Today is Odds and Ends day.

In the beginning . . . 

Before my main competition arrived, a high end mortgage calculator was my primary competition.  They had dozens of rave reviews and a dedicated clientelle.  Based on my Taco Bell conversation, I priced my software to slide in $1 under theirs.  Also, I offered a Lite version of my software.

Well wouldn’t you know it?  They have reduced their price and are now offering a Lite version of their software.  And their description is virtually identical to mine except they changed out the name of the software.

Mad Men

When I got the advertising quote of $100: it was for one article, sent out one day, and it consisted of just a hyperlink.  That’s it.  If I want a banner, it will cost at a minimum $3,000 ($1,000 per month for three months).  

Um . . . . No.

I was thinking this would generate immediate sales but I can’t spend that kind of money at the moment.  Ken’s SEO model is the better bet.  It will take longer but the long term benefits can’t be denied.  Plus, it’s way cheaper.

Penny

Guess what showed up at my house today?

I’ve never sold stock before . . . hehe

Last week my hands got dirty.

I’ve talked about the theory behind E-Myth before.  For those that haven’t read, there are three levels to any business.  The technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur.

Last week, I was the technician.  Again.

With running an eBusiness, once you get everything setup you just kind of play entrepreneur in trying to make sales.  Every time someone buys something, no human intervention is required.  Since computers do an excellent job of handling reptitious tasks, the customer walks away with the same experience as other customers.  No having to worry about part time help screwing up the works.

But that’s what happened.

My friend gave me some great feedback on the book.  But until I sat down and started going line by line did I realize that something was terribly amiss.  The editor for my book did a fantastic job of catching all kinds of typographical and grammatical mistakes.  But their edits produced an eBook that wasn’t mine.  Entire paragraphs were re-written and the meaning was completely changed.

At one point in the book, the sentence read that it was impossible to buy real estate.

WTF?

So I had to spend another 20 hours, going page by page through the entire book.  Entire sections were re-written and expanded.  Now the book has returned to it’s original message.

Why didn’t I catch this before?

Fatigue.  MS Word and iWork Pages can track changes.  And in this book, the editor flagged about 5 jillion changes.  After about page 15, my brain was shot and I blindly accepted them.  Bad on my part.  Next time, I’ll have to be more careful.

The time has come for some advertising.  While sales have been steady, I want them to explode.

I was completely disillusioned when I went into Google Adwords.  With various four or five letter search word combinations, I was thinking I could reach people for about 5 cents per click.  Bzzzt.  Wrong answer.  For my niche, even with 5 words, I’m looking at $4 per click.

Yikes!

When I completely changed my word combination, I managed to get to 50 cents per click.  But my search results are limited to a few hundred per month.

My initial budget for advertising was set at $100 per month.  So the choice was simple: continue with Adwords or find another way.  I elected to find another way.

What I decided to do was put myself into my prospective client.  If they go to Google and type in a phrase, what are they looking for?  For me, I’m not looking for a sales pitch.  Information is my goal.  So while the entire page may be peppered with ads, if I just want to learn then I click on a website.  Then what happens to the Google adwords?  Nine times out of ten, they disappear.

So what’s left?  The website.  Then it occurred to me that advertising on websites might be the better use of my money.  Text link or banner ad: doesn’t matter.  With thousands of people visiting a site each month, my site will be splashed in front of them.

One sight in my top search results gets 16,000 unique visitors per day with advertising between $65 and $100 per month depending on banner size and location.  With a click-thru rate of 0.5%, this means 80 visitors per day.  Over a month, my site could possibly receive 2,400 unique visitors or a click-through cost of 4 cents per person.  Where I originally wanted to be.

If I could have a skyscraper ad versus a banner ad, my click-thru rate would be doubled to 1%.  But so far the sites I’ve been negotiating with are banner ads only.

So I’ll have to pull out the oldest marketing trick in the book to get people to click.  Using a powerful marketing word that everyone knows:

FREE

When the site was launched, we set certain mile stones.

1. When we hit 100 sales, we’d have a nice dinner.
2. When we hit 1,000 sales, we’d have a party.
3. When we hit 10,000 sales, we’d have a nice trip somewhere.

This last weekend, we dined to the health and prosperity of our first 100 customers.

Three weeks has passed since the arrival of our eBook/Pro software.  Since then, sales have been steady.  The viral marketing is working beautifully.  Costs have been kept at a bare minimum including zero spent on advertising.

What we’re working on now is a “combo” package – wrapping the eBook and Software up into one package and offering a discount.  The logistics behind this is tougher than I thought considering iTunes won’t allow discounts or other offers to be included in their application.

Someone buys the book from the website, then has to go into iTunes to buy the software – so how do they get the discount?  Emailing copies of receipts is one option but it requires human intervention.  With my “9 to 5″, it would be hard to process emails until I got home in the evening.

Ideally computers should be able to do all this.  But when the systems are written to be completely locked down then all flexibility goes out the window.

But I have an idea on how this combo package can be done . . .

Every morning, my eyes spring open and the first thought through my head “How did I do yesterday?”

Morning time is my time.  Some people function better at night.  My brain performs it’s best during the early morning hours.  Maybe after sleeping and my brain has had time to flush the mundane minutia of the day out of my head.  Who knows?

My morning ritual now includes a check of the sales.  The information is summarized nightly so in the morning, it can be accessed.  Each day, I check the number of sales and enter the numbers into my spreadsheet.

My next stop is the emails.  I know, I know.  Tim says to avoid emails first thing in the morning.  Personal emails, yes.  Those are pushed off until later on.  But MY emails contain ideas or suggestions which are going to impact my day.  Including them early makes more sense.

As reviews and emails come in, I’m always pleased at the number of people who appreciate the application.  The sensation of having a positive impact on people’s lives is beyond words.  Really that was my objective all along.  To further that objective, each day is spent trying to figure out how to improve.

After all, one of my company’s core values is Innovation.

My eyes scan the monitor as I drink my morning coffee.  The imagination starts to wander, thus beginning the best part of my day.

• What can I do today to have more of a positive impact on people?
• How many more people can I help today?
• What other value added services can I offer?

Being an entrepreneur is great.