Dropped the ball on the blogging, but I'll be getting back to it now. After putting my Uni work on a back-burner, I really needed to get up to speed so as I was I forgot the importance of how this blog actually keeps me mentally organised and focused, even when I was still doing the work on my project.

So enough of the excuses, let's have a brief and get up to speed on where we are with the project. The key thing, the site is in development and it's getting on nicely! There have been some hiccups and other problems with have either slowed down development or taken progress into a different direction (Some of which required backtracking) but we're getting there.

I must admit though it's utterly worth it, the service I'm getting is incredibly good and will no doubt recommend them to anyone and everyone. In fact, I'll plug them here (Armerdesign!). An incredible bunch of people with the skills, quality and affordability to match. In my opinion and experience the only option for start-ups wanting a website developed for a reasonable price.

Looking at our social networking we are 110 artists strong! Some good variety, mostly illustration-primary artists. What we don't have in our group of supporters include sculptors and 3D artists, I doubt this would be a problem in the beginning of our launch but obviously reaching into these areas is only going to enforce our compatibility with all areas of art.

We're becoming stronger in having a community of artists, the beginnings of one of the appeals clients will find (A wide variety of artists ready to take on the project). But! It's hardly difficult to see what I'm missing, if this platform is ever to be successful there needs to be at least a 1:1 ratio. The first being artists, the second being.....clients!

I was already aware of this problem early on as the number of supporting artists grew, I simply don't know how I can reach out to potential art clients. I can always go gunning blind with some small target audience filtering using blunt online advertising. Adsense, banner advertising and other cheap online advertising forms. I can't say for Adsense but banner advertising has been said to be less than 1% effective. But to defend it, the price is incredibly cheap, it gets your content spread and it does at least provide some results. What I'm proud to say is with my own marketing methods to artists I'm 10% effective! It takes time but it always produces results.

So! Marketing to artists is fine, what isn't fine is that I'm pretty much blind as to how to advertise to clients. I should say that tomorrow I'm going to work on this and devise a solution by the end of the day, but I honestly have read plenty of articles for guidance but to little avail. That's not to say I won't try, because I will try, again and again. I'm now starting to create some external lines of support, people & businesses very welcome to support start-ups like my own. I'm confident this will fruit to a certain degree.

First goal tomorrow, spend at least 2/3 hours working on marketing.

Now, forgetting client targeted marketing. Just to make a small note at marketing content, I've created a promotional video as a little sub-project just for fun. I enjoyed making it and everything but on reviewing whether it's good enough to be released is another matter. Listening to the almost Churchill-wannabe-like speech makes me cringe. I'm getting a good friend to criticise it, see if it's good or not. I did buy a professional microphone for improving audio but the order got cancelled unfortunately and the price got raised £10. Puts me off buying it for such a little thing, even despite how useful it can be long-term.

So with that being said, my social networking is terrible. Don't get me wrong, we're growing and there's a good chunk of content for new supporters to chew on. But as for new content and regular updates? Forget about it, it's terrible. My lacking social networking skills is highly evident here.

This is my second goal tomorrow, spend 2 hours maximum devising what exactly I'm going to do about this problem, be it pre-preparing posts (Something I did a bit before) or devising a way in which content can be released on the spot.

Another, although unrelated goal, is to strengthen my revision notes for my upcoming exams for 2 hours Since it's unrelated I won't go into this though.

Finally, my last goal, daily objectives. This is something that has gradually deteriorated, even though I kept up my marketing. If I was consistent with it though I have no doubt I would be making an entirely different update on this blog altogether! I won't get anywhere without consistent hard work.

So this last goal is to review what my daily objectives were and update them to something more appropriate, this will take less than 30 minutes without distraction easy.

That's about it really, hope I'm not forgetting anything. Tomorrow I'll be working 6 hours 30 minutes minimum. When I've finished everything I'm going to revisit my Uni revision and maybe learn some more Russian. "Oochen horosho!"