EBook is ready!
What an insanely busy week! But the good news is that the EBook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website: How to let people know you exist and get them to come to your website! I promised is finally now available for purchase.
The Table of Content for the book is:
Section 1: Time Based Traffic Generation Techniques
- Chapter 1 – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Chapter 2 – Content
- Chapter 3 – Freebies
- Chapter 4 – Blogging
- Chapter 5 – Socialize
- Chapter 6 – Social Network Sites
- Chapter 7 – Web Directories
- Chapter 8 – Miscellaneous
Section 2: Money Based Traffic Generation Techniques
- Chapter 9 – Google AdWords
- Chapter 10: Press Releases
- Chapter 11: Domain Acquisitions
Although the dedicated purchase page won’t be ready until tomorrow, for those of you who can’t wait, you can already start buying it here right now for $28.95. It’s less than the price of a dinner at the restaurant, and you’ll get a lot more out of it!
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EBook Update
Last week I mentioned I would have an EBook entitled How to Generate Traffic to Your Website: How to let people know you exist and get them to come to your website! ready for Monday this week. Well Monday has come and gone. I’ve decided to postpone it’s release until Monday next week (March 10, 2008). As I’ve always said in the past I’d rather release something of higher quality and value than to push it out to meet a date, even if I publicly stated it.
A preconception I’d also like to discount here is that EBooks are pure profit machines. Far from it. The work that involved in creating a good EBook is substantial. For my upcoming book Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog? which will be published in the traditional sense (both as a softcover and hardcover through bookstores like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, etc.) I calculate I easily put in over 500 hours. For this EBook I calculate the total will be about 350+ hours. Assuming a 40 hour work-week, that’s about 2 months of full-time effort!
As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of the work was already done before I decided to finish and polish it a week or so ago. But 2 months worth of full-time work is not cost free. Just looking at the opportunity cost I’ve already invested a significant amount of money. As well each transaction is not free, there is a processing fee. It might be small, but let’s not forget it (There are other costs such as support, but we’ll ignore these as they’re harder to pre-calculate).
What I’m trying to get at is that the author of an EBook has the same risks as a software company. All the risk is front-loaded. That is all the time and money upfront has to be invested before any revenue is generated. That’s a lot of risk. Assuming a round rate of $100/hour, at 350 hours that’s $35,000 invested in the book ($100/hour is not my rate, it’s just a simple number to work with). Adding another 5% for transaction fees, that’s another $1750. That means that to balance out with a consulting gig I would need to generate $36,750! Only once I’ve achieved this revenue do I start to make any profit in comparison to straight consulting. If I don’t achieve it, I’ve lost money!
In other words:
- At $20/EBook I need to sell 1835 books
- At $25/EBook I need to sell 1470 books
- At $30/EBook I need to sell 1217 books
That’s a lot of Ebooks. If I want to break even selling 1000 EBooks I need to price it $36.50. If I sell less than $36,750 worth of the EBook than I’ve lost money!
EBooks are sold differently than traditional books, so the numbers are different. As an author of a traditionally published book you need to sell more copies to break even with your time, but I believe it’s easier. Firstly you’re not the only one selling your book, other reputable bookstores are listing your book (people search Amazon for example). Another disadvantage of EBooks is that have a shorter lifespan. For example the materials in this book may not be as relevant in a couple of years, so I need to make my revenues sooner than later.
Another large benefit with traditionally printed books is that they can easily be used to increase your reputation, credibility, etc. People generally put more worth into traditional books than they do EBooks, even though there are some very amazing EBooks!
Therefore the idea that EBooks are profit machines is simply not true. At least for high quality EBooks. Sure I could have just slapped together some text taken from here and there and made an EBook in a few days. Added some pictures and pretty graphs. But that’s not a high quality EBook. Such an EBooks revenues will be limited purely by my selling abilities. Instead I’d rather my EBook sell itself. There’s nothing as powerful as word of mouth marketing!
In any case, all this is to say my upcoming EBook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website: How to let people know you exist and get them to come to your website! release date has been postponed from this week to next week (March 10, 2008).
If you’re interested, come back on Monday to see if the book is available. And you can also subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t have to remember to come back, that or you can also subscribe to my email newsletter which will send updates to your email box directly.
See you next week!
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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website
Since I finished my book Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog? (it’s been sent to my publisher and is now going through an editing phase) I’ve been reconsidering finishing my previous book about online sales and marketing. What really brought this thought forward was buying and reading Bob Walsh’s ebook MicroISV Sites that Sell! It convinced me that I needed to finish it sooner than later.
Unlike Interview the Pros, which is going to be available on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, etc., this second book will only be available as an ebook here. I chose to go the ebook route because of the time and costs it takes to get something to print. The material in this ebook is much more time sensitive and therefore I felt it wasn’t valuable to wait until it could be available in print. I did try to keep the content as timeless as possible but some of the information will become less pertinent quicker than a traditional book can afford. That’s the nature of the internet and online traffic generation.
The ebook will be titled “How to Generate Traffic to Your Website: How to let people know you exist and get them to come to your website!” Instead of focusing on the many aspects of marketing and sales as I originally planned, I decided the book would be more beneficial to you if I narrowed the focus to only how to generate traffic to your website.
The book should be ready by the end of this to early next week because I had already written a large portion of it before I wrote Interview the Pros and because it covers a lot of the same material I presented at a 4-day seminar on how to generate traffic for a website. It won’t be as encompassing as Interview the Pros, but it’s definitely loaded with valuable information. It’s got almost everything I’ve used to get this blog and my company LandlordMax to where they are today (a combined traffic of more than one million unique visitors a year).
If you’re interested, come back very soon to see if the book is already available. Like I said it should be available later this week to early next week if all goes well. And 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. As well you can subscribe to my email newsletter which will send each of the blog entries I publish to your email box directly.
See you in a few days!
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What do You Bring to a Meeting?
The following is an interesting observation I came across when reading Raymond Chen’s The Old New Thing: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Window
If you find yourself in a meeting with a mix of managers and programmers, here’s one way to tell the difference between them: Look at what they brought to the meeting.
Did they bring a laptop computer? Score bonus points if the laptop computer is actually turned on during the meeting or if the laptop is special in some way. If so, that person is probably a manager.
Did they come to the meeting empty-handed or with a spiral-bound notebook? If so, that person is probably a programmer.
It’s not an infallible test, but it works with surprisingly high accuracy.
After thinking about it for a bit, I absolutely agree. This observation is very accurate, I’ve seen it over and over with my own eyes.
Raymond goes on to give one more tip on how to tell if the presenter is a technical person or a manager based on their Power Point presentation. Can you guess what it is?
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LandlordMax Breaks Sales Record
Every once in a while I share some of our sales metrics, and this month I’m excited to say has been great. We had some clear successes:
- We beat our previous monthly sales record by a full 25.2% (in one month!)
- Unique visitors for the month is up by another 10% (another new monthly record)
- Downloads of LandlordMax trials were up 40%. This is a very significant increase. And since most sales usual come when the 30 day free trial is about to expire, next month should be very interesting…
- We got a great video review of LandlordMax on theREIbrain.com.
- The feedburner stats on this blog clearly increased more than usual (about 20% more than usual)
- This blog had more unique visitors this month than any other month
And a few other successes that aren’t as publicly interesting.
In any case, as a general philosophy I believe it’s a good thing to share your successes AND failures. I’ve shared both of them here on this blog many times. Today I’m proud to share our most recent successes.
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The Art of Profitability
I have to admit that when I first picked up The Art of Profitability I wasn’t expecting to be as good as it turned out to be. It was good. The only negative I can say is that I didn’t like the overly descriptive and colorful story telling, it was a little too much for me. But the content by far more than makes up for it.
This book is all about the different profit models, not on how to maximize your existing profit model. It CLEARLY explains the difference between the many different profit models. And not only does it explain but it also gives many examples of each profit model.
One aspect of the book I really appreciated was the effort the author went through to create “assignments” for the student Steve in the book. Having had already read several of the “assignments” beforehand (books the student had to read), I found they were very appropriate. And the ones I didn’t I’ll probably pick up.
Overall a good book which I recommend. Even if you’ve already defined your profit model for your business, you might be in for a surprise. If I rate this book on the revenues it will make for me compared to it’s cost and time to read, I’m way ahead.
Therefore I recommend the book The Art of Profitability.
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What's the Secret? How Do You Have Time To Do All That?
A very common, and I mean very common question I get is where do I find all the time to do everything I do. How am I able to run my company LandlordMax, write for this blog, write a book, and so on. Honestly I have just as much time as everyone else, I just choose to prioritize my time differently. I’m a big fan of Paul Graham’s, especially the following quote from his article How to Start a Startup which I use very often when talking to people:
“My final test may be the most restrictive. Do you actually want to start a startup? What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. Instead of working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four. And maybe end up with nothing– though in that case it probably won’t take four years.”
So what’s my secret to be able to do all the things I do in a normal day? It’s simple. Prioritization. What does that mean? I decide to use my time right now differently than most people.
Let’s take an example. Let’s assume you’re a sports fan and you want to watch every game of your favorite team. Or maybe you watch a daily TV soap opera. Maybe you just watch an hour of TV every day. Whatever the case the numbers are about the same so let’s use the sports example since it’s the easiest to calculate.
For our example let’s say you watch hockey. Your favorite team will play at least 80 games a year for about 3 hours each game. It’s probably a little less, but we didn’t include all the games or the playoffs (and the season is a little more than 80 games anyways). If we do the math we get:
- 80 games * 3 hours = 240 hours
Breaking it down further:
- 240 hours / 8 hours a day = 30 days
Breaking that even further:
- 30 days / 5 days a week = 6 full time weeks (or 1.5 months full time).
By just eliminating one activity I’ve added one and a half months of full-time time. Wow! What can you do in one and a half months full-time? I suspect a lot!
Do you have to completely eliminate this activity? No. Almost anything you take to that extreme will generally not work. You’ll probably experience some binging if you do that. Rather I recommend you do it in moderation. I still watch the occasional game. Maybe once a month. But by only watching the occasional game, I’m still at least a full-time month ahead of many of my peers who watch all the games (or tv every night, etc.). And I can tell you there are many, I personally know of over a dozen people who watch at least 2-3 sports games a week. That adds up, and it adds up quickly. Quicker than you think.
So the next time you decide to sit down and watch TV you should conscientiously decide that it’s what you want to do. Don’t just plop down on your couch because it’s the easiest thing to do, conscientiously decide that it’s what you want to do. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as you actively decided it’s the best use of your time. We all need down time after all. But if you continue to consistently choose the easiest path, then please don’t ask me how I manage to find all this time to do the things I do. You can to, there’s no secret. You just need to choose to.
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Blogging Book Interview Update
As many of you already know I’m in the process of compiling a book of interviews with many of the most prominent bloggers. The idea of the book is to ask every blogger I interviewed similar questions to find out what’s common, what’s different, what works, basically what it takes to be a successful blogger.
At this stage I’ve completed all the interviews and I can tell you that the answers are amazing. I’ve been successfully blogging myself for over two years now and I still learned a lot! Thank you everyone for taking the time to participate in this project and giving such great responses and advice.
The book will be sent off for editing by the end of this month.
I also initially posted a list of bloggers who had agreed to participate. This list has changed somewhat since then. A few people weren’t able to complete their interviews for different reasons, which is expected when you interview so many outstanding people. I was very honored they accepted in the first place, but I can also appreciate their busy schedules. Therefore you’ll find a few new names on the list which is very thrilling.I’m very happy and proud to announce the official list of bloggers who will be part of the book (in alphabetical order of their first names):
- Aaron Wall from SEO Book
- Ades Tynyshev from Ades Blog
- Al Carlton from Coolest-Gadgets.com
- Alex Papadimoulis of Worse Than Failure
- Andy Brice of Success Software
- Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends
- Asha Dornfest from Parent Hacks
- Ben Casnocha
- Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog
- Bob Walsh author of several blogs books including Clear Blogging
- Dan Lyons from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
- Dane Carlson from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog
- David Armano from Logic+Emotion
- David Seah
- Derek Semmler
- Dharmesh Shah from On Startups
- Eric Sink
- Ian Landsman of Userscape
- James and Alex Turnbull from Google Sightseeing
- JD from Get Rich Slowly
- Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror
- Jeff Clavier from Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
- Jennette Fulda from Half of Me
- Jenny from 101 Reasons I Hate Being Fat!
- Jessamyn West of Librarian.net
- Joel Cheesman from Cheezhead
- Jonathan Snook
- Manolo from Manolo’s Shoe Blog
- Neil Patel from Quick Sprout
- Pamela Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation
- Patrick McKenzie from Micro ISV on a Shoestring
- Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist
- Ramit Sethi from I will Teach You to be Rich
- Rob Walling from Software By Rob
- Rohit Bhargava from Influential Marketing Blog
- Seth Godin
- Stephane Grenier of Follow Steph (me)
- Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion
- Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar
- Yaro Starak from Entrepreneur’s Journey
Quite an exciting list! Several people listed here have over a million unique visitors per month on their blogs! Most have hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month. All are of course very successful bloggers!
As soon as the book comes back from editing, I’ll post an update and let you all know when it will be available to buy from Amazon. I’m sure you’re as excited as me to see it in print!
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Why do Some Projects Continue to Push Unrealistic Software Development Schedules?
To quote one of my favorite software development books Rapid Development:
Some people seem to think that software projects should be scheduled optimistically because software development should be more an adventure than a dreary engineering exercise. These people say that schedule pressure adds excitement.
How much sense does that make? If you were going on a real adventure, say a trip to the south pole by dogsled, would you let someone talk you into planning for it to take only 30 days when your best estimate was that it would take 60? Would you carry only 30 days’ worth of food? Only 30 days’ worth of fuel? Would you plan for your sled dogs to be worn out at the end of 30 days rather than 60? Doing any of those things would be self-destructive, and underscoping and underplanning a software project is similarly self-destructive, albeit usually without any life-treatening consequences.
This analogy is all too accurate. You cannot wish for certain things to happen. Unfortunately reality is what it is.
One little tidbit that did catch my attention however, which I’m sure many people easily overlooked, is that if you really push a schedule beyonds reality is that you might not be able to re-adjust it later. For example if you push everyone to the extreme for 30 days they might not have any energy left at the end for another 30 days, or even more as is often the case. They will be “worn out”!
It’s virtually the same as asking someone to run a 100 meter sprint and then continually moving back the finish line as they’re just about done. It might work for a 200 meters, if you’re lucky maybe even 400 meters… But once you reach a certain threshold it will have very significant negative impacts. There’s a reason why people who run the 400 meters don’t sprint the 400 meters.
Ever try to sprint a mile? What about a marathon?
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Why Coupon Codes are Bad on Websites
Have you ever gone to a website to buy something and noticed a “coupon code” field on the purchase/checkout page?
This week I purchased a few domains from GoDaddy.com for my company LandlordMax and as I was proceeded through the checkout process I was presented with a “Coupon Code” field. Being familiar with this my first instinct was that I needed to find a coupon code online. If the field exists there must be an available coupon code.
So I went straight to search on Google for GoDaddy.com coupon codes without completing my purchase. Remember at this point I’d already decided to purchase the domains from GoDaddy, all I’m trying to do now is pay less. Why shouldn’t I? Everything in the checkout process is telling me that I can get this very same product/service for less.
Within seconds I find several GoDaddy discount coupon codes online. So I start trying them. The first one fails. Ok, let’s try this next one. Nothing. Invalid. Another. Nope. And so it goes on for a few more minutes. I’m now starting to get frustrated. I’ve already tried a dozen coupon codes that don’t work, so there’s definitely a lot of them out there. I’ve got to be getting close to finding the “good one”. So I continue looking.
I know that if I keep looking I’ll eventually find a valid coupon code and save myself some money. But I’m also tired of doing this and I’m starting to get a little frustrated. Why couldn’t they just not have hid this from me. Had I not known I wouldn’t be writing about this today!
At this point I don’t really feel like looking for a coupon code anymore. I’m also very busy and I have other important things to do. So I go ahead and make the purchase, without a coupon code. I however feel that I’m paying too much. Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t matter. I believe there is a coupon code that I’m not aware of and that’s all that really matters to me. Unfortunately perception becomes reality and so I feel jaded on the price.
Where does this all leave us? Not in the best place. Depending on the product the customer might move on to another company because too much goodwill has been loss trying to find a coupon code. They might have purchased the product and are unhappy to have paid too much. Or possibly they did find the coupon code and as a business you’re losing a large profit margin. In the best case the customer saved some extra money they hadn’t anticipated to and in the worse case the customer has moved on to another company.
What’s the alternative? Don’t show a coupon code! It’s that simple. If I don’t know about the discount than I don’t feel bad. I won’t look for it. I won’t care. I won’t be disappointed.
If you want to use coupons why not instead just make it part of the URL (the webpage address). Do something like https://www.GoDaddy.com/?couponCode=2342 If I don’t happen to come across the direct link I won’t know about the discount. And best of all, everyone who doesn’t come across the link, which I would bet is the majority of purchasers, won’t know. I won’t get frustrated trying to find a coupon code that might not exist. I’ll just pay and be on my merry way.
It’s much like going to a grocery store. I pay for my food. The customer behind me might have coupons, which is great for them, but it doesn’t affect me. The cashier didn’t just tell me that there is possibly a 30% off coupon available somewhere nearby in the store (along with a bunch of expired coupons) and that I should go look for it right now. Meaning they’ve now informed me that I’m paying more than I should which doesn’t make me happy. Although I’m aware that there are potentially coupons out there, as long as they’re not in my face I’m happy. I’m blissfully ignorant. Sometimes this can be the best thing!
** Update: For those of you who are curious, at my company LandlordMax we don’t offer any coupons or discounts on the software we sell. Therefore you don’t need to search Google for discounts, they don’t exist. We’ve made it really simple, everyone pays the same price.
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