Mark Hewitt's Blog

It's been a busy week. I got in an appointment with a Business Advisor at Barclays bank to find out about my options and things to think about as I put my business(es) into action, which was pretty informative. I've now ordered a pack from Business Link, who provide all kinds of advice and support to new businesses and will give me free consultations with various specialists to help me plan the thing out.

I still haven't finished the new site designs, although I'm nearly done with the Home Computer Support page. Try and get that finished tomorrow with luck, so I can push it out to the online directories and such and start to get my name out there.

The big fun is my new project, Day of X! The idea struck me yesterday just as I got out of bed - that there are now so many International Days of Whatever that almost every day of the year is dedicated to something. So I decided to try building a blog around it.

I fleshed out the idea while walking into town first thing to do some shopping, registered the domain and created the blog when I got home, designed the site through the afternoon and implemented it just after dinner, and I wrote the first post before I went to bed. It's fun to have taken something from concept to (working) completion so fast, and I think it's going to be a really enjoyable project.

I've struggled for a long time to find a niche on the web - something genuinely different from what other people are doing. There just aren't a lot of original ideas left! For example, all three of my article blogs are very broad - Technology, Food and Productivity. It makes it easy to find ideas to write about, but it's just not a model that builds readership online, as any successful website owner will tell you. This is finally an idea with a strong niche concept, and I think it could really go places. Time will tell.