How to Generate Traffic to Your Website – Mark Gladding Review
Mark Gladding founder of the company Tumbywood Software which sells the software Text2Go, a nice little program that will convert almost any text to audio, reviewed my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website. You can read Mark’s full review of the ebook by clicking here.
Some of the highlights of his review include:
The book is based on Stephane’s experiences over the last few years of marketing and promoting his software company online. This makes the content highly relevant to myself, as I strive to improve the marketing of my own software product Text2Go. I found the examples and statistics quoted in the book fascinating.
The material would also be relevant to anyone starting a small online business, not just a software business. I’m sure the issues are the same. Limited time, little to no marketing budget and 100 tasks all competing for your attention.
Stephane covers an impression range of traffic generation techniques in his book, the highlights being SEO, content generation, freebies, blogging, Google Adwords, press releases and social networking.
I found each topic was covered to just the right level of detail. As you can imagine, separate books could easily be written about each of the above topics. However when running a small business you don’t have the time to become an expert on every possible online marketing strategy. Stephane provides enough information on each topic to get results. Each of the major topics also includes excellent references to more indepth sources of information.
Stephane’s writing style is clear and easy to follow. The writing is illustrated with plenty of interesting graphs and screenshots.
He concludes the review with:
In conclusion, How to Generate Traffic to Your Website contains a wealth of really useful information that’s well organised and clearly presented. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to other small online software and non-software business owners. At $28.95 (or a couple of hundred Google PPCs) the ROI will be very quick.
Something else that’s especially interesting (this is not in his review but was communicated through emails) is that Mark converted the ebook to speech using his software Text2Go and listened to it on his iPod commuting to and from work. How great is that!!!
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Web Design for ROI – Review
I recently got my hands on a copy of the book Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads. Overall I have to say it was a very good book, it really explained a lot of the key concepts in web conversions at a high level (sales conversions, lead conversions, etc.). For example I know our site isn’t perfect, and we already have a lot of work planned towards this end, but what I really liked is that most of the “enhancements” we’re planning for the future are described in this book. At least at a high level. This book is not about the details of the implementation, but it’s a high level description of what needs to be done and why.
Which is the key thing to remember about this book, it’s written at a high level, meaning it’s aimed at people who are newer to the concepts of website conversions (sales, leads, etc.). Therefore if you’re already well seasoned on concepts such as sales conversions it won’t be as exciting for you. It’s not as detailed or thorough as books like Call to Action, but it’s still very good. This book will be especially interesting for you if you’ve been mainly focusing your attention on traffic generation and ignoring any efforts on items such as sales conversions, etc..
I’d highly recommend this book for anyone who has a website where they’d like to increase their conversions, be it sales, leads, etc. It’s a good introduction and will get you going. What I really appreciated was the “Digging Deeper” chapter at the end. The authors really hand picked the best books and websites on the market to recommend as further resources to investigate. Personally I’ve almost read every single book they recommended, as well as follow most of the websites they recommended. Some examples of the books they recommended (which I’ve recommended – even reviewed – before here on my blog) include: Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. And some examples of the websites they recommend include: Marketing Sherpa, Guy Kawasaki’s website and blog,
Overall I recommend this book, especially if you’re just starting to get into the market of increasing the performance of your website. It’s not as advanced as some of the other books out there, but that’s not it’s intention. It’s a great book to start with and build up from. Well worth the purchase.
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BitsDuJour Ebook Sale Results
As many of you know from my post yesterday (or from seeing it directly), my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website was showcased on BitsDuJour.com for the day. As part of being on BitsDuJour, I offered a 49% discount, bringing the book down to an even $15.00.
Overall the results were positive. I really enjoyed working with Roger (my contact) at BitsDuJour. He was very professional, helpful, and really made the whole experience a pleasure. Thank you Roger.
In terms of results, there was a noticeable spike in sales of the ebook. It wasn’t quite as high as I wanted, I was hoping to replicate Bob Walsh’s success from some months back. Nonetheless it was pretty decent. I was able to sell a 45 copies of the ebook in one day, which is good. It’s a bit shy of my personal target of 200 sales but acceptable (I always aim high).
I suspect one of the bigger reasons for the differences in sales volume is due to the topic of my ebook (as well as price). What I mean by topic is that there are a lot more traffic generation ebooks out there, and to be honest many are pretty bad or very weak on content. So I can understand people’s trepidation. But my book is about over-delivering and under-promising, or as to quote someone who attended the seminar I gave last summer “if most courses are like drinking from a water fountain, than in comparison this course is like drinking from a water hydrant!” I can’t wait to hear people’s responses once they’ve had a chance to read the book!
In any case it was a good day. Doing the math, the revenues comes out to:
45 * $15 = $675
Of course it doesn’t end there, we now need to remove the commissions and other obvious costs:
PayPal charges = $33.75
BitsDuJour commission = $256.50
Total Profits = Total Revenues – costs
$675.00 – $256.50 – $33.75 = $418.50 Profits
The real profits are slightly less, I had to do a bit of related customer support which eats into my time (I’m not free either). But for simplicity let’s ignore that and say the profits for the day were $418.50 which is pretty good. I’m happy.
What interesting for me is that above the revenues it generated, it also created traffic to my website. My RSS feed count went up a bit. It also gave the ebook a lot more exposure, and hopefully that will result in more reviews. If you’re one of the people who bought the book and you do post a review online, please let me know, I’d love to read it (positive or negative).
Another really positive thing that came out of being on BitsDuJour is that it pushed me to update my sales page for the ebook. I knew it had to be done, I even mentioned it here on my blog as being higher on my to do list. Knowing which day specifically I was going to be on BitsDuJour pretty much committed me to a deadline, which apparently I needed. So that was a really good thing if nothing else.
The big question, would I do it again? Absolutely. The exposure was great and the revenue was good. Most importantly though I really enjoyed working with the people at BitsDuJour, even after the deal had expired they continue to treat me very well!
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49% Discount – Today Only
The ebook I wrote (How to Generate Traffic to Your Website) will be on sale for $15.00, a huge 49% discount from the regular price, on BitsDuJour.com. This discount will be available ONLY TODAY so if you haven’t already purchased it, nows a great time!
The book has gotten many great and raving reviews, of which you can find some of the highlights below. Above the highlights, you can also click on each of the reviewers signatures to read their complete and full reviews.
In addition to this you can read the first 21 pages here for free to see for yourself what the book is like. This sample of the ebook includes the full detailed Table of Contents and a decent portion of the first chapter on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Here are some highlights from the many reviews I promised:
It’s remarkably in depth. I’ve only read some of it so far, but what I’m most impressed with is the breadth of the coverage. It pretty much hits on everything someone starting a commercial website needs to think about.
As someone who knows a fair bit about these topics, I found Steph’s down to earth – here’s-what-you-want-to-do-and-why – presentation very complete. His chapters on SEO, AdWords and press releases were some of the best material from a microISV’s point of view I’ve seen to date. Steph pulls from both the experience of his microISV – LandlordMax – and other sources to illustrate and illuminate his points.
The SEO chapter in particular is must reading for any microISV because it focuses on techniques that work today – not 5 years ago – and because it gives you for the time invested a solid set of strategies to start acting on now. MicroISVs seldom have the luxury to dive to the bottom of any of the many subjects we have to deal with.
[…] To my surprise I found that Steph has done an indepth analysis of the traffic generation process and the sheer volume of topics covered in the ebook itself, reveals the amount of research Steph has done to accomplish this book. […]
Honestly, each section and category in itself could’ve easily made into another E-Book and believe me there are lot of e-books out there which deals with only 1/220th of what Steph’s written about in thie ebook, but sells for a higher price.
Steph’s done an amazing job on this ebook, and his hardwork is very evident from the research done, the topics and the sheer depth of information present on each topic.
I can assure you that this is NOT an ebook that will contain information that you’ve already read elsewhere.
Every page is simply worth the money you pay. And it’s cheaper that all those “I’ll teach you everything in two minutes” kind of books. […]
[…] Stephane has actually put a lot of work in the book, making it very easy to read, simple to find what you’re looking for and packed with some serious information about driving traffic to your sites. […]
We consider ourselves pretty savvy, but Stephane’s book has made us look at a few of the methods descibed from a different angle. We’re not saying its all new and revolutionary, we’re saying its got everything you need to know to start increasing your traffic, drastically. […]
Besides tons of written information, Stephane has also made sure that visual examples are placed throughout the book, to make sure you know what he’s trying to teach you. […]
Stephane absolutely knows what he’s talking about, and a lot of this is also coming from his personal experiences as a webmaster. We’ve got nothing bad to say – in fact, looks like we’re going to have to redo our own ebook in the making.
But the selling point for me to get this eBook was the fact that it wasn’t like all those spammy-type eBooks out there. It gives you realistic and proven tips for the long run, rather than the short term deal. Again, the fundamentals that people often overlook. Matter of fact, I have seen quite a few eBooks and all of them tend to only be a few pages long, but not How to Generate Traffic to your Website. This eBook goes into so much depth that it tries to fill as much information within the 138 pages. And so far, every single page has been useful information for me.
So, for all of you guys looking to make money online, you need to build traffic to your site first and foremost and I’m going to go on record and guarantee that this eBook is going to help me in more ways than one.
One of the highlights of the book for me was the sense of balance and perspective that is shown. For example, it’s possible to endlessly tweak your Adwords campaigns or your onsite SEO. However, Stephane repeatly emphases the point that you need to look at the ROI of your time. I also think the fact that he’s not advocating a single traffic generation technique means that he’s not afraid of recommending you weigh up each technique when deciding on how to make your next improvement. One really useful tip he makes is to play to your strengths. For example if you write great content for your blog and you enjoy it, then do more of that rather than trying to become an expert in another technique such as Google Adwords.
[..]In conclusion, How to Generate Traffic to Your Website contains a wealth of really useful information that’s well organised and clearly presented. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to other small online software and non-software business owners. At $28.95 (or a couple of hundred Google PPCs) the ROI will be very quick.
Don’t wait, today’s a great day to bring the traffic to your website to the next level by buying the ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website. You won’t get a better price, and it’s only available today at this amazing 49% discount of $15.00. You can buy it right here and now by clicking here.
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Biggest Stock Market Tip – Part 2
Today I had a discussion with someone who didn’t fully appreciate what I wrote about in yesterday’s post (Biggest Stock Market Tip), so I’m going to expand my original explanation with a better example.
Let me ask you this question, would you prefer to own a share of LandlordMax sold for $1000 or one sold for $1? Your answer should be “I don’t know” because you can’t possibly know based on the price alone. Maybe the $1 portfolio is worth a lot more than the $1000 portfolio!
Let’s assume LandlordMax is worth $10 million dollars (we’ll take it for granted that LandlordMax has at least $10 million cash in it’s bank account). If we look at the following two scenarios the values of the portfolios are quite different.
Scenario 1 ($1000/share):
LandlordMax is worth $10 million dollars and has 10 billion outstanding shares sold at $1000/share. That means each share is worth 1/1000th of the real value. In our case this means that our $100 share is worth $1 of real value. A really bad deal.
Scenario 2 ($1/share):
LandlordMax is worth $10 million dollars and has 10 outstanding shares sold at $1/share. That means each share is worth 1/10th of the total price. In this scenario, our $1 share is worth $1,000,000 of real value. A phenomenal investment!
Conclusion:
As you can see from the above examples, the stock price in of itself is pretty much meaningless. It needs a context, at the very least the total value of the company and the number of outstanding shares. If you don’t believe me, please contact me IMMEDIATELY and I’ll sell you some LandlordMax shares at any price and quantity you want, as long as I get to control the total number of outstanding shares.
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Biggest Stock Market Tip
Listen closely because this is the biggest tip you’ll ever get on investing in the stock market. This one tip is enough to make or break your fortunes! And fortunately for you most people don’t use it, even after they know about it.
What’s the amazing tip? It’s very simple in principle, actually it’s almost too simple. But before we get to it, let’s take a quick step back to look at how most people invest in the stock market right now. Read this before you skip to the tip, it will make it that much more poweful.
Imagine that I tell you a stock is worth $100. Is that good or bad? Is it expensive of not? What if we compared that stock to another $10 stock? Which is more expensive? Which is richer? In other words, which is more valuable?
I’m willing to wager that the majority of you will say the $100 stock is more valuable? Why is that? How do you know? Because the price is higher? And that’s where the problem lies!!! The price of a share of stock is a horrible measure of value. The price of one single share of stock is meaningless. Yes MEANINGLESS. It’s completely useless without a context.
Why? Because the price alone doesn’t tell you what percentage of the company you own. If you’re a little confused don’t worry, that’s why I’m going to give you a concrete example. Let’s take a look at two different companies
- Company A has 1000 shares selling for $10 each. The total price of the company is $10,000.
- Company B has 100 shares selling for $100 each. The total price of the company is $10,000.
In these two examples, owning $100 worth of shares of either company is equal. That is owning 10 shares of company A at $10/share is worth the same as owning 1 share of company B’s stock at $100.
Now this is an easy example, real life is more complex. The total market value is never the same, nor are the amounts of shares available or the price. To compound this, you have to remember that the total market value of a company is rarely equal to the real value of a company.
So where does that leave us? We’ve covered that looking at the share price is a very bad indicator of value, but where’s the real tip? The real tip of today’s article, the biggest tip I can give you, is that when you buy stocks in a company you should pretend as though you’re buying the whole company, and not just a few shares. Pretend as though you’re buying a mom & pop store on the corner of the street, a coffee shop, whatever. The key is pretend as though you’re buying the whole company.
By doing this you’ll force yourself to look at the company as a whole. You won’t just look at an arbitrary stock price without any context, you’ll look at the real price to acquire the company. And yes the stock price is completely arbitrary, a company can issue a split (or reverse split) at any time. When this happens the stock price changes drastically, but the price of the full company doesn’t.
But if you think about it some more, it will make you look at buying stocks very differently, and this is the most important part of the tip. For example, you’ll not longer be looking at just the price of a stock, you’ll want to make sure it’s worth it. Would you buy a coffee shop losing a million a month? Yet many people buy stocks like this. Would you buy the coffee shop at 10x it’s current value, say for a million when you know it shouldn’t ever be more than $250,000? Happens all the time in the stock market. Not only that, you’ll want to do more research. As much as you would do when buying a coffee shop.
Another major shift in thinking will be your hold time, that is how long you plan on holding onto a stock before you will sell it. When you buy a coffee shop do you buy it with the hopes of selling it in a few days or weeks? Not likely. After all, if you’re going to spend all that time and effort into researching and acquiring it, you’ll make sure it’s a valuable asset for a longer time frame. Buying and selling stocks quickly will dramatically reduce you’re returns, more than you can imagine. It’s worth picking solid stocks, or should I say coffee shops now that you’re perspective is already changing.
This one tip, the tip of looking at buying a stock as a full company rather than as a single stock will dramatically shift your overall thinking. It’s a simple tip with profound impacts. And it’s from this different way of viewing stocks that your biggest gains will come from.
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How to generate traffic to your website – Dat Money Review
Jason from DatMoney.com very positively reviewed my latest ebook “How to Generate Traffic to Your Website” earlier this month. If you haven’t had a chance to come across it yet, here are some of the highlights from the review:
“I mean, we all can’t know everything; we have to start from somewhere, right? And although my methods do help build traffic, just by reading the first 30-40 pages of this eBook, I was in shock on how much I have missed out on.”
Further on he states:
“But the selling point for me to get this eBook was the fact that it wasn’t like all those spammy-type eBooks out there. It gives you realistic and proven tips for the long run, rather than the short term deal. Again, the fundamentals that people often overlook. Matter of fact, I have seen quite a few eBooks and all of them tend to only be a few pages long, but not How to Generate Traffic to your Website. This eBook goes into so much depth that it tries to fill as much information within the 138 pages. And so far, every single page has been useful information for me.”
However the best recommendation is that he “goes on the record and guarantees” the ebook is going to help you:
“So, for all of you guys looking to make money online, you need to build traffic to your site first and foremost and I’m going to go on record and guarantee that this eBook is going to help me in more ways than one.”
Thank you Jason for such a glowing review! And it’s great to hear you got a lot of value out of it.
You can read the first 21 pages of the ebook for free here, which also includes the full Table of Contents. The ebook costs only $28.95, and you can buy your own copy right now by clicking here.
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What am I Up to?
Well it’s been almost a year since I last posted what I’ve been up to, and what a year it’s been! I’ve been just as busy this year as last year, if not busier. A lot has changed since last year. We’ve had to shift a lot of priorities based on time and money, which I’ll discuss shortly. As well I’ll talk our current objectives for the upcoming year.
LandlordMax
Lots has been happening with LandlordMax as you’ll soon see, so much so that I’ve had to allocate separate sections to it. Overall though we’ve really been growing at a good rate as you’ve probably already read from my recent post on our sales metrics. We’ve been working hard at it.
LandlordMax has also started to appear in several major newspapers, rather than just our market specific niche publications such as Multi-Housing News. We recently appeared in the Ottawa Business Journal, the Ottawa Citizen, the Calgary Herald, and so on That’s been great, and it’s definitely helped to get our name out.
In addition to this we’ve really been growing internally here at LandlordMax (beyond what I’ll cover in the individual sections). We’ve now automated a lot more of the shipping process (24% of our orders are shipped). We’ve enhanced our technical support offerings (we now have a discussion forum for example). We’ve also automated a lot more of internal development process. In this regard, our version control system has been enhanced, we’ve moved from CVS to Subversion. We’ve also improved our project management system. Not only that but we now use a higher-end wiki much more extensively than before for all our internal documentation. Basically a lot of behind the scenes enhancements.
LandlordMax Version 3.11f Released
For those of you who have been following this blog, you know we just recently released version 3.11f of LandlordMax. It involved a great deal of effort and it was a success, it went without a hitch. Not only did we resolve some issues, but we also completely overhauled the report printouts! That in itself was a large effort.
LandlordMax Website Re-design
Although a lot of effort has already gone into this project, it’s one that we’ve had to push back a few times. We’ve already designed the website, we’re actually well into the implementation phase, but it takes time. As well we need to be careful with our SEO (Search Engine Optimizations) because we’re ranked very highly on Google. The new design looks amazing and will really improve the site but I’ve had to make the hard decision of pushing it back. I’d post a screenshot but I don’t want to unveil it until it’s complete.
We’ve also started to created animated tutorials but unfortunately this is another effort that’s had to be pushed back. That being said, we are actively working on making one larger animated tutorial for the home page which will showcase LandlordMax. Our goal is to have this available and online sometime between now and next month.
LandlordMax Version 5.x
In my last update I mentioned how we were working hard on getting a version 4.x out, well it’s now version 5.x. Our version numbers are based on year dot month, so 5.x means it was released in our 5th year of business on the x’th month of the year (3.11 being 3rd year of business in November – the 11th month).
This major version upgrade has mainly been delayed because we went down some wrong paths, well maybe a better way to put it is paths that we couldn’t fully support with our resources. For example we attempted to include full QuickBooks integration but this was pushed back. As well we attempted to provide full support for check printing, but again the higher costs (time and money) have forced us to push this feature back to another version. We got pretty far, the issue is to properly and fully integrate these features takes a lot of effort. We could do a quick and dirty job, having them poorly integrated with many outstanding issues, but that’s not the way we operate (for example checks that can only be printed to very specific layouts). Therefore we’ve pushed these features off until we could completely and seamlessly integrate them
That being said, we’ve been working feverishly to get the latest version out. Some quick previews of what you can expect include a whole new workarea in LandlordMax called “Contacts”. This is a place to store additional contacts beyond your tenants, vendors, etc. As well we’re planning on adding the ability to send out emails directly within LandlordMax (where having additional contacts will be a big benefit), such as invoices, receipts, and even generated reports. Sending emails without spell checking wouldn’t be much fun, so you can expect to see this as well. We’re also adding support for “Accounts” in the accounting workarea. Although we won’t offer for bank reconciliation support with this version, we will be getting much closer (you can take that as a hint of another feature we want to eventually offer). There’s a lot more than this, but I hope these teasers give you an idea of some of the great new features you can expect to see in the next major version.
LandlordMax Mac Version
We wanted to offer a Mac release of version 3.11 of LandlordMax but this has been pushed back due to other higher priorities. We’d love to offer a Mac version, but the demand compared to some other items has forced me to make some tough decisions, this being another one of them.
LandlordMax Network Version
We’ve been talking about this for some time and our intentions are still very strong in this respect. Indeed a lot of effort has been going into this. At this stage we’ve definitely decided it will be based on the same programming language as the desktop version of LandlordMax so that we can share a lot of the same code base. We’re still ironing the details of how we’ll finalize the offering, whether it will be a client/server application or a browser based system. Both have their pluses and minuses. In either case, the work we’re doing now is going to be beneficial for whichever path we ultimately decide to take.
If I were to guess today on the outlook for a networked version, I’d wager it’s closer to 2009 than 2008. This is mainly because I’ve had to commit some of these resources to getting the latest version of LandlordMax, version 5.x, out sooner than later. We really strive to release a major new version of LandlordMax every year, at the longest every year and a half. For this release we’re already at the year and a half marker, so I really want to get it out as soon as possible. It’s understandable why it’s longer than usual, but we still need to get it done. I’m aiming for under two years, but that’s still to be determined. Which means another hard decision, diverting effort from this endeavor to the 5.x version. But don’t worry, it’s coming! That’s a certainty. It’s just the when that isn’t.
FollowSteph.com
This blog is growing by leaps and bounds. Since last year the RSS feed count has pretty much gone up four times! The traffic numbers are higher than ever.
I’ve also been trying to post more frequently and regularly, which I’m sure has really helped. I’ve also past my 250th post milestone in February. In addition I’ve done many smaller enhancements with very good results (for example I include relevant pictures with each post whenever possible).
I did look at a blog re-design, but to be honest I’m pretty happy right now with the current look and feel. It’s simplistic. There’s quite a few things I would like to do, but they haven’t been enough of a priority for me to implement them. Maybe this year, we’ll see…
Interview the Pros (Book)
The full title being “Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog?“. Since last year I went ahead and interviewed 40 of the most prominent bloggers and compiled all the interviews in a book that will be traditionally published and available in stores such as Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, etc. You can find the complete list of everyone I interviewed for the book here. As you can see from the list, these are some very influential bloggers. Even though I’ve been blogging for over two years, I still learned a lot from them!
The book just recently came back from the initial editorial review and was very well received (this took about two months). The biggest change from the original version was the epilogue, which I completely rewrote. That’s been re-submitted and the book is going through one final edit. I expect this last edit to be done within 2-10 weeks (at least that’s what they’ve told me). But they did suggest it will probably be on the shorter side as I’ve requested the interviews be left intact for obvious reasons. Once that’s done it’s down to the final details, the book’s cover art and copy, and so on. Based on what I’ve seen, I suspect the book will be available in stores by late summer. I was initially hoping for spring/summer, so late summer is still inline and reasonable.
By the way, the other big concern they had with the book is that it contained too many interviews. In other words there was too much content. They tried to convince me that it should be published as two separate books, but I pushed for one. Therefore expect to get a lot of value from this one book, it was strongly suggested to be two separate books!
Generate Traffic to Your Website (ebook)
In addition to the above book I also wrote a 138 page ebook on how to generate traffic to your website which has been a great success. The ebook goes for $28.95 which is very affordable, and so far it has generated sales in the thousands of dollars. If you’re interested you can read the first 21 pages free here.
This ebook has appeared on many sites such as 47Hats.com, BloggingTips.com, etc. and has been positively received overall by the online community. There are a lot of very positive reviews about it online, two of which I haven’t even yet had the time to mention on this blog, or the sales page for that matter. This will soon change of course.
With all that, the biggest issue with this ebook is that the sales page needs a lot of work. I honestly put it together very quickly, and it’s obvious. Just as I was releasing it, I got my editorial review back for my book Interview the Pros, which took precedence over fully developing the sales page. And then came the final push to get LandlordMax version 3.11f out the door. And so on. Basically I haven’t had the time.
In any case, it could be converting much better. Therefore you can expect to see the sales page for the ebook to be updated very soon, especially since we’re suppose to be showcased on BitsDuJour.com early next month (May). I really want to have it updated before then.
FindYourWeddingDress.com
This project has moved a lot since last year. The website is stable, and we did hire someone to populate the database with wedding dresses. Although it’s not publicly released, I figured it would be a lot easier to get commitment from wedding dress designers if they could see the website in action with a sample database. See what it would be like when it was fully populated.
To do this we hired someone to populate the database, and she did a great job. If you go to the website you’ll see we have over 500 dresses in the database right now. 500 dresses might not seem like a lot, but it is. Without getting into the specifics here, I can say the work is in the details.
However, the next stage of this enterprise is to contact the different wedding dress designers and work out arrangements with them to fully populate the database with complete data. This is where I’m lacking the resources to move ahead. I would prefer to do this myself, or hire a professional to help us contact the different designers. In either case, I just don’t have the time right now. Therefore this has been temporarily put on the back burner with the full expectations that I will return to it by winter.
The good news though is that the traffic to this website is growing exponentially, without any marketing! For some reason we’re being found on the search engines for all kinds of searches. Right now we’re looking at about a thousand unique visitors per month. Overall this is an almost non-existent website, but it’s amazing for a website that doesn’t have any links to it other than my mentioning it once or twice on this blog. No one else is linking to it. These are almost all due to search results. For example this month the search term to generate the most traffic is “castillion train dress”. I can just imagine what will happen once we really get the ball rolling with this project.
WhichJar.com
Last time I left off this website was stable and only needed the database to be populated. Unfortunately this is still the case. I just haven’t been able to allocated any time to it, including time to find someone to help me with this project. Therefore it’s currently been put on hold. The database has about 100 jars, but that’s insignificant, it’s just not enough to be of any real value right now. It needs at least 1,000 – 10,000 jars of the bigger open source project to get any real traction.
More
Yes, there’s still more! Like I said, I’ve been busy. But the rest isn’t as interesting as what I’ve already mentioned. For example we’ve bought a bunch of domains to monetize and/or re-direct to LandlordMax (for example PropertyManagementSoftwares.com), we’ve been enhancing on our affiliate program for LandlordMax, and so on.
Overall it’s been a busy year and next year is looking to be even busier! I can’t wait. And just like I said in last year’s post, this is why I love being an entrepreneur; you never know where next year will lead you.
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More LandlordMax Sales Metrics
Last week I promised I would post a follow-up article to my previous one about our sales metrics at LandlordMax, where I would show our daily sales averages over a month. Well here’s the graph below:
It’s not exactly what you would expect from a property management software application is it? To quote Eric, the founder of RentARoom.ca, who commented on my previous post (thanks Eric):
“Beginning of the month is probably slow, rising to mid month to it’s peak, and the last days of the month fairly low sales as well. The slowest days: First to Third of the month.
I guess property managers are busy trying to get it all done in their old system. They give up by mid month, or catch their breaths and say they have to find an “easier” way by next month and find a new program.
So by that, advertising just before mid month would be best. (depending on first ad seen -first visit to the website- and conversion to a buying decision)”
That was exactly my initial thoughts. And this proves why it’s so important to get real hard data rather than assuming. In this case common sense is wrong, including mine. The best days for our sales are at the beginning of the month, when landlords and property management companies are at their busiest.
Not only that, but when they’re at their quietest time is when we get the least sales. In other words when we expect the most sales is when we’ll get the least!
Why is the real buying pattern almost the opposite of what we’d expect? Although I don’t know for sure and I can only speculate, my guess is they buy LandlordMax when they’re experiencing their biggest pains. That is they buy it when they need it most rather than when they have the most time. The biggest time for sales is when all the rents are due.
Interesting isn’t it? Common sense in this case proves to be wrong. Getting cold hard data made a real difference, it was very educational. It’s also a very big reminder to always double check your intuition with data. I’m sure glad I did!
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The Scariest Day of a Software Release
What’s the scariest day of a software release? Is it the day before the release? The day of the release? It’s neither, the scariest day of a software release is the day after the release.
Why? That’s when all hell can break loose. That’s when your software will move from your small testing world to the big real world, when it will really be tested beyond the small and friendly confines of your company. That’s when you’ll know if there’s a problem and you’ll be called upon to fix it right NOW. Not tomorrow or next week but right now. The day after the release is by far the scariest day of a software release.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to bringing a software release to fruition. It takes a great amount of effort. And there’s definitely a lot of pressure to get it right. But all that’s nothing compared to the nightmare of having to deal with a software release gone bad. It can mean rolling back, losing data, angry customers, customers who’s entire companies go down because of you. It’s not a good position to be in.
It’s also when the customer wants solutions and answers right now! How can this have happened? When will it be fixed? And you need to give them an answer and solution NOW. You’re on the fire cooker and with each second that passes the stress and pressure increases exponentially. No one wants to experience the day after a bad release.
The day after a release is always tense, everyone’s on standby waiting for any signs of trouble. Although I’m not making justice to real soldiers, it almost feels like being in the trenches waiting for the battle to begin. It can be nerve racking.
You’re hoping for a completely quiet day, but you’re prepared for the worse.
And that was us on Monday this week. The good thing is that it was a completely quiet day!!! Not a word. Not a peep. Nothing. The release went absolutely perfect. Not one hitch. The server got hammered by the sheer number of downloads but it held up without a problem. A lot of people upgraded based on the sheer number of downloads, but not one support request was related to the upgrade!
I couldn’t have asked for anything more. So far every single release of LandlordMax has gone really well. It’s been great. Of course I could say we’ve been very lucky, but I have to admit there is a lot of effort that goes into each release to make them successful. And it pays off. It’s worth the time, and I strongly recommend every company put the necessary effort into successfully releasing software rather than just throwing it out there and hoping for the best. It’s worth it.
And please don’t misconstrue this last comment as me saying that you should only release software when it’s fully complete feature wise, that’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m a big fan of evolutionary software, meaning build your software iteratively. Don’t try to build it all at one time, rather build as many features as you can now and add more later in future versions. It’s just that whatever you do build now, make sure it works to perfection.
Once I’ve written the follow-up article I promised on our sales metric here at LandlordMax, I’ll post an article about how to significantly improve the odds of successfully releasing a software. If you’re interested come back soon, or if you want to save yourself some effort, you can also subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t have to come back each day until I post the follow-up. As well you can subscribe to my email newsletter which will send each of the blog entries I publish to your email box directly.
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