Why do All Degrees Take 4 Years?
If you think about it for a moment, this doesn’t make any sense at all. Really why do all degrees take 4 years. Do all degrees require exactly the same amount of education, the same amount or learning, and the same amount of experience? I highly doubt it, which means it doesn’t make sense why all college degrees take 4 years!
I won’t debate why you should or shouldn’t go to college or university, it could be to learn to learn, to acquire a skill, to acquire knowledge, etc. It really doesn’t matter for this post, the question is why does it take 4 years no matter what subject you’re getting your degree in?
Some topics are more involved than others. And it shows! I remember taking some “hard science” courses where each course had a lab section to it. If you take 5 of these courses in a semester, that was also 5 labs (don’t ask me why but I did this for a few semesters – and no I’m not insane, at least I don’t think so). For other subjects, there were no labs. Some classes had virtually no assignments where others had weekly 5+ hour assignments (university calculus classes are a good example of classes with higher workloads). If I compare my computer science assignments to my psychology assignments, well let’s just the say the amount of effort wasn’t comparable on average. And almost none of my psychology classes had any labs whatsoever. In case you’re wondering I have a BSc. in Computer Science with a Math and Physics minors. I was also just a couple courses short of a full second degree in Psychology (1 semester) before I left academia for the workforce.
Of course I assume things haven’t changed that much since I went to university years ago, except that now laptops are standard whereas when I went it was only one or two computer science students that could afford any laptops at all. Actually, almost no one had computers period. You generally had to find a friend that could help you out or go to the dreaded computer labs. That was also back when we used to walk 50 miles in blizzards with 100mph winds. But seriously, I assume there’s still as much discrepancy between how much effort goes into getting different degrees.
And that’s how it should be. Some material is harder to learn and takes more effort. That’s life. It’s just the way it is. But why is it that almost every college degree still takes 4 years. Why don’t they vary depending on what’s required?
Is it a perception thing, where people will put less value into a 2-3 year degree versus a 4-5 year degree. I’m sure that will happen, but that can’t be the real issue. At least I hope not.
Or is it that it’s just easier to make everyone go through the same 4 year program, and expand or shrink the program to make it fit it into 4 years (Parkinson’s Law – work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.). Plus, and I just can’t resist, it’s relatively pretty easy money to have a 2-3 year program take 4 years.
Personally though, I believe the main reason is that’s easy and it’s standard to make it 4 years, no matter how much time it really takes (or should take). It’s hard going against convention. It’s the standard. Why rock the boat. And any other of the million cliches and tag lines you can come up with. Sure the other benefits are nice, but I simply think it’s because that’s the way it’s always been. And that’s why we should really question why college degrees almost always take 4 years to complete!
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Why Ford and GM are Going Bankrupt
Sure there’s the obvious issues like the fact that they have to spend more per car made. Sure there’s the issues with the unions and high salaries. Sure there’s the issues with the lower quality of their cars. Sure there’s the mismanagement issues. Sure there’s the issue that they’re focusing on government bailouts rather than solving their business issues. There’s a lot wrong, no doubt about it. But I believe it’s even more fundamental than that.
Let me ask you a few questions:
- What’s the family sedan from Honda?
- What’s the family sedan for Toyota?
- What’s the family sedan for Ford?
- What’s the family sedan for GM?
I bet you were immediately able to answer the first two questions (Honda Accord and Toyota Camry). I’ll also wager that you weren’t really able to answer the last two. What is the family sedan for Ford and GM? Why is that such a hard question to answer when that’s the most common car people buy?
It’s because they have no focus. They’re all over the place. To succeed you need to be about something, something that people can care about and follow your lead. It doesn’t matter how good your idea is or how good your execution is, without a goal and focus it’s all for nothing. So let’s hope they can figure it out before it’s too late.
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Why is Feedback Important?
Several months ago I had the bad luck of catch Strep Throat. Since I’ve had it several times in my life, I pretty much knew I had without having to see a doctor. But if you want antibiotics to treat it, you need to go see a doctor.
Before I continue, let me just say that the main reasons you want to treat Strep Throat with antibiotics is two-fold. Firstly in rare cases it can easily prevent some pretty severe complications. And secondly, you’re much less contagious.
In any case, I initially tried to see my family doctor but unfortunately he was unavailable for whatever reason, maybe he was on vacation or something, I just can’t remember. (by the way my current family doctor is the best doctor I’ve ever had – not only is he good, but he also cares!). Because I couldn’t see him, I went to a local walk-in medical clinic.
The doctor saw me, did a quick swab test, and of course the results came back positive for Strep Throat. However, for whatever reason, the walk-in doctor didn’t want to prescribe me any antibiotics. She was very adamant, saying that my body could, and should, fight it off naturally.
Now I understand there is a lot of abuse going on with antibiotics, but Strep Throat is an infection that can potentially lead to serious complications in some cases if not treated, and it was 100% certain I had it. Sure it might go away naturally, but let me tell you, once you meet someone who’s experienced the serious complications from this infection, you understand why they recommend treating it. So why not take the antibiotics, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Plus, I’d be a lot less contagious.
But she refused. She said to go home, relax, and come back in a few days if got worse. So I left. But after a few hours, I had second thoughts and called the clinic. I explained that I had been diagnosed with Strep Throat, that the tests were 100% positive, and that it was highly recommended by the medical establishment to treat it with antibiotics. Not just to help fight the infection, but to help prevent any potential complications from the infection. Talking to doctor via the receptionist, she basically informed me the doctor really didn’t want to treat me with antibiotics and to come back in a few days if it got worse. I pushed some more and since it was near closing time, the receptionist said they would have to call me tomorrow.
The next day I decided to get a second opinion since I hadn’t heard anything by lunch time. I went to another walk-in clinic and saw another doctor. He quickly did another swab test and it was also positive for Strep Throat. He immediately gave me a prescription for antibiotics. I mentioned about the other doctor who refused to give me antibiotics, and asked why she wouldn’t just to get a better understanding. He said he had no idea, that with Strep Throat you should always give antibiotics. Again, this isn’t a sore throat, it’s a confirmed (now twice confirmed) case of Strep Throat.
Two or three days later, I forget now, I got a call from the initial medical clinic. This time the receptionist said that the original doctor that saw me wasn’t in today, but another doctor from the clinic would like to talk to me on the phone. She said, and I’m trying to remember the exact words as best as I can here: “You have Strep Throat and we HAVE to treat it with antibiotics. You can come in within the next hour to pick up a prescription, I’ll leave it at the front.”
Now you may ask, what was the point of this whole story? And how is it related to feedback? Well, if you look at the first doctor, she basically refused to treat Strep Throat with antibiotics. Since she’s not my family doctor, once I leave the clinic, she has no way of knowing whether her treatment was effective. Or worse yet, whether her treatment (or lack of treatment) helped or made things worse. She can only assume that things got better.
Let’s take this one step further. Let’s say her lack of treating me with antibiotics caused a rare kidney complication from the Strep Throat. How would she ever know unless I returned to tell her about it? She can’t know, and therefore she can’t learn from her mistakes. As far as she can tell her treatment was very effective since I didn’t come back.
How rare are the complications? I don’t know. But did you know it’s speculated that Mozart, the famous composer, may have died due to a kidney failure complication because of Strep Throat. Although rare, it does happens. But what’s worse is it’s so easy to prevent.
Getting back to our story, let’s say there are complications in 10% of the cases. How can any doctor from a walk-in medical clinic know (and learn) on the effectiveness of their treatments? As far as the first doctor who treated me can tell, there were no complications. No one came back. Although they might have ended up in a hospital, she wouldn’t know. She might not even be aware that another doctor from her very own clinic treated me with antibiotics. She could theoretically believe her treatment was right and continue treating her other patients the same way, re-enforcing her belief that her treatment (or lack of) works. A vicious cycle. And it’s really not her fault, there’s no way for her to know if it isn’t working.
Which is why it’s so important to have a family doctor. Unlike a walk-in clinic doctor who you’ll only see once, or maybe a few times over the years, your family doctor is going to be following-up with you on an on-going basis. Your family doctor is going to be getting feedback on their treatments. They’re going to see the results of their treatments firsthand and learn from them. They’ll know what works and what doesn’t. It’s not necessarily that one is better than the other (although it may be case), it’s that one has the chance to see the results of their actions, and learn from them, while the other doesn’t.
Feedback is the key! Without feedback how can you learn anything? How can you know if something really works if you never get to see the results of your actions? Feedback is the key ingredient in learning!
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8 Types of Headlines that Compel Your Readers to Action
Note: This post is mainly an exert from my ebook How to Generate Traffic for Your Website:
A headline has 5-7 seconds to get the attention of a reader. Not only that, but statistics show that only 2 out of 10 readers will read past your headline. That means if you’re going to hook your reader, you need to do it right away.
To give you a more concrete example of just how powerful a headline can be, John Wesley submitted an article to several social networking sites, including Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. The headline read “The Two Types of Cognition”. With this headline the article generated about 100 visitors. Nothing spectacular. However a couple days later, and after some work rewriting his headline, John resubmitted it with a new headline. With the new headline it got about 5000 visitors. A very significant difference, 50 times more visitors. What was the difference? Only the headline. The article was exactly the same. The headline went from “The Two Types of Cognition” to “Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence“. You can find the details of his case study here.
Headlines can and do have a significant impact. It might only be one line, but it can easily make or break your articles success.
In addition to grabbing the person’s attention, the headline must offer some value to the reader in exchange for them taking the time to read your content (article, press release, etc.). According to the legendary copywriter Robert Bly, there are eight categories of headlines that compel readers to take action and read your article. They are:
- Direct Headline: These are straight forward headlines that state exactly what they want, they make no attempt whatsoever to be clever. An example is “LandlordMax – 30% off today only”
- Indirect Headline: These headlines are subtle, what could be considered as link bait. They usually try to generate curiosity by the reader, or offer a double meaning in their headlines. In others words the classic link bait approach.
- News Headline: This is a direct news announcement. For example “LandlordMax releases version 6.05″.
- How to Headline: This is exactly as you would expect, it’s a headline that offers you an article on how to do something. For example how to fix a broken faucet.
- Question Headline: This category of headlines ask a question that the reader can relate to, that they can empathize with, something they would like answered. A classic example is “Who else wants to make a million dollars in the stock market?”
- Command Headline: This headline states what the reader of the article needs to do. For this headline to work the first word needs to be a strong and commanding word. For example “Buy this EBook now!”
- Reason Why Headline: This is basically a list of why something is good or bad. For example “3 ways to be more productive with your time”.
- Testimonial Headline: In this case the headline is a customer testimonial. This is done to offer outside proof, otherwise known as social validation. You’re validating through social proof that your article (or product) is great and worth the readers time. After all it’s not just you who says so, someone else is saying it too.
For further reading on headlines I recommend any book by Robert Bly. As well the book Advertising Headlines that Make You Rich contains a list of good and usable headlines (with a short explanation on how to use each headline). And don’t forget to check out Brian Clark’s blog CopyBlogger.com, he’s got a lot of amazing articles on how to write headlines. Good luck and good writing!
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LandlordMax Major Release Coming This Week!
This is one of those posts I’m not sure how to approach, especially being this tired when I’m writing it. You see I was fully expecting to release the latest major release of LandlordMax tonight, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Although we don’t have official release dates, we’ve slowly and quietly being letting people know that a release was coming, most likely over the weekend. Again, unfortunately, it’s not going to happen.
The good news is that the new version of LandlordMax is ready to go. It’s actually been ready for almost a full week now. The only thing holding us back is the website, it’s not entirely ready. We’re still working on the release notes, and the user manual definitely needs more work. At the very least I don’t want to release the latest version without a strong News and Newsworthy page like the last release. Although I really hate it, I can accept it if the user manual is trailing behind by a bit. It’s not the end of the world. But we absolutely need a page showcasing the latest features, otherwise it could potentially be confusing to our users. I’d rather give them a good heads up of what’s new, and how some of the new features may affect them (for example a new feature called Advance Notices will have an impact on their existing Scheduled Entries).
That being said, instead of pushing through tonight to the wee hours of the morning, I believe we need a rest (plus we have a key person downtrodden with a bad cold – not me – fingers crossed). I myself have only slept a few hours for the last 4-5 nights, so I’m pretty exhausted. I’m actually hoping this post makes sense when I read it later after I’ve had some rest.
So what I’m going to do instead is take a small breather, and let everyone get some rest before we go live with the new version. We need it! But more importantly, I think it’s important that we avoid making any mistakes releasing a new version of the software. And the best time to make mistakes is when you’re overtired. It’s also the time when people have a tendency to push stuff through that’s of lower quality just to get it over with. That’s not a position I want to be in. I believe the wait will be worth it. I want to avoid making any stupid mistakes. And a few days is not going to hurt anyone. It’s worth the cost.
Although I really don’t like to promise an official release date, I suspect we’ll be releasing mid-week this week.
Thank you for your patience and I look forward to posting when LandlordMax is released!!
PS: Please note that you don’t have to wait for the new version to come out to buy LandlordMax, as part of your license you’re entitled to all releases that come out for up to a year. This includes major upgrades!
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How to Publish Your Own Book – Part 1
Should you decide you want to author and publish your own book like I did (Blog Blazers), there are basically three main paths you can take. Each has it’s own benefits and risks, and each is quite different. There are actually a few more alternatives to this, but you can pretty much fit them into these options if you try hard enough. They are:
- Ebook only
- Print-on-Demand (POD)
- Self publish
- Publish through a publishing company
I’ve personally had experience with 3 of them: Blog Blazers which was initially POD but ended up being self published, and How to Generate Traffic to Your Website which is an ebook only book. The only reason I have tried publishing through a publishing company is that I haven’t been interested enough in this option yet. But who knows, that might change if the opportunity is right.
In any case, over the next while I plan to write several posts explaining the ins and outs of each publishing option, maybe even have one Questions & Answers session, and finish off with one final post with my recommendations of which publication method to use in which situation (along with some links to further information and resources). Should be a lot of fun and hopefully you’ll learn a lot along the way.
And if you don’t want to miss anything, please feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter or RSS feed. This will guarantee that you’ll get each post directly rather than having to come back each day.
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Who Should Make the Decision?
Is it the person in charge that should make the final decision? Sometimes, but not always. It should be the person who’s most knowledgeable with the information on which the decision will be based.
Let me give you an example. In the tv show 24, this season the president of the United States was taken hostage in the White House by a small team of armed men. Yes it’s quite a story, but let’s ignore that for now. What was interesting is that the decision on whether or not to storm the White House and retake control was not decided by the agents that were following the case the whole time, those that knew who the terrorists were and had studied their histories, those that really understood their motivations and intentions.
Instead the decision was taken by the Vice President. He didn’t even know what was going on, he was just quickly appraised of the situation, well as much as they could within minutes, and he had to make a decision on whether or not to storm the White House. There’s no way this person could make the right decision unless it was pure luck. There’s was just too much history and information needed to full appreciate and understand the situation. Plus, he had additional motives (such as protecting himself) which came into play. In this case the wrong person to make the decision was the person in charge.
Of course this is only a tv show, but it happens all too often. Especially in software development. I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen developers struggle and fight through a hard problem only to come to a fork in the road. They then have to go to the team lead / manager (or whoever is in charge, which is sometimes someone who’s not at all technical) and have to explain the issue. Now if it’s a good lead, they will listen to the developer and pretty much let them lead the decision, after all they’ve been in the thick of it while the leader only superficially knows and understands the issues. It makes sense and is the smart thing to do.
However many times the opposite happens. The suggestion is completely ignored and the developer is told to just make it happen (even when they strongly disagree and push against it). My favorite is “I understand you might not think this is a good idea, but just do it anyways.” The reality is that someone working on a problem for hours or days can’t really express the full issue in minutes. It’s just not possible, so what you get are the highlights, the glance over. If you really want to make the decision, than dig into it, spend some time to really appreciate what’s going on. Expect to spend some hours, maybe even days to fully understand what’s going on. Especially if the decision has large implications for the future.
The reality though is that sometimes the developer is not perfect either, they might not appreciate everything else that’s going on. Maybe there’s political factors. Maybe there’s monetary factors. Maybe some timelines with the marketing team that need to be met, etc. If you can (I understand that sometimes it’s not possible), than share with your developers other factors that will affect the decision. Help them rather than just make the decision outright based on only one factor. In other words, don’t just pick option A because it will allow you to meet your deadline while option B won’t because it might come back to bite you very hard. If the developer is pushing option B so adamantly, figure out why. And only then make your decision. Don’t just base it on one factor that you know, understand the full problem. Work together to come to a decision.
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Tune into Click for Clients Radio Tomorrow at 4pm
Tomorrow I will be interviewed on the hour long show of Click for Clients radio hosted by Jon Ward and Andy Renk as seen in their announcement video above. The interview will be mainly about my book Blog Blazers and ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website and how you can blog successfully.
So don’t forget to tune in tomorrow at 4pm EST.
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The Anatomy of a Press Release
This post is an exert from my ebook How to Generate Traffic for Your Website:
Writing a press release is almost the same as writing good content, therefore pretty much everything that applies to writing good content applies to writing good press releases. Your headlines need to catch your reader’s attention immediately, the active voice is strongly recommended, and you need to provide unique and interesting information. An interesting angle (a different perspective) is always a very good thing to have with your press release.
The main difference with writing an article for your website and a press release is that a press release is more restrictive. Press releases have a structure to them that you really should adhere to, to get you the best results. In some circumstances if you don’t adhere to the generally accepted format your press release won’t be accepted at all by the wire service.
** Please note that there are some variations to press release formats, but the one I will describe is the most common.
Headline: Every press release needs a headline. It’s very crucial to the success of your press release. The headline needs to be precise, convey what the press release is about, and possibly create anticipation for the article above the other aspects of what makes a great headline.
Teaser: Your first paragraph (also known as your sub-lead – which might sometimes appear with the headline in a different text format than the rest of your article) is a teaser that reveals something exciting without going into the details, it’s the hook
Second Paragraph: The second paragraph explains why the news in your first paragraph is important and why it’s beneficial to the reader
Third paragraph: The third paragraph should include quotes from powerful industry leaders, well known experts, etc. You need to validate your second paragraph (where you stated your news). If you’re not using quotes, then explain how you came to your conclusion. Just remember to keep it short, it’s only a paragraph.
Fourth paragraph: The fourth paragraph is the wrap up. It’s where you close off your article.
Contact Info: This is where you give out your contact information so that the general media can contact you. Just make sure that you can be reached through your contact information the day your press release goes out.
Above this, there are some differing options by the different services as to what you can include, such as how and where you can place pictures, graphs, etc.
Having described the anatomy of a press release, let’s look at a concrete example. The following is a press release I wrote and published a while back in June 2005. In terms of reach, it was read 161,125 times on PRWeb (the service I used to distribute this particular press release). This number is includes only the times it was read on PRWeb directly, not how many times it was read from all the sites that re-published it. In any case, it’s a good example of a successful press release.
How Interest Rates Can Drastically Affect Real Estate Prices
Interest rates can drastically affect real estate prices and the profits you make on your real estate properties, probably more than most people realize. An increase of interest rates of 5% to a more normal historical average of 8% can signify a 27% drop in housing prices to maintain a $1000 monthly mortgage payment!
Many people believe that what has driven the real estate market to today’s high prices is the investment value of properties, just like stocks in the dot com boom. However, if you ask the average person what started the boom, as in what exactly is the “investment value” most people won’t be able to answer you. Put fairly simple, housing got affordable quickly because interest rates dropped substantially and rapidly, to their lowest in decades. Although this is not the only variable, the reality is that for each 1% interest rates dropped, a person could afford a lot more mortgage with the same monthly payments, especially when the interest rates are on the lower side of the spectrum. This has fueled the real estate market boom. However as the flames burned high, the market has taken a fire all of its own as speculation too hold.
Looking at an example, a mortgage payment of $1000/month at an interest rate of 5% amortized over 30 years will allow you to pay a mortgage principal of $186,281.62. If you increase the interest rate by 1% to 6% and you want to maintain the same monthly payment of $1000, then you cannot sustain a mortgage of more than $166,791.61. This makes the mortgage amount you can afford 10.97% less than before. Take a higher interest rate, a more historically average interest rate of around 8%, now you can only afford a mortgage of $136,283.49, a significant drop of 26.8%!
We can graph the mortgage affordability based on interest rates alone. As you can see, the mortgage affordability is affected much more significantly at first. This is unfortunate for all those people that have been buying up real estate without really doing the research or working their numbers, or that are on the edge financially. They will most likely get squeezed out of the market and cause over zealous fire sales, much like the dot com boom and bust of 2000.
Headline: As you’ll quickly notice the headline draws attention. It has a power word (drastically). It creates a sense of emotion (this was written in 2005, so the real estate bubble hadn’t yet exploded – it was actually in full mania).
Teaser: In the teaser you’ll notice I state that interest rates will drastically affect real estate prices, and more importantly the profit YOU will make on YOUR real estate properties. Then I give a quick and concrete example with some numbers (no calculations or explanations are included yet) showing just how large an impact it can have on you. I imply a LARGE 27% drop in prices. Again, notice I state my claim without any explanations as to how I got to those numbers. The idea is to provide just enough information to entice the reader to read further.
Second Paragraph: This is where I make my real statement. This is where I explain my article, why it’s interesting, what it’s about, how I got to this conclusion, and most importantly why it’s important to YOU.
Third Paragraph: This is where I give credibility and validation to my initial statement. Normally I would use a quote (this is probably the only press release where I didn’t include a quote) from some high profile person (don’t forget this can also include you if you’re the founder of a company or a high profile person). In this particular press release I validated the second paragraph by explaining how I came to my conclusions. I give a concrete example of my conclusion with numbers, to show that I just didn’t make them up from thin air.
Fourth paragraph: Here I wrap up the article and add a parting thought, a word of warning for the reader to leave with.
Tip: Not all press releases need to be directly about you, your company, your product/service, or your website. Sometimes creating press releases with very interesting news information, such as the example I just showed, can result in significant indirect traffic. In this article the key to driving the traffic was the contact information.
My goal was not to directly promote me or my company, but to create authority in the real estate field. I was trying to get attention from real estate investors and indirectly create traffic and sales for my company LandlordMax (as well as this blog). And at the same time, if the article is related to your keyword as this one was, it can increase your search engine ranking through all the links you’ll get (from re-publications).
You can also increase the odds of getting traffic to your website by embedding a link to your company’s website, blog, etc. with the quote, but it’s not always recommended (if you don’t do it right it can come across as “spammy”).
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LandlordMax 5 Year Anniversary!
Actually it’s a belated anniversary, it was last month but I was just too busy trying to get the book to the printers, combined with everything else, to post about it. So here it is. LandlordMax was officially incorporated 5 years ago! The company was of course around before that, but it was just me working on the first version. Seems like only yesterday…
Which leads me to think, it’s time for an update on everything that’s been going on around here. The last update on LandlordMax, and everything I’m working on, was on June 8th. Wow, has it already been 4 months???
Well I can tell you it’s probably been the 4 busiest months in since I started LandlordMax! It’s been so busy that over the last 4 weeks I’ve only posted once on this blog where I usually post 1-3 times a week. So without any further ado, here an update on everything:
Blog Blazers
As many of you know, I’m in the process of publishing a book called Blog Blazers. Well the book is finally off to the printers. I’m sure like all other books, it was quite a dash to the finish line. The book is now officially scheduled to be available for November 1st. Which is why the last few weeks have been a whirlwind! If I hadn’t gotten it to the printers before now there’s no way it would be available on time.
For those who’ve been following my story of publishing the book, the cost is already over $15,000. Above this you can add the costs of printing (which is dependent on the number of copies), followed by all the marketing and promotional costs. Which means the original $15,000 will in all likelihood be quickly eclipsed as my marketing efforts starts to ramp up.
I’ve already hired a PR agent to get us in the media (he did very well in getting LandlordMax in the papers – we had appearances in at least 6 major newspapers). I’ve also hired another PR consultant who’s going to be working with me on a part time basis. She’s already started 2 weeks ago, so that ball is already rolling. And that’s just the beginning, I haven’t even started talking about my efforts. But have no fears, I’ll share more of my promotional experiences as I go through them. I already have a few big posts planned.
Above all this, I’ve also had to get the website up and running to get credit card approval for the company (the book will be managed by Levac Publishing House). Yes I could’ve gone the PayPal, e-junkie, etc. route, but I chose to go the professional route. After all, we’re already all setup for LandlordMax so I can leverage a lot of this effort. Plus it looks a lot more professional. And based on the volumes of sales I expect, it makes sense.
In any case, the website is already designed and we’re in the process of properly completing it right now (it’s currently faked with images for those of you who’ve already checked it out). The good news is that a lot of the work behind the scenes is completed. Other than the actual implementation, we’re already well into the process of getting approval from our credit card processing company, which takes at least a few weeks assuming we pass all the checks (SSL certs, proven shopping cart system, privacy policies, security validaton, etc.).
Please note that the book isn’t just going to be available on the website, it’s going to be available on Amazon and so on. So that work is already in progress above all this. And technically I could have limited purchases of the book through bookstores, but I prefer to give people the option of buying directly from us. Actually, to be honest, I’ve really been thinking about creating an optional bundled deal with my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website exclusive to the Blog Blazer website. But I’m still in the air on that one. So we’ll see what happens.
As well, the book Blog Blazers will be available in both softcover and ebook formats (it will no longer be available in hardcover). In the ebook version, all the URL’s will be linked. So for some people it might be advantageous to buy both the softcover and ebook. I often myself buy both books and ebooks as I like the tangible book for reading and the ebook for referencing and searching – especially if the ebook is bundled with printed book. I also now understand why they charge a few more dollars for the bundle, it does costs something to manufacture the ebook, and to sell it. But it’s not much, so I suspect the bundle will be something like an additional $5 or so. I’m still working on the ebook pricing. By the way, the book will be priced at $16.95 USD.
And before I move on, if you have a blog that gets respectable traffic and you’re interested in reviewing my book Blog Blazers, please feel free to give me a holler.
LandlordMax
An amazing amount of work has been going on with LandlordMax. We’re moving forward with the new major upcoming release. Generally I don’t like to publish the upcoming features, but today I’m going to share some insider knowledge. There’s some benefits and liberties to being the founder of a company.
We’re planning to integrate email within LandlordMax, as well as offer support for Outlook (so that you can import and export certain data such as your contacts).
Another major feature is the ability to generate graphs and charts for the relevant reports as you can see in the screenshot below:
Please note that these graphs will appear in the generated and formatted PDF’s. So now not only will you have all your data, but you’ll also be able to quickly analyze the results of your reports!
Something else some of you might have noticed in the above screenshot, there’s two new workareas. The hint is the two new buttons on the left side of the screen. These are the “Contacts” and “Synchronize” buttons. Contacts is a place to store additional contacts that don’t really fit under tenants, landlords, vendors, etc. And Synchronize, well this is part of the work being done to support Outlook right now.
If you can make it out, there’s a new third button on the right side of the screen. Although it just says “Print” (there’s two Print buttons), it should really say “Email” (we’re using print as a placeholder). This is where we anticipating putting one of the new “Email” buttons. You’ll be able to quickly click on this button to email the generated report right from this screen. You’ll no longer need to export the report to then email it. You’ll be able to do it all in one fall swoop!
Of course it doesn’t end there, we’ve added several new features, like the ability to associate the accounting entry to an “Account” (generally a bank account but it can be more open ended). And it’s not all new features, we’re also working on enhancing the current usability of the software. As much as I’d like to just add new features, I also strongly believe we should look at what we already have and enhance it even further. So lots of work is going on in this respect too.
I also promised in June that I would post an update on our sales revenues, so here is the monthly sales revenues graph, followed by the 12-month trailing average graph:
What’s really exciting for us is that as the real estate market is collapsing our sales keep increasing!!! It just goes to show that as the market gets tight, people really start to look for value in their purchase choices. And I like to think of us as the Honda or Toyota of cars. We’re not necessarily the luxury model, but we sure do offer an incredible value in terms of bang for the buck. Just wait until we have our networked/browser based version available!
How to Generate Traffic to Your Website
Above the book Blog Blazers and LandlordMax, I’ve also written an ebook earlier this year called How to Generate Traffic for Your Website which has been very well received by the online community (you can read some of the very positive reviews here).
The biggest news about this ebook is that it’s continuing to sell very well. Actually in August I ran a test to see how well the book would sell at $14.95 versus the original $28.95. It turns out this was a good decision. So I’ve decided to keep it at $14.95.
As I’ve also alluded to earlier, I’ve been thinking of offering a special bundle deal with my upcoming book Blog Blazers exclusive to the website. So that might happen next month, we’ll see. If it does, it most likely means that the sales page for the ebook needs some serious updating to related it to the Blog Blazers book. So there might be some effort going on here as well. We’ll see…
FollowSteph
What can I say, traffic is exploding! I’ve been at it for over 3 years now with over 300 posts. I’m still going strong.
The biggest news here, other than the fact that it’s continually growing, is that I’d like to re-skin/theme this blog. Upgrade it’s look and feel to circa 2008. I’d like to do that before my book is released, but again, we’ll see. There’s only so many hours in the day, even with help. Someone still has to find, manage, and coordinate all the efforts.
GTA Stud
You would think I already have my hands full, and I do, but somehow I’ve managed to start yet another project. I’ve launched a new website called GTA Stud. This project was conceived and launched only a couple of months ago, but it’s already starting to get very good traffic with all things considered. We’re getting about 1,500 unique visitors a month, and we haven’t even begun to promote the website! Just this mention is my first promotion.
The website consists of everything GTA (Grand Theft Auto) related. The website is pretty much a blog, where one day we have an article on something related to GTA, be it a tip, trick, a how-to, a secret, basically something interesting about the game, followed by a gameplay video on the next day. So far we’ve been mainly finding the most “redonculous” videos on YouTube, but we soon hope to publish our own YouTube videos which will include full tutorials and mission walk-throughs. I’m pretty excited about that since no one’s publishing walk-throughs or tutorials that I know of.
The quick story behind the project is that I’m the silent partner under the scenes. I’ve basically hired someone to write all the content, find all the gameplay videos, as well as create all the tutorials and walk-throughs videos. My part, other than financing the project, is to promote the website. And unfortunately because of everything else going on, I haven’t really had the time to do anything. Which is why it’s great that we’re already getting 1,500 unique visitors a month within a little over a month! Imagine when we start promoting it.
The other reason I’ve been holding back is that we don’t really have a design for the website. For example, even the GTAStud logo is pretty weak. The good news is it’s being worked on right now and hopefully we’ll have something later this week. So things are moving quite fast with this project.
Misc.
I have a few other projects going on, but most of them have been sidelined for now. These include FindYourWeddingDress.com and WhichJar.com. To be honest, although WhichJar.com is generating some traffic I don’t know that I’ll ever get back to this project. It’s not that it’s not successful, it’s that I just don’t have time. I thought about hiring out, but I can’t commit myself to even managing that project. I’m over extended. So if anyone is interested in buying the website (including the domain/code/database/etc.) please give me a holler. There’s about 200 jars already loaded. The key isn’t getting the traffic, it’s adding the data to the database. The good news is that it’s pretty automated, all you need to do is submit jars (with additional fields) to a submission form and it will do all the rest for you (all username/password protected of course).
For FindYourWeddingDress.com, I’m now at a stage were I need to hire someone to help me out. Mostly because I just don’t have the time. Plus most of the work can be easily outsourced. The problem is that I don’t have time to find someone, nor manage them. So it’s going to be put on hold until I can find the time.
Conclusion
So that’s it. That’s what I’ve, well I should say, we’ve been up to. Hopefully now that the book is going to print I’ll have a few minutes to breathe. Yeah, not likely. The marketing campaign is really ramping up! Plus the website needs to actually be built, not just faked. And I want to get the new release of LandlordMax out as soon as possible. So there’s lot of work there. Actually, there’s lots of work everywhere! The good news for you though is that I’m back to posting more regularly. Hopefully I can get back to my 1-3 times a week within the next few days.
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