How to generate traffic to your website – Dat Money Review
Jason from DatMoney.com very positively reviewed my latest ebook “How to Generate Traffic to Your Website” earlier this month. If you haven’t had a chance to come across it yet, here are some of the highlights from the review:
“I mean, we all can’t know everything; we have to start from somewhere, right? And although my methods do help build traffic, just by reading the first 30-40 pages of this eBook, I was in shock on how much I have missed out on.”
Further on he states:
“But the selling point for me to get this eBook was the fact that it wasn’t like all those spammy-type eBooks out there. It gives you realistic and proven tips for the long run, rather than the short term deal. Again, the fundamentals that people often overlook. Matter of fact, I have seen quite a few eBooks and all of them tend to only be a few pages long, but not How to Generate Traffic to your Website. This eBook goes into so much depth that it tries to fill as much information within the 138 pages. And so far, every single page has been useful information for me.”
However the best recommendation is that he “goes on the record and guarantees” the ebook is going to help you:
“So, for all of you guys looking to make money online, you need to build traffic to your site first and foremost and I’m going to go on record and guarantee that this eBook is going to help me in more ways than one.”
Thank you Jason for such a glowing review! And it’s great to hear you got a lot of value out of it.
You can read the first 21 pages of the ebook for free here, which also includes the full Table of Contents. The ebook costs only $28.95, and you can buy your own copy right now by clicking here.
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More LandlordMax Sales Metrics
Last week I promised I would post a follow-up article to my previous one about our sales metrics at LandlordMax, where I would show our daily sales averages over a month. Well here’s the graph below:
It’s not exactly what you would expect from a property management software application is it? To quote Eric, the founder of RentARoom.ca, who commented on my previous post (thanks Eric):
“Beginning of the month is probably slow, rising to mid month to it’s peak, and the last days of the month fairly low sales as well. The slowest days: First to Third of the month.
I guess property managers are busy trying to get it all done in their old system. They give up by mid month, or catch their breaths and say they have to find an “easier” way by next month and find a new program.
So by that, advertising just before mid month would be best. (depending on first ad seen -first visit to the website- and conversion to a buying decision)”
That was exactly my initial thoughts. And this proves why it’s so important to get real hard data rather than assuming. In this case common sense is wrong, including mine. The best days for our sales are at the beginning of the month, when landlords and property management companies are at their busiest.
Not only that, but when they’re at their quietest time is when we get the least sales. In other words when we expect the most sales is when we’ll get the least!
Why is the real buying pattern almost the opposite of what we’d expect? Although I don’t know for sure and I can only speculate, my guess is they buy LandlordMax when they’re experiencing their biggest pains. That is they buy it when they need it most rather than when they have the most time. The biggest time for sales is when all the rents are due.
Interesting isn’t it? Common sense in this case proves to be wrong. Getting cold hard data made a real difference, it was very educational. It’s also a very big reminder to always double check your intuition with data. I’m sure glad I did!
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The Scariest Day of a Software Release
What’s the scariest day of a software release? Is it the day before the release? The day of the release? It’s neither, the scariest day of a software release is the day after the release.
Why? That’s when all hell can break loose. That’s when your software will move from your small testing world to the big real world, when it will really be tested beyond the small and friendly confines of your company. That’s when you’ll know if there’s a problem and you’ll be called upon to fix it right NOW. Not tomorrow or next week but right now. The day after the release is by far the scariest day of a software release.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to bringing a software release to fruition. It takes a great amount of effort. And there’s definitely a lot of pressure to get it right. But all that’s nothing compared to the nightmare of having to deal with a software release gone bad. It can mean rolling back, losing data, angry customers, customers who’s entire companies go down because of you. It’s not a good position to be in.
It’s also when the customer wants solutions and answers right now! How can this have happened? When will it be fixed? And you need to give them an answer and solution NOW. You’re on the fire cooker and with each second that passes the stress and pressure increases exponentially. No one wants to experience the day after a bad release.
The day after a release is always tense, everyone’s on standby waiting for any signs of trouble. Although I’m not making justice to real soldiers, it almost feels like being in the trenches waiting for the battle to begin. It can be nerve racking.
You’re hoping for a completely quiet day, but you’re prepared for the worse.
And that was us on Monday this week. The good thing is that it was a completely quiet day!!! Not a word. Not a peep. Nothing. The release went absolutely perfect. Not one hitch. The server got hammered by the sheer number of downloads but it held up without a problem. A lot of people upgraded based on the sheer number of downloads, but not one support request was related to the upgrade!
I couldn’t have asked for anything more. So far every single release of LandlordMax has gone really well. It’s been great. Of course I could say we’ve been very lucky, but I have to admit there is a lot of effort that goes into each release to make them successful. And it pays off. It’s worth the time, and I strongly recommend every company put the necessary effort into successfully releasing software rather than just throwing it out there and hoping for the best. It’s worth it.
And please don’t misconstrue this last comment as me saying that you should only release software when it’s fully complete feature wise, that’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m a big fan of evolutionary software, meaning build your software iteratively. Don’t try to build it all at one time, rather build as many features as you can now and add more later in future versions. It’s just that whatever you do build now, make sure it works to perfection.
Once I’ve written the follow-up article I promised on our sales metric here at LandlordMax, I’ll post an article about how to significantly improve the odds of successfully releasing a software. If you’re interested come back soon, or if you want to save yourself some effort, you can also subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t have to come back each day until I post the follow-up. As well you can subscribe to my email newsletter which will send each of the blog entries I publish to your email box directly.
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LandlordMax Sales Metrics
After the last post about our sales revenues I got to thinking, it’s been too long since I really looked at our other sales metrics for LandlordMax. Which days of the week do we sell the most? Which days of the month? Is it still as consistent today as it was the last time I checked?
The answer is yes, the data is still as consistent today as it was then, at least for the days of the week.
We sell twice as many copies of LandlordMax on any given weekday as we do on a weekend. Why? It has to do with our customer base. We’ve found that half our customers are real estate investors and half are property management companies. It’s a little more complex than that, for example we also have at least one major city using LandlordMax, some banks, and so on, but overall the vast majority of our software is sold to two categories of customers.
The question is: why are weekend sales levels roughly half of our weekday sales levels? I still really haven’t answered the question although I left enough clues to give a hint at the answer. It’s because on weekend most property management companies are closed, and therefore there’s no one around to buy LandlordMax. On the weekdays we have both categories of customers buying LandlordMax. On the weekends we only have one category of customers buying LandlordMax, individual real estate investors.
Because of this, if I want to spend money on advertising, it’s to my big advantage to do so on the weekdays. It’s effective on the weekends, but twice as effective on the weekdays. Knowing your sales metrics is very important, well at least if you spend on advertising.
Next post I’m going to expose our average revenues per day over a month. There’s also a visible pattern in this graph, but it’s not as pronounced as the days of week chart you see above. What do you think it is?
I’ll give away one free copy of my Ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website to the first three people who correctly guesses either (by posting a comment on this post):
- Our sales trend over a month
- The day we get the most sales
- The day we get the least sales
Additionally, if you want to save yourself some effort, you can also subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t have to come back each day until I post the follow-up. As well you can subscribe to my email newsletter which will send each of the blog entries I publish to your email box directly.
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Why Are There So Many Dead Blogs
It’s amazing how many dead blogs there are out there, blogs where the authors wrote for around two to three months before they called it quits. Well maybe it’s not so amazing. Blogging is very easy to start, it has almost not barrier to entry. However the path to successful blogging is very hard; it takes time, it takes energy, in other words it takes a lot of effort.
To give my favorite analogy, it’s like going to the gym. Ever notice how packed gyms are in January? All these people are trying to fulfill their New Year’s resolution of getting in shape. They all start with the best intentions. They go to the gym at least several times a week and each time they exercise like there’s no tomorrow. They’re on a mission, a mission to get fit. The race is on and their running at full throttle.
Fast forward two to three months and most of these same people are barely going to the gym once a month, if at all. What happened? The good intentions are still there, but once the excitement of starting something new has faded and it’s transitioned into work, well you know the outcome. What should have been a marathon from the start ended being a sprint to nowhere.
The same is true with blogs. Lots of people have started blogs. They get all excited and post almost every day when they first start. It’s excited. It’s all new. They start to get a little bit of traffic. Sure it’s mostly friends and family, but after a few weeks or some friends of friends start looking at their blog. Maybe even a little word of mouth if they’re lucky.
Then a few weeks pass. They start to realize that the blog isn’t going to magically grow. It will take a lot of time and effort, especially to write posts on a consistent basis. Even once a week starts to become a burden. The excitement has worn off and the traffic hasn’t grown by leaps and bounds. It’s growing, but not as expected.
Plus other life events start to take precedence. Instead of blogging tonight they find themselves watching the latest sports game, the latest episode of The Office or Heroes. Then last weekend they just had to attend that barbecue at Bob’s, he always throws the best barbecue, and boy can he barbecue those steaks! And then there’s this great new movie at the cinema that just couldn’t be missed, everyone’s talking about it. And more importantly, the daily grind, you know that thing called work, it’s tiring. There’s nothing wrong with taking a night off, but suddenly that night off has become a week off, then a month off, then it’s pretty much a permanent vacation.
This is why we see the internet littered with blogs that have about two to three months of content. That’s about as long as it takes for people’s excitement to wear off and fade to nothingness. It’s the same psychological principle that happens at the gym. Ever wonder why they push so hard for yearly memberships rather than monthly memberships? It’s the same issue with starting a business. It’s amazing how many times I hear people who stalled somewhere in the middle of writing a business plan. Well ok, maybe it’s not so amazing.
Implementation, execution, and especially perseverance are the keys to success. Blogging takes a lot of hard work and effort. It takes an enormous amount of persistence and patience. Don’t expect to succeed in a month, or even half a year. Exceptionally few do. Expect it will take you two to three years of consistent posting to really get going. To quote Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, “Can you write something of high quality on a daily basis on your chosen topic for the next 3 years? That’s 780 posts if you post each weekday for the next 3 years – 1560 if you post twice each weekday…”.
It’s not easy but it can be done. Decide on a posting schedule and keep at it. I really hate seeing great new blogs with lots of potential fall to the abyss.
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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website – Free EBook Sample
Yesterday I released a sample (the first 21 pages) of the EBook I’m selling “How to Generate Traffic for Your Website“. In it you’ll find the complete and detailed Table of Contents, as well as the beginning of the first chapter (SEO – Search Engine Optimization).
Like I keep saying over and over here on this blog, you need to try different things to see what works. If you don’t try you won’t ever know. For LandlordMax we offer a free 30-day trial, so why not with an EBook? Except instead of a time based trial, you get the beginning of the book. In this case you can read the first 21 pages before you decide on buying it.
Something else to mention, I’ve had some people approach me expecting the book to be an advanced book about online traffic generation. This book is targeted for people who have just started to those that have an intermediate level of skill and knowledge on traffic generation. It will give you a really solid foundation on which to build. To quote Bob Walsh from 47Hats.com:
“As someone who knows a fair bit about these topics, I found Steph’s down to earth – here’s-what-you-want-to-do-and-why – presentation very complete. His chapters on SEO, AdWords and press releases were some of the best material from a microISV’s point of view I’ve seen to date. Steph pulls from both the experience of his microISV – LandlordMax – and other sources to illustrate and illuminate his points.”
If you haven’t already checked it out, you can read the first 21 pages of the ebook here. And if you’ve already read the sample and want to get the rest, you can buy it here.
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Your Website’s Response Time Will Affect Your Google AdWords Campaigns
Everybody understands that it’s important to monitor a website for uptime, after all if your website is down you’re down. But it’s not as simple as that. You also need to monitor your server’s response times. That is the time it takes from the time you request a webpage to the time loads in your web browser. The longer the response time the worse the user experience. No one wants to wait for a page to load anymore, we’re no longer living in the dial-up modem era.
And for those of you who use Google AdWords, you’ll really want to pay careful attention to your website’s response times. Google has recently indicated that a website’s response time will be incorporated into the Quality Score. And any affects in the Quality Score will therefore affect the eligibility and minimum prices for your ads!
The key to monitoring a website’s response time is to get an average from multiple sources on a continual basis. You need to take the average response time throughout the day to compensate for when your server is handling more requests, and thereby responding slower. You also need to measure the response times from different sources because some paths on the net may get bogged down for reasons unrelated to your web server’s performance.
So how do you this cost effectively? I recommend using a website monitoring service. For my company LandlordMax we use Pingdom, and we’re extremely happy with them. What initially attracted us to their service was Pingdom’s blog, which I recommend reading if you have a chance. There’s lots of great material in there.
In any case a good average response time should be well under 500 ms per request. You can find our uptime and response times graphs for LandlordMax below:
As you can see there are always some issues. In the first graph, the uptime graph, our website was down for a total of 5 minutes for the month of March. Although we want 100% uptime, it rarely happens, not without excessive costs. To be honest, until you really monitor your website you probably won’t realize the real uptime. A lot of people are surprised when they see these graphs! They never really thought that their websites were ever down. But if you think about it, OS patches often cause a 5 minute outage. Even with load balancers you can go down for a bit as you tweak the load balancers themselves.
Another great benefit with these types of service is that they will contact you when your website does go down. They’ll contact you, depending on your preferences, by email, by text message, and so on. For us we’ve got it checking our server every 5 minutes, so I personally know within 5 minutes by text message when our server goes down. It’s great peace of mind!
But going back to our discussion about response times, on average our (LandlordMax‘s) response times are about 200 ms. That’s great! We’re very happy with this. We had a couple of glitches were the response times exploded to 1 second, but overall it’s a very good looking graph. And even 1 second is better than many many websites out there.
On Pingdom’s blog, they’re kind enough to provide some graphs to show the dramatic differences in response times some websites have experienced. The following shows a very significant difference in response time starting at 4pm. Based on the blog’s comment, the difference in response time is because they switched hosting services.
And here’s another graph from Pingdom which shows what a dramatic difference optimizing your webpage code can have on your response times:
Obviously there’s a lot you can do to optimize your website’s response times. It’s worth monitoring, especially if you use Google AdWords!
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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website – Bob Walsh Review
Bob Walsh recently gave a very positive review of my latest EBook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website on his blog 47Hats.com. To quote his blog post title “An Excellent Ebook for MicroISVs”
The following is an exert from his review:
“As someone who knows a fair bit about these topics, I found Steph’s down to earth – here’s-what-you-want-to-do-and-why – presentation very complete. His chapters on SEO, AdWords and press releases were some of the best material from a microISV’s point of view I’ve seen to date. Steph pulls from both the experience of his microISV – LandlordMax – and other sources to illustrate and illuminate his points.
The SEO chapter in particular is must reading for any microISV because it focuses on techniques that work today – not 5 years ago – and because it gives you for the time invested a solid set of strategies to start acting on now. MicroISVs seldom have the luxury to dive to the bottom of any of the many subjects we have to deal with.”
You can read Bob’s full review here. Thank you Bob for the great review!
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How to generate traffic to your website – John Cow Review
Today I got another great review of my latest EBook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website from John Cow. John gave it a very positive review which you can read in full here.
My favorite quote from his review is:
“Stephane absolutely knows what he’s talking about, and a lot of this is also coming from his personal experiences as a webmaster. We’ve got nothing bad to say – in fact, looks like we’re going to have to redo our own ebook in the making.”
John’s also found one small minor flaw on Page 68 which he’s making into a contest. The first one to tell him what it is will win $30 via PayPal. In other words if you find it first, you’ll be getting the ebook for free! I’ve since found it and will correct it as soon as he lets me know someone has won contest.
Thank you John for the great review.
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How to generate traffic to your website – Reviews and Comments
Reviews of my ebook “How to Generate Traffic to Your Website” are starting to appear online. Ian Landsman, founder of UserScape, commented earlier last week on his blog:
“Stephane yesterday released an interesting book on generating traffic to your site. It’s remarkably in depth. I’ve only read some of it so far, but what I’m most impressed with is the breadth of the coverage. It pretty much hits on everything someone starting a commercial website needs to think about. ”
Thank you Ian for the great comment.
And to add to this, yesterday Mani Karthik of Daily SEO Blog wrote a review of the ebook on BloggingTips.com. It was a very positive review. Below are some of the highlights:
- To my surprise I found that Steph has done an indepth analysis of the traffic generation process and the sheer volume of topics covered in the ebook itself, reveals the amount of research Steph has done to accomplish this book.
- In total, there are 11 chapters under the two sections that takes care of all the things (yes, I do mean it) that you need to know to create traffic to your website
- Honestly, each section and category in itself could’ve easily made into another E-Book and believe me there are lot of e-books out there which deals with only 1/220th of what Steph’s written about in thie ebook, but sells for a higher price.
- Steph’s done an amazing job on this ebook, and his hardwork is very evident from the research done, the topics and the sheer depth of information present on each topic.
- Every page is simply worth the money you pay. And it’s cheaper that all those “I’ll teach you everything in two minutes” kind of books.
But my personal favorite is: “I can assure you that this is NOT an ebook that will contain information that you’ve already read elsewhere.”
Thank you Mani for the detailed and very positive review. If you’re interested you can read Mani’s full interview here.
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