50% Discount on How to Generate Traffic Ebook!
Ever since the ebook appeared on Bits du Jour, I’ve been considered reducing the price by 50%. I also have to admit I just haven’t had the appropriate time to allocate to marketing the book, what with Interview the Pros (the traditionally published book I have coming out soon) and the upcoming major release of LandlordMax.
In any case, I’ve just reduced the price of the ebook by 50% tonight. I’m going to give that a try, at least for now. I don’t know how long it will last, so if you’ve been on the fence nows a good time to take advantage of this offer. I definitely will never reduce the price lower than it is today. If anything else, once I have some time to really market it, the price will likely increase.
Considering how affordably priced I thought it was before, now it’s an even greater deal. It’s now less than the price of going to a movie with a popcorn and drink!!! You can’t beat that. Check it out now!
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How do You Add Empty Lines in WordPress Posts?
Does anyone know how to consistently add blank or empty lines within a WordPress post? Seems like such a common and simple thing but for the life of me I can’t figure it out. And I’m not the only person struggling with this issue. If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find many people asking this same question.
How can this have been missed? Almost everyone wants to add empty or blank lines to format their text. Often you need to add a little bit of white space to make the post look clean. But in WordPress it seems like they’ve gone to the ends of the world to make this an impossible and death defying feat! I just don’t get it.
If you enter in blank lines in the WYSIWYG editor, as soon as you click on the save or publish button, all the empty lines disappear. All your text gets crunched up again. Type them back in and save. Poof! Like magic, gone. What’s up with that?
What about manually coding them in the html view you ask, which by the way is wrong since the goal of WordPress WYSIWYG editor is to abstract this html knowledge out of your daily repertoire (you shouldn’t need to know html to be a blogger, although it really really helps). No can do. I’ve tried everything! I’ve tried <br> statements. I’ve tried <br> </br>. I’ve tried <p></p>, <p> </p>. I’ve tried everything and nothing works. As soon as you hit the save or publish button, that code disappears into the never land.
So how does one add an empty line in a WordPress post? I have no idea. You could try looking for support on WordPress.org or support on WordPress.com, but neither has a consistent solution. The only somewhat related solution someone’s found is to increase your paragraph spacing in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which is not the solution I’m looking for. I want empty lines, between images, between paragraphs and images, in other words any block of content. A simple request you would think.
How can this be so difficult? If I’m struggling with this others have to be too. My big question is why? It seems like such a common thing that I just can’t but ask how this could be such a difficult task. Does anyone know of a consistent solution?
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The Secret to Making ANY Computer Safe
Have you ever been at someone else’s house and needed to use their computer to quickly check something on the internet but where worried about the security of their system? If it was infected with viruses, spyware, or what have you? What about using your credit card to buy something. What if you’re on vacation and needed to use it for business purposes, or just to quickly check something within your bank account?
I can tell you that this completely terrifies me. I’ve seen way too many computers completely infected with garbage. Computers that I wouldn’t even do anything at all on, not even save a text document for fear of keystroke loggers.
Yes it can be that bad! Less than a year ago I was at a someone’s house where the computer was still running Windows 98. It had no router, not even a software firewall. No antivirus. Nothing. Connected directly to a broadband modem. This person was complaining that their computer was really slow and kept crashing all the time. And I mean all the time! When I asked them about even just upgrading the OS, I got some funny looks, which is when I realized it wasn’t even worth asking about a firewall router. It’s a good thing I didn’t need to use his computer to connect to the internet. I can’t even begin to imagine all the possible harm I could have self-inflicted!
Although this is a more extreme case, it’s not that extreme. Another person I know was using an older version of Windows XP, not even SP1. They couldn’t be bothered to upgrade. No router, nothing. Direct connection to a broadband modem. As you can imagine the computer was pretty much useless, but they kept using it thinking the computer hardware was the issue. They even did their banking on it!!!
As a quick divergence, a lot of people are heralding the Mac as the solution to their security and performance issues. But that’s completely false, you’ll still encounter the same issues. Like everything new, there are less issues right now because if you buy a Mac right now you’re fairly up to date (plus there haven’t been as many targeted attacks yet). But wait another year or two as these people don’t update their operating system like they should. Especially if they also connect directly to broadband modem boxes. It’s only a matter of time before all these brand new shinny macs also start to come to a crawl.
The fundamental issue is not the OS but the people. And it’s not that they’re idiots filling ID-10-T forms all day, it’s that they don’t know any better. Upgrading and security hasn’t been ingrained in their brains. They hear about it, but they don’t really get it, at least not yet. Unlike the concept of changing the oil in your car every x miles, upgrading is still not a fully understood benefit. It’s not really appreciated, so many people just don’t do it. Plain and simple.
But getting back to our discussion, what can you do to use any computer to safely access the internet? Two things really. Well technically you could probably get away with one, but just to be extra safe I recommend doing both.
1. Use a Live-CD OS to boot the computer.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this concept, what it means is that you can create a CD that will boot the operating system from the CD drive. A great example of this, and the one I use, is the Knoppix linux operating system.You can technically do this with a USB key as well, it’s just that not all computers will allow you to boot from the USB key whereas a CD is 100% supported.
What you’re basically doing is bypassing the normal operating system and booting your own safe operating system! This is much better because you can guarantee the OS (operating system) is safe, or as safe as you can make it by always using the latest version.
No longer do you have to worry about a corrupted operating system. Just bring your own on a CD. And the best benefit of all is that there is ZERO installation. It works directly off the CD. It doesn’t touch the computer’s OS in any way. Theoretically you could remove their hard drive and still use the computer! It’s a self-contained OS. You get a guaranteed OS that doesn’t touch the other person’s computer. It doesn’t install anything, heck it doesn’t even need to know which OS they’re using.
But even more than that, you can add one more layer of protection to this setup. But I would only recommend going this far if you’re going to be staying at someone’s place for an extended period of time, otherwise I can’t imagine carrying the device around in my back pocket.
2. Use your own router.
Above bringing your own OS on a CD, why not bring your own router. They can be bought for as little as $40. Not only is it another good line of defense, but it can make the computer much faster as it won’t be busy having to block tons of unwarranted traffic from the net. Let the router do that. Plus two lines of defense are always better than one. It’s just safer.
Conclusion:
With these two tips, bringing your own OS on a CD and your own router, you can virtually use any computer risk free (as long as you boot from the Live-CD!). You won’t have to rely on someone else’s capabilities to keep their system clean. You won’t have to potentially anger/insult/scare anyone by letting them know their computer is filled with viruses and spyware. And you’ll be able to confidently access your bank accounts and any other highly sensitive website worry free.
As one last little bonus, if you bring your own OS on a CD, you’re guaranteeing yourself to always have the same software everywhere. If you prefer FireFox over IE, you don’t have to hope they have it installed, or install it for them as they look behind you all worried with sweat beeds dripping down their forehead asking you over and over, are you sure it’s ok? It will be on your CD everytime all the time.
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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website – Andy Brice Review
Earlier this month Andy Brice of Successful Software wrote a review of my ebook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website. The following is a quick highlight of Andy’s review:
“On the whole I think it is a very good introduction to marketing websites. At 136 pages there is plenty of ‘meat’ and a good balance between depth and breadth of coverage. Steph illustrates many of the topics with his own real-world experience with landlordmax.com.”
You can read his full review here. Thanks Andy for taking the time to review the book.
For those of you who are just hearing about this ebook for the first time, you can read the first 21 pages free here. You can also find several more reviews here. And if you’d like you can purchase it right now.
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Interview the Pros – Update
As many of you already know, I’m in the process of getting a book published called Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog? which consists of 40 interviews with many prominent bloggers and will be available on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and so on. The good news is that I’ve just finished sending the final review/edit of the book to my publisher earlier this week. I’m now in the process of working with them on the book’s cover copy (the wording on the cover, back, inserts). We’re also in the process of working through the illustrations for the cover, and what have you. As far as I understand, this next step could take up to 5 weeks.
The book’s already been assigned it own ISBN, which is pretty cool! It will be available in both hard cover and soft cover, In addition to this I’m in the process of building up a website for the book which should be available for its release. I’d share the link but it’s not yet ready.
All in all things are progressing. It’s not as fast as I’m used to in the blogging and technical world, but I’ve been informed that for a traditionally published book is pretty fast, which is good news.
I’ll keep you posted with updates as they become available.
For those of you who are new to this blog (the readership is growing quite rapidly), the list of people interviewed for the book are:
- Aaron Wall from SEO Book
- Ades Tynyshev from Ades Blog
- Al Carlton from Coolest-Gadgets.com
- Alex Papadimoulis of Worse Than Failure
- Andy Brice of Success Software
- Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends
- Asha Dornfest from Parent Hacks
- Ben Casnocha
- Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog
- Bob Walsh author from 47 Hats
- Dan Lyons from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
- Dane Carlson from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog
- David Armano from Logic+Emotion
- David Seah
- Derek Semmler
- Dharmesh Shah from On Startups
- Eric Sink
- Ian Landsman of Userscape
- James and Alex Turnbull from Google Sightseeing
- JD from Get Rich Slowly
- Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror
- Jeff Clavier from Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
- Jennette Fulda from Half of Me
- Jenny from 101 Reasons I Hate Being Fat!
- Jessamyn West of Librarian.net
- Joel Cheesman from Cheezhead
- Jonathan Snook
- Manolo from Manolo’s Shoe Blog
- Neil Patel from Quick Sprout
- Pamela Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation
- Patrick McKenzie from Micro ISV on a Shoestring
- Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist
- Ramit Sethi from I will Teach You to be Rich
- Rob Walling from Software By Rob
- Rohit Bhargava from Influential Marketing Blog
- Seth Godin
- Stephane Grenier of Follow Steph (me)
- Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion
- Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar
- Yaro Starak from Entrepreneur’s Journey
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Status Update
Normally in the past I’ve posted updates about what we’re doing here at LandlordMax (as well as my other projects) every six months to a year. Well I’m now going to try to increase that frequency to every 2-3 months. I’m doing this because it forces me to look more frequently at our successes and failures in detail. I always do some checks each month, but by forcing myself to post about the more interesting metrics on a regular basis will force me to look deeper into these metrics. Hopefully finding some great nuggets of information along the way.
Firstly, the most exciting and good news is our traffic metrics at LandlordMax. Our traffic, as measured in by unique visitors, has increased by a whopping of 108% in the last 6 months!! That’s our biggest success as it is translating into more sales.
As well our revenue growth is continuing to be very positive, which is great to see. For those of you who are fairly new here, in early April I posted a graph of our sales revenues over the last few years. In that graph there was somewhat of a spike in 2008. I’m glad to report it wasn’t just a one-off spike for January and February, it’s a consistent growth in revenue. May is already looking like another very big month, possibly the biggest yet!
I decided to also push the data further and generate a moving average graph using a 12 month trailing period (which is why the first 12 months are missing from this graph). I have to admit I was surprised with the results, it’s much better than I expected! As you can see below, we’re definitely moving in the right direction. The real estate bust is not hampering our growth, so it’s not all bad news out there. It’s definitely not all doom and gloom for everyone as you can clearly see.
Some other interesting news, FollowSteph is still growing at a very good pace. In the last 6 months the traffic on this blog has grown by 46% which is great. Although I was hoping to more than double it every 6 months, I can’t complain with this growth rate. The good news is that the RSS feed subscription rate has grown much faster than that, it’s pretty doubled in the same amount of time.
As for the book Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog?, it’s still being edited by my publisher. These things take time, which I have to admit is excruiating for me. I like to have things moving, I’m not a big fan of waiting. But the good news is that the book already has it’s own official ISBN number assigned to it. And most of the book’s cover and back copy is ready to go. It’s going to be available in both as a soft and hard cover book. I’ll let you all know as soon as the editing phase is done, which hopefully will be sooner than later. As well I have to finish the website for the book pretty soon, so I can start to do some pre-marketing. I’ll let you all know when the website is available.
As for the ebook I wrote How to Generate Traffic to Your Website it’s done fairly well overall. I have to admit I was hoping for better results, but this topic seems to be saturated with lower quality ebooks. In other words a lot of people are suspicious of all books on this topic because of some bad experiences, so you really have to push hard to make the sale which isn’t really where I want to be (I don’t want to compete with the long spammy sales letters). However what’s been really interested is that ALL the reviews it’s gotten have been favorable! And each time a review came out there was definitely a spike in sales. But between reviews it’s pretty quiet. So I’m looking into what are my options for the future of this ebook…
Otherwise everything else is moving along very well. The biggest item is that we’re always working very hard on releasing the next major version of LandlordMax as soon as possible, which is coming together very nicely. Just extremely busy as usual.
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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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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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