EBook Update
Last week I mentioned I would have an EBook entitled How to Generate Traffic to Your Website: How to let people know you exist and get them to come to your website! ready for Monday this week. Well Monday has come and gone. I’ve decided to postpone it’s release until Monday next week (March 10, 2008). As I’ve always said in the past I’d rather release something of higher quality and value than to push it out to meet a date, even if I publicly stated it.
A preconception I’d also like to discount here is that EBooks are pure profit machines. Far from it. The work that involved in creating a good EBook is substantial. For my upcoming book Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog? which will be published in the traditional sense (both as a softcover and hardcover through bookstores like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, etc.) I calculate I easily put in over 500 hours. For this EBook I calculate the total will be about 350+ hours. Assuming a 40 hour work-week, that’s about 2 months of full-time effort!
As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of the work was already done before I decided to finish and polish it a week or so ago. But 2 months worth of full-time work is not cost free. Just looking at the opportunity cost I’ve already invested a significant amount of money. As well each transaction is not free, there is a processing fee. It might be small, but let’s not forget it (There are other costs such as support, but we’ll ignore these as they’re harder to pre-calculate).
What I’m trying to get at is that the author of an EBook has the same risks as a software company. All the risk is front-loaded. That is all the time and money upfront has to be invested before any revenue is generated. That’s a lot of risk. Assuming a round rate of $100/hour, at 350 hours that’s $35,000 invested in the book ($100/hour is not my rate, it’s just a simple number to work with). Adding another 5% for transaction fees, that’s another $1750. That means that to balance out with a consulting gig I would need to generate $36,750! Only once I’ve achieved this revenue do I start to make any profit in comparison to straight consulting. If I don’t achieve it, I’ve lost money!
In other words:
- At $20/EBook I need to sell 1835 books
- At $25/EBook I need to sell 1470 books
- At $30/EBook I need to sell 1217 books
That’s a lot of Ebooks. If I want to break even selling 1000 EBooks I need to price it $36.50. If I sell less than $36,750 worth of the EBook than I’ve lost money!
EBooks are sold differently than traditional books, so the numbers are different. As an author of a traditionally published book you need to sell more copies to break even with your time, but I believe it’s easier. Firstly you’re not the only one selling your book, other reputable bookstores are listing your book (people search Amazon for example). Another disadvantage of EBooks is that have a shorter lifespan. For example the materials in this book may not be as relevant in a couple of years, so I need to make my revenues sooner than later.
Another large benefit with traditionally printed books is that they can easily be used to increase your reputation, credibility, etc. People generally put more worth into traditional books than they do EBooks, even though there are some very amazing EBooks!
Therefore the idea that EBooks are profit machines is simply not true. At least for high quality EBooks. Sure I could have just slapped together some text taken from here and there and made an EBook in a few days. Added some pictures and pretty graphs. But that’s not a high quality EBook. Such an EBooks revenues will be limited purely by my selling abilities. Instead I’d rather my EBook sell itself. There’s nothing as powerful as word of mouth marketing!
In any case, all this is to say my upcoming EBook How to Generate Traffic to Your Website: How to let people know you exist and get them to come to your website! release date has been postponed from this week to next week (March 10, 2008).
If you’re interested, come back on Monday to see if the book is available. And you can also subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t have to remember to come back, that or you can also subscribe to my email newsletter which will send updates to your email box directly.
See you next week!
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How to Generate Traffic to Your Website
Since I finished my book Interview the Pros: What does it take to create a Successful Blog? (it’s been sent to my publisher and is now going through an editing phase) I’ve been reconsidering finishing my previous book about online sales and marketing. What really brought this thought forward was buying and reading Bob Walsh’s ebook MicroISV Sites that Sell! It convinced me that I needed to finish it sooner than later.
Unlike Interview the Pros, which is going to be available on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, etc., this second book will only be available as an ebook here. I chose to go the ebook route because of the time and costs it takes to get something to print. The material in this ebook is much more time sensitive and therefore I felt it wasn’t valuable to wait until it could be available in print. I did try to keep the content as timeless as possible but some of the information will become less pertinent quicker than a traditional book can afford. That’s the nature of the internet and online traffic generation.
The ebook will be titled “How to Generate Traffic to Your Website: How to let people know you exist and get them to come to your website!” Instead of focusing on the many aspects of marketing and sales as I originally planned, I decided the book would be more beneficial to you if I narrowed the focus to only how to generate traffic to your website.
The book should be ready by the end of this to early next week because I had already written a large portion of it before I wrote Interview the Pros and because it covers a lot of the same material I presented at a 4-day seminar on how to generate traffic for a website. It won’t be as encompassing as Interview the Pros, but it’s definitely loaded with valuable information. It’s got almost everything I’ve used to get this blog and my company LandlordMax to where they are today (a combined traffic of more than one million unique visitors a year).
If you’re interested, come back very soon to see if the book is already available. Like I said it should be available later this week to early next week if all goes well. And 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. As well you can subscribe to my email newsletter which will send each of the blog entries I publish to your email box directly.
See you in a few days!
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LandlordMax Breaks Sales Record
Every once in a while I share some of our sales metrics, and this month I’m excited to say has been great. We had some clear successes:
- We beat our previous monthly sales record by a full 25.2% (in one month!)
- Unique visitors for the month is up by another 10% (another new monthly record)
- Downloads of LandlordMax trials were up 40%. This is a very significant increase. And since most sales usual come when the 30 day free trial is about to expire, next month should be very interesting…
- We got a great video review of LandlordMax on theREIbrain.com.
- The feedburner stats on this blog clearly increased more than usual (about 20% more than usual)
- This blog had more unique visitors this month than any other month
And a few other successes that aren’t as publicly interesting.
In any case, as a general philosophy I believe it’s a good thing to share your successes AND failures. I’ve shared both of them here on this blog many times. Today I’m proud to share our most recent successes.
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The Art of Profitability
I have to admit that when I first picked up The Art of Profitability I wasn’t expecting to be as good as it turned out to be. It was good. The only negative I can say is that I didn’t like the overly descriptive and colorful story telling, it was a little too much for me. But the content by far more than makes up for it.
This book is all about the different profit models, not on how to maximize your existing profit model. It CLEARLY explains the difference between the many different profit models. And not only does it explain but it also gives many examples of each profit model.
One aspect of the book I really appreciated was the effort the author went through to create “assignments” for the student Steve in the book. Having had already read several of the “assignments” beforehand (books the student had to read), I found they were very appropriate. And the ones I didn’t I’ll probably pick up.
Overall a good book which I recommend. Even if you’ve already defined your profit model for your business, you might be in for a surprise. If I rate this book on the revenues it will make for me compared to it’s cost and time to read, I’m way ahead.
Therefore I recommend the book The Art of Profitability.
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What's the Secret? How Do You Have Time To Do All That?
A very common, and I mean very common question I get is where do I find all the time to do everything I do. How am I able to run my company LandlordMax, write for this blog, write a book, and so on. Honestly I have just as much time as everyone else, I just choose to prioritize my time differently. I’m a big fan of Paul Graham’s, especially the following quote from his article How to Start a Startup which I use very often when talking to people:
“My final test may be the most restrictive. Do you actually want to start a startup? What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. Instead of working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four. And maybe end up with nothing– though in that case it probably won’t take four years.”
So what’s my secret to be able to do all the things I do in a normal day? It’s simple. Prioritization. What does that mean? I decide to use my time right now differently than most people.
Let’s take an example. Let’s assume you’re a sports fan and you want to watch every game of your favorite team. Or maybe you watch a daily TV soap opera. Maybe you just watch an hour of TV every day. Whatever the case the numbers are about the same so let’s use the sports example since it’s the easiest to calculate.
For our example let’s say you watch hockey. Your favorite team will play at least 80 games a year for about 3 hours each game. It’s probably a little less, but we didn’t include all the games or the playoffs (and the season is a little more than 80 games anyways). If we do the math we get:
- 80 games * 3 hours = 240 hours
Breaking it down further:
- 240 hours / 8 hours a day = 30 days
Breaking that even further:
- 30 days / 5 days a week = 6 full time weeks (or 1.5 months full time).
By just eliminating one activity I’ve added one and a half months of full-time time. Wow! What can you do in one and a half months full-time? I suspect a lot!
Do you have to completely eliminate this activity? No. Almost anything you take to that extreme will generally not work. You’ll probably experience some binging if you do that. Rather I recommend you do it in moderation. I still watch the occasional game. Maybe once a month. But by only watching the occasional game, I’m still at least a full-time month ahead of many of my peers who watch all the games (or tv every night, etc.). And I can tell you there are many, I personally know of over a dozen people who watch at least 2-3 sports games a week. That adds up, and it adds up quickly. Quicker than you think.
So the next time you decide to sit down and watch TV you should conscientiously decide that it’s what you want to do. Don’t just plop down on your couch because it’s the easiest thing to do, conscientiously decide that it’s what you want to do. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as you actively decided it’s the best use of your time. We all need down time after all. But if you continue to consistently choose the easiest path, then please don’t ask me how I manage to find all this time to do the things I do. You can to, there’s no secret. You just need to choose to.
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Why do Some Projects Continue to Push Unrealistic Software Development Schedules?
To quote one of my favorite software development books Rapid Development:
Some people seem to think that software projects should be scheduled optimistically because software development should be more an adventure than a dreary engineering exercise. These people say that schedule pressure adds excitement.
How much sense does that make? If you were going on a real adventure, say a trip to the south pole by dogsled, would you let someone talk you into planning for it to take only 30 days when your best estimate was that it would take 60? Would you carry only 30 days’ worth of food? Only 30 days’ worth of fuel? Would you plan for your sled dogs to be worn out at the end of 30 days rather than 60? Doing any of those things would be self-destructive, and underscoping and underplanning a software project is similarly self-destructive, albeit usually without any life-treatening consequences.
This analogy is all too accurate. You cannot wish for certain things to happen. Unfortunately reality is what it is.
One little tidbit that did catch my attention however, which I’m sure many people easily overlooked, is that if you really push a schedule beyonds reality is that you might not be able to re-adjust it later. For example if you push everyone to the extreme for 30 days they might not have any energy left at the end for another 30 days, or even more as is often the case. They will be “worn out”!
It’s virtually the same as asking someone to run a 100 meter sprint and then continually moving back the finish line as they’re just about done. It might work for a 200 meters, if you’re lucky maybe even 400 meters… But once you reach a certain threshold it will have very significant negative impacts. There’s a reason why people who run the 400 meters don’t sprint the 400 meters.
Ever try to sprint a mile? What about a marathon?
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Why Coupon Codes are Bad on Websites
Have you ever gone to a website to buy something and noticed a “coupon code” field on the purchase/checkout page?
This week I purchased a few domains from GoDaddy.com for my company LandlordMax and as I was proceeded through the checkout process I was presented with a “Coupon Code” field. Being familiar with this my first instinct was that I needed to find a coupon code online. If the field exists there must be an available coupon code.
So I went straight to search on Google for GoDaddy.com coupon codes without completing my purchase. Remember at this point I’d already decided to purchase the domains from GoDaddy, all I’m trying to do now is pay less. Why shouldn’t I? Everything in the checkout process is telling me that I can get this very same product/service for less.
Within seconds I find several GoDaddy discount coupon codes online. So I start trying them. The first one fails. Ok, let’s try this next one. Nothing. Invalid. Another. Nope. And so it goes on for a few more minutes. I’m now starting to get frustrated. I’ve already tried a dozen coupon codes that don’t work, so there’s definitely a lot of them out there. I’ve got to be getting close to finding the “good one”. So I continue looking.
I know that if I keep looking I’ll eventually find a valid coupon code and save myself some money. But I’m also tired of doing this and I’m starting to get a little frustrated. Why couldn’t they just not have hid this from me. Had I not known I wouldn’t be writing about this today!
At this point I don’t really feel like looking for a coupon code anymore. I’m also very busy and I have other important things to do. So I go ahead and make the purchase, without a coupon code. I however feel that I’m paying too much. Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t matter. I believe there is a coupon code that I’m not aware of and that’s all that really matters to me. Unfortunately perception becomes reality and so I feel jaded on the price.
Where does this all leave us? Not in the best place. Depending on the product the customer might move on to another company because too much goodwill has been loss trying to find a coupon code. They might have purchased the product and are unhappy to have paid too much. Or possibly they did find the coupon code and as a business you’re losing a large profit margin. In the best case the customer saved some extra money they hadn’t anticipated to and in the worse case the customer has moved on to another company.
What’s the alternative? Don’t show a coupon code! It’s that simple. If I don’t know about the discount than I don’t feel bad. I won’t look for it. I won’t care. I won’t be disappointed.
If you want to use coupons why not instead just make it part of the URL (the webpage address). Do something like https://www.GoDaddy.com/?couponCode=2342 If I don’t happen to come across the direct link I won’t know about the discount. And best of all, everyone who doesn’t come across the link, which I would bet is the majority of purchasers, won’t know. I won’t get frustrated trying to find a coupon code that might not exist. I’ll just pay and be on my merry way.
It’s much like going to a grocery store. I pay for my food. The customer behind me might have coupons, which is great for them, but it doesn’t affect me. The cashier didn’t just tell me that there is possibly a 30% off coupon available somewhere nearby in the store (along with a bunch of expired coupons) and that I should go look for it right now. Meaning they’ve now informed me that I’m paying more than I should which doesn’t make me happy. Although I’m aware that there are potentially coupons out there, as long as they’re not in my face I’m happy. I’m blissfully ignorant. Sometimes this can be the best thing!
** Update: For those of you who are curious, at my company LandlordMax we don’t offer any coupons or discounts on the software we sell. Therefore you don’t need to search Google for discounts, they don’t exist. We’ve made it really simple, everyone pays the same price.
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Now That's Motivation!
It’s amazing how simple things really energize and motive a team. Small simple things can sometimes be incredibly effective. A great example I’ve just read about for the umpteen time came from the latest book I’m reading called The Old New Thing. The book is about the history and evolution of the development of Windows, but importantly there’s one poignant story that sticks out. It’s also referenced in the book Rapid Development as a great team motivational example, and many others. I’ve also read this same story on countless websites and blogs. It’s become folklore. It was very effective!
To quote The Old New Thing:
During the development of Windows 95, application compatibility was a high priority. To make sure that coverage was as broad as possible, the development manager for Windows 95 took his pickup truck, drove down to the local Egghead Software store (back when Egghead still existed), and bought one copy of every single PC program in the store.
He then returned to Microsoft, unloaded all the software onto tables in the cafeteria, and invited every member of the Windows 95 team to come in and take responsibility for up to two programs. The ground rules were that you had to install and run the program, use it like a normal end user, and file a bug against everything that didn’t work right, even the minor stuff. (Of course, you had to provide the program to the person investigating the bug upon request.) In exchange for taking responsibility for ensuring that Windows 95 was compatible with your adopted programs, you go to keep them after Windows 95 shipped. If you did a good job with our two, you could come back for more.
The cafeteria was filled with Windows 95 team members, browsing through the boxes upon boxes of software like bargain hunters at a flea market. And there were the inevitable “What’d you get?” comparisons afterwards.
If Microsoft had decided to keep all the copies of the software they had just purchased for testing I can assure you there would’ve been a lot less enthusiasm in testing as many applications as possible. It would have made more financial sense, why give away everything you just purchased. Especially if you might need to re-test these same software applications when you updated Windows 95, or for future versions of Windows such as Windows 98, etc..
However this simple, very simple, idea of just letting the software developers take home the software they properly tested created great excitement and energy on the team. I have no doubt that if Microsoft had to re-buy all the software afterwards, they still would have been ahead financially with all the extra effort, energy, and goodwill they got.
Frequently in business trying to scrape the bottom line financially isn’t always the best thing. Often it’s worth looking at alternative options. Simple acts can sometimes be more valuable than giant acts.
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The Year 2007 in Retrospect
Seeing as the year 2007 is about to come to a close I thought now would be a great time to go back and reflect on everything I’ve accomplished throughout the year. Like I always like to say, reward your successes and learn from your failures.
Successes
- LandlordMax sales multiplied last years, which is much better than a percentage increase!
- Traffic to LandlordMax Property Management Software has also multiplied.
- We’ve released several updates of LandlordMax for version 3.11, including several new features and reports
- LandlordMax now fully supports Windows Vista
- We’ve contracted a great publishing agent to help us promote LandlordMax, FollowSteph, etc. which has resulted in several articles in the papers so far (and more scheduled to come in early 2008)
- We broke our one day sales records several times
- We broke our monthly sales record
- A lot of progress has been made in getting another major upgrade of LandlordMax out the door for 2008
- We’ve started to work on a networked and multi-user version of LandlordMax
- We’ve started to work on a browser based version of LandlordMax
- We’ve had some great support for an upcoming Mac version of LandlordMax which we hope to offer in 2008
- We’ve received more customer testimonials this year than all other years combined
- We’ve re-opened up a discussion forum on LandlordMax
- We’ve started working on a significant redesign of the LandlordMax website (mainly the front page)
- We completely redesigned and rebuilt the purchase pages to make them much easier
- Traffic to FollowSteph has greatly increased!
- RSS Feed subsribers is growing at a very good rate
- Increase the direct revenues of FollowSteph by about 800% (from advertising, affiliate links, etc.)
- I was interviewed on StartupSpark.com
- Many articles have had very high search engine placements
- Many articles have received high numbers of comments
- Many articles rank very high in the search engines
Others
- I started to write a book interviewing several of the most prominent bloggers online (for which I’m almost done compiling all the interviews and will be sending it off for editing very shortly). A lot of very prominent bloggers accepted to be part of this project which is great (I need to update the list). After reading all the interviews and compiling them, I can tell you this is definitely going to be an amazing book to read. There’s lots of great advice!
- I’m in the process of creating a new website called FindYourWeddingDress.com. We’ve already hired one part-time person to assist us in this task. We’re hoping to fully launch it within the next few months.
- We released the website WhichJar.com
Failures
- We had an issue with our SSL certificate on the LandlordMax purchase page. We always maintained 100% security, it’s just that we somehow didn’t renew our certificate on time and therefore weren’t officially certified for a few days. This was quickly rectified. It won’t happen again!
- Although we released the website WhichJar.com, there is currently not enough data in the database to really make it viable (we only have a few hundred open source projects stored so far). Therefore this project has been sidelined for now until I have the available resources and time or until I can find someone to partner up with. The failure is that I didn’t appreciate the data population effort that would be required
- I started an Online Sales and Marketing book which I didn’t complete. The good news is that it successfully transitioned this effort to the blogging book, which is a great success! I’m hoping to return to it sometime in late 2008 if time permit but for now it’s on hold.
- I had quite an experience with Telus with my cell phone service
This is what I can remember by just going through the blog. All in all a pretty busy year. For next year I expect to achieve even more.
Here are my goals for next year:
Goals:
- I expect the book to be available in bookstores such as Amazon.com by the Spring of 2008.
- I expect to sell over 100,000 copies of the book by end of year 2008
- I expect to more than quadruple LandlordMax sales revenues by the end of 2008
- I expect to multiply my RSS feeds on FollowSteph by end of the 2008.
- I expect to release a new major version of LandlordMax by spring/summer of 2008
- I expect to release the Mac version before the end of 2008
- I expect to release the networked/multi-user based version of LandlordMax by fall/winter of 2008.
- I expect to release the browser based version of LandlordMax by end of year 2008 or early 2009
- I expect FindYourWeddingDress.com to be fully functionning by spring/summer of 2008
- I expect to appear several more times in the media (newspapers, tv, etc.) for LandlordMax by the spring of 2008
- I expect to multiply the traffic of FollowSteph.com by at least five times before the end of 2008
- I expect to break several LandlordMax sales records this year, and again receive more testimonials than all previous years combined.
- I expect to fully complete the LandlordMax website redesign before the end of 2008
- I expect to give FollowSteph.com a significant face lift before the end of 2008
- I would like to release a cash flow analyzer software application as a complimentary product to LandlordMax before the end of 2008. We currently offer a free online cash flow calculator on the LandlordMax website, but I’d really like to expand this offering.
This is my list of successes/failures for 2007, and my goals for 2008. And because I publicly stated them here today, I’ll review them same time next year.
What about you? What are your big successes? What are your goals for next year? Did you know you increase your odds of achieving your goals if you publicly state them, especially if they include concrete terms and timelines.
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HelpSpot a Great Customer Service System
As some of you know we use HelpSpot from UserScape as our technical support system. We’ve been using it for some time and it’s a great product. Today we performed a much needed upgrade as we were behind one major upgrade and at least a few minor updates. That being said, I know Ian, the founder of UserScape, has been very busy increasing its capabilities, adding many new great features.
We’ve been wanting to upgrade for a while, the only issue we feared was that we had significantly customized the templates to our website’s look and feel and it might cost us some effort. Right now we’re extremely busy and will continue to get busier until tax season. Our busiest time is actually from early fall to the end of tax season. We however decided to go ahead with it because our discussion forum is getting hit with more and more spam and we could therefore use the new captcha feature in HelpSpot to try to reduce it. There are many other great features, it’s just that this is the one that interested us the most right now.
Well let me tell you how incredible easy it is to upgrade HelpSpot! They have a page which lists all the changes to the template files you need to make. I’ve never seen clearer instructions. Not only did he highlight the changes, but he also included some of the template code above and below some of the examples. This really helped in cases where we weren’t a hundred percent sure because of the heavier customization we had done. I’ve personally gone over many technical documents which were suppose to be “simple and clear instructions” but were completely useless. This one clearly explained how to upgrade the custom templates.
The upgrade was so easy and simple that I can’t give it proper justice. Based on some of my other experiences I expected it to take some effort, especially since we significantly customized our integration with HelpSpot. It took me all of 15 minutes! Yes, that’s right! In 15 minutes I was able to upgrade all our template files as well as the full system. Everything worked right out of the gate the first time. Even the templates. That’s amazing! Congrats to you Ian and your team.
The only negative thing I can say about this upgrade is that I didn’t do it sooner. Not only is HelpSpot a great product for customer service, but upgrading is a also incredibly quick and easy. Even with heavy customization!
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