The three random words are: Sparrow, cry and publicity. The outcome: this cheap try to get to your heart.

The three random words have been obtained with: http://creativitygames.net/random-word-generator/randomwords/3

A lot of people that have websites has used Google Analytics to track basic statistics. It's quite easy to implement and you get a lot of data. You know there are a lot of things that you can do with it that you don't know how to do. There are experts that can tell you how to set up a lot of options but, ey, that's a lot of information you are already getting there. I think I can life with this "basic" stuff.

Since I started AlejoLab I have been learning that what I don't know about GA is a lot more than I thought. If you are somehow like me, who have some general technical knowledge about the web and usually work out the problems by searching for references instead of learning how to do the things from the ground, then you will probably do like me. Like 4 months ago I would have say I knew 50% you need to know to get basic statisctics on GA, and how to use 2% of the features to make the most of it. That last part is what you usually that other things about custom dimensions, filters, custom reports, and so on. You know someone is going to need them, but they are probably professionals with very specific needs.

After this three months I have been learning a lot of new things about GA, sometimes not very practical things, but the realizations of the features I needed. Now I would say that I know 10% of the basics and 1% of the total.

Here are some of the things I have realized I didn't know about and I should. They may be basic or more advanced. I write them in a, sort of, chronological order.

• How to track goals (basic if you are seeling something or have a subscribers list).
• Integrating GA with AdWords (and your goals).
• Integration GA with AdSense. More difficult than expected because they have to approve you account and domain before, and it can take weeks of obscurity.
  
• Configuring the value of goals and campaigns correctly son you can say where is you money going and coming from without leaving GA (and doing all the math yourself).
• Activate and link Webmaster Tools, to know which searches and keywords are diving traffic to your site.
• How to correctly set up profiles and accounts.
• Why managing your profiles efficiently can be extremely useful (and can save basic data you are losing without knowing).
• Taking out your own internal visits (they tend to be a lot) that are messing up all the data.
• Segmentating your users using filters.
• The ability to track specific behaviours (looks easier than expected).
• What the bounce rate really means.
• How GA cookies work and how to customize them to track what you really need.
• Recently GA has added to its API the possibility to perform split tests with the content (incrementing exponentially the possible uses of all the previous features).
• ...

I guess what happens if you don't plan to learn about something and learn by using it just because it is there. At some point you start to consider to either delegate or learn the basics in a more structured way. As always it depends on your personal goals.

I have been dissecting the situation with the help of my girlfriend/fiancé to find different fronts where I want to take action to improve and keep moving forward. Today we have managed to define at least three courses of action for what seemed a tangled and unique situation, formerly known as "what I do". I think thats three areas are mostly everything, but I cannot be sure yet until I finish making all the questions to see the situation from all the possible angles.

As I was talking in yesterday's post Turning point. The goal of this blog has been accomplished. I have managed to build the habit. But there are some things that the blog needs in order to keep being useful:

• A new goal, to be defined with questions such as: What I have learn until now thanks to the blog? How will I use this new habit to work towards my vision?
• Change the time when I usually write and publish the posts. Which is usually at the end of the day because I either don't manage my time better or because I have get used to talk about what I have done during that day and so, it seems logical to make it at the end of the day.
• Work in batches and have a reserve of posts. In case I keep posting daily , which I feel is something I want to keep doing.

That is, to start working more seriously on a project that can be useful and profitable. Since making an income to live from blogging is not my first choice, I have put to rest some plans to market and promote the blog (because I have a small audience) until I define if the new goal of the blog really needs it.

Separating the search of an income stream from the blog is important since I have been slowly believing that I need more readers to be able to turn the blog into a source of income.

I have around 7 projects or topics which I have been talking about in the blog, plus 2 more which I haven't, that are candidates to be explored to help someone needs.

I need to make better use of my time, specially when doing personal, everyday house chores. Because I am at home most of the day, the everyday tasks such as cooking, cleaning and so on, tend to be around me always and they define my daily schedule more than I have wanted to admit until now.
Because of my inabilty to manage "house chores time" I am also having problems on how to use my "productive time" efficiently. So I am going to use the sames steps I would use to improve a creative or business process to improve the way I face the daily chores:

1. Track
2. Analysis
3. Test improvements
4. Evaluate and control

For example, one of the most time consuming chores is to decide what to cook according to our diet, what we have eaten recently and what ingredients I have available. I haven't succeded in preparing weekly meal plans. Which would be ver useful when doing the grocery list. What we usually use as a reference is what we have bought the last time (specially when buying online) instead of what we have consumed. So, from now on I will be tracking what things we consume each day, instead of trying to figure out what to eat the next week when doing the groceries. 
Another thing I have done is to prepare three check lists in a whiteboard with daily, weekly and monthly tasks for personal and house chores.

In June's newsletter I offered a free reward for the subscribers at the end of the mail:

But I am a bit sad because only two people asked for the rewards. One of them is my girlfriend and the other is a friend of mine.

This leads me to talk about some stats for the blog and if I should start marketing the blog. But I can leave that for tomorrow since it can be an interesting topic on its own.

Do you find the rewards funny? Which one would you have asked?

The month is over, June amazing days.
A daily post was published, and now it
is time to send subscribers a nice mail,
with highlit stories in a full post list.

After some writing the words get through.
The mail is sent! (six thirty local time),
good luck and may subscribers open you.
Farewell and play "you've got new mail" sound chimes.

If you are reading this but not the news
you are still in time, go now subscribe,
and get next month's one, you have no excuse.
Become one more to read and live this vibe.

As long as Lab is fun and I can write,
this blog will have each day a post to bite

That was actually hard to write. I am not much into poetry. My highschool teacher would be proud.
Read why this can be considered a shakespearean sonnet at writing a sonnet for dummies. To make sure I was using the right accents on the words I have cheked each verse, and the whole sonnet, using Google translator voice sintetizer. In some verses the rythm and entonation actually sounds like reciting.

I have been creating a spreadsheet to track and improve my writing sessions, and I my plan is to sell it for a small price. This is based on the techniques explained by Rachel Aaron in her ebook "2k to 10k" which I read recently. She explains the basics in her post: How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day

I wanted to use the ideas presented, but when starting to gather the information from my last writing sessions I couldn't resist to take some time to prepare a proper spreadsheet. What I want to provide here is a way to track the information about the writing sessions, not information about the overall progress of the book. The goal is to analize all the data to spot the patterns in your writing sessions in which you are most productive.

I have prepared a version with Microsoft Office 2010 and another with LibreOffice, automating the calculations of different statictics and making everything to look nice and easy to use. The file has a sheet with instructions, another for the actual tracking of the sessions and a last one with a clean template.

Some of the features included are:

• Open and go, no macros or plugins needed. Save the time to set up the whole thing and just start writing.
• Easy and clear instructions to help you get started.
• Calculates automatically words per day, session time, total writing time in the day, words writing speed for each session and word writing speed for the day.
• Automatic day summary. The spreadsheet recognizes when there is a day change and show the total statistics for the day in a light colored row.
• Ready to use sheet and a clean template to copy new sheets. Helps to keep everything organized the way you like it.
• You get all the future updates and fixes even if I choose to rise the price a bit. Get in touch if you have any problem with the product or ideas to improve it.
• Receive everything in your email. A zip containing versions for Microsoft Office 2010 (.xlsx) and Open document format (OpenOffice, LibreOffice) (.ods)

Not conviced yet?
Well, it's just £1.2, I won't fight for it. When the time comes that you need something like this, just remember that for this price it doesn't worth your time doing it yourself.

If you think this is interesting but don't want to buy it yet, consider suscribing in the sidebar to the monthly summary newsletter to keep informed.

Today I wanted to do something for the Oppa! video project, but I had a visit to the dentist that left me out of game during most of the day. So I have been tinkering a bit with the AdWords campaign, experimenting, and I already set up the ads for the 3rd round.

I have also discovered some new settings to improve the experiment. I am taking note of all these so I can make a full guide and report of the complete experiment. So, coming soon:

.. or a similar title.

The idea is to use this as one of my first attempts into making small digital products to sell online. A nice presented, detailed and explicative report and guide for a very low price (maybre around 1$).

I you would be interested in something like that. Why would you be interested? What would you expect to find or learn from it?

I am conducting an experiment using AdWords, to help me find the best, and most attractive words, to explain what I am doing here at AlejoLab.
Each round is taking 5 days, with a budget of 2€ for each day. My objective is to maximise the CTR (clicks per number of times the ad is shown) as I want to find the words, ideas and concepts that are more appealing. After that I will focus on conversion for getting more suscribers for the list, and eventually customers.

During the first round one of the ads clearly outperformed the other almost doubling its CTR. I then used the most relevant concept from the winner and created an "offspring" of two new ads, in one of which I used the same concept. These new ads have also been running for 5 days now and they both have lower CTR than the first round winner. But there is clearly one winner with a CTR of 1,07%.

So it's time to design the 3rd round. But I will wait until Monday because I want to enjoy the weekend and focus on surviving the dentist visit tomorrow for a treatment with a potentially painful recovery.

I am having a terrible toothache now, I already have an appointment for the dentist but I hope the pain recedes a bit until I go.

That being said, there a lot of things a would like to talk about, so I guess I will make a short summary:

• I forgot to say that the video about projections in yesterday's post was made because I am applying for a residence at Watershed. And I wanted to show some things I have done with projections and tracking because my proposed project will be mainly about that.
• The AdWords campaign experiment keeps running and it is in the second round helping already to find the words that are most attractive while describing what I am doing here. I´m taking notes so I can make a full and interesting report.
• I would love to show and share what I am doing as a wedding invitation, but it is not time yet. I have to keep it private until it has been sent, and is somewhat private so I want to change the content a bit before showing it. I went to a printer, and they told me that it's the most complicated design they have ever thing. Correct aligment is essential and they are not doing it. Luckily we are achieving a fairly decent quality and aligment with the printer at home, and I have bought the special paper we need to print it ourselves.
• Today I had another work session for the Oppa! video project, We were just three gathered around a cup of tea and a piece of cake (my tooth was not aching yet) while reviewing last day's work and taking notes (that I need to write in the production document).We also did a small testing dancing using our fingers so we could experience the possibility of really slowing doing movements without worrying about balancing your body. I will upload it soon, as usual.
• Finally I have been at another class of the NLP course. It has been very interesting by itself, but because of my teeth I wasn't in the most comfortable position to be relaxed. As the positive side, I have been able to "experiment" and get some doubts, that I will ask to the teacher, involving interferences (such as pain), while programming yourself. If you are a bit into NLP maybe you can understand what I mean, or even have something to say by yourself. While doing some of the exercises I couldn't focus, or I didn't want, as I didn't want to relate, what were supossed to be clear and bright positive images and thoughts with the pain I was feeling. On the other hand, I was more comfortable and focused while being the guide for another studing during and exercise.

Some different things have been happening along the last two days that I haven't talk about.

First of all, today I was at the Best of Britain Indie Meetup at Bristol. It has been great people there and the presentations have been very specific, focused and interesting. Which is something refreshing for me to see at these kind of events. Yay!

Yesterday, before the drama class started, we got to shot some new tests which I haven't edited yet. Hopefully I will do it tomorrow and publish them right away. Specially because we are meeting on Saturday 11:00 at Castle Park for more gangnam fun.

Three days ago I started a new small experiment involving AdWords and a 2€ daily budget. Testing names and phrases that could explain quickly what I am doing here. The idea is to see what ads have the higher Click-through rate (CTR). It can also bring people interested in reading the blog and subscribing. Right now there are only two ads running whith one of them having clearly a better CTR, actually more than twice the other. There are getting like 40 clicks each day right now. I will be creating new ads doing split tests until I get something interesting or I reach 50€ (that would be ok for at least 5 rounds of tweaking).