Michael Haislip: Professional Millionaire

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Ever find a new hobby or idea and then spend days researching it? Then you, my inexperienced friend, were a passionate rookie.

Why Target Rookies?

A passionate rookie in any field devours information like I devour cheap booze. The rookie doesn’t yet know enough to sort out the useful information from the worthless, so they tend to absorb all the information they can find. It’s the source of the John Chow clone effect.

The rookie is more likely follow the advice of those that have come before him. Whether or not this advice is good doesn’t matter. A passionate rookie is so enthralled that anyone could pitch him anything, and he’d take it all with a smile. In short, the rookie is willing to spend money. He wants to be sold and upsold.

Methods of Targeting Rookies

1. Create content that promises to impart wisdom

Use page titles that promise to teach the rookie something. Entice him with “secret systems” and “surefire techniques.” Offer e-books that show him “How to (insert goal here) in 30 Days.”

2. Build credibility

A rookie burned by bad advice is likely to drop out completely. For example, look at all of the “make money online” blogs that have popped up and then vanished before a year passes. With their heads filled with unrealistic expectations of easy money by some unscrupulous A-list bloggers, they quickly become disillusioned. There goes another potential customer or potential reader.

3. Be transparent, be open, be communicative

Rookies want the real dirt. They want to see the truth so they can feed that passion. This passionate phase in their interest is invaluable for hooking them on you. If a rookie starts suspecting that someone is holding back vital information, don’t expect to see him back.

Conclusion

My former insurance sales manager said, “If they’re in a buying mood, then keep on selling.” Target those niches which have the most passionate rookies to maximize profits. They’re always in a buying mood, no matter what you’re selling.

Anyone who registers and researches a lot of domains has encountered this girl, who I’ve dubbed the Enom Girl. Enom is a major domain registrar and has a massive portfolio of parked domains. Enom Girl is on every one of their parked domains.

I have written a Shakespearean sonnet in her honor.

Ode to Enom Girl

Enom Girl smiles at me from parked domain,
My stock photo angel in pink lipstick.
Plunging neckline, black strap, my heart in pain,
Why must you tempt on each domain I pick?

Cornsilk hair, that shy smile, hide a dark soul.
Profit pursuits be thy master and king.
For money, ’tis the reason, ’tis the goal,
Yet, still, sweet rose, my love for thee I sing.

A sweet heaven’s blessing ’tis your backpack,
Hours and days I spend lost in your eyes.
Strange how you seem to know, you have a knack,
Parking domains that I desire to buy.

Come on, baby, let’s give this thing a whirl.
Love me, my dear fair angel, Enom Girl.

I’ve been wondering if it’s feasible for webmasters/bloggers to join together to purchase ads. In newspaper parlance, this is called a co-op ad, or a cooperative advertisement purchase. The costs of the ad are split among the group members.

Another idea:

When I sold insurance, many carriers had co-op advertising deals. In short, the agent and the company would split the cost of advertising. It got the agent exposure, and it let the carrier promote its brand.

Perhaps affiliates and their sponsors could work out a co-op deal to promote both interests.

Again, just some thoughts. Perhaps someone will find inspiration in them.

This little foreign girl cries at night because she can’t read your English-only site. Shame on you.

I asked myself a question last week. “How many potential readers am I losing by only writing in English?” When I first asked the question, I didn’t think much about it. But since then, I’ve become more convinced that English-only sites are losing a potentially huge audience.

My Reasoning

The general assumption seems to be that everyone who uses the Internet also speaks English. However, there is no empirical data to verify that. So, after a bit of research, I discovered the stone-cold facts. I found a chart that breaks down the languages spoken on the Internet along with a bit of statistical data. It seemed that I was onto something.

While many Internet users are bilingual, I reason that most aren’t. If 30 percent of users are primarily English speakers, that means 70 percent of users aren’t. That’s a huge potential readership being lost to the language barrier.

Think Like a Non-English Speaker

Most people would suggest using one of the existing translation services, such as Babel Fish or Google Translate. This is bad for several reasons:

1. Why would a non-English speaker find your English-only site when he’s using non-English search queries?
2. Assuming he somehow finds your site, how long would he hang around trying to read a foreign language? A user who can’t find immediate value is more apt to click the back button rather than a “Translate This” button.
3. Even if he manages to translate the page, it does you, the webmaster, little good. As far as I know, neither Google nor Babel Fish cache translated pages. Foreign language users would be forced through this arduous process every time.

In short, we can’t expect foreign language speakers to visit English-only sites. A webmaster needs to generate foreign language versions of his site. Unfortunately, most of us don’t speak 12 languages. What to do?

The Solution

After some research, I found very little help. For WordPress users, there are multiple plug-ins that seem like the answer, but still present the same problem; the user must initiate the translation process, and that translated page vanishes once the user leaves. What we need is a way to create permanent foreign language pages.

There’s 2 ways to do this:

1. Manually translate the pages and create a separate site (easy for static sites, not so easy for frequently updated sites or blogs)
2. Create a program that automatically does this for you

Unfortunately, I know of no program that performs such a function. I guess this means I get to do some programming.

More on this as I come up with something.

Knowing how much each visitor to your website is a key metric. Every webmaster, blogger, and Internet entrepreneur should know it. But how many actually do?

Not So Easy Any More

Not too long ago, figuring the value of a site visitor was simple: revenue divided by unique visitors. A site making $5000 with 100,000 uniques meant each unique was worth $0.05. A webmaster would then know how much he could spend to acquire visitors while still making a profit.

The current state of the web has changed that somewhat. How do we define a “unique visitor?” Think of all the ways someone can access web content:

• Traditional browsing
• RSS feeds
• RSS-to-e-mail
• Mobile devices
• and probably more than I can think of

Is an RSS subscriber a visitor? He’s reading your content, but he’s not on your site, nor is he seeing ad impressions unless it’s a monetized feed.

What about the person reading your site on his cell phone? How do you monetize for that? Are you even sure what your site looks like on a cell phone browser?

Questions that Need to Be Answered

1. How much is a single RSS subscriber worth? Is it worth it to convert visitors into subscribers?
2. Are new visitors more profitable than repeat visitors?
3. What’s the conversion rate for repeat visitors vs. new visitors?
4. How do we even define a visitor?

Anyway, those were just some random thoughts I had in the shower. Does anyone care to weigh in on the subject?

Crazy Bob says, “Click my affiliate links. CLICK THEM!”

Here’s your term of the day: scope creep.

Scope creep, as defined by Wikipedia, means:

“[the] uncontrolled changes in a project’s scope. This phenomenon can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered a negative occurrence to be avoided.”

In business, this happens when owners don’t have a proper, written business plan. On the web, it happens when a site starts creeping out of its niche into more generalized territory.

The Depressing Story of Crazy Bob

We’ve all seen blogs that start out with a singular focus. For example, let’s look at a fictional blog. We’ll call it “Make Insane Money Online with Crazy Bob.” Crazy Bob intends to make insane amounts of money by showing people how to do the same. Also, he’s trying to pay for his psychiatric medications, but that’s another story.

The project starts out well. Crazy Bob writes some intriguing articles. He works all the social bookmarking angles. He makes enough to cover his medication with enough left over to buy food for his 17 cats. Everything is going just as planned.

One day, Crazy Bob realizes that he’s out of ideas, and begins repeating the same trite advice from every other “make money online” site out there.

Unfortunately, Crazy Bob is so bored by this that he begins posting pictures of his cats. Then more details of his personal life creep in: what he ate for breakfast, whether he’s getting enough fiber in his diet, what he tells his dates when they ask about the pervasive odor of cat urine in his apartment. That kind of stuff.

At this point, scope creep has set in. The site should accurately be called “Make Insane Money Online with Crazy Bob and Please Look at My Funny Cat Pictures while You’re at It.”

Damn cats.

What to Do about It

1. Stop publishing pictures of your cats. No one cares.
2. Look at the original theme of your site. Has the site drifted away?
3. Determine if it’s best to re-brand your site around its current, expanded theme, or whether it’s better to spin off the extraneous content into a separate site.

Scope creep kills. You have been warned.

You know, dear readers, it seems the holy grail of entrepreneurial types is to figure ways to make money while doing what they like. One of my passions is writing, and if I can make a buck (or a million) while doing it, then sign me up.

I recently came across a service called Smorty. Though I’m not really sure what the name means, they do promise that a blogger can get paid for blogging.

A little research into the company revealed that they are a blog advertising firm, which means companies pay them for reviews and links. In turn, the bloggers get paid to blog about the companies. It’s a nifty system.

The blogger makes money by accepting offers, which are basically requests from advertisers about how to format the review. Also, each offer is assigned a pre-set price, so it’s known up front what will be paid.

The offers are based on several factors, including a blog’s Google PageRank and its Alexa ranking. Smorty also uses an in-house rating system called “Smorty Score,” which increases as more offers are completed.

Smorty appears to be a good bet for bloggers who want to make some extra cash.

Angry Canadian Guy is none too pleased with your seamless integration of ads and content, eh.

New year, same old problems for webmasters. If you earn revenue from contextual advertising (Google’s AdWords and the like), then this post is for you.

Remember when banner ads were the top dog of web advertising? Oh, to be back in the halcyon days of the late 90s, when ad prices were based on CPM (cost-per-thousand for you young whippersnappers out there). Page views were all that mattered.

As the web evolved and the once-inexperienced users became web savvy, people learned to ignore the ads. Banner blindness had set in, driving advertisers to use Flash and Shockwave to make their ads fly across the screen and sing and dance and whatever else would catch your attention.

Users started ignoring them, too.

Then AdSense and AdWords came along, promising to save web advertising. For a while, it did.

The question: when will AdWords start being ignored by users? I think it’s already happening. Anecdotally speaking, I can’t remember the last time I clicked an AdWord ad on a website. An experienced user quickly learns to separate the ads from the content, just like people did with banners. (Caveat: I still find contextual ads on search engine results to be very useful, especially when the first page of results is useless. This indicates that the best way to reach experienced users is search engine advertising.)

So who experiences AdWords blindness?

1. Experienced users as described earlier
2. Repeat visitors who have learned your devious ad placements
3. RSS subscribers who get full feeds in their readers. Even though full feeds are user friendly, they do little to convert readers into clicks.

This blindness, of course, is the reason webmasters attempt to make AdWords look like the rest of their content. While this is suggested by Google as an optimization strategy, I would say that it’s the mainstream equivalent of blind linking, a JavaScript technique used mainly by adult sites to hide the true destination of a link. Of course, as a fine, upstanding citizen, I would never visit an adult site. I’m just passing on what I hear.

While blending the text ad’s appearance with the content’s appearance is good in the short term, in may be terrible in the long term. How many people now check a link’s destination before they click? I know I do, lest I be taken to something I didn’t expect or want.

It’s this mistrust of links that I’m worried about. Since linking is the very basis of hypertext and the web, AdWords may very well be doing long-term harm.

Maybe you’ve been in a similar situation. If you haven’t, then I bet your life is so perfect that everyone loves you, and singing bluebirds perch on your shoulders, and rainbows and unicorns shoot out of your butt. If so, I hate you. Also, you should probably get that butt condition checked out.

Anyway…

I purchased a Christmas gift for my mother, inexplicably waiting until 9 days before the big day. I’m lazy like that, but that’s my problem.

I looked around at some of the major shopping sites but ultimately settled on Buy.com, since they guaranteed delivery by Christmas and were also the best price I could find. Yes, I am a cheap professional millionaire, thank you for asking.

The damn thing didn’t arrive until December 31st, at which point it was useless because I had driven to Best Buy and purchased the item on Christmas Eve. I swear every year that I will never do shopping on that accursed day of Christmas Eve. Yet, somehow, I always end up violating that oath. Trust me, my loathing of humanity is only amplified by Christmas Eve shoppers.

1. Guaranteed shipping times were both confusing AND incorrect

This is a deal breaker at Christmas, much less any other time. Any e-commerce operation knows exactly how long a package will take to arrive via a ground carrier (Postal Service not withstanding). To screw that up, and by so many days, is unforgivable.

2. The return process makes you wonder if just keeping the item is a better option

In order to return this item without incurring return shipping charges, I had to request a return authorization, have that request approved (a one-day delay), and then wait around for the FedEx guy to show up so I could refuse the package. Our FedEx guy comes at 8:00 AM, and I’m not a happy camper when I awake before noon.

3. Looking up an order is an herculean task

Unless you go through the crap of setting up an account (which should have been done when I purchased but somehow wasn’t), you can only look up orders by order number. In the long run, it’s a trivial annoyance. However, enough annoyances add up to lost customers.

4. It took four days for the order to ship

Four-day handling times are the hallmark of a badly designed fulfillment system. Unfortunately, this sort of delay is what led me to cancel the order. I’ve also witnessed this behavior with Overstock.com and Amazon Marketplace (not the main Amazon site), which suffer from many of Buy.com’s problems. Fulfillment issues such as these violate the fundamental flow of good e-commerce:

1. Find the item
2. Checkout
3. Receive confirmation of payment and expected shipping times
4. Confirm shipment

When a site adds other steps, such as “Wonder if my item shipped yet?” or “Wait for the FedEx guy so I can refuse the package,” that’s the sign of a fulfillment system in disarray. It’s also the sign of lost customers.