The Power of Google Alerts
Have you ever wanted to know what’s being published online about you this week, today, or maybe even right now? Well you don’t have to worry anymore. And no, you don’t have to continually keep surfing all the nooks and crannies of the web to find out. It’s much simpler than that, all you need to do is setup a Google Alerts.
So what are Google Alerts? According to Google itself: “Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.”
From my perspective, it’s a way for me to keep track about what’s going in regards to myself on the internet. I can find out when new posts about me (Stephane Grenier), my blog (FollowSteph.com), my book (Blog Blazers), or even my company (LandlordMax) appear. It’s great to be able to keep up with everything that’s being posted about you!
But it’s more than that, and herein lies the power of Google Alerts. Not only are you able to find out when things are being said about you so that you can know, and possibly react, but you can also get Google Alerts about any keyword!! That’s a huge benefit!
For example, if you’re website is about “Dog grooming”, wouldn’t it be awesome to get all the latest webpages Google indexes into it’s search results for “Dog grooming”? If it’s a blog post maybe you can contact the author, add to the discussion by leaving a comment, and so on. If it’s an existing discussion on a forum, maybe you can join in and participate. Just be careful not to spam whatever page you get alerted to, it will eventually come back to you. The key is that Google Alerts can alert you about new discussions and articles related to your keyword/niche, which in turns allows you to join those which interest you. How great is that?
And here’s an extra little trick. You can also setup Google Alert’s for your competitor’s names. The reason this is interesting is that it allows you to have an idea of what they’re up to. And you might find some interesting tidbits of information here and there that you can learn from. But overall, it’s a great way to keep track of what your market niche is doing.
So if you haven’t already setup Google Alerts, I strongly suggest you do. They’re great and extremely easy to setup. Even better it’s free! You’ll definitely get your time’s worth. And if you’ve already setup Google Alerts and you’re using them, please feel free to share your story of how you’ve benefited from them.
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Which Stage of Twitter Are You At?
Having heard and read so much about Twittter, I’ve just recently become a Twitterer myself (StephaneGrenier) to see what all the hoopla was about. And I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve already gotten a lot of value out of it, and I’ve just joined a bit over a week ago!
There are lots of benefits to Twitter, but it mostly depends on who you are. That is, the Twitter experience is going to be very different for different people. For most people, the obvious benefit is self-promotion (just like for blogs). However that’s just a very small part of it, just like blogging.
Rohit Bhargava wrote a very good post titled: The 5 Stages of Twitter Acceptance. Where are YOU at? And I have to agree, it’s very accurate. Well with the exception of stage 1, I wouldn’t necessarily call it denial, but more along the lines of not really having time to check it out since you can’t clearly see the value. And stage 2 being where you still don’t fully get it but you’re willing to commit to taking the time.
Having just joined a week ago, I’ve jumped from stage 1 to stage 2. The good thing is that I skipped stage 3 entirely. I’m now working my way between stages 4 and 5, but I don’t know that I’ll ever completely get to stage 5. Sometimes it’s nice just to post the odd distraction. Like last night when I was tired from coding for the better part of the day, I decided to post a couple of entertaining links. Things I found interesting but that didn’t really offer any value other than entertainment. I don’t believe you can be all business all the time, sometimes you have to have a lighter side (and what I have entertaining is not always useful). Which is why I might never make it completely to stage 5.
That being said, although I’m probably not the normal Twitterer, I believe the 5 stages of Twitter Rohit describes to be very good and accurate. I’ve found, in the little time I’ve been Twittering, that a lot of people get caught up in stage 3 of self-promotion. I even had to stop following some people because almost all of their tweets where stage 3 tweets (that or they were tweets of links to their latest blog posts). I’m following you on Twitter for a reason, and it’s not just for self-promotional tweets (a certain level is acceptable, but not the majority). The good news is not everyone does this, but unfortunately enough do. The other thing I’ve found difficult is trying to follow more than a few dozen people, I find there’s just too much noise. But that’s another post for another day (I’m still learning).
The good news is that there are a lot of people at stage 4 and 5. And that’s great! It’s because of this that I’m really enjoying my Twitter experience. My only regret is not having started sooner.
Which leads me back to my original question, which stage of Twitter are YOU at?
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Is it a Good Time to Buy Real Estate?
It depends. Don’t you absolutely hate that answer? But the reality is that it really does depends and any other answer is wrong.
It really does depend on the situation and circumstances. For example, it might be a good time to buy real estate in New York city while simultaneously being a bad time to buy in Los Angeles. And even then, and much more importantly, it might be a good or bad time for you personally to buy real estate (or any other revenue generating asset such as stocks, bonds, etc.)!
Let’s look at a simpler case study than real estate to get a better understanding. Let’s pretend you’re the owner of a movie rental store. Instead of real estate, you buy and rent DVD’s. Is it a good time to buy DVD’s? It depends. Firstly how much do the DVDs cost in terms of how much you can rent them for? In other words, will the DVDs make you money? And how long will it take you to start being profitable from buying and renting DVDs?
Before we go on, remember that although you can buy a DVD for say $40, that’s not necessarily your true cost. You also have to include the cost of employees, rent for your store, marketing, people bringing back the movie late, lost inventory, insurance, accountants, etc. However for the sake of this discussion let’s keep it simple, let’s assume the real cost is double the purchase price.
Taking an example, if our total cost to buy a DVD is $80, and we can rent the movie out at $5/day, then it will take 16 days to start making any profit. Not bad. But wait, it’s not that simple. Is the movie going to be rented 16 days in a row? That’s a probability, and you have to assume no. In real estate, we use a similar concept, the vacancy rate, which signifies the percentage of unoccupied units. For now we’re just going to assume the DVD is fully rented. And since most people rent a DVD one day and return it the next day (sometimes two), we’ll use 32 days as a safer assumption. At 32 days, it’s not looking too bad.
But we’re not done. What about late returns? Right now most video stores allow you to return a movie late (by over a week) with no late fee. This will unfortunately over complicated our example, so let’s just assume we can’t charge late fees. Therefore instead of 32 days, we’ll pad our estimate to 60 days, or 2 months. It’s simple and should be good enough.
Is it a good time to buy now? It still depends! Can you actually rent your DVD’s at $5/day in your local area? Are you in a poorer area where $5/day is considered a luxury? Maybe you can only charge $2/day. Or maybe you live in Beverly Hills and you can charge $20/day because you offer mocha lattes for each of your visitors as they peruse your store. The price you can charge for your revenue generating asset, in this case DVD movies, will greatly affect whether or not it’s a good time to buy. At $2/day, it will take you at least half a year of continued rentals to make any profit. Can you rent the DVD for half a year non-stop? Not likely. Most movies fade out of popularity within months, if not weeks, before other newer movies take their place. Hence at $2/day, it’s probably not a good time for you to buy. However if you can rent the DVD at $20/day, it will take you only 2 weeks to start making a profit instead of 2 months. A much better time to buy. Well maybe.
We still can’t know if it’s a good time to buy. Why? What about the specific asset, or in our case the specific movie. If the movie we’re buying is the latest multi-gazillion blockbuster, then it’s probably looking good. But what if it’s the latest Hollywood straight to DVD flop that absolutely no one wants to see? Probably not. We might never even be able to rent it once! It could be a complete lost of time and money. Again, it depends.
But let’s assume it’s the best movie ever made in all of history, and we can rent it out at $10/days and it will only cost us $50 total to buy. Is it still a good time? Again, it depends. What if all you personally have left in your bank account is $10 (and maybe even that $10 is allocated to other pre-existing payments). Then you can’t afford it.
Can we get a loan for the $50? Maybe, but can we afford the payments? Can we carry the loan? We’re assuming it’s the best of the best movies, but what if it’s not? Poseidon anyone? Ignoring that we might make enough money to cover our loan payments on the principal, what about the interest? Can we get an affordable loan at an interest rate that will give us a comfortable return (I say comfortable return because we all have different thresholds for risk)? In other words, even if it’s the greatest deal, can we afford it. Does our personal financial situation allow us to capitalize on it?
So the next time someone asks you: “is it a good time to buy?”, I hope you’ll say it depends because it really does depend! It depends on the specific situation, circumstances, and the assets you want to buy.
PS: I didn’t include the long tail in this example, that is movies that have been out for years and still continue to get rented often. These are very profitable. And the same is true for real estate properties, stocks, etc. Generally the longer you hold onto them, the more money you’ll make. Instead I tried to focus on whether or not you’d be able to get to that longer tail, that if you can at least start making a profit on the assert within a reasonable amount of time.
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Interview with Sam Berns founder of WithoutaFather.com
We’re fortunate today in that I am able to share with you an interview I did with Sam Berns, the founder of WithoutaFather.com, a website aimed at helping teens and children growing up in single parent homes. In the US alone there are over 21 million such kids.
I’ve known Sam for several years now, and I can tell you he’s very passionate about everything he does. It came as no surprise that he would leave his consulting career to dedicate himself fully to this website. When I first knew him he was a volunteer with Junior Achievement and has helped over 100 high school kids start their own businesses. He chose to volunteer in the more disadvantaged schools in the city, and the interesting thing is that no matter were he went, the kids he mentored were always the most successful.
He’s tried to recreate elements of that mentorship online with his website. Professionals in all fields can sign up, create a profile that protégés can browse and post questions on their profile page. This allows the online mentors to offer advice, inspiration and encouragement in the time it takes to reply to an email.
One example is a young protégé who asked for advice on how to beat her interview jitters from an online mentor, who’s profession is to constantly hire teens. He was able to offer her some really great advice and help her significantly improve her job interviewing skills. He’s helping her get the job she wants, not the job she has to take.
So without further ado, here’s the interview I had with Sam:
Steph: What did you do before you started WithoutaFather.com?
Sam: I did application design and financial modeling. Basically I worked with managers and helped them predict the financial outcomes of their business decisions. That can mean creating a business case, a financial model or designing new applications that allowed us to do that.
Steph: What was it like to quit your job and focus on this project entirely?
Sam: It was a bit scary. To go from a paycheck every two weeks to none is something you have to accept. It helps if you live well within your means and have some money saved up. Every entrepreneur knows this feeling, in the end you have to believe enough in what you are doing, that is the price of admission.
Steph: How did you end up helping teens growing up without a father?
Sam: I grew up without a father myself and I knew I wanted to do something to help them, I just didn’t know what. Kids growing up without a father are 5 times more likely to grow up in poverty than kids growing up in married-parent homes and are twice as likely to drop out of high school.
The idea was to create a website that would try to deal with as many of those challenges these teens face. I was struggling to build this website on my own and got very lucky when a former client heard about what I was doing and offered to help me out.
Steph: Do you mind if I ask who the former client was and how they helped you? It’s always great to hear about the power of reciprocity, especially in business.
Sam: The former client is an interactive studio called Fuel Industries. Warren Tomlin is the Chief Creative Officer, he got wind of the idea and mentioned it Mike Burns, their CEO who took me to see Brian Nesbitt, their CTO and I’ve been working out of their offices ever since. These guys made the website so much better than what my initial vision was.
Steph: Can you tell us specifically how the website helps teens?
Sam: Sure, the website is divided in 4 sections. There’s an advice section, a resume application, a budget tool and the online mentorship program.
The advice section is really born out of everything I wish someone had told me when I was growing up like how to get good grades or how to tell if a girl likes you.
The resume tool is to help these teens access the workforce on their own.
The budget tool teaches them the importance of savings and being able to afford big things like a post-secondary education.
And finally in the online mentorship program, we try to attract professionals from all sectors to share their story of success and let our young protégés contact them on their profile page and ask them questions that will help and encourage them to continue on with their own education after high school and find their own success through education and hard work.
Steph: How is WithoutaFather.com doing right now? And where do you see it going in the future?
Sam: We’re slowly building traffic and have noticed that people spend a lot of time on the website, with a lot of them using our resume builder and budget builder tools, which is great. Over the next couple of months, I’ll be reaching out and trying to attract more online mentors and will be visiting more high schools to talk about the website and how it can help them.
Steph: Thank you Sam for taking the time for this interview today, it’s really appreciated. I wish you all the best with WithoutaFather.com, especially since it’s such a noble cause.
Sam: It was my pleasure! Thank you Steph.
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I'm Immortal
I’m Immortal and I can prove it using valid and correct statistics! It’s pretty simple actually. To prove my immortality, I’m going to use the data from my life.
Here’s how the proof goes. Since the day I was born I’ve never had a day in which I died. Being my age, that’s just under 13,000 days. A fairly decent sample size (I think that with 13,000 flips of a coin we could determine the odds of getting heads or tails). But maybe for those of you who aren’t yet confident, let’s increase the sample size. In all 18,408,206 minutes I’ve lived (give or take a bunch) I’ve never died. Not once!
So based on my past data, the odds of me ever dying are less than 0.00…1%. In other words I’m virtually immortal! How cool is that?
However as we all know this logic is flawed, I will one day die. I’m no more immortal than anyone else. However there is no error in my logic. My sample size is large, quite large (over 18 million data samples with not one instance of me dying). Definitely enough to get a very high level of confidence, statistically speaking that is.
The flaw is that I can’t prove something positively, I can only ever really disprove something. In this case, just because I’ve lived over 18 million minutes without dying, doesn’t mean I’ll live another minute. In other words I can only prove that my theory is false, I can never be sure that my theory is true. I can be more confident, but I can never be sure.
And this is exactly what’s gotten the world in such financial trouble. Statements like “The market never goes down x% in a given month.” or “The US government can’t collapse.”. Our sample size just isn’t big enough. We can never prove this to be true, we can only disprove it. Just like we can’t disprove/prove we’re immortal until we die.
Therefore you have to be careful of what’s being said out there. Remember that rare events do happen, and they happen much more frequently than we think. Several are happening right now. The Feds bringing the interest rates to near 0%. The real estate market collapsing on itself. Deflation looking like it might be a real possibility. The government needing to bailout the corporate world on a never before seen scale. It’s all happening, yet it’s not possible. Another once in a lifetime event is happening again and again and again…
However there is good news. Learning and knowing to appreciate rare events can be an incredible benefit. You should plan for them, because although rare they do happen very frequently (that last sentence sure sounds like something Yogi Berra would say).
If you’re interested in learning more about this, I strongly recommend the books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan (the inspiration for this post). Both are amazing books that will really open your mind. And they’re not just about finance, they can be applied to anything in life.
Thank you also Jian for recommending these books.
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Tune into Small Business Radio Today
Today I will be on Small Business Radio hosted by Anita Campbell to talk about my latest book Blog Blazers at 1:30pm EST. Don’t forget to tune in as the topic of the show will be “Advanced Blog Tactics Used By Professional Bloggers”, which will come from both the interviews I conducted in the book Blog Blazers and my own personal experience. It’s going to be a great show so don’t miss it!
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10 Most Popular Books in Blog Blazers
In my book Blog Blazers I asked 40 high profile bloggers which books they recommend you read. Below is a list of the top 10 books they recommended, with each and every book getting at least two or more recommendations. So if you haven’t already gotten all your Xmas presents, maybe you can get a book or two from this list to go along with your copy of Blog Blazers from Amazon!
- Clear Blogging
- Purple Cow
- Naked Conversations
- SEOBook
- On Writing Well
- The Elements of Style
- Cluetrain Manifesto
- Made To Stick
- The Long Tail
- Blink
Please note that these interviews were conducted about a year ago, so some books like ProBlogger from Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett where not yet available.
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Nothing is Impossible
Sometimes not knowing you can’t is the best thing for you.
How many times have we been told we can’t do this or that? How many times have stopped only because we’ve been told it’s not possible? How many opportunities have we missed because we didn’t think we could do it? We’ll today I’m going to share with you the story of Cliff Young and the power of ignoring the “it’s not possible” advice.
In 1983 Cliff Young showed up to run a 543.7-mile (875-kilometer) endurance race from Sydney to Melbourne in Australia that takes place over 5 days. Being such a grueling race, you’ll generally only find world class athletes competing in it. But not in 1983. Cliff, then 61 years old, initially showed up for the race in overalls and boots to compete.
As you can imagine Cliff gathered a lot of attention before the race started. Most of it pretty negative. They told him, “You’re crazy, there’s no way you can finish this race.” To which he replied, “Yes I can.” and continued to give an explanation of why when he was younger he would run for 2-3 days at a time and round up as many as 2000 sheep over 2000 acres.
Still no one believed him. He did get attention because, well, you have to admit, it sounds like lunacy. How could this 61 year old man initially dressed in overalls and boots run a 5 day grueling race against world class athletes?
And then the race began. As you’d expect, the athletes quickly left Cliff in the dust. Not only that, but he didn’t exactly have the best running form. There was even some fear going around that he would hurt himself. But on the race went.
Now, before we go on, the common strategy for running this race by the world class athletes is to run 18 hours a day and sleep 6 hours at night. This way they can stay alert and keep running.
Not so for our friend Cliff. When he said he use to round up sheep for 2-3 days, he meant 2-3 days straight. Straight through the day and night that is. So instead of sleeping like the world class athletes, Cliff did the impossible. He ran through the night. He never really stopped (except to eat and some other basic necessities). He just kept going. He believed it was possible even though everyone else told him it was impossible.
Of course Cliff didn’t run as fast as the world class athletes, but he ran 24 hours a day for 5 days. If you do the math, running an extra 6 hours a day over 5 days adds up to a lot of time. It adds up to an additional 30 hours of running. And this gave Cliff a big advantage.
Not only did he finish the race, he won it!! And not by a slim margin. He broke the course record by 9 hours! Yes a full 9 hours. He crushed his competition.
So if someone tells you it’s not possible, just think of our friend Cliff before you resign yourself and give up. Think: What would Cliff do?
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The Rabbit Doesn't Always Win
Blogging is a marathon and not a sprint. Starting a business is a marathon and not a sprint. Achieving success is a marathon and not a sprint.
Sure you have to work very hard at the beginning, but you can’t stop after a short sprint. You have to keep going. You have to persevere. I’ve said it numerous times here, it’s not the quality of your idea that matters, it’s the execution over time that matters.
Now don’t get me wrong, you definitely should take advantage of the excitement and motivation that comes from starting a new project such as a blog. That’s a very good thing. But whatever you do, don’t lose your momentum completely. It’s ok to fall behind here and there, we all do it, but don’t stop. Whatever you do just keep on going.
The majority of time the difference between success and failure is that the person who succeeded persevered. It’s not quite as simple as that, but have no doubt that it plays a major role in success. It’s easy to get stopped by the first road block. Most people do. Maybe it’s that you don’t understand something. Maybe you’re tired. You’ve had a long week. You have a social event you’d like to attend. Maybe it’s that you’re not sure what to do next. Whatever it is, keep moving. Don’t stop whatever you do.
A classic example of a blog with really good potential is Hiring Horror. A lot of people like to hear about hiring horror stories. It’s entertaining and we’ve all seen too many of them ourselves. Which of course makes for a potentially very interesting blog. And indeed one was created, Hiring Horror.
Looking at the posts (please note I have no idea who’s behind this blog), they definitely jumped out from the starting gate. On the first day alone there were 4 posts! Then the next day there were 2 posts. Then the weekend came with no posts, which is not that unusual for a lot of blogs. Monday another 2 posts. A couple more days later, another 2 posts.
And then the momentum really started to fall apart. 5 days later there’s only 1 more post. It took another 4 days for the next post. Then a lengthy 11 days for the next post. Then 16 more days for the next. Now we’re at 21 days since the last post and still counting…
This is a classic example of starting off with a full sprint and quickly fading. Although I can’t know for sure, I suspect the authors (there appears to be more than one) were all excited and expected to write several posts a day. And at first they were really motivated and couldn’t wait to write. The excitement of something new was abound.
Then the weekend came which slowed things. After the following week, well, the excitement had probably worn off and it became something they had to do. The zest was gone. And so the posting ratio fell fast. And within a few weeks all interest waned and the blog pretty much died. Maybe we’ll see another post, but I wouldn’t count on it. And it’s too bad because it had the making of a good blog.
Unfortunately that’s the same way most blogs (businesses, projects, etc.) start and fade within a few months. Everyone gets excited. They get a burst of energy. And then once the novelty fades things start to crumble until the whole thing ceases to exist.
The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. You can succeed! You can make it! You just have to be aware of this before you start whatever it is you want to start. Make sure it’s worth it and push through it. As the movie Run Fatboy Run asks, what will you do when you hit the “wall”? Will you push through it or give up and go home?
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Blog Blazers Free Shipping Until Xmas!
Because of everything that’s happening with Amazon, I’m going to go on a lurk and offer free shipping for the book Blog Blazers until Xmas when you buy it directly from the official website (for Canadian and US orders). For international orders, until Xmas as well, shipping will be reduced to $5. In other words, I’ll cover your shipping costs.
I’m doing this because I’m very annoyed with this Amazon “Temporarily out of Stock” issue. I just don’t want to put anything in the way of you getting and benefiting from your Blog Blazers book before Xmas. The best part is that you don’t have to wait on Amazon to get free shipping. And you don’t have to buy $25 worth of books to get that free shipping!
So if you haven’t already bought Blog Blazers, now’s the time. This is special free shipping offer and it’s only going to last until Xmas!
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