Blogging Book Interview Update
As many of you already know I’m in the process of compiling a book of interviews with many of the most prominent bloggers. The idea of the book is to ask every blogger I interviewed similar questions to find out what’s common, what’s different, what works, basically what it takes to be a successful blogger.
At this stage I’ve completed all the interviews and I can tell you that the answers are amazing. I’ve been successfully blogging myself for over two years now and I still learned a lot! Thank you everyone for taking the time to participate in this project and giving such great responses and advice.
The book will be sent off for editing by the end of this month.
I also initially posted a list of bloggers who had agreed to participate. This list has changed somewhat since then. A few people weren’t able to complete their interviews for different reasons, which is expected when you interview so many outstanding people. I was very honored they accepted in the first place, but I can also appreciate their busy schedules. Therefore you’ll find a few new names on the list which is very thrilling.I’m very happy and proud to announce the official list of bloggers who will be part of the book (in alphabetical order of their first names):
- 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 of several blogs books including Clear Blogging
- 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
Quite an exciting list! Several people listed here have over a million unique visitors per month on their blogs! Most have hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month. All are of course very successful bloggers!
As soon as the book comes back from editing, I’ll post an update and let you all know when it will be available to buy from Amazon. I’m sure you’re as excited as me to see it in print!
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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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Be the Best at Something Instead of Average at a Lot of Things
It’s common knowledge that you should work on things you’re not so good at. If you’re a star baseball pitcher who can throw the ball faster than anyone else but can’t throw a curve ball to save your life then you should improve your curve ball. If you’re really good at math but can’t write worth anything then you should really try to improve your writing skills. You should try to improve your weaknesses so that you can do everything. Basically you should focus most of your energy on improving your weakest points.
I completely disagree! Spend most of your energy improving the things you exceed at, not your weaknesses.
If you’re a great baseball pitcher that can throw a ball faster than anyone else, being able a throw a curve ball becomes less and less important. Not only that, but if you don’t improve on your main skill (throwing an amazing fast ball) than you’ll just be like everyone else. A pitcher who can throw a decent fast ball but with a limited repertoire of pitches. Nobody will really care. But if you throw the fastest and meanest fastball people will care. You’re skill will be rewarded. You will get attention. You will succeed!
If you can do math like no one else people will pay attention. You will succeed. People will overlook the fact that you can’t write. They’ll care that you can do amazing mathematical feats. They’ll focus on that. You’ll be rewarded for that. Only few people can achieve the heights off any skill.
Another example is basketball. Look at Shaquille O’Neal. He’s a very famous basketball player but he continually struggles with free throws. Something that’s considered a standard skill in professional basketball and he can barely do it. The reality is that it doesn’t matter, he’s focused his time and energy on improving his greatest strengths rather than working on his biggest weaknesses. Do you think people would care if he could get a decent free throw percentage if he hadn’t built up his other basketball playing skill? I doubt it.
I’m not saying that you should ignore your weaknesses, what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t worry too much about it. Put some effort to improve them but instead focus the vast majority of your effort and energies on improving what you excel at. Focus on your strengths. If you’re beyond amazing at something success will follow. People will overlook your weaknesses.
I’d rather have a Shaq on my basketball team than an all around average player. I’d rather have a team of Shaq’s, each with a very different expertise than an all around team of average players.
“The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time. The number of divas who can hit the f6 in Mozart’s Queen of the Night is vanishingly small, and you just can’t perform The Queen of the Night without that famous f6.”
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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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2 Very Simple Ways to Significantly Increase Your Productivity
There are many thing you can do to improve your productivity and today we’ll cover two of the easiest possible productivity tips that will give you biggest bang for the buck!
1. Check your email at most 3 times a day.
Very simple. Don’t check your email throughout the day. Don’t automatically check your email every 5-15 minutes. Not even once an hour. No more than a total of 3 times in any single day. If it’s very important, then the person will find another means of contacting you directly (maybe through messenger, that old thing we call a phone, or even coming to see you in person).
The 3 times I personally check my emails are:
- First thing in the morning for obvious reasons.
- After I come back from lunch. It’s nice because it’s a lighter transition to get back in the groove of things.
- Near the end of the day. When you’re getting tired and your productivity is already low. It’s a nice change of pace. As well it’s a good way to prepare for tomorrow.
Anything else is simply too much. I can’t tell you how many people I see reading and writing emails all day. It’s too much. It’s overload. And as I’ve mentioned before, if it’s really that important they’ll contact you by another means. It’s as simple as that.
2. Learn the hotkeys of your most common tasks for your software applications.
For those of you who aren’t computer literate, this means learning the keyboard shortcuts to the most common commands of the software applications you use on your computer.
For example, if you’re in Microsoft Word and you want to save your document what do most people do? They move the mouse over the File menu, then to the Save item in the menu, and so on. This can easily take as much as 2-5 seconds for a simple save that’s done many many times a day. As an alternative you can just type in alt-f-s. That’s less than 1 second! You’ve easily increased your productivity by 5 times!
Other common hotkeys for computer newbies is the copy/paste commands. Rather than use your mouse to highlight the text, click on copy, paste, etc. you can just learn how to highlight text with the keyboard (there are some simple shortcuts here). Then use ctl-c to copy and clt-v to paste. Less than a second! Another very significant increase in productivity.
How about switching applications? Do you navigate your taskbar on the bottom of the screen until you find the right application? Try alt-tab instead. It’s much quicker.
The list goes on. And as you get better and better and learn more and more hotkeys, you get to do more advanced tasks with increasing efficiency. Instead of 5-10 second gains you start getting 15-30 second gains. These few seconds may not seem like much, but the more you use them the more they save you. Over a day it can add up to hours. I can honestly say I sometimes shock people by how fast I can manipulate my computer while they stare at my screen. It’s not that I’m an amazing computer whiz (that’s another debate), it’s just that I’ve just slowly built up my library of hotkeys.
Quick Tip: You’ll also find that most software applications standardize on the same common hotkeys. Copy/Paste is always the same. Same with File Save. Suddenly you’re no longer more efficient in just your key programs, but in all programs on all computers!
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Christmas Book Gift Ideas – Personal Success
What is personal success? It’s how to improve yourself. How to become successful. There are lots of books on this subject. Too many to be honest. Most that I’ve read has been focused on increasing your personal securities, conquering your fears, etc. Today’s list is not about this. It’s about how to improve your own personal productivity. How to better understand other people, what their goals are, and so on. How to improve see past the BS, such as with the book How to Lie With Statistics.
For example I could have included this book in the marketing and sales section, but then I would have been advocating using it for evil versus good. I’m suggesting it here so that you can better understand what people are trying to tell you (sometimes wrongly but to their best interest). How they might be stretching the truth to convince you.
Others are as straight forward such as Get Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got. It’s to help you maximize your efficiencies.
One book that’s odd is the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. I appreciated this one because of this perspective on life. The book has some really great life lessons. For example, early on in his career he realized his opponents were just as afraid of him as he was of them. This realization was crucial for most of his success. But it goes beyond that. There is lots to learn from this great man.
For those of you who just found this page today, the categories of books I’ve been sharing this week include:
- Software Development (language independent)
- Business
- Marketing and Sales
- Technology
- Investing
- Personal Success
- General (a catch all for remaining books that I learned from)
Personal Success Christmas book ideas:
Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to see remaining Christmas book ideas, the ones that didn’t really fit into one of these categories. You can also subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t forget. If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, don’t worry you can also subscribe to receive the articles by email here.
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LandlordMax Customer Testimonial
Today’s testimonial for LandlordMax Property Management Software comes from Daniel Bonnell. Here’s a great example of how positive and friendly customer service can really help your company achieve success:
“I had spent many of months studying many of other software. I had thought that I had found the best until they had gotten my money. After the payment had been made that was the last of any support. We had gone live with the other program and found many of problems, tried to get support and only showing them what was wrong with their program and was unable to help resolve the problem. By mistake, I had emailed LandlordMax. They were so kind in trying to help me with the program that I thought was theirs. The support from LandlordMax was so fast and not making me feel stupid that I was asking questions about the wrong software. Once I figured out my mistake, I realized that I needed to switch to a company that cared. LandlordMax is so much easier to understand, and if you have a question it is answered fast and accurate. Any problem that I have had has been one of mine and not the program as was what the problem before. Thank you, LandlordMax for the best program and support. There isn’t a better program out there, I know and stand behind them 100 percent. They have made my job so much easier.”
Thank you again,
Daniel Bonnell
DT Rentals
It would’ve been easy to push his first support request aside and assume he didn’t know what he was talking, that it was the wrong software as we suspected, but instead we assumed the issue was on our side. Great customer service means assuming the issue is yours first and foremost.
And because of this small act of assuming the issue was with us, we actually tried to get to the bottom of it, we didn’t just ignore it hoping he would go away. He went from getting no response (or negative responses) from his previous software to a company that truly backed it’s product. He was very pleased with this, so much so that he decided to check out our product and found it was a the solution for him. Not only did Daniel buy LandlordMax, I’m sure he’s also going to share his positive experience with many others.
Great customer service is priceless. And thank you Daniel for sharing with us your story!
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12 Tips on How to Prepare Your Laptop for a Presentation
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at presentations or meetings where the laptop projected on the overheard hadn’t been prepared beforehand. What do I mean by prepared beforehand? It wasn’t ready or cleaned up ahead of time for the presentation. I’ve seen MSN Messenger popup windows appear in the middle of a meeting (several years ago one person’s message was even very inappropriate for work). I‘ve seen emails come through with popups displaying large portions of confidential emails. You name it I’ve seen it.
So today’s topic is how to prepare your laptop for your next presentation and/or meeting. Here’s a list of things you should always do with your laptop before you start your presentation:
1. Close all instant chat clients. Close your MSN Messenger. Close Yahoo Messenger. Close Trillian. Close whatever instant chat clients you’re using. Even if you did get the message, there’s no way you can respond. So why get the message in the first place. And secondly what if the other person sends an embarrassing or confidential message…
2. Close your email client. Who reads their emails during a presentation? Close it. A popup window will only distract your audience. Never mind embarrassing or confidential emails.
3. Turn off your screen saver. Nothing is more annoying than a screen saver going on all the time. Turn it completely off. Why would you ever want your screen saver to turn on in a presentation? It will only distract your audience. Nothing good ever comes from a screen saver coming on during a presentation. Just turn it off, it’s as simple as that.
4. Pre-load the applications you’ll be using in your presentation. As many as you can. No one wants to wait for you to start an application, find the file to open, and wait for it to load. Load them all beforehand. Make it as seamless as a program switch (alt-tab).
5. Try your absolutely best to plug in your laptop. Laptops that run on battery generally run slower to extend the battery’s life. When you’re presenting the last thing you want to do is have your laptop run slower. This is especially true if your showcasing a product. But even worse, nothing kills a presentation as effectively as running out of power!6. If all at all possible, bring a backup of your data on a USB key. If for some reason your laptop won’t work with the projector, at least you have an alternative option. This isn’t always feasible, some systems need you to pre-install a bunch of applications, etc. But if it’s at all possible, bring a backup on a USB key.
7. Exit all unnecessary services and applications. Why slow down your computer down if you don’t need to. As well, the less windows you have open the less clutter people see. The less applications you potentially need to navigate between.
8. Clean up your desktop icons. And if you’re going to use a desktop background, make sure it’s appropriate for your audience. Although it doesn’t happen that often, it’s possible that you need to navigate to your desktop. Be prepared for this. The less clutter and background, the less distractions. As a quick anecdote, I was once in a meeting where one of the presenter’s desktop folders was very “inappropriately” named for the audience (I’ll let your imagination go wild). Luckily he, nor anyone at the meeting other than me, noticed. Otherwise it could have been a very embarrassing situation for him.
9. Be the first one to arrive. Have your laptop setup before anyone else shows up. You will look a lot more professional if you’re up and running than if you’re fumbling around trying to get your laptop working.
10. Test all your hardware before. Make sure the projector works with your laptop. Make sure the mouse works. Make sure you have internet connectivity if you need it. Basically make sure everything works before. And absolutely make sure you bring everything. Don’t forget your mouse if you need it. Don’t forget your clicker if you use it. Double check that all your required hardware is available and works.
11. Prepare a background image/show to display before the presentation starts. While everyone is entering the room and waiting for the presentation to start there is some dead time. Put something up. At the very least put your logo, a screenshot, a mug shot. Something. Even better, if you have the time and resources, prepare a small repeating presentation. Maybe some screen shots of your product. A small repeating demo of your key features. Maybe some stats about your products usage and benefits. Basically display something for your audience to look at that’s interesting while they wait for the presentation to start.
12. Double check all the above at least once!
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Blogging Book Interview Update
Earlier this month I stated that I am in the process of writing a book which will interview some of the most prominent bloggers, asking them what it takes to blog successfully. Since that time the list of people who have agreed to participate in this project has significantly increased. Not only that but all of them are very successful bloggers. Many have traffic above 100,000 unique visitors a month!
As part of choosing who to contact and interview, I’m trying to bring in as many different types of bloggers as possible. As many different niches as possible. There’s the obvious choice of bloggers who choose to write about how to blog such as John Chow. But in addition to this I tried to include people from as many different topics as possible, including business, marketing, software development, specific niches, etc. What I hadn’t realized beforehand is that bloggers seem to congregate to certain common topics more than others, making it harder to get a breath of experiences. And This is why you’ll see that most of the bloggers fall mainly into a handful of different blogging categories. I’m trying my best to extend the range of experiences as much possible.
As well I was planning on keeping the list of bloggers confidential until I had completed all the interviews, but I’ve decided it’s better to share it now. This project is just too exciting to keep it under wraps until the last minute. So without further ado, here’s a list of some of the bloggers that have already agreed to participate in this project (in no particular order):
- John Chow
- David Sifry founder of Technorati
- Seth Godin
- Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror
- Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users
- Alex Papadimoulis of Worse Than Failure
- Dan Lyons from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
- Aaron Wall from SEO Book
- Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist
- Neil Patel from Quick Sprout
- Eric Sink
- Jennie Tan from OfficeTally
- Jeff Clavier from Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
- Bob Walsh author of several blogs books including Clear Blogging
- Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog
- Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends
- Ian Landsman of Userscape
- JD from Get Rich Slowly
- Hani from the Bile Blog
- Joel Cheesman from Cheezhead
- Andy Brice of Success Software
- Derek Beauchemin of DerekBeau.com
- Al Carlton from Coolest-Gadgets.com
- David Armano from Logic+Emotion
- Yaro Starak from Entrepreneur’s Journey
- Ben Casnocha
- Jonathan Snook
- Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar
- Pamela Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation
- Rohit Bhargava from Influential Marketing Blog
- Patrick McKenzie from Micro ISV on a Shoestring
- Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion
- Rob Walling from Software By Rob
- Jenny from 101 Reasons I Hate Being Fat!
- Dane Carlson from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog
- Dharmesh Shah from On Startups
- David Armano from Logic + Emotion
- Ramit Sethi from I will Teach You to be Rich
- Jay from Dumb Little Man
- Manolo from Manolo’s Shoe Blog
- Emily Chang
- ArseBlog
- Derek Semmler
- David Seah
- Ades Tynyshev from Ades Blog
If you have any others you’d like to suggest to be interview for the book then please comment below. Especially if they are blogging for an interesting and somewhat different/unique niche. If you yourself are a blogger and you have traffic exceeding at least 10,000-25,000 unique visitors a month (preferably over 100,000) then please email me directly. There’s still a few spots left, at least until the end of November. At that point I will definitely not be able to include any more bloggers because of some harder deadlines.
This is a very exciting project! And as you can see from the people who have already agreed to participate the book has quite a range of knowledge and experiences. I’m really looking forward to its release!
** Update: As of today several new people are looking to participate in this exciting project. You’ll find I’ve just added their names to the list tonight.
** Update: A few more names have again been added.
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Free Business Idea
Ideas are a dime a dozen, and today I’m going to give you my latest business idea. It’s easy to say I came up with this idea (I’m probably not the only one) and I could possibly make decent money from it, but the reality is that it won’t go anywhere unless I do something. Again, ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is 99% of the battle. And I can honestly say that in this case there won’t be any execution. Even if it was the best idea I just don’t have the time or resources to execute on it. So if you’re interested in pursuing this idea, please by all means take it and roll with it. It’s all yours!
The Idea:
Today there is a large discrepancy in the price of new car for the same model between Canada and the US. The difference is large enough that people are taking trips to the US with only the intention of buying a new car. Even after taking into consideration the loss of the warranty, the costs of the time, lodging, dinning, export fees, currency exchange, and so on, you can come out quite ahead. For example I recently saw the same new car advertised for $40,000 CDN and $25,000 in the US. When you consider that the CDN dollar is worth more than the US dollar right now, that’s crazy! $15,000 goes a long way to paying repairs in the first 5 years of ownership, more than your warranty will ever cover.
So the business idea is not to buy and sell cars, that’s too complicated and there are already tons of car dealerships doing that. Rather what I’m proposing is a delivery service, much like FedEx. The business is composed solely of picking up a pre-purchased car at a dealership in the US and bringing it to a specific location in Canada for pickup. A simple delivery service. It would include going through customs and paying the appropriate fees, but in essence it’s just a very niche delivery service taking advantage of a limited time price difference.
Again, this is simply a delivery business. Nothing more. You don’t buy the cars, your customers have already done this. At no point do you ever own the car. You’re just picking up a parcel, in this case a new car, and bringing it to another location.
Why would someone pay for this? Well if you charge a reasonable amount it’s worth it. You’re basically saving your customers the hassle of a road trip, the time to wait at the border for customs to process your car, etc. The advantage for you is that if you do this with a car carrier truck you don’t just bring one car at a time, you can deliver a small fleet of cars at once. You get the advantage of economies of scale. Not very large, but large enough to make a pretty good profit margin.
Of course this business opportunity won’t be around forever. Eventually the new car dealerships will have to adjust their prices. That’s just a matter of time. But if you’re willing to make the effort and execute on the idea then I’m pretty confident there’s profits to be made for at least several months. If you charge somewhere between $2,000-$5,000 per car, that should easily cover your expenses and give you a decent profit margin.
Since this is a limited time business opportunity, you also don’t want to grow too big. Therefore I would suggest local advertising, possibly something even as simple as classified ads. If you’re even more ambitious you could definitely get some media attention. I can easily envision seeing this on the nightly news.
So there you have. A free business idea. Will it work? I don’t know for sure but I’m pretty confident there’s profit to be had here. The idea does have a lower barrier to entry, anyone can come up with it and execute on it. The question is how many people will actually do it. Ideas are a dime a dozen!
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