Why I Love Being an Entrepreneur
Because everyday is different! It’s as simple as that. You never really know what to expect tomorrow. For example, a couple of days ago I wrote an article about how the downward trend of the USD dollar versus the CDN dollar has affected our revenue. Then today I found out we’re on pace for another record month for revenue! We’ve already beaten last month’s total revenues (although May is not a good benchmark because it’s never been a good month for us). At our current pace it looks very good that we’ll beat April’s sales record.
For a lot of people this would be nerve racking, especially the ups and downs in revenues. For me I really enjoy this. You always have to be prepared for the unexpected. The more challenges you face, the easier it seems to get. And this is why I love being an entrepreneur.
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How to Get Published?
In my last entry I wrote how I was interested in writing a book about marketing and sales for small businesses (all small businesses, not just software based small businesses). It was received with good enthusiasm based only on the summary. Several people commented that they would buy it. I also received a number of personal emails saying the same. Therefore I’ve decided to go ahead and write the book.
And like everything I do before I fully commit, I researched my options. I spent the last week analyzing what options there are to authors like myself, and its amazing to see how much the publishing market has changed. In the past you pretty much had to go with a major publication company to get your book out, and even doing that was a challenge. The odds of being selected for publication were really low, never mind actual success. You could also look for a small presses, which is almost the same as large publication company but without all the benefits. In any case, you needed a publishing company to get your book out in the world.
There was also another option, you could self publish. This however was, and still is, a very costly endeavor. You need to have a lot of seed money to truly self publish, you have to cover all the expenses. Let’s say you decide to print 100, 1000, or even 5000 books (for an initial print run), you personally have to cover that cost. That’s above the costs of writing the book, creating the artwork, getting the ISBN, hiring a copy editor, marketing etc. It can be a very profitable venue, its just that you need a substantial bankroll and expertise to go this route.
Today the market has changed for the better, there’s more options. Although most people still prefer going with a publication company there’s a couple of new ways to publish that are easier, quicker, and more affordable. The main ones are POD (Print on Demand) and ebooks.
Print on Demand is where you partner up with a company like iUniverse to print your book on demand, be it one at a time, 20, 100, and so on. You don’t need to make runs, your book can be printed one at a time if need be. However to take advantage of this with Print on Demand you do have to spend a bit of money to get your book ready and into the “system”. The fees aren’t astronomical but they aren’t cheap either. For example iUniverse has packages ranging from $299 to $1,199 (not counting editorial services, etc.). This is great when you consider you can be self published without have to do a full print run of your books.
How do you make money using this service? Like most publishing companies, it’s mainly through royalties. iUniverse gives you a 10-20% royalty depending on what options you want to use. Another benefit is that they’ll sell you copies (again even one at a time) of your book to you at a heavy discount.
The option I investigated with POD and traditional publishing is ebooks. Ebooks are basically books sold in digital format (generally PDF) that you can purchase and download online. I’ve purchased at least a couple dozen myself and I’ve even sold one in the past. Ebooks can be great because the costs are only your time to write and market the ebook. Each sale goes almost directly to your bottom line. The downside is that it’s generally less credible, harder to sell and market. People prefer traditional books over ebooks.
After looking at all the options, I’m strongly leaning towards Print on Demand (POD). You don’t get some of the benefits of a publishing company (big distribution, some marketing, etc.), but you make up for it in other respects. With POD, you’re guaranteed to have your book published, you’re publishing it! With POD you can also get your book to market much quicker. With traditional publication companies getting through the approval process can take months, never mind going through all the steps and negotiations. The difference is 2-3 months versus a year or so. Personally I just don’t have the patience for that anymore, I’d rather just go ahead and get it done. That’s what being an entrepreneur for so long does to you.
As a disadvantage you don’t get your book professional edited for you with POD. You need to do this or hire a professional editor. That’s ok with me because I don’t mind hiring someone for this. Also, you don’t get the full distribution of a publishing company. Your book will not appear in bookstores across the nation, at least not unless you’re a proven bestseller. That’s ok I can accept that. Another disadvantage is that you need to provide all the marketing for your book (books don’t sell themselves). That’s ok too, the topic of the book is about marketing and sales after all. If I can’t do that I shouldn’t be writting this book. Something to also remember is that publishing companies will only continue to market your book as long as it has a return on investment otherwise they’ll leave it entirely to you. Either way you’ll still need to do a lot of the marketing yourself.
Having looked at all the options, the benefits and disadavantages, I believe I’ll proceed on the Print On Demand route. I like the timelines. I like the control. I don’t mind doing all of the marketing, that’s something I know (its definitely a serious consideration for most people). I also don’t mind the loss distribution, my plan was to focus mainly on sales through Amazon anyways. I plan to emulate the success the authors of the book Call To Action had using their own techniques (great book by the way, I commented on it back in July 2005). I can’t find it anymore, but I remember reading somewhere that they didn’t want to sell the book directly on their own website, even if it was for a much higher margin! They wanted every sale to go through Amazon.com so that they could increase their Amazon ranking, giving it some serious momentum (there’s more to it than that, but that’s for another day).
Another factor that really helped make my decision was a book I recently picked up at my local bookstore called Get Published. It’s written by the CEO and editorial director of iUniverse so its very skewed towards iUniverse, it’s almost a sales pitch. But even with that it was a great read. I read most of it in one sitting. Again, there’s no doubt its a book to sell their service, they have testimonials of iUniverse sprinkled throughout, but it still clearly explains a lot about the publishing world. The fact that even with their sales pitch I’m still recommending the book should say something. They really do explain how things work in the publishing industry. They really do tell you the good and bad of the different types of publishing methods available to you (traditional, POD, etc.). They don’t try to oversell you on iUniverse, they tell you what they can’t and won’t do for you. They tell you exactly what the differences are and what you’ll need to do to be successful in both. For example, they tell you that you will need to do 100% of the marketing for your book with iUniverse, they won’t provide this for you. Again I strongly recommend Get Published if you’re looking for information on how to get a book published.
When will the actual book be available? My personal goal, which I’m publicly sharing right here and now, is to have it written before the end of summer. It’s an aggressive goal but I think I can do it. Add another 2-3 months to get printed by iUniverse (ISBN assigned, printing, edited, cover design, etc.) and I’m hoping to have it available for purchase on Amazon.com by late fall to early winter. Let’s see what happens!
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Interview
Ben from StartupSpark.com just posted up today an interview he did about me and my company LandlordMax. It’s a great interview, and I’d especially like to thank Ben for taking the time to interview me. As well he had some very complimentary comments about the interview:
“Stephane understands what it takes to be an entrepreneur. When I ask him about competition, he hits the nail on the head. When I ask him about what it takes to start a business he demonstrates incredible passion. You’ll have to read the interview to see what he says.”
Thank you Ben for those amazing comments!
Just an extra little note, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Ben’s blog StartupSpark.com, he’s been doing interviews with other small software vendors and getting their take on what it takes to make it. There’s some really good interviews there, I personally got some great nuggets of information from all of them. One interview that I particularly liked was with Ian about his company HelpSpot. So go check it out, there’s lots of good information.
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School Versus the Real World
Many years ago when the movie Back To School originally came out I remember laughing quite hard when Rodney Dangerfield’s character Thornton got NASA to do his Astronomy homework for him. If memory serves me correct, he also got the a famous author write an essay about his own book for his English class as well. Of course this was funny, how could it not be.
Although funny, according to the academic world this is wrong. This is what’s called cheating! Having someone else do your work for you. It’s a simple black and white case, he didn’t do his own work, someone else did it for him, therefore he cheated on his assignments. This is looked down upon, and it’s easy to see why. If you don’t do the work you’ll never learn the material. Very simple.
Now in real life the opposite is true. You need to do some of the work, but those that get ahead generally have teams do many of their work for them. For example, if you buy real estate, you often get your real estate agent to process the paperwork for purchase of the property, you don’t do it yourself. You get a mortgage broker to prepare the financing for you. You might also get a lawyer to do some of the work. Maybe you also have a property manager to manage your property. In the academic world, this would be considered cheating because someone else is doing the work for you.
In business the same is true, otherwise you’re really a self employed person (or employee)! If you’re employed right now, what are you doing? Someone is paying you to do their work for them. Think about it! Every employee is doing work for someone else. In the academic circle, this would also technically be considered cheating.
The reality is that the academic world teaches us to do everything ourselves, to learn how to do everything ourselves. To balance our check books ourselves, to run our finances ourselves. In the real world, and especially in business world, the opposite is true. In business we’re often thought to get a team to help us. And I can attest that starting a business without an initial team in place is much more difficult. A team can make a big difference. Getting a good accountant, a good lawyer, and so on really does helps. But what’s more, you generally need members on your team that have specific skills that you might be lacking such as a graphics design, sales, marketing, software development, team management, accounting, etc.. Getting a software product like LandlordMax out the door requires more knowledge and skill than any one person can have.
The other week when the movie Back To School played as a rerun on TV, which by the way was the inspiration for this article, it really made me think about this. I realized that since I’ve starting my company LandlordMax over four years ago that my reality has changed. Yes the movie was still good, but what really caught me off guard is that I no longer found this joke as funny. Actually quite the opposite, I think it was a great move by Rodney’s Dangerfield’s character Thornton. It really showed his business acumen! He couldn’t be successful in business without assembling at least one good team, which is why he quickly went ahead and got NASA to do his Astronomy homework.
In some way, it really made me appreciate the difference in realities different people have. Why we don’t all think the same. Successful business people often look at assembling a good team first whereas the average person tries to do everything themselves because this is what they’ve always been thought. There’s nothing wrong with this, but without leveraging other people’s skills and time, you can’t get further ahead than the number of hours you have in the day. It’s a simple reality, a simple difference in the way we perceive our worlds, but it has a large implication in how we’ll go about living our lives.
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Record Day!
I thought Tuesday this week (October 24, 2006) was a great day, but it turns out to be greater than I initially thought! We broke and tied many records that day, both LandlordMax and FollowSteph:
- Broke our sales record for the most units sold in a single month (and there’s still a week left).
- Broke our sales record for the most revenue in a single month (with upgrades, etc., the number of units doesn’t always directly correspond with total revenue).
- Tied our one day sales record for the most units sold.
- Broke our one day sales record for the most revenue.
- Broke the record for the most unique visitors in a single month (and there’s still a week left).
All in all a great day. I initially knew we broke the sales record for the month but I hadn’t realized we also hit the daily sales records too. Not to mention FollowSteph’s traffic growth which has been growing at a pretty consistent 20-30% a month average for the last year almost. Tuesday was a great day!
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Business versus Technical Solutions
Last week I published an article here entitled “LandlordMax’s Most Challenging Bug” which received lots of comments both online and through personal emails (probably more people sent emails than commented). One thing that really struck me was the difference in thinking between people who run a business (from small ISV owners to managers) and technical people (developers, architects, etc.). Based on their background the solutions varied substantially. I’m not talking how to tackle the problem technically (btw there were some great tips and information being shared, thank you!), there was no doubt there was a lot of variation here, but I’m talking in terms of what types of solutions made economical sense.
What really struck me is that most developers completely ignored the cost to benefit side of the equation! I’m not saying that you should always base your decision on cost to benefits (I don’t want to acquire design debt for example), but sometimes this becomes a strong factor in the decision making. This is something that I use to lack, I always wanted to get in there and find the correct technical solution. The reality is that sometimes it’s not the right thing to do. This is a hard pill for technical people to swallow. I know it use to be for me. Not so much anymore being a lot more on the business side of things, but in the past it was a common issue.
Using my last article as a basis for this argument, let’s look at the cost to benefit of different types of solutions. Not actual solutions, but cost to benefits of the types of solutions. Rather than share my actual numbers, let’s just round realistic numbers to make the calculations, it’ll be much easier that way. So our first assumption is that allocating a developer to a task for 1 full day will cost $1000 in immediate salary. We should of course add in the costs of benefits, hardware, software, training, testing, etc., but for now let’s just say it’s $1000/day for a developer. Now remember this cost does not include any testing!
Ok, now I’ll assume that our fictional company makes $1 million in revenue a year, a simple round number. Assuming we have a unit price of $150 per unit, then this means we sell 6667 units per year.
Now before I proceed, let me backtrack a little. For those of you who are interested, you can read the full article here. However, just to get everyone up to speed, here’s the quick version. We found a bug in LandlordMax regarding how it reads certain types of JPG images. This bug is also present in many larger software application such as Internet Explorer and FireFox, so it’s not a simple solution. Also, images aren’t part of our core functionality. Don’t get me wrong, they’re a great feature, but we didn’t have them in the first 3 major versions. Now the problem is that we have two solutions, one that’s quicker to implement and one that isn’t. This problem only affects 0.05% of our total customers, and of those 90% will be satisfied with this solution. The other solution is complex, will take more than a week or two, and probably won’t fully work (IE and FireFox with very large resources still don’t have it full working). This solution will satisfy 90% of those customers too, possibly more.
Using these parameters, we can see there are two sides to this coin. Most technical people will want to fully solve the issue, to get it right. Yes the costs are high, but let’s do it right. The business side want’s to see what’s the cost to benefit. Now just a quick side step, you have to remember that you can’t always just look at the cost to benefit otherwise you’ll get so far into design debt that you’ll eventually kill your company. However, in this case, we’re not very likely to expand on this issue once it’s solved so it’s very unlikely that we’ll add any design debt no matter what solution we decide.
In any case, let’s look at the two solutions.
Solution 1:
An acceptable solution to the problem which will take about 1/2 a developer day, padded to 1 full day for safety. In this case, the cost is $1000. Now if we calculate it terms of cost to benefit, it means we’re paying $1000 for 0.05% of our 6667 customers, or 333 customers. On average, this means that we’re paying $3.33 to add this solution for these customers, of which 90% will be ok with the solution. The remainder would like a better solution but will probably live with it since this is only a small part of why their using the software, after all this is not the core functionality of the software. Also remember that these few people who are used to using this type of image mode also use to having this issue with a number of other major software applications. So it’s nothing new.
Solution 2:
We provide as best a technical solution as we can, knowing that we probably won’t be able to solve it fully as other software companies with budgets multiple orders of magnitude bigger larger than our total revenue can’t solve it. We’d be lucky to spend only a week, probably 2 weeks, and this might only reduce the number of people facing the issue by a percentage. But let’s be optimistic and say that we’ll solve it for 90% of the people who use this image mode.
Then in this case, we’ll spend 10 developer days, $10,000, to solve it. This means that it costs us $10,000 for our 333 customers. On average, this means we spend $30 per customer on this solution alone. This is now a significant percentage of the purchase price (20% of the total purchase price for fixing a small bug). But again, remember that it’s only for 90% of these 333, so we’re only really solving it for 300 people, bringing our per customer solution price to $33.33, or 22% of the total purchase price. We still have to deal with the remainder 10%, or 33 people. Assuming we use solution 1 for the remainder, this now brings up our price to $11,000, $10,000 for the initial solution and $1,000 for the remainder. Our total price per customer is now $33 for just this bug fix, or 22% of the total purchase price.
Which Solution is Right?
Which of these two solutions would you be more inclined to implement from a business side? What about from a technical side?
From a technical side, at least from my experience, we always want the perfect solution. But from a business side, it makes a lot more sence to go with solution 1. And don’t forget, solution 2 is probably a lot more costly than we estimated, it might take us a month, maybe two, or what if it’s a never ending series of issues? If the solution takes two months, which is not so hard to imagine once you see how Mozilla (FireFox) solved it (and that’s not even fully working), that brings our cost per customer to approximately $120 per customer. We’re now at 80% of the total purchase price for just one bug fix that’s not critical! Yes it’s only a portion of the customer, yes we could amortize it, yes we could calculate in the total lifetime purchases of the customer, and so on. But looking at the numbers when the first scenario is perfectly acceptable, I just can’t see how I can justify scenario 2.
As a developer, I can easily find ways to justify solution 2 such as design debt, etc. But from a business perspective solution 2 makes no sense!
UPDATE: Now add to solution 1 the fact that we now have an additional 9-10 developer days to add more features and benefits to the software. Let’s say we can increase our sales by 2% by instead allocating this same developer for the time difference to a new highly requested feature (maybe it’s only 1%, maybe it’s 10%, in any case, we’ll just use 2% since it’s easily feasible). If that’s the case, we can increase our sales of $1 million to $1,020,000, or by $20,000. Now not only have we paid for our bug fix, we’ve also paid for our developer and made a profit!
And the thing to remember here is that we’re not just helping 0.05% of the people (which we are), we’re also making 100% of the all our customers happier with a new feature (well maybe not 100%, but a much much larger percentage than 0.05%) that they wanted!
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Ideas are a Dime a Dozen
I don’t know if I’ve posted about this before, but it keeps coming up over and over again with people I talk who want to start a businesses, invest in real estate, start new projects, etc. Either they don’t have a new novel idea to start with, or if they do, they think the idea is worth a mint. The reality is that both of these preconceptions are dead wrong! Ideas are worth very little, it’s the execution that’s worth it’s weight in gold!
Let’s think about this a little… How many times have you heard someone say something like “I thought of that years ago. I should be a millionaire”. I know I’ve heard it a lot. The reality is that 99.99% of the general population doesn’t follow through with their ideas, at least not much past the first few months. Most people aren’t willing to put in the effort it takes to get an idea off the ground. And make no mistake about it, it takes effort. By the way, health gyms are notorious for using this to their advantage. They get you to buy a year membership, with an initiation fee, knowing full well that the majority of their members will stop using the facilities within a few months. Are you one of these people?
I can also tell you that I come up with potentially successful business ideas every day. The problem is that I can’t try them all out. You need to focus on one idea and push through it because it will take time for it to come to fruition. If you decide to invest in real estate, than expect it to take you many properties and deals before you can retire, you won’t retire on one golden deal (also you probably won’t have the experience to know what a golden deal is without some experience). In business the same is true, it takes time for a business to gain momentum and get off the ground. Don’t keep moving from project to project, which is easy to do as soon as you hit a speed bump or when you think of something new and exciting. If you study psychology at all (or probably through common sense), you’ll know that people like novelty more than repetition, so it’s very easy to get sidetracked.
On the other side of the coin, you have those who think they need to come up with a golden idea to make it. They think that everything’s done and there’s nothing they can do. Guess again, there’s lots of things everyone can do, you just need to put your mind to it. And please don’t ask me what you can do, that’s what you have to come up with yourself. Make that your first goal! Come up with an idea. Now don’t think it has to be original, it doesn’t. Just look at what’s happening in your area of interest, see what others are doing, look at who’s succeeding, and see if there’s more room in the market for you. How many grocery chains are there, movie rental chains, real estate investors, software companies, chocolate bar producers, tv shows, etc. You don’t need to be original, you just need to look at it from a slightly different angle. Maybe a higher quality, cheaper price, best locally, fastest, better service, etc.
The next major obstacle I often hear is that I don’t have enough money to get going. The reality is that if you think too big to start, than absolutely you don’t have the money. You might need to start smaller and grow from there. If you’re a real estate investor, start with a single resident home instead of with an apartment complex. Maybe one in a more affordable community. If it’s a business, look at something that can be started with your current capital. It can be as simple as a web service, a blog, a software application. You could even sell cookies, a lot of large companies have started this way.
Who’s familiar with the purple dinosaur Barney? How many of you know it was started by a mother (Sheryl Leach) in 1987 as home videos she wrote and filmed herself because she was dissatisfied with the selection of home videos on the market to amuse her own son? She produced three “Barney and the Backyard Gang” videos and marketed then to day-care centers and video stores until they were finally discovered by a PBS director in 1991. And the rest, to quote a cliche, is history.
So what are the steps to success?
1. Get started! That means now! We all have things happening in our lives, it’s just a matter of priorities. If you can find the time to watch any TV, then you can find the time to get started. I can tell you right now that for me it’s 11:15pm right now (actually I’m now revising this entry, minus some LandlordMax related sidetracks, and it’s 12:35am now) and I’ll be up on the computer for at least another hour or two working (as I’ve just confirmed). I live by the principle of work extremely hard for 5 or so years and then completely relax for the rest of my life rather than work moderatly for my whole life. So get started, find the time, it’s there.
2. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. That is, stay the course. Yes, you’re all pumped and the first 2-3 weeks go flying by. You get some work done but suddenly its your friends wedding on the weekend. One weekend isn’t so bad. But the next thing you know you have a party you just have to attend, a supper, a celebration, a birthday. And then there’s the bbq the weekend afterwards at your parents. And not to mention the fact that it’s SuperBowl weekend right after and everyone meets up for that. Suddenly a month goes by and nothing gets done, so you stop working. The project pitters to a dead stop. This is exactly how health gyms make their money! Stay the course. Push yourself. Set your priorities. Know what’s important to you and live accordingly.
3. Educate yourself. This means spend time AND money on educating yourself. I think I’ve read every book there is on real estate, business, marketing, sales, software development, etc. I try to read one book a week that’s related to what I’m trying to do. Yes I still read the odd novel, but again, base your priorities on what you want. A novel to me is like going to the movies, so I read them when I need a break. Not all my books are interesting, actually I can tell you many are really pretty boring and hard to read, but the content is worth the effort. Try to read a lot of what will help you succeed. The unfortunate side is that it’s not always the most interesting material.
Also attend seminars, talk to people in your industry, join like minded groups. For example, I belong to several local groups, the latest of which was just formed. This last one is a group focused on generating passive income here in Ottawa that meets once a month to discuss any and all passive income opportunities available out there (stocks, real estate, automated businesses, web sites, etc.) Take the time to educate yourself, you’re worth it.
4. Spend on yourself. Most people think that they can start a business, invest in real estate, and so on, with just time. It’s possible, but don’t be afraid to invest money on yourself. I can’t tell you how many people get flustered when I start to share my expenses in regards to LandlordMax and FollowSteph. They’re all pumped to get started, but as soon as I suggest they look at investing $500-$1000 on themselves and their idea, WAIT A MINUTE!!! “I don’t know, that’s seems like an aweful lot of money.” Well let me put it another way, if you don’t even believe in yourself and your idea enough to put down a little money on it, do you think anyone else will? Why are so many people afraid to invest in themselves? I don’t understand it. Don’t they realize that their employers are doing just that, they expect to make more money from their labour and skills than they pay them (that’s how business works)? I can’t imagine a world in which I wouldn’t be willing to invest in myself and my ideas. I do it all the time. Actually, I’ve been known to be a little trigger happy in this regard. I’m willing to take the chance sooner than later as I’m a big fan of trying rather than theorizing. After all you can’t debate with results, right or wrong (and I’ve proven myself both right and wrong many times).
5. Stay focused. I can’t even count any more how many people have asked me to co-venture with them… From small to larger projects. In the past I would generally hear everyone out, consider their ideas, and possibly be interested, in the least I’d offer some guidance. Today I have a different perspective. After having gone through it so many times, I now tell people that if they have an idea they’d like me to consider as a co-venture, come talk to me again about it in 6-12 months, whether or not they’re succeeding. Why 6-12 months? Simply because I want to see if they’re going to stick with their projects. Again, it all comes down to the fact that the vast majority of people, good intentions or not, will for some reason or another, start to lose interest in their projects within a few months. All I’m trying to do is weed these people out. So far I only know of a very small select few people who’ve gone beyond this! I don’t care whether their succeeding after this time, everyone has different areas of expertise and maybe its something simple their missing, maybe it’s not the great idea it seemed, maybe its an amazing success I missed an opportunity on, it doesn’t matter. I’m personally not interested in any co-ventures unless the person has put in at least 6-12 months of effort, to show me that they’re going to stay the course, that they’re focused, that they’re not just another health gym statistic.
6. Stick to your idea, test it. Lastly, don’t run away as soon as you hit a road block. Get past it. Go around it. Go in a slightly different direction. But keep moving. I can’t tell you how many people hit a road block and stop. If I did that with LandlordMax, well I wouldn’t be here. It’s now been over 3 years now, 4 if you count the year in which I created the initial version. If you think there weren’t some brutal road blocks, think again! To use one of my favorite quotes from I can’t remember who: “It took me 10 years to become an overnight success!“.
And with that, let me just say, you can’t make a journey around the world without first taking a step, so take it! Henry Ford put it another way: “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” Or as a fellow business owner and investor of mine, Glenn Scott put it: “I would rather see a stupid do’er than a brillant dreamer“.
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Adsense, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Website Promotions
The seminar where I was a keynote speaker over the last two weekends turned out to be a great success! Not only was it sold out, but everyone seemed to really benefit from it! All in all a phenomonal success!
Because of the enthusiasm and success of the first seminar, we’ve (me and Glenn Scott) decided to offer another repeat of it, just a little more condensed. The next seminar will only be lecture based rather than a combination of lecture and workshop, and it will be over 1 weekend instead of two. The new seminar will be very similar in terms of content; Adsense, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and website promotion methods. We’re just going to eliminate the Dreamweaver MX section and the computer workshop time.
We’re very excited about it, especially considering the amazing feedback we received! You can yourself view some of the amazing video testimonials we received from the seminar by going directly to the the new website we’ve setup for the next course: LearningCentre.com. You can also view comments that were left from some of the attendees on my blog related entry here. As you can easily see, it was a great success!
This next seminar will be held on the weekend of September 23-24, 2006 here in Ottawa. If you’re interested, please visit LearningCentre.com for more details.
In addition, based on the feedback from the people in the seminar, we’re going to offer in the very near future (within days) a new membership based group to LearningCentre.com for as little as $25/month, which is extremely affordable! It’s less than either cable tv or your cell phone, it’s the price of only one supper outing. The idea is that it will give you the opportunity to keep up to date with the latest industry information through both its online blog/newsletter and forums where both me and Glenn Scott will be very active members. In addition to that as part of the same membership package, we’re going to offer something similar to what REIN offers for real estate investors, we’re also going to host a monthly evening event where we’ll have either one of us, or a guest speaker, talk about the latest information, offer tips, show things we’ve learning that month, and so on. These monthly evening events will of course be optional, but I wouldn’t want to miss them!
I’m personally very excited about this new package because it gives the people who take the seminar a nice way of following up after the seminar is done, it helps to keep them updated. Therefore as part of the seminar package, we’re giving everyone who takes the seminar one free month’s access to this extra package, giving you a month’s worth of free access to the member’s only section of LearningCentre.com and one free monthly evening event eadmission!
Very Exciting! Had you asked me two weeks ago about these new offerings, chances are I wouldn’t have been able to predict them. But after having gone through the seminar once and seeing the interest, I can’t help but be thrilled!
Lastly, as many of you who took the course have already seen, we’ve been working very hard this week to get the website LearningCentre.com up and running (it was unplanned), and if everything goes well we should be fully operational by the end of the weekend. As we mentioned in the seminar, neither of us had any plans of offering this seminar again, or even expanding on it, but the interest and enthusiasm were so high that I was able to convince Glenn Scott to join me for a few more offerings. Therefore I can’t guarantee how many more seminars we’ll offer here in Ottawa, so if you’re interested I would suggest taking the next one right away in case it’s the last one…
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SEO Resources
Just a quick post as this week is incredibly busy for me, several people at the seminar of which I’m one of three keynote speakers asked me where to get additional SEO and Adsense related resources. I’m going to recommend here one ebook that I really enjoyed and got a lot of value from, probably the best resource, and several links/blogs for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As for Adsense, unfortunately all I can reference is additional websites and blogs, I don’t know of any one book or ebook that does a good job of explaining it that worth its price.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
eBooks
SEO Book: By far the best book I’ve read on the topic. This book is written by Aaron Wall, who’s one of the first 100 “Google qualified professionals” in the world. Even though I’ve been very active in the SEO world for quite some time, this book still contained many great pieces of information for me when I read it. In terms of an introduction and encapsulating a lot of the knowledge, this is probably the one best resource to get. You can find the SEO Book here.
SEO links
Beginner’s Guide to SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The best and most comprehensive free introduction and how-to to Search Engine Optimzation (SEO) I’ve seen online!
Matt Cutts: This is the blog you want to follow if you want to keep up with SEO.
SEO Chat: Lots of articles being continually updated on SEO
SEO Black Hat: Lots of interesting leading edge information on SEO
Adsense
Adsense Links
Problogger.net: He’s mainly about making money through blogging. The good news is that he covers many related topics, from Adsense to other monetization methods. He even talks about other related topics such as SEO, how to generate traffic, etc. Very excellent overall resource.
Performancing.com: Again, very related to monetizing blogs, but very applicable to monetizing any website.
I mentioned it in the course but not here yet, getting information about SEO and website monetization, such as using Adsense, is generally not easily available in one “put together nicely” package. This is why the seminar was created. These are just some of the more common resources I personally use, there are many more. These should at least give you a big head start!
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Update: LandlordMax Traffic Doubles As a Result of the Free Real Estate Analyzer
A few weeks ago we released a free online real estate analyzer on my company’s website (LandlordMax) in the hopes that it would increase the traffic to our website, and hence create more interest in our main product. The idea is that if you offer something of value for free, you will generate significant traffic from it.
We initially doubled the traffic to our website, which was great! Since then, as I promised to update you all, we’ve continued to get at least double our previous traffic each day from before we released it, sometimes much more! This increase in traffic has been maintained, and is actually still growing as its gaining more exposure. At this point, we’re barely promoting it anymore if at all, we’re letting the viral aspect take over, which is great. This might turn out to be our best marketing investment yet!
If you have a website and you want to increase your traffic significantly, offer something of high value for free and people will come.
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