1 new registration each week… pretty cool huh??
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: Currently on hold whilst we complete the preparatory work for the meeting.  
4. Make arrangements for cards to be printed: Sample cards are presently at the supplier and are being prepared… we’re hoping these cards do come to us before the meeting so that we have something to show them.
5. Set Up Business Bank Accounts: Depending on the outcome of the meeting will ultimately depend on the next phase, which for us would be the setting up of business bank accounts and registration of self employment… yes do you remember that old goal?? 
6. Start work on Add Deal CP: Currently on hold whilst we focus our efforts on the business plan and completing of the plan for this meeting.  
7. Build Brand Recognition: We have been trying to do a lot more in the way of building the brand, at present we have unveiled the card design, we have business cards currently at the printers and we’re also doing a lot more in the way of Social Media.

So there you have it… business this week has, as always, been very busy and hectic.  We have also e-mailed the Torbay Development Agency to see if this scheme is something that they would be interested in as well… we have yet to hear from them.

Over the course of the next week, there will be progress made on a wide range of different areas, and we should, by the end of Round 2, be in a position where we are dishing out the cards.

Open University

Forms have been found… and straight after this we will be collating all of the evidence we need to get the funding we’re looking for.

Exercising

Does walking around the town centre count as exercise??  We guess not, certainly if after the walking around you go for a giant stake.

We will be getting down to some serious exercising in the coming weeks, especially if we’re joining karate..

Auto-Biography

No new progress on this frontier this week.. as all of our attention has been preparing for this meeting next week.

Other

E-Mail: This morning, we have to say we were guilty of having a quick tidy up of our inbox, as there were a couple of e-mails out of their folders… quickly sorted and we now again have our tidy inbox that we have maintained throughout this round.

Music: Well we did say it that we would be purchasing an album, and that is exactly what we have done, so we now have Michael Boltons Gems in our iTunes folder at the moment, and what an excellent purchase.. certainly one we would recommend.

Film: No new films to report this week as obviously its back to the grindstone at the moment. 

TV Series: Tonight sees the start of BBC’s The Apprentice, so we’ll be certainly watching this with great interest as well as getting ourselves some good old sweets to enjoy the program with… jelly anyone??

So with this being the final check we are sad and pleased to say that this is end of our Round 1 check in and we will not be checkin in on ROW80 until the start of the next round in April.  We hope you have enjoyed reading our check ins as much as we have enjoyed reading yours… we will be back in Round 2.

Don’t forget you can keep up  to date on all our news by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.

You can as always find out all of our latest check ins in our dedicated ROW80 category, and you can also find a copy of our initial goals by clicking here.

Have a great week…. and let us know how you got on.

ROW80: Meeting Preparation [2]

When we start writing out ROW80 blog posts, the first thing we do is look over our achievements at the previous check in as well as our goals for the next check in.  Development for our meeting in a weeks time is continuing and progressing at a nice steady pace, and has seen a lot of progression on both our social media frontier, blogging, as well as our website design and development frontier.

We have been working quite hard on what will be our main website, Add Deal.com.  The new website will be live in time for our meeting, elsewhere we have been designing and developing our Add Deal reward card and this week we will see the unveiling of our new card design… we will also be looking at getting some samples developed and delivered in time for our meeting.

On the theory frontier, that is the business planning, financial forecasts, there hasn’t been much progress.  However, this week will see a massive investment of time into our theory side of the business and will also see some new documentation being developed and created for Add Deal…

So before we give too much more information away, let’s get into this weeks check in, and since today is Sunday, we should have quite a bit to provide you all with.

As always you can find a copy of our latest check in by clicking here, you can also find a copy of all of our ROW80 check ins by clicking here and finally you can find a copy of initial goals by clicking here.

Blogging

1. Blog at least 10 times per week: The complete count of blog posts completed before this check in is 9 blog posts, which all things considered is not too bad and we did say we would certainly be blogging more.  We will also be doing a lot more blog posts this week.
2. Guest Blog Posts: We have some ideas, and this week, we will be writing these posts and also contacting a few fellow ROW80 bloggers to get our posts on their blogs.
3. Update Pages Accordingly: A  couple of new pages has emerged this week, the first one called Add Deal Newsletter – will hold our subscription form as well as some information relating to our newsletter and what’s in it for the recipient.  We also have a new page called our Environment policy, this page will detail how we are being green.
4. Comments: We have commented on a couple and this week we aim to comment on at least 10 blogs this week.

Business

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: Business plan goals have been set and it will be complete by the end of the week… meaning this goal will be complete by next weeks check in.
2. Have 5 new users signing up a day: We’ve had a couple of new registrations this week.. so we’re really quite pleased with this… lets hope it continues.
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: Add Deal Babies is presently going on hold till after the meeting.. we will get the website launched before the end of March.
4. Make arrangements for cards to be printed: Arrangements in place… and now.. we need to get the first set of cards printed before a big print run.. all that will be happening this week.
5. Set-Up Business Bank Accounts: This week will see all of our business plan, marketing plan and financial information complete in time for the meeting, it will also see a presentation put together of all the elements that will make up Add Deal. After this the appointment will be made.
6. Start work on Add Deal CP: Add Deal CP work is slow at present.. and we will mainly be focusing on the main website over the next few weeks.
7. Build brand recognition:  We’re working hard and making great progress on this goal, and interactions have increased on our Facebook page as well as on our Twitter feed.  We are also blogging more and will also be researching more into building a recognisable brand – this may result in an appointment being made with a branding company in Torbay.

Open University

Well as we promised at the last check in, we found the information sheet we need and this week will see us completing the forms and getting it all sent over to the Open University in time for our studies in May.

Time certainly has passed us by quite rapidly over the past few weeks.

Exercising:

Well with our 2 FREE sessions of Karate now over… the ultimate decision now is… will we join??  The answer of course is yes, we will do and in fact in the next 2 weeks we will see us moving into the karate concept a lot more with a uniform being purchased and we will also be purchasing some weights…

More to come on this frontier…

Autobiography

We’ve not had a lot of time to pin down the owner and as such there hasn’t been much movement on the autobiography frontier.

Other

E-Mail: All e-mails have been organised into their correct folders, leaving only the important e-mails to handle and reply or to organise response too.

Music: No new music this week… however having previewed some of the new Michael Bolton CD, it is likely that this will be added to our music collection.. at some point.

Film: Excellent weekend of films, having seen Johnny English 2, which is totally hilarious, followed by Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1, which is another great film and rounded off with a rather interesting film called Contagion, again very interesting and certainly makes you think.

We certainly have been watching quite a few new films this week… and no they weren’t from BlockBuster, we made use of the Virgin Media Tivo box to give us the films… no DVDs to take back and no late fees… yay!!

TV Series: No new TV series this week… however, on Wednesday we will be watching the new series of The Apprentice on BBC2.

Well that’s this week check in over and done with.  This week will see a lot more blog posts from us again, and will also see us focusing on our blogging frontier.  Complete with our business plan this should mean that by the end of the week we will have a whole host of interesting blog posts to write about over the coming few days.

So there we are.

How did you get on??  Don’t forget that as always you can checkout our initial goals by clicking here and you can also find out all of progress in the dedicated ROW80 category.

ROW80 Meeting Preparation

As some of you may have already read, we have a meeting set for sometime in March, at this meeting with the Torbay Town Centres company we are looking to explain further the benefits and advantages of Add Deal.  As well as letting them know more about how we intend to develop the concept further.

So with this in mind, as you can imagine it has been full steam ahead on a wide variety of different aspects of the project, including:

• Finding out if we can get some samples of the cards and products/accessories that we would be selling/providing
• Working excessively on our business plan, cash flow forecasts, profit and loss as well as our balance sheets
• We have also been working on and receiving some artwork that will one day take on the full design of the products/services we intend to supply
• Completing work on a wide range of our different websites across the board.

At present it is all go-go go here at Add Deal HQ.

Elsewhere on the frontier we have been making some progress on our weight loss with working on karate, however, we think the diet may need a slight bit of attention as it is much to be desired.  We’re also going to add a couple of fresh goals to our weight loss category to assist with the overall development.

So without giving too much more information away let’s get down to today’s check in.

As always you can find copies of our latest check ins in our dedicated ROW80 Category as well as finding a copy of our initial goals that we set all the way back in January 2012.

Blogging

Let’s see if we managed to do more blog posts this time round:

1. Blog at least 10 times per week: So far this week we have blogged 7 times excluding this check in… this means we only have around 2 or 3 more blog posts to complete before our next check in… and we’re confident we will easily each that in due course.
2. Guest Blog posts: We have got a couple of guest posts we want to start getting out there… we will be working on these before our next check in.
3. Update Pages accordingly: Not got round to updating our pages as yet, however, work is being carried out on the website that will be our main Add Deal site.
4. Comments: We really have been making a consertive effort to comment on a wide range of different blog posts, we’re sorry we haven’t got round to all of you however we did get up to around 6 or 7 blogs we visited, read and commented on, you are all doing well on your goals.

Business

How have we done on our business frontier… well quite well we think:

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: All goals on the business frontier are slowly being completed, at present we are looking to have samples of our cards printed off.
2. Have 5 users signing up a day: No movement on this frontier as yet, however, we will continue to promote and blog about Add Deal as well as using Social Media to get the word out there about our business.
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: Work has halted at the present due to focus being on this meeting in March, however, as soon as full preparation has been complete we will resume work on Add Deal Babies and get the site launched.
4. Make arrangements for cards to be printed: We have some samples currently being designed and developed in-house, we should have a design complete before the next check in… we hope you will like the design of the card.
5. Set up Business bank accounts: As soon as the business plan is complete, which will be sometime over the next 2 weeks an appointment will be made with the bank to discuss the concept further as well as open an account.
6. Start work on Add Deal CP: Work has halted on this area as well, in prep for this meeting.
7. Build Brand Recognition: Work has doubled in this area with focus being made on Twitter, Facebook and of course this blog. Our aim is to ensure people get to know the main brand which is the Add Deal Man… in fact we have had designs through for a life-size version of the man to be created… we’re looking forward to seeing further concepts such as this in the future.

Open University

No movement on this frontier, now we did say we were going to find out our Open University forms, and we certainly will do.. in fact we’ll make it our first job straight after this blog post.

Exercising

Well this week, has seen us take our first karate lesson, of which our second one is tomorrow, Thursday the 15th of March.  Although it has been an interesting experience we’re thinking of taking it further.. after all what’s the worst that can happen?

We did say we would add some goals, and here they are:

1. Get our hands on some weights for us to tone up some parts of our arms (or rather kill the hang).
2. Price up and purchase an exercise bike to help the legs etc

Ok, so there are just a couple, but hey the fact that we’re even thinking along these lines is a good sign… we may also consider taking up the Wii fit in due course.. but for now the Karate, and some weights would be sufficient to start us off with.

Autobiography

No new movement on this frontier… however, we will be catching up with the business owner and founder at the end of his meeting.

Other

E-Mail: Our e-mail inbox as you can imagine has been full of e-mails from companies with quotes, artwork and the like.  However, we have managed to stay on top of the organising side of things and business e-mails have been dealt with in a matter of hours or sometimes minutes.

Music: No new tracks purchased this week.. as we have been focusing on getting things organised for our meeting in a couple of weeks.

Film: No new films as yet.. we will be making an effort on this frontier at the weekend.

TV Series: Well we’re really pleased, next week sees the start of BBC’s The Apprentice… so we will certainly be tuning into that, however, this week hasn’t seen any new TV Series watched or added to our list of favourites.

Overall this week we have seen a wide range of progress across a broad spectrum of the project.  We have now started bringing the business out of the whole virtual process through to being an reality.  We’ll bring you all of the updates and changes as soon as we get them, we will also get copies of the designs of our Business cards, compliment slips and letterheads and post these online.

As always don’t forget you can check out all of our ROW80 check ins in our dedicated ROW80 category.  You will also find a copy of our  initial goals that we set up back in January 2012.

That just leaves me to ask one thing… are you making these last few weeks count??

ROW80: Branding Begins

The fact that we’re completing this post on a Monday morning rather than on the Sunday does imply that we have had a rather busy weekend and you would be right for thinking this.  Saturday was certainly not a day for taking things easy, taking my partners son to his first karate lesson was certainly one of the more interesting highlights of the weekend and has resulted in myself being signed up to take part in the next session which is today.

After the karate lesson we then proceeded to make pizzas with all 3 children and overall had one of those weekends that was spent with the children, which given the fact that most of the time we spend is in the office working on Add Deal wasn’t too bad.  During the evening of the weekend we were overlooking some of the more interesting factors that would make up Add Deal in the coming few days, weeks and months.

Some of you may remember that at our last check in we mentioned that we were getting ever closer to turning Add Deal from virtual into reality and to that we are aiming to stick to and complete as soon as possible.   This week has been full of quotes from businesses and suppliers we’re looking to move forward with these quotes and get the products ordered as soon as we can.

So without further a do let’s get started on this weeks check in, as always you can find a copy of our latest progress in our dedicated ROW80 category.  You will also be able to find a copy of our initial goals back in there as well.

Blogging

1. Write 10 Blog Posts a week: A pretty dismal effort so far on this frontier, our aim is for 10 blog posts a week, we only manage to complete 6 posts throughout the week… more will be done this week for sure.
2. Guest Blog Posts: We have a great couple of ideas to do with this, so the likelihood is that we will publish or write around 2 or 3 new guest posts this week.
3. Manage and ensure pages are up to date: We haven’t got round to updating the pages, however we will be doing this before the next check in.
4. Comments: We still have not been very pro active on the whole commenting frontier, we promise that today we will comment on 10 of your check ins starting right after we’ve published this blog post.

Business

Let’s have a look here, earlier we mentioned that we had been getting quotes on all sorts of different products and services, and we’re still making progress, this week sees us develop and create our own newsletter that you can sign up to – blog post to follow.

It will also see a massive push on the Add Deal Babies frontier, as well as persistent and constant branding, promoting and other social media activities.  For now, lets take a look at the goals and see how we got on.

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: Progress has been made on our goals this week, however we have also made further progress on our business plan and social media strategy.
2. Have 5 new users signing up a day: Nothing new here, however, this is set to increase thanks to our branding week ahead.
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: Nothing new here, however, this will be developed quite rapidly over the coming few days.
4. Make arrangements for cards to be printed: Arrangements in place, however we will be seeking a cheaper quote.
5. Set up Business bank accounts: No new movements here, business plan progress is slow, however, should be complete by the end of March and as such an appointment will be setup with the local Natwest bank manager.
6. Offer Add Deal for FREE: Add Deal is FREE although, at present we don’t have much to offer and as such this goal will be removed as of today.
7. Start work on Add Deal CP: Work has begun on this part of the project, however this will be on hold until such time that Add Deal Babies has been launched which should be quite soon.
8. Build Brand Recognition: This week will all be about branding and ensuring people get to know us, and get to know our Add Deal Man further, we’re going to be doing a few blog posts around this, we will also be creating a few bits and pieces such as banners, newsletters and more work will be done across our social media websites.  More to come soon.

Open University

Had a reminder through this week about filing for our course fees to be paid, we shall be finding the form out and getting the relevant pieces of information over to them before the next check in.

Blog post to follow.

Exercising

Now, today we were hoping we would report we’re getting on the Wii Fit to weigh ourselves.  However, we think it would be a better idea to wait till after our first lesson of karate before we go anywhere near a device that can weigh us.

So we start karate tonight and we’ll go from there.

Autobiography

Nothing new to report here… we will be making more of a conservative effort after the next couple of weeks have passed.

Other

E-mail: All of our e-mails have been put in their relevant folders the moment we are receiving them, this means that we have a very tidy inbox at the moment and we’re quite pleased with the overall progress on this frontier.

Music: Couple of interesting movements here, we downloaded one new track this week by Pitbull called International Love, brilliant song.  We also have downloaded Spotify and since we’re a Virgin Media customer we get 6 months free… excellent!!

Film: No new films this week as spent the weekend with the children making pizzas and learning karate…

TV Series: No new TV Series this week, we’re a bit gutted as Whitechapel has now finished and Monday nights have gone from being the amazing night to being full of usual garbage.

So this is another long blog post for our check in, however, as you can see we are making slow progress across all of our frontiers, some goals have been dropped freeing up our time to focus on some of the others.  Dont’ forget you can always find us on Facebook, to get the latest news and updates.

You can also see all of our ROW80 progress in our dedicated ROW80 category, and you can also find a copy of our initial goals in there as well.

Until Wednesday.

ROW80: Where to start??

Right well…here we go… we’ve been back online a couple of weeks and there has been all sorts of different bits and bobs going on.  We have been working quite hard on this Add Deal concept and we’re still pushing forward with the business side of things, however, we’re now getting to the stage where the virtual needs to come to reality.

We don’t really want to do a ROW80 check in solely aimed at the concept of our business, however, this weeks check in will certainly have quite a business feel to it.  Unlike most weeks where we would report that very little has happened, this week it’s quite the opposite a lot has happened – but it’s now a case of lets turns it into reality.

First off, the definition, What is Add Deal?  - Add Deal is an online and offline loyalty rewards program that gives customers points on their loyalty card that are then used for vouchers.

Now, some of you are wondering, why the definition, well because, we have been in contact and liaising  with a wide variety of businesses all of whom we need to ensure Add Deal goes live and none of them appear to understand the concept.  We will be adding a new page soon with the definition of Add Deal.

Right, let’s get on with the check in, remember we may be a bit more business focused than normal.  As usual you can find a copy of our initial goals here and as always you can get the latest ROW80 updates straight from our dedicated ROW80 category.

Blogging

1. Blog at least 10 times per week: We haven’t been doing too much blogging and in fact we’ve managed around 1 blog post per day – however we have been focused on other areas of the project.
2. Guest Blog Posts: We’re getting one written this week – in preparation for our launch of Add Deal Babies in a few weeks time.  We have also been speaking to a company that may be able to assist us with some PR to help our WOT Score/Reputation.
3. Keep pages up to date: Our pages are currently up to date, however we will be making some adjustments this week.
4. Comments: Sorry for the lack of comments guys we will be making a more consertive effort to do lots of comment before our next check in, keep your eyes out for us.

Business

Now, as we said earlier, this week we would have a more business feel to our blog post, and well here it is.  For the past 3 or 4 days we have been using both forum, e-mail, telephone and all other means of communication at our disposal to begin costing out the project so we know what to charge other businesses on a monthly basis.

However, trying to explain the overall concept to people over e-mail or forum is quite difficult.  We have also been looking at a wide variety of stationary suppliers for our letter heads, business cards and compliment slips.  We are also pleased to say that there is a rumour at the moment about a new mobile app for Add Deal – we’re not going to reveal much at the present other than watch this space as we look into this side of things further.

We’re also pleased to announce that our control panel, the infrastructure of the entire concept, has gone into production and should be complete by the end of March.  We are also working on our main Add Deal website – we’re also hoping to get this launched before the end of March/April.

So lets take a look at overall goal progress:

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan:  None of the goals are currently being worked towards, as such, however, we have begun work on costing out the entire concept to see if the project is doable or manageable.
2. Have 5 new users signing up per day: Nothing new here as yet, although the new website will point a lot of the new visitors to registering online.
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: – this is set to be launched at the end of the month and work has continued on the project
4. Make arrangements for cards to be printed: Pricing of this has been worked into our prices and we may need to consider a cheaper supplier – if possible.
5. Develop Add Deal.TV: – Add Deal.TV is going to be pushed back to April/May for a development and as such will be removed from our goals.
6. Set Up Business Bank Accounts: Nothing new to report here as yet… we will be looking into this once business plans have been complete.
7. Offer Add Deal for FREE: As you know Add Deal will be free for 3 months – however we first of all need a CP and cards to be able to offer this.
8. Start work on Add Deal CP: Our Add Deal CP has gone into production and we’re making great progress on both databases and web frontier.
9. Build Brand recognition: Building brand recognition starts with ensuring we have a good reputation online… we’re tackling people whom believe our site to be SPAM.  We are also working on all of our social networks to ensure people know that their never more than a couple of clicks away from us.

Open University

Nothing new to report… need to find our financial forms and get those sent into the OU as soon as possible if we are to start this course in May 2012.

Exercising

We were meant to start this on Monday, however, we dived straight into getting Add Deal organised and as such totally forgot about our exercising… we will therefore be starting this next Monday.

Blog post is certainly to follow for this one.

Autobiography

We haven’t been able to get round to pinning the owner down long enough.  However, he did let us know he has done a blog post on another blog that is a bit more personal to himself.

Hopefully next week there should be more stuff on his blog.

Other

E-Mail: Our inbox folder has remained relatively organised and tidy, besides the e-mails back and forth from companies, as we try to explain the concept further.  Everything is in its right folders and it gives us the ability to concentrate full on those important e-mails from suppliers and customers.

Music: No new music this week,

Film: No new films this week, however we have seen a preview of a film out at the cinema soon called the Devil Inside – that looks quite an interesting film and certainly something that will get into your head.

TV-Series: Nothing new here this week, the normal series are currently being watch as and when we can get round to it.  Although we did record the channel 4 Documentary about the Real Story of War horse and last night we watched the documentary about Solar Storms – it was all rather interesting stuff.

So, there you have it a complete check in of this weeks activities.  As always don’t forget to take a look at our initial goals back in January of this year and also you can find all of the ROW80 updates in our dedicated ROW80 category/

How did you fair this week??

ROW80: Back to it

Right, well where were we, oh yes, at the previous check in we had only recently moved and if we remember it all correctly we had also only just got ourselves back online.  Well, it’s now been a few days since the last time we checked in and we’re pleased to announce that things are starting to turn back to normal – not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

We have been spending a lot of time with this whole concept of WOT (Web of Trust), the problems we’re facing is Add Deal in 2008 and 2009 was registered as a SPAM domain name, now back then we weren’t the owner of the domain name so we’re unsure of what exactly the problem was or still is.  We have asked the people who have ranked the website as SPAM to review their comments and reconsider their position, to date no one has got back to us.

We have also placed a few questions in their forum only to be accused of SPAMMING, it seems to us that essentially there is something wrong with our domain names and rather than the people who marked it down review their comments they’d rather continue to mark it down.

We would like to point out that our domain name is not SPAM, people have a choice as to whether or not they register and all information is stored securely.  We will be working more on our online reputation over the coming few months.

What else has been going on?  Well lets take a look at the past few days, don’t forget you can get the latest news on our ROW80 progress by visiting the official ROW80 category, you can also find out our initial goals by visiting the category as well.

Blogging

1. Blog at least 10 times per week: Not a bad week, all things considered, we managed to get to 6 blog posts out of our 10 that we’re meant to do each week… this week we’re sure we’ll make the full 10.
2. Guest Blog Posts: No movement here, we’re saving one for when we launch Add Deal Babies.com this month
3. Keep pages up to date: All pages have been kept up to date.
4. Comments: Sorry guys and girls, we’re not being anti-social and we’ve not forgotten about you, but we have been very busy this end… hopefully more comments this week.

Business

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: We’re slowly getting round to this… and we will have this complete in due course.
2. Have 5 new users signing up per day: No new movements here, although we will be spending more time on promoting the website in a round about way.
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com: Nothing new here… however we are aiming for a March launch.
4. Make arrangement for cards to be printed: Nothing new here
5. Develop Add Deal.tv: Nothing new here either
6. Set up business bank accounts: Nothing to report
7. Offer Add Deal for Free: We’re created a post relating to this, whereby we’re offering Add Deal for FREE for 3 months… e-mail us for more info@adddeal.com
8. Start work on Add Deal CP: We’re making great progress here, with a couple of new pages added – no new scripts yet… more to follow.
9. Build Brand recognition: We’ve moved our Add Deal Facebook page and the Add Deal Babies page over to the new timeline layout and we are pleased to announce we now have 40 followers on Add Deal.  More will be done over the coming few weeks.

Open University

Nothing new to report here, although we have recently had a phone call relating to our studies, nothing major just a survey.

Will be organising financing for this, this week.

Exercising

As promised last week, tomorrow we will be getting back onto the scales and starting our daily work out.  We’re hoping that this will see some of the weight drop, although in all honesty we reckon the move has caused some weight loss.

More on this tomorrow and a blog post will follow.

Autobiography

Nothing new here, the owner will do a couple more blog posts over the coming few days.

Other

E-mail: We are pleased to announce that all of our e-mails have been stored in their correct folders and we now have an e-mail inbox that looks pretty tidy.  :D.

Music: No new tracks this week – we are on a tight budget at the moment so do bear with us.

Film: No new films this week

TV Series: Apart from the normal TV series of Being Human, Whitechapel and Law ad Order we have to say we haven’t really been watching many more series.

So how have we done since Wednesday, well all considering we don’t think we’ve done too badly, oh sure its taken us a while for us to fully adjust to the move, but hey we are making excellent progress on all of our frontiers.

Don’t forget that as always you can get the latest ROW80 updates in our dedicated ROW80 category as well as a copy of our intiial goals being located in there as well.

Well done for getting this far.

So how did you fair??  

ROW80 – We’ve Moved!!!

As we write this we are very pleased to announce that we have moved.  For those of you who are regular readers you will know that we moved just over 3 weeks ago and since then we have been spending a lot of our time getting ourselves settled into the new home and, ordering and building new furniture for the property – spanners, screw drivers and goodness knows what else have all come out this week.

The move went ok, however, unfortunately we were ill throughout the duration suffering from the virus that had been circulating at the time, so the whole thing of moving to a new property really wasn’t of interest to us at the time.  Anyway, we have moved and we are also finally off the Internet dongle and we’re currently making using of Virgin Medias Fibre Optic broadband… so far so good.

So what’s been going on, have we found time to do a bit of work on the business, have we heard back from people relating to our old company, are we working on new projects?  Well we’re going to go through a bit of detailed bits here. We haven’t really found time to work on the project as out attention has been diverted somewhat on the move and also on our old company.

We have been speaking to a wide range of different advisors and there are some pretty good looks on the horizon.  However, we’ve got a few legal bits and bobs to complete first and we will be getting those out-of-the-way in the coming few days.  More on this soon.

We’re not working on any new projects at the moment as we think there is more than enough on our plate.  Although today being the 1st of March we do have plenty of things to get done if we are to start my first module at the OU in May.

Phew!! Right let’s get onto the checkin.

Don’t forget that as always you can catch up on our ROW80 progress in our dedicated ROW80 category and you can of course find a copy of our initial goals in there as well. Here we go….

Blogging

As we’re sure you can imagine, blogging hasn’t been going too well on this frontier this week, but let’s have a look.

1. Blog at least 10 times a week: Well with only 2 blog posts complete all week thus far we’re pretty sad to say there has been little progress here.. due to poor internet connection and the move.
2. Guest Blog Posts: Nothing here, although there is something in the pipeline
3. Keep Pages up to date: All pages are presently up to date and nothing new to add
4. Comments We’ve been trying to comment on people’s posts as best we can, however, we’ve not been doing well here either..

Business

Let’s take a look and see how we’re getting on here:

1. Complete goals as set out in the business plan: Nothing new here as yet, now we have moved it will be full steam ahead with our business plan which should be complete in full by the end of March.
2. Have at least 5 new users signing up a day: No new progress here, in fact sign ups have been pretty low – more promotion needed and a better website – more on this soon.
3. Launch Add Deal Babies.com – not launched as yet… site will be launched this month and we will be completing all launch works before mid march.
4. Make Arrangements for Cards to be printed: Now we have moved this is one of our essential goals – a design will be developed and published soon and we will show it off on here – blog post to follow
5. Develop Add Deal.TV – next website to be developed
6. Set up Business Bank Accounts: We will be making arrangements to discuss this opportunity at the end of March as soon as our business plan is set up and ready to go.
7. Offer Add Deal for Free: No movement here
8. Start Work on Add Deal CP: This will be started and completed by the end of March 2012
9. Build Brand Recognition: Nothing new here – in fact we have fallen down over the past 3 weeks – will be getting back onto this now we’re online.

Exercising

We’re pleased to say that the Wii is set up and we just need to get the Wii Fit all set up and our exercising scheme should continue as of Monday next week.

Autobiography

Well on Tuesday we managed to pin the owner of the company down and forced him to write a couple of articles on his blog.  We’re pleased to say he has updated a couple of his pages which can be found on his blog by clicking here – come and take a look we’re sure you will find it all quite interesting

Open University

Nothing new to report here, well not as yet at least.

Other 

E-Mail: Ok now as we’re sure you can imagine with any move the last thing you want to be doing is sitting down organising your inbox and being on an Internet dongle for almost 3 weeks and the amount of e-mail and bits and bobs we’ve had to handle we’re still organising it all now… we are looking that by the end of the week we will have our inbox organised.

Music: Nothing new this week, however, we did order a whole host of different tracks prior to the move including: Akon, Beautiful, Akon, I’m so Paid, Akon, I Wanna Love You, Akon, Right Now Na Na.

Film: We watched a film called the Girl Next door, my partner was expecting a vampire film, I was expecting a psychotic knife killer, only to later discover it was a sort of torture/abuse style film based in the 1960s in the US… not a nice film… won’t be watching it again.  

TV Series: No new TV series as yet, however, we are pleased to say that we have got Virgins Vido Box and we’re making use of the all the different channels we have available to us.

Phew!! Well first of all well done if you got this far, and thank you for reading it all.  Now that we’re back online our normal service should resume.. we say..

As always don’t forget to leave a comment or two, checkout the latest news and developments in our ROW80 Category and as always be sure to take a read of our initial goals.

So how did you get on over the past 3 weeks

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.

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??