LandlordMax Version 3.11f is Now Available!
We just released the latest version of LandlordMax Property Management Software (version 3.11f) tonight. If you’re a LandlordMax’er I suggest you upgrade to this latest version. The most noticeable change you’ll notice is that we’ve really enhanced all the reports printouts. Although the reports were really good before, we’ve brought them up to another level. On your computer screen you might not notice the difference as much, but when you print the reports out on paper the use of a darker gray instead of black for the lines makes the reports much more readable (click here to view a sample report).
As well this latest version of LandlordMax is a maintenance release, which means we’ve resolved some issues within the software. In particular we resolved two bugs that can affect you. One of these is that the report “Account entries for a Landlord (adjusted % owned)” didn’t work for some individuals in particular situations (the report just didn’t generate). This was of course resolved. The other issue that we dealt with how negative expenses were shown and calculated on two specific expense related reports. After that all the remaining issues are pretty much minor issues, such as having some text truncated, icons revised, etc. You can find a complete detailed list of all changes (release notes) for version 3.11f here.
Actually one of the more noticeable minor changes we made was the default screen size of LandlordMax. Up until this release LandlordMax supported all screen sizes from 800 x 600 up and default to 800 x 600 on startup. As of version 3.11f, the default screen size is 1024 x 768. Although we realize this may be an issue for some people (we still have approximately 3% of the people visiting our website using this resolution), they can still downgrade their LandlordMax screen size to 800 x 600.
However as of the next major release we will only support the screen resolution of 1024 x 768 and higher. That’s a pretty standard, 97% of our web visitors have this screen resolution or higher. We preemptively did this change to determine the reaction, if any, we might encounter from our current users before we fully commit. The reason we’re increasing the minimum supported screen resolution for the next major release is because we’re finding it impossible to properly display all the data we want to expose. Not to mention the fact that 97% of our users have already moved to this higher resolution (try to buy a monitor today that’s lower than 1024 x 768!). We have to do this if we want to continue to grow and offer more and more enhanced functionality. This is especially true if we want to do it in a very user friendly manner (aka. easy to use). In other words this is in anticipation of these imminent upcoming needs.
In any case, I strongly recommend you download this latest release of LandlordMax if you haven’t already done so. The updated reports alone are worth it!
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Foreclosure's Map
Someone notified me of a map they found on USAToday’s website which merges a map with foreclosures in Denver since 2006. I recommend checking it out. Although the foreclosure data is limited to one of the hardest hit areas of the city, it’s still very interesting!
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LandlordMax Sales Metrics
After the last post about our sales revenues I got to thinking, it’s been too long since I really looked at our other sales metrics for LandlordMax. Which days of the week do we sell the most? Which days of the month? Is it still as consistent today as it was the last time I checked?
The answer is yes, the data is still as consistent today as it was then, at least for the days of the week.
We sell twice as many copies of LandlordMax on any given weekday as we do on a weekend. Why? It has to do with our customer base. We’ve found that half our customers are real estate investors and half are property management companies. It’s a little more complex than that, for example we also have at least one major city using LandlordMax, some banks, and so on, but overall the vast majority of our software is sold to two categories of customers.
The question is: why are weekend sales levels roughly half of our weekday sales levels? I still really haven’t answered the question although I left enough clues to give a hint at the answer. It’s because on weekend most property management companies are closed, and therefore there’s no one around to buy LandlordMax. On the weekdays we have both categories of customers buying LandlordMax. On the weekends we only have one category of customers buying LandlordMax, individual real estate investors.
Because of this, if I want to spend money on advertising, it’s to my big advantage to do so on the weekdays. It’s effective on the weekends, but twice as effective on the weekdays. Knowing your sales metrics is very important, well at least if you spend on advertising.
Next post I’m going to expose our average revenues per day over a month. There’s also a visible pattern in this graph, but it’s not as pronounced as the days of week chart you see above. What do you think it is?
I’ll give away one free copy of my Ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website to the first three people who correctly guesses either (by posting a comment on this post):
- Our sales trend over a month
- The day we get the most sales
- The day we get the least sales
Additionally, 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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LandlordMax Sales Revenues
It’s been almost a year now since I last posted our sales revenues at LandlordMax (May 2007). Therefore I figured today was as good a time as any to update our progress and growth. You can find our sales revenues chart below:
As you can clearly see, our growth it ongoing. The current real estate crash is not adversely affecting us. Actually on my last post a year ago I predicted this would happen, with greater effect the more the real estate market crashed.
Of course I’d love to take all the credit for growth, that my company is solely responsible for all this growth. And there’s no doubt that the biggest reason for our growth is ourselves, but I really think the real estate crash is helping us. What I believe is happening is that the real estate flippers (those banking on capital appreciation) have basically been squeezed out of the market. And this goes for subprime borrowers too that cause increases in real estate prices (the higher the demand the higher the prices). What’s now left is the core group of investors, those that have larger real estate portfolios for cash flow (monthly income). Investors that need software like LandlordMax to manage their real estate portfolios. Hence increasing the demand for property management software like LandlordMax.
In any case, the last time I posted we had just started to reach new heights, and again this year history is repeating itself. It’s great! In the last 3-4 months we’ve consistently increased our revenues to another level again. It’s been a great ride and I can’t wait to see what the future will bring!
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LandlordMax Version 3.11f Coming Soon!
This is just to let all you LandlordMax‘ers know we’re planning a patch release of version 3.11, version 3.11f, very soon. Although we don’t have an official release day, you can rest assured that it’s coming in a matter of days and not weeks.
The patch will consist of about 5-6 small bug fixes, issues such as “Fixed a bug where the data printouts didn’t default to the address when the building didn’t have a name entered“. In addition to this there will be one bigger fix related to negative amounts on some of the expense only reports. It only affects you if you enter in expense amounts in the negative, for example “-15.00” rather than “15.00” (such as a refunded amount as a separate accounting entry).
Additionally, as a free bonus (this was intended for the next major release but we pushed it up), we’ve revamped all the reports in terms of printing. As of version 3.11f, all the lines in the reports will be gray rather than a black. This makes it a lot easier on the eyes, especially for line items. In other words the printed reports are a lot easier to read.
If you already own LandlordMax Property Management Software, and you’re already on any version of 3.11, then this will update will be absolutely free. And don’t worry about having to come back every day to the website to find out when it’s released, when you start LandlordMax it will check for you to see if a new version is available, and when it is a popup window will let you know.
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Why Are There So Many Dead Blogs
It’s amazing how many dead blogs there are out there, blogs where the authors wrote for around two to three months before they called it quits. Well maybe it’s not so amazing. Blogging is very easy to start, it has almost not barrier to entry. However the path to successful blogging is very hard; it takes time, it takes energy, in other words it takes a lot of effort.
To give my favorite analogy, it’s like going to the gym. Ever notice how packed gyms are in January? All these people are trying to fulfill their New Year’s resolution of getting in shape. They all start with the best intentions. They go to the gym at least several times a week and each time they exercise like there’s no tomorrow. They’re on a mission, a mission to get fit. The race is on and their running at full throttle.
Fast forward two to three months and most of these same people are barely going to the gym once a month, if at all. What happened? The good intentions are still there, but once the excitement of starting something new has faded and it’s transitioned into work, well you know the outcome. What should have been a marathon from the start ended being a sprint to nowhere.
The same is true with blogs. Lots of people have started blogs. They get all excited and post almost every day when they first start. It’s excited. It’s all new. They start to get a little bit of traffic. Sure it’s mostly friends and family, but after a few weeks or some friends of friends start looking at their blog. Maybe even a little word of mouth if they’re lucky.
Then a few weeks pass. They start to realize that the blog isn’t going to magically grow. It will take a lot of time and effort, especially to write posts on a consistent basis. Even once a week starts to become a burden. The excitement has worn off and the traffic hasn’t grown by leaps and bounds. It’s growing, but not as expected.
Plus other life events start to take precedence. Instead of blogging tonight they find themselves watching the latest sports game, the latest episode of The Office or Heroes. Then last weekend they just had to attend that barbecue at Bob’s, he always throws the best barbecue, and boy can he barbecue those steaks! And then there’s this great new movie at the cinema that just couldn’t be missed, everyone’s talking about it. And more importantly, the daily grind, you know that thing called work, it’s tiring. There’s nothing wrong with taking a night off, but suddenly that night off has become a week off, then a month off, then it’s pretty much a permanent vacation.
This is why we see the internet littered with blogs that have about two to three months of content. That’s about as long as it takes for people’s excitement to wear off and fade to nothingness. It’s the same psychological principle that happens at the gym. Ever wonder why they push so hard for yearly memberships rather than monthly memberships? It’s the same issue with starting a business. It’s amazing how many times I hear people who stalled somewhere in the middle of writing a business plan. Well ok, maybe it’s not so amazing.
Implementation, execution, and especially perseverance are the keys to success. Blogging takes a lot of hard work and effort. It takes an enormous amount of persistence and patience. Don’t expect to succeed in a month, or even half a year. Exceptionally few do. Expect it will take you two to three years of consistent posting to really get going. To quote Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, “Can you write something of high quality on a daily basis on your chosen topic for the next 3 years? That’s 780 posts if you post each weekday for the next 3 years – 1560 if you post twice each weekday…”.
It’s not easy but it can be done. Decide on a posting schedule and keep at it. I really hate seeing great new blogs with lots of potential fall to the abyss.
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Do You Still Read Your Blog's Filtered Spam Comments?
Everyone who’s been blogging for a while that uses WordPress has heard of Akismet. It’s an amazing WordPress plugin that most of us can’t live without. Actually if it wasn’t for Akismet I suspect I would have turned off commenting on this blog long ago!
For those of your who aren’t familiar with Akismet, it’s a WordPress plugin that will filter comments posted on your blog, much like spam filters work for email. Although it might might not appear as though most blogs gets “comment spam”, the numbers are incredible. Each day I get anywhere between hundreds to thousands of spam comments that Akismet filters behind the scenes so that you don’t have to see them. If I was to do this manually it would take me anywhere from an hour to several hours each day.
What I’ve noticed though is that over the last year I’ve stopped manually going through the comments Akismet has flagged as spam comments. I just automatically delete every comment Akismet flags as spam. And that’s for a few really good reasons:
- I’ve found Akismet to be highly effective at figuring out which comments are spam and which ones aren’t.
- I don’t have several hours to filter out comment spam on my blog each day.
- Losing the odd comment is not as critical as it is for my corporate website. I hate it, but the cost-to-benefit equation highly favors the odd lost comment.
What do you do? Take the poll:
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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website – Free EBook Sample
Yesterday I released a sample (the first 21 pages) of the EBook I’m selling “How to Generate Traffic for Your Website“. In it you’ll find the complete and detailed Table of Contents, as well as the beginning of the first chapter (SEO – Search Engine Optimization).
Like I keep saying over and over here on this blog, you need to try different things to see what works. If you don’t try you won’t ever know. For LandlordMax we offer a free 30-day trial, so why not with an EBook? Except instead of a time based trial, you get the beginning of the book. In this case you can read the first 21 pages before you decide on buying it.
Something else to mention, I’ve had some people approach me expecting the book to be an advanced book about online traffic generation. This book is targeted for people who have just started to those that have an intermediate level of skill and knowledge on traffic generation. It will give you a really solid foundation on which to build. To quote Bob Walsh from 47Hats.com:
“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.”
If you haven’t already checked it out, you can read the first 21 pages of the ebook here. And if you’ve already read the sample and want to get the rest, you can buy it here.
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Your Website's Response Time Will Affect Your Google AdWords Campaigns
Everybody understands that it’s important to monitor a website for uptime, after all if your website is down you’re down. But it’s not as simple as that. You also need to monitor your server’s response times. That is the time it takes from the time you request a webpage to the time loads in your web browser. The longer the response time the worse the user experience. No one wants to wait for a page to load anymore, we’re no longer living in the dial-up modem era.
And for those of you who use Google AdWords, you’ll really want to pay careful attention to your website’s response times. Google has recently indicated that a website’s response time will be incorporated into the Quality Score. And any affects in the Quality Score will therefore affect the eligibility and minimum prices for your ads!
The key to monitoring a website’s response time is to get an average from multiple sources on a continual basis. You need to take the average response time throughout the day to compensate for when your server is handling more requests, and thereby responding slower. You also need to measure the response times from different sources because some paths on the net may get bogged down for reasons unrelated to your web server’s performance.
So how do you this cost effectively? I recommend using a website monitoring service. For my company LandlordMax we use Pingdom, and we’re extremely happy with them. What initially attracted us to their service was Pingdom’s blog, which I recommend reading if you have a chance. There’s lots of great material in there.
In any case a good average response time should be well under 500 ms per request. You can find our uptime and response times graphs for LandlordMax below:
As you can see there are always some issues. In the first graph, the uptime graph, our website was down for a total of 5 minutes for the month of March. Although we want 100% uptime, it rarely happens, not without excessive costs. To be honest, until you really monitor your website you probably won’t realize the real uptime. A lot of people are surprised when they see these graphs! They never really thought that their websites were ever down. But if you think about it, OS patches often cause a 5 minute outage. Even with load balancers you can go down for a bit as you tweak the load balancers themselves.
Another great benefit with these types of service is that they will contact you when your website does go down. They’ll contact you, depending on your preferences, by email, by text message, and so on. For us we’ve got it checking our server every 5 minutes, so I personally know within 5 minutes by text message when our server goes down. It’s great peace of mind!
But going back to our discussion about response times, on average our (LandlordMax‘s) response times are about 200 ms. That’s great! We’re very happy with this. We had a couple of glitches were the response times exploded to 1 second, but overall it’s a very good looking graph. And even 1 second is better than many many websites out there.
On Pingdom’s blog, they’re kind enough to provide some graphs to show the dramatic differences in response times some websites have experienced. The following shows a very significant difference in response time starting at 4pm. Based on the blog’s comment, the difference in response time is because they switched hosting services.
And here’s another graph from Pingdom which shows what a dramatic difference optimizing your webpage code can have on your response times:
Obviously there’s a lot you can do to optimize your website’s response times. It’s worth monitoring, especially if you use Google AdWords!
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Give Your Customers the Best Experience Possible
Recently I purchased both Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3 for my PlayStation3 and was quite surprised that I couldn’t use my guitar from one game to play with the other. For those of you who don’t know what either of these two games are, they’re the latest video games that came out during the last Xmas season which let you play music instruments on your game consoles. It’s almost like karaoke for instruments.
What’s even worse than the guitars not being interchangeable is that the makers Rock Band released a patch to resolve this issue that was approved by Sony (the game console maker) but was blocked by the markers of Guitar Hero 3. That’s extremely frustrating. I can understand their perspective, the guitar from Guitar Hero 3 “feels” better than the guitar from Rock Band, but why not let us use it to play Rock Band (or vice versa)? The word of mouth marketing (for example comments like my last sentence) are worth gold.
But the real reason I want support for both guitars is not to interchange them. That’s not the big issue, at least not enough to write a blog post about. The issue is that I want to be able to play both games in multi-guitar mode. That is with two guitars at the same time on the same console, on both Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3.
The thing to acknowledge is that these games are social games, that is games best played with friends and family. When people come over I want to play either Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band with both guitars at the same time. I don’t want to have to buy a second guitar to complete my Rock Band and a second guitar to play the multiplayer Guitar Hero 3 games. That’s a total of 4 guitars when I should only need two to give me the best experience possible for both games!
Which brings us back to the true motivation of blocking the already available patch that would solve this issue. It’s not the reason most people initially suspect, it’s because the makers of Guitar Hero 3 want to sell you a second guitar. They basically make a larger margin per game if they can sell you a second guitar. And indeed you can buy a second guitar for Guitar Hero 3 without the game.
But will I buy a second guitar? Will I fork over $60 (times two if I also want to get one for Rock Band) just so I can play with other people when they come over? Right now whenever someone comes to visit we just swap the guitar, that and I’ve learned to play with the joystick to give my guests a chance to play with the guitar. It’s actually at the point where I can play Guitar Hero 3 on the Hard level competitively with the joystick! With Rock Band we just never play with a full band.
How frustrating is it? Very! It’s frustrating enough that I wrote a blog entry about it. Will I buy a second guitar? I highly doubt it. I just don’t have people over enough that will play these games to make it worth the additional costs. Especially not when it’s not a technical reason, it’s just to sell more add-on units at the cost of diminishing the users experience.
I can also tell you that people who bought one and were on the fence for the other aren’t as excited. One of the reasons to get the other is so you can get a second guitar to play socially without the additional cost (this is advantageous for both game makers). The guitars should be interchangeable. They have the same buttons, the same everything.
To the makers of Guitar Hero 3, please stop blocking this patch and let us all play both games with both guitars. It will make both games that much more enjoyable. And most importantly, it will make us all want to buy the next version that much more! Give us the best experience possible with your product, especially when it comes at no additional cost to you.
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