Project Manager, Technical Lead or Both

While in my thinking room (the shower), I had a revelation.  I have been trying to figure out why I keep seeing Project Manager positions being posted with very, very specific experience requirements.  This is fairly specific to the software world (with some exceptions like federal contracting and nuclear) where the PM is expected to bring a very deep toolkit of experience to the project.

In my way of thinking and experience, I have often said that PM expertise is generally transferable between projects, technologies and domains.  These specific experience job postings had me confused.  My epiphany was that the software world has tended to combine two roles that you will find separated in other domains.  Those are Project Manager and Technical Lead.  In other domains, the Technical Lead is the person who defines the technical requirements for the project while the Project Manager “manages” the execution.  These are two very clearly distinguished roles that are well understood in the more mature PM environments.

Just an epiphany that I wanted to share with everyone.

Oh the trials and tribulations

Okay, so I should know that I am going to learn some lessons along the way but some of them I would like to avoid.  I have had a couple of big ones over the last 10 days that I would just as soon as not had.

First, I found out that my landing pages were still sitting in test mode which meant that when folks clicked through to go to the sales pages, they were getting a test feedback rather than getting there.  Doesn’t make for great sales that way.

After I got that fixed, everything was cruising along just fine with good CPC, CTRs and decent hops.  However, I wasn’t getting any sales.  Isn’t that the point of this whole thing?  So, I got in touch with my mentor and described the problem.  he looked in his ClickBank records and didn’t find any hops from me.  Surprise, surprise!!! Why is this.

Well, after going back and forth a couple of times, we figured out that my links were not pointing at the right place.  I was going to a sales page that has one of the lowest gravity factors in this niche.  Oh well, it only goes to show that you really need to test and be very careful about making sure that the details are correct.

Now that I have everything fixed up, my two Landing Pages (LPs) (DIYSolarPanels and MakeSolarPanels)  are working fine and its just a matter of time before we see what the real results should be.

Back in business

Okay, I am back in the saddle!  I had to take a few weeks off in order to deal with some other projects, customers and issues. During that time, I shutdown my campaigns because I knew that I needed to re-write my landing pages and I wasn’t going to get the time.  So, now I have the time.

I have re-written my landing page or provide more information and less sales “stuff” and I can see where that goes.  I started by turning on one Ad Group (DIYSolarPanels) and determining that the ads were still drawing impressions and clicks and they were.  However, I made a big booboo.  I have code in my landing page that tracks where the click came from and where they went.  In that code, I have a flag that sets the code to either production or test mode.  Unfortunately, I had a very sickening feeling yesterday when I found that the code was set to test mode.  I know that this flag was set since I turned things back on but I am wondering how long the flag had been set prior to turning it off.  This would definitely tell me why I wasn’t getting any hops to the sales page.  Oh well, it’s a mistake that would be easy to make and there isn’t anything that I can do about it.  Just have to move on but learn the lesson to check things before releasing them for operation.

One other note is that the process of testing things is really slow when you are only committing $10 per day to the operation.  At this rate, it takes about 4 days to tell whether or not there is a potential buyer out there.  Obviously, if the hop & conversion rates were higher, it wouldn’t be a problem.  However, I think I am running in the right area so its a matter of waiting around to see what happens.

One thing that I have learned is that Google plays games with their bids (CPC).  I am not sure how their algorithm works but it obviously changes the “Estimated First Page Bid” based on my performance.  I have been told before that you can get lower rates as you show performance (and that does work) but I wouldn’t ahve thought that the “Estimated First Page Bid” would change that quickly.  Oh well, part of the learning process.

That’s it for now.  Going to keep plugging away.  I will be upping my budget tomorrow because I am starting a new Ad Group (MakeSolarPanels) and I want to see how that one does.  Will let you know.