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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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website – David Scott Kane Review
Earlier this week David Scott Kane from The Recursive ISV wrote a very in depth and detailed review of my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website. And quite a review it was. Thank you Scott for the very kind and positive words!
Some of the highlights include:
I’m going to state at the outset of this review that this book has the good stuff!
You gotta love a review that pretty much starts with that previous sentence! And if that wasn’t enough of an endorsement, the next quote from the review sure is:
I just believe that credit should go where credit is deserved and I believe this book is a must have for every micro ISV and indeed many who consider themselves ISV’s.
Like I said earlier, it is a glowing review. If nothing else, the fact that he values one chapter as enough reason alone to buy the ebook, well…
To my mind Steph’s chapter on this is worth every cent of the eBook alone. This is something I’m always harping on about here and something most ISV’s and micro ISV’s fail epically at.
What’s more, the conclusion is extremely positive:
The book covers a heck of a lot more too. I’ve been working with websites since 1995, yet I still found gems in this book.
I also found things I knew but had forgotten and some things I wasn’t in agreement with – but was able to take away and give more thought to.
Don’t assume you know the SEO game and are able to skip this, even if it only makes you take a fresh look at what you’re doing it’s certainly worth every cent of the $14.95.
Frankly I can’t wait to read his next book, coming out in November, on blogging.
I’ve really only scraped the surface on what’s inside Steph’s book. So in conclusion, yes I recommend it, highly. Read it, use it and improve yourself and your business of software.
As you can see, Scott gave my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website a very glowing review. Thank you.
And in case you missed the link earlier, you can read his full review here.
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How Important are Headlines?
This post is an exert from my ebook How to Generate Traffic for Your Website:
How important are headlines? VERY. The reality is that a headline can often make or break an article. A headline will determine if even the first sentence of the article is even read. On average you have 5-7 seconds to get someone’s attention, which is done through the headline. More importantly, only 2 out of 10 people will read past your headline and actually read your article! That’s just how important headlines are.
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.
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How Blogging Can Help Your Business
This post is an exert from my ebook How to Generate Traffic for Your Website:
To give you a quick idea of the scale of blogging, here are some more quick metrics according to Technorati.com (April 2007):
- There are 70 million blogs
- There are about 120,000 new blogs each day, or 1.4 new blogs every second
- There are 1.5 million blog posts per day or 17 posts per second
What do these metrics mean for you and your company? Why is it important to blog? What’s are the benefit for your company? Will it help increase your traffic or revenues? Is it worth your time and effort (make no mistake about it, blogging successfully takes a lot of time and effort)?
For most companies, blogging can really help. It can help your business in a number of ways:
Personalize your business.
Instead of being just another faceless company website, it can give your website a second personality. It can give it that personal touch that people like. A lot of sales are through emotions, and people like to connect with people they like and trust. If you’re honest and real on your blog, and not just writing what you think people want to hear, you’ll create a personal bond with your customers. This will create long term traffic and revenues.
Express your personal philosophies and beliefs
A blog can allow you to express your personal philosophies, beliefs, etc. that might not be as appropriate on a corporate (or more official) website. For example, I share on my blog my beliefs about technical support. I’ve shared my beliefs that the most important aspects of software are easy to use, customer service, and quality. That it’s not the sheer number of features implemented, but rather how each feature is presented. To me that’s more important. I’d rather have less features, but have each one bug free and extremely easy to use. That’s my philosophy towards software design, and I’ll share it openly on my blog whereas I wouldn’t on my company’s website.
Behind the scenes.
I’ll also share what’s going on behind the scenes. How we’re doing on the next upcoming major release. Some struggles we had to deal with. Successes and failures we’ve experienced. A lot of people appreciate this. Why do you think movies often include commentaries and behind the scene clips? People like to know what happened behind the scenes. It helps bring a story to the businesses they deal with. And more importantly, it really helps them appreciate what you’re about. As a great example, my company LandlordMax doesn’t offer phone support. We tried it for a few months and realized it wasn’t going to work for us financially (if you don’t try you can’t know for sure), at least not unless we charged a significant amount. Now every time someone asks us why we don’t offer phone support I send them a link on my blog explaining why we don’t offer phone support. 99.9% of responses after reading this blog post are understanding and positive. Some extremely positive!
Transparency.
Another point very similar to behind the scenes, it’s giving your visitors transparency to your company. For us, because our customers plan to stay with us for the long haul, they want to make sure we’ll be around for a long time. Once they enter in all their data into the software, they don’t want the company to suddenly disappear. Our lifespan is important to them. By being transparent we can give them the confidence they might not otherwise get from just our corporate website.
Expertise.
People want to deal with competent people. When you go see a car mechanic you want to make sure they knows what they’re doing. When you hire a plumber, you want a good plumber. If you’re into home renovations you’d probably prefer to hire a reputable person like Bob Villa or Mike Holmes simply because they continually share their expertise. It makes you confident they can do the job. A great example of this is Pingdom.com. I don’t remember how I found their blog, probably through a link from another blog or a social network site, but needless to say I started to read their blog posts because they were extremely interesting and informative. The more I read the more I appreciated their knowledge. And it turns out I had been looking for a company I could trust for LandlordMax that offered their service (they will monitor your servers and if they go down , they notify you right away). Within a week I had bought a year package. The blog is what sold me. If it hadn’t been for the blog I have no idea who I would have selected. They really sold me on the fact that they knew what they were doing. But beyond that, I now follow their blog. I’ve also recommended their blog and services many times to a lot of individuals. I’m even mentioning it now in this post (and in the ebook). Their blog has absolutely increased their overall traffic (and revenues).
Give Advice.
A blog gives you the ability to offer advice that you might not want to on a corporate website. For example, a blog about a winery could offer a lot of advice on how to select wines. It could explain the differences in viscosity. It could explain how to taste a wine. Even further, the company could explain how wine is made. The blog could describe the process, explain the subtleties. Basically by offering advice on how to make wine and select wine, they’re giving something to their customers. People will come back. They’ll share their article with their friends. It will drive traffic to their website.
Controversy.
Controversy will often generate attention and traffic. However, rarely will a professional or corporate website want to present any controversy. This is where a blog comes in really handy. It’s an easy way to present your view on a controversial point yet not directly involve your company, and still manage to get some of the advantages such as increased traffic.
Long tail.
Blog articles will generally continue to generate traffic long after you write them, sometimes even years later. Take advantage of this older traffic and redirect them to your main website. Each archived article may not have that much traffic individually, but together they do add up quickly!
If you enjoyed this article, you might also be interested in purchasing the full ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website for only $14.95 (less than the price of a dinner for two). It contains 138 pages of information on how to increase the traffic to your website using both free and paid methods. You can read the first 21 pages here for free.
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I Wonder How Often this Works?
We’ve all gotten the emails from some rich heir that’s in exile but has millions in a bank they can’t access. And if we help them, they’re going to share some of their riches with us. We all know the email, we’ve all seen it a hundred times (most are Nigeria based).
If you’ve been under a rock and you haven’t seen them yet, well you should really watch Ze Frank’s Ted Talks speech just below. It’s pretty hilarious (specially starting around the second minute – although the whole talk is really good):
This is a scam known as an advance-fee scam. The basic idea is that you’ll send them money in advance of getting a large payout, which of course never comes. You would think that this scam being as famous as it is today wouldn’t work anymore, but for some strange reason it still works. Don’t ask me why, I don’t get it. But for whatever reason, some people still get caught in this scam every year.
Of course these aren’t the only scams going around. Recently an email made it through our spam filters here at LandlordMax which I found interesting enough to comment on. Now I’m sure few people will fall for this particular scam, but imagine if you’re a small one person business (even smaller multi-person businesses have been known for falling for these types of scam), wouldn’t the following email look somewhat interesting. Especially if you were on the verge of running out of money during tougher economic times.
We are a software development and marketing company in Kuwait (Middle East). As part of our software portfolio, we would like to market and sell LandLordMax to our real estate and property management customers in the Kuwait market.However, we would like to brand the product as one of ours instead of LandLordMax. This would require a complete removal of all links that point to LandLordMax or your website, your license etc and be replaced with material suitable to our porfile. Also the logo will need to change.
We will market it and sell it and of course pay you license fees per installation.
Do you have any such reseller program that we can participate in. If not how do you suggest we take this forward.
The first thing to note is that they took the time to put in our company name several times. But what really sticks out, at least to me, is that they must have used some sort of keyword searching algorithm because they included “real estate and property management” in the email. This makes it look a lot more authentic. It makes it look like they’re in the right field. It’s no longer a generic email blasted to millions of random email addresses. At least it doesn’t obviously appear that way.
The other appealing thing in the email, for many businesses that is, is that they just want to market it. They want to “resell” it. They even go so far as to ask if there’s a “reseller program”. Although we all know this is bogus, I can see it further reducing the defensiveness of a more susceptible person.
Of course that’s never their intention. If it was, why would they later ask “However, we would like to brand the product as one of ours instead of LandLordMax. This would require a complete removal of all links that point to LandLordMax or your website, your license etc and be replaced with material suitable to our porfile. Also the logo will need to change.”
Basically they’re asking for a full version of the software, that’s completely de-branded, and has a no licensing implemented! If that doesn’t scare you as a business, I don’t know what would. Why not just go ahead and ask for the source code straight out? Generally, unless you’re acquiring a company for it’s assets or intellectual properties, you want to leverage the existing brand name because it has value. Not here.
You gotta love these types of requests. Normally I just dismiss them, but I had to comment on this one because of the higher than normal level of sophistication. Now maybe I just never noticed it before, but this is the first time I’ve seen such an email that includes matching company name with relevant keywords (not optimized keywords, but at least their relevant). I have to wonder how many businesses will be caught in this one versus the 419 scams (the initial email scam mentioned above).
By the way, as I was doing some research for this post, I came accross this interesting list of the top 10 email scams of 2008. Not exactly educational reading, but fun to go through. And they offer exerts of the different emails.
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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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Blog Blazers Update
As I’m sure some of you have noticed, I haven’t been posting much recently. That’s because I’m really pushing hard to get my upcoming book Blog Blazers (book cover above – this is the first time I’ve publicly shown it!) completed and to the printers ASAP. The publication date is November 1st, so to make it on time for that date I need to get it off to the printers now. The good news is that it’s almost ready to go, I’m just in the process of finishing up the last last details with our typesetter Shawn. It’s been quite a sprint to the finish line as well. Self publishing a book is no small feat!
And don’t think it ends when the book is off to the printers. The website for the book needs to be completed. And the marketing effort is just starting to really rev up.
As soon as this week is over, and I’m finally able to catch a breath of air, I’ll go into more details about the whole experience and some of the people involved. But before then, I want to send out a thank you to all the people who helped make this book possible. I still can’t believe the quality of the team that got together for this book. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was amazing! If you plan on self publishing your own book, please don’t hesitate to contact me for references and contacts. I can point you to some great people.
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Off-site SEO is More Important than On-site SEO
Don’t believe me? Ever hear of the term Google Bomb? This is where enough people point to a specific website using the same anchor text (the highlighted text that’s underlined in a link) to override what Google thinks the website is about.
The classic example is Miserable Failure which George Bush experienced a while back. Unfortunately Google has corrected this and it no longer works, so I can’t show it to you live.
But it doesn’t mean it’s not possible elsewhere. Actually it’s very possible and it happens all the time.
For example, you can have a perfectly optimized website “mesothelioma” (a renown keyword for it’s high CPC – Cost Per Click – value), but if everyone linking to your website says you’re about something else, that something else will overrule your SEO efforts. Google has realized that although you may think you about a specific topic (or maybe you’re just trying to game the system), if everyone says else wise they’re probably more accurate than you. And Google will therefore adjust what it thinks your website is about according to what everyone else says it’s about.
Which is good and bad. It means that your website can be about multiple keywords just by having links to it with different keywords. It also means that although you might optimize your website for one particular keyword, the search engines will recognize it for several other keywords which is great (assuming of course that they link to you with the other keywords).
It also means that you can get a double whammy by optimizing your website for the keyword(s) that most people link to your website for because you’ll be matching what the world thinks you’re about. That’s a good thing.
The key thing to remember is that the way people link to you is more important that your on-site SEO efforts, especially as your website gains momentum. Yes your SEO efforts are still very valuable, you will need this to be at the top of the search results. What I’m saying though is that it’s not that critical to have your website 100% SEO optimized (if that’s even possible). If you can get 70%-80% of the way there, that’s probably good enough. You’ll get to a point where you’ll be getting diminishing returns on your on-site SEO efforts, where you’d be better off spending your time getting high quality links to your website.
PS: If you’re interested in learning more about On and Off-site SEO, check out my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website, in which I discuss this and many more SEO topics.
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Book Update: Self Published Versus POD
As most of you already know, I’m in the process of publishing a book in which I interview 40 very prominent bloggers. The project started in the winter of 2007 and we’re now near the end of the summer of 2008. I expected to have the book out by spring of this year, and summer at the latest. However most things don’t go as planned.
I initially decided to go the POD (Print on Demand) route, using iUniverse as my POD of choice. They had great reviews, a good book (Get Published!), and they seemed very knowledgeable on the phone. Again, things never quite work out as planned. iUniverse merged with AuthorHouse and Amazon has decided to change the rules for all POD publishers.
Not only that, my experience with iUniverse wasn’t all that rosy. Yes I expected some issues, but having seen them listed often as the better POD choice, I expected more from them (but then again I probably didn’t have the correct expectations). Having started the process just before the merge certainly didn’t help, especially with issues they had moving some of the staff. If memory serves me right, I went through two account managers before finally staying with Rosalie, who incidentally turned out to be the best of the three. The first account manager disappeared and it wasn’t until I called and pressed the issue that something was done. I don’t remember what happened to the second account manager, I think she decided not to move in the merger. Whatever the reasons, it took three tries which definitely delayed things.
Another issue that really irritated me was that my book was accidentally put on hold for a month. For some reason it wasn’t pushed through the next phase and it just sat there. It wasn’t until I contacted them and pushed to see what was going on that they realized the issue. Scary to think how long it could’ve been before they realized something was amiss!
On the positive side, the professional editing they provided was very good. I really believed it improved the quality of the book, so I’m pretty happy with that. However getting the editing costs all figured out was somewhat of a challenge, which I won’t go into today. Needless to say, it cost me about $1000 to get the book edited. Remember it’s an interview book so the interviews aren’t edited like a normal book (the bulk of the content), only the preface, introduction, epilogue, etc. are edited.
The downside to the editing service is that you don’t really get to communicate with the person proofreading and editing. They send you the revised document with their comments. They also include a document which adds additional comments, which by the way is filled with up-sell services (not a bad thing in of itself, but somewhat frustrating since you don’t get to actively communicate with the person). In addition, you only get one pass. And you don’t get to choose the person you’ll be working with, to see if they have the same style as you. But I got lucky and hit a good editor. Plus the amount of content was pretty small, so it wasn’t too difficult to work with.
On the negative side again, some other things started to really annoy me. For example getting the book’s cover copy (the back) took a bit more than a month. And I have to admit I wasn’t impressed with what I got back from them. Firstly, the copy was mainly an exert from one of the interviews. To me this is very weak, especially for taking a month. Anyone can just flip through a book to look at it. And if you’re shopping online you can page through a book using Amazon’s “Search Inside” feature. In their defense, they did include more than just an exert, just not much more. And it didn’t really work for me.
This led me to contact Peter Bowerman, author of The Well Fed Self-Publisher (an excellent book which I’ll discuss in more detail shortly). Through emails with Peter I decided to use his mentoring services, and am I glad I did! Although in his book he talks about self publishing versus POD, I still had to talk to him before doing a 180 degree turn and going the self publishing route. Thank you Peter! That was probably the best money I ever spent on consulting services. I don’t know that I will ever be able to beat the ROI from that one phone call!
Why did I change my mind? For a number of reasons, including those which I’ve already mentioned. But it’s more than that, and chapter 12 of Peter’s book (“Print-on-Demand (POD): Dream or Disappointment) expresses much better than I ever can. So if you’re considering either route, I strongly suggest buying his book and reading at least that chapter. It alone is worth the price of the book. And don’t get me started on Appendix C! I can’t tell you how valuable that section of the book is!
For me personally, what I didn’t like about POD is that you have no controls over timelines. There aren’t really any with POD. I could never get a good answer as to when the book would be ready, and if I did get an answer it was generally too optimistic. Plus, it was impossible to work on anything in parallel to speed up the publication of the book. For example, work couldn’t be done on the books copy and cover couldn’t be done in parallel (and each seemed to take much longer than I thought necessary – which turned out to be true). Although I didn’t agree, I accepted the sequential process at the time (mostly because I didn’t really know any better).
The catalyst though is that I couldn’t get a good idea of when the book would be ready. For the copy they said 4-5 weeks, but based on what I saw, that should have been 1-2 days. Yes they might be busy, but 4-5 weeks seems excessive. Once we agree on it, we get to move on to the cover, which I suspect will take as long if not more.
You also get very limited input in the process. For example, since I’ve gone the self-publishing route I’ve hired George Foster, one of the best book cover designers in the industry (did you know that a book is generally judged by it’s cover?). Working with George (and Peter) we came up with a general theme. Then we tweaked it several times until it was just right. This flexibility just simply isn’t available with a POD service. You don’t even get to choose the artist you’ll be working with!
The other thing that irks me is that if I’m going to pay to have someone help me with the copy (I can write web copy, but I don’t really know what sells for books) and the cover, then why am I using their service? Why do I have to wait? I’m basically paying for something I don’t want.
Something to note though about POD versus self-published, POD is significantly less expensive and less time consuming than self publishing. Self publishing is basically not for people who just want to try to write a book, it’s a full endeavor! You get what you pay for, but it’s also not cheap. So only go the self published route if you really think you have a hit on your hands (or you have a lot of money to burn). Self published is not a hobby, or a sideline like POD can be. The difference in price is from $1000-$3000 for POD to at least $10,000-$15,000 for self publishing. And this doesn’t include any time or marketing costs, this is just to get the book to out there. I’ve personally spent over $15,000 as of right now on just to get the book published. Wait until I include my marketing costs!
Before I continue, let me just say that iUniverse has its place and time. It’s just not for me. However if you plan to sell a limited number of copies, you have very limited funds, you have no timeline to get published, you don’t need creative control, or you just want to try publishing a book as a hobby, then it might be the solution for you. But for me it was no longer the right choice.
Getting back to our discussion, there are some other perks going the self published route. You own the ISBN number, not the publisher. The book is registered under your publishing company (we’ve created the entity Levac Publishing House for this first book). Plus once you get the book done, you own it. With a POD they own the finished product. For example you own the text but not the typesetting. Which means if you ever do strike out on your own, you’ll have to absorb that cost again.
But more importantly, some of the economies start to favor you with the self published model. With POD the best discount you can get for promo books is about 50% of retail, and this is only if you order in quantities of 500 or more. So if you have a $20 book, that means $5000. If you want smaller amounts, then expect only to get a 20-30% discounts. Not a small sum of money, especially if you plan to market and promote it on a commercial level. On a hobby level, you probably won’t ever need 500 promo copies. Again it depends on what you want to do.
With self publishing, you can get that cost down to $2.00 + shipping & handling (assuming an initial printing run of at least several thousand books). So assuming 500 promo books, that’s $750. Wow! What a difference from $5000! I didn’t include shipping since both options would incur this same cost. Anyways, it again comes down to your business model for the book. Is it a vanity book or are you planning on the book being a business unto itself?
Obviously you know which model I picked. I personally expect to go through more than 500 promo books in the first few months alone! I’ve already promised each interviewee a book which brings it up to 40 copies the first day.
Why is the pricing so different between the POD and self published? With POD they always charge you 50%-80% of the cost for promo books. With self publishing, once you’ve incurred the large initial upfront costs, the reproduction costs become small in comparison. In other words, you don’t make a profit for the first x books (and x isn’t a hobby number, we’re talking in the thousands of books), but once you pass that threshold (your break even number) it becomes financially viable. The statistics however show that most authors never get to the break even point. Of course for this book, we’re going to blow past the break even point!
But there’s still more. By going self published I can guarantee the quality of printing. Apparently there’s quite a few horror stories floating online about the print quality of Amazon’s new POD vendor. I’d hate to experience that.
But it doesn’t end there, there’s more. Another aspect I really like about self publishing is your ability to price your book. With POD the books generally have to sell for more because of the higher overhead. With self publishing you can generally bring your price down a bit. Not much, but about 10%-20% less. It might not seem like much, but if you’re comparing two books side by side, it might be enough to influence your decision. And more than that, the POD vendors generally set the price based on the number of pages, not the quality of the book.
So to make a long story even longer, the book’s production path has been significantly adjusted this week. A lot has changed. The title is no longer “Interview the Pros”, it’s “Blog Blazers”. It’s no longer going to be a POD book, it’s going to be a self published book. I’ve also hired an amazing team to get this book done. I’ve hired a cover artist, a book mentor, a typesetter, an indexer, and so on. Although I don’t like to promise timelines, I’m hoping to get everything to the printers by the end of next week if everything goes according to plan. From here I’ve been informed it takes about 5 weeks to print the books (a proof copy needs to be approved – with time for shipping – and then the first full run is printed and warehoused).
I would show the cover, but we’re still finalizing the last minute details. As soon as it’s ready I’ll post it up. Also the book’s website isn’t ready yet. I’m hoping to have that up very soon. I’ll keep updating you as the book is approaches the finish line.
Otherwise everthing else is progressing very fast now. I’m very excited about the results and can’t wait to see the finished and printed book!
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Strike One. Strike Two. Strike Three. What You're Not Out?
Recently Apple release version 2 of it’s wildly successful iPhone with great dismay. So many people flocked to the stores to buy this latest new offering that it killed their networked. This ended up causing a lot of phones to become “bricked” (aka as useful a phone as a brick). Strike 1. Well maybe not strike one, we’ll pretend they just forgot to bring their bat to the game.
Having quickly brought back their network from the dead within a day or so, people were able to activate their new iPhones (or upgrade their older iPhones to the latest software). All seemed well and rosy again.
Then within no time reports started to come out that the phones were continually crashing. That synching your phone could take hours, many hours. Daily reboots. And much worse. Basically the community came to conclusion that version 2.0.0 of the iPhone should really have been called version 2.0.0 beta (maybe even version 2.0.0 alpha depending on who you talk to).
Strike One!
Then release 2.0.1 came out. It was suppose to fix some bugs. Maybe it did, who really knows for sure. For me personally the phone was just as unstable. I think rather than 2.0.1 it should be called 2.0.0 alpha 2. In any case, at best it only seems to have resolved some superficial issues.
Strike Two!
Looks like Apple just released version 2.0.2 with even more issues. Apparently they fixed some bugs, but also introduced others. I haven’t yet upgraded myself, but if it’s anything like what’s described on this recent post on iPhone Atlas, I’m not going to either! To quote the post: “This problem is generally accompanied by another in which music and other media are erased from the iPhone.” You should see the fix to resolve this issue!
Strike Three!
What? Not out yet? Apparently not. They have enough pre-built goodwill to keep going. But for how long? No company has infinite goodwill. Eventually they’ll lose all their credibility. The “it just works” won’t apply anymore.
And it’s not like they haven’t had any time to fix these issues. It’s been what, a month? Maybe two? Yet all we seem to be getting are basic bug fixes that don’t resolve any real issues. Not only that but they seem to be causing more issues. It just works, I don’t think so.
If Apple doesn’t watch out, they’ll lose all their credibility and brand value before they know it!
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