Wise businessmen and businesswomen, obtain an education and experience before they ever consider beginning a new business. But then no one has ever accused me of being a “wise woman.” And so I dove head first into my website and have had to “learn as I go.”
Within in the first ten days of launching www.FunnyPhotosContest.com, I quickly discovered that trouble lay ahead and my first lesson was about to begin. During the planning stages, we (my grown children and I) had to establish dates for the two monthly contests. As four months of the year have only 30 days and seven months have 31 days, leaving February with only 28 or 29, we had no choice but to set the "last day" of the month as the ending date of the second contest. Thus, the 1st of the month and the 15th logically became the start dates of the two contests.
No problem…right? Wrong. A few days before the 14th, the end of the first contest, I suddenly realized these dates presented a big problem. The first contest of the month would end at midnight on the 14th, and the next would begin IMMEDIATELY!!! Good grief, when would I make the transition from one contest to the next. I needed time to remove the photos from the first contest, upload the new photos, and post the winners?
As a result, I had no choice for that first contest, but to carry my laptop computer to bed on the 14th and set my alarm clock for midnight. Luckily, I organized everything carefully so that the process took only about 10 minutes. However, this was obviously not a pattern I wanted to continue. I needed a day for production between the two contests. And so, the new dates became the 2nd to the 15th and the 17th to the end of the month. Although, not as neat and tidy as the 1st and 15th, the dates appealed to me much more than an ongoing midnight rendezvous with my computer.
Although I solved my first lesson quickly and easily enough, I knew this would not be my last -- more likely, only the beginning.
