Welcome to Chez Cliff!

Several final steps with regards to the ebook.

First:  Editing.  No matter how many times you read your own writing, there are problems.  Having edited my book five times I felt pretty confident when I sent it out.  But my editors disagreed with me.

Guru.com produced nearly 40 people who offered to edit my book.  Selecting the person to do it was tough.  But, as I stated before, I wanted a quality product to go out the door.  Especially if my name was attached to it.  In total, editing took about two weeks.

Second:  Appeal.  I studied a number of ebooks before putting mine together.  eBooks are horrible.  Just because anyone can produce one, they do.  And they don’t give any real thought about the look-feel of the book.  Usually it’s a boring black and white page, with 3 inch margins, and the text is exactly what you see on the website.

Lord Google introduced me to Charlie. Charlie talked on his website about making eBooks look fantastic.  I hired him to do it, along with some improvements to the site.  In the end, I was very happy with what he did and felt that not only was the quality there but it looked good.

Third:  Integration.  Selling any book usually requires the author put the first chapter for free on the internet.  OK, done.  But usually when perusing books at the book store, I flip through more than just the first chapter.  The middle and the end also get some scrutiny.  So I decided to put an excerpt from the mid-point of the book.  In this case, Chapter 5.  This section was deliberately picked because it’s something that anyone can use even if they don’t buy the book.

Next week I’ll be chatting about the software for the iPhone app.  That’ll be fun.

I was going to chat a bit more about the book.  But this needs to slip in here, to understand a bit better my motivation behind some of the decisions I made.

This phrase speaks to me:  Do one thing and do it well.

If I were to rattle off the name of some companies, what impressions or feelings would you get?  General Motors.  What runs through your mind when you hear those words?  I would bet dollar for dollar that the words “Top Quality” were no where near your thinking.

This isn’t a rant on how GM quality is horrible or bad.  It is a discussion about perceptions.  An economist I am not but I would wager that a good portion of GM’s current problems is due in part to it’s tarnished brand.  People want cars that last a long time.

On the flip side, what do you think of when the word “Honda” is mentioned?  Reliability?  Dependability?  With our global recession, I don’t see many articles talking about Honda losing $1 billion per month.

When coming up with my idea, my concepts and my products I’ve always had one thing on my mind:  “Do one thing and do it well.”  Even if I only sold a dozen applications or five books, I wanted to make sure the people who gave their money felt it was well spent.  That what they received was better than anything the competition could ever dish out.

Every decision I made was based on asking myself one simple question:  Is this going to have a positive impact on people?

If the answer was no, the idea was instantly rejected.

If the answer was yes, I had no problem putting out a delay to make sure we got it right.

As stated before, Wordpress is the engine which drives my websites.  I know enough about HTML programming to understand the importance, and simplicity, of being able to control the content on the site.  So if an error is found, I can quickly fix it without having to go through a “web guy”.

Based on previous estimates, graphic shops charge $400 for a site design.  Menu buttons, header graphic (or masthead if you will), titles, text, etc. is usually what is included.  For me, all I needed was a site style.  For Wordpress, there are only 1.8 jilliion different styles available.  Why not find one of those?

After nearly a week of searching, I found a site style which I thought was pleasing.  I plunked down $20 to buy it.  Then to get some tweaks, I went to Guru.com and paid $200 to have a bunch of customization done to it.  including the redesign of the header graphic.

In the end, i got a great looking site for $220 instead of $400.

As far as organizing the site, I stole.  Yes, I stole and stole shamelessly.  Tim’s website appeals to me for how it’s organized.  If this design is good enough for Mr. Marketing, it is good enough for me.  So you’ll find distinct similarities between mine and his.

Will the site go through a redesign to make it look better?  Most definitely.  But for a start-up, it’s best to keep costs as low as possible.  Right now the site style is good.  After sales start coming in, the money can be used to have someone make it look really slick.

Next: integrating the book into the website.

With the book coming along, the next step was developing the website.

It is my belief that websites are becoming a natural extension of books.  Books won’t go away any time soon.  But for the internet crowd, websites are proving to be a very powerful marketing tool in advancing not only readership but also sales of the book.

Just look at Tim and his Four Hour Work Week site.

The first step: what about the end user?  If someone were to read the book, what resources should be available to help them further their objective of buying investment property?  What information could I provide to help them along their investing path?

My mentor recommended I take a look at creating a path.  Some simple steps users could identify with readily and would also help organize the site into some kind of logical fashion.

I created a five step plan, using action verbs.

• Prepare
• Define
• Assemble
• Acquire
• Manage

Each step corresponds to a section of the book.  For example, the Define section refers to those chapters in the book where we discuss how to define a Business Model.  The Define section of the site has those tools available to help someone define their business model.  So in the book, we discuss the theory.  On the website, we actually do it.

After listing out each section, and what useful content should be under each section, the content for the site came together rather quickly.

Next step: design or lookie-feel of the website.

The starting point for BuyThatDuplex was a book.

I knew I had wanted to do a book for many moons.  Real Estate seemed to be a good starting point.  But what can you write about a subject that’s been talked about to death?

Taking a chapter from Sir Richard Branson’s book, I let my frustration be my guide.  What really bothered me about real estate books?  What could I do differently?  What could I do better?

Following my frustration, the book practically wrote itself.  At the same time, my niche market became defined.  I wanted to go after that market segment, where people are considering buying their first piece of investment property.

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My focus would be to provide a sort of manual to walk someone through that first purchase.  And everything else that was built would support this same idea.

Now let me state for the record: writing a book is tough.  My editor equated it to giving birth.  The original idea had been kicked around for nearly two years.  But it was February through August were I did nothing but eat, sleep and breath this book.  My crowning moment was when I finally put the book down and said “It is finished” and then had a brain aneurysm.

The next step:  Website.