Rules for dealing with customer complaints

SportsLizard's Price Guide will pass the 2,000 user mark today (not bad for something that's been around for less than a month). The uniqueness of the application coupled with the shear volume of new users and visitors to the site has led to more customer service related emails than I'm used to.

A few days back I wrote a post that I didn't publish expressing how frustrating it's been (I used a lot of f-bombs and called a lot of people morons so I thought twice before hitting the publish button). If someone is 100% satisfied with your service, they probably aren't likely to contact you. Most contacts are the same stupid questions or flat out complaints. It can eat away at you if you aren't careful. So how do you handle it?

My previous experiences as an engineer (working with our complaints department to identify quality defects), combined with experiences with iPrioritize prepared me well. Here are my rules:

1. Don't over-react. Things that are real problems will resurface over and over, and you'll hear from more than just disgruntled users. Over the past month I've ALMOST over-reacted a few times, but have been able to cool myself down. Except for a few minor changes, the price guide remains in tact and there's been over 10,000 price searches (so I must be doing something right). I'm going to patiently improve the product and not make changes based upon a few pissed off people - changes that probably would alienate my happy customers.
   
2. Be extra nice to every customer. Aside from the fact that it's just plain right to do, being nice to frustrated customers often has a lot of fringe benefits. I can't tell you how many times a pissed off person has ripped me a new one in the initial email and then apologized and turned "nice" after I apologize and offer to help them out - even if that means cancelling their account. People are conditioned to being treated crappy by customer service departments and they assume that you don't care about them. Show them you do, and even if they don't stay with you they'll have nice things to say about you to their friends and family. Contrast that with a ticked off customer who you fought with. It's not worth the stress of fighting, and they probably aren't doing you any favors when their friend asks about you.
3. Always apologize. For what you say? For whatever they are experiencing. Let's say someone didn't confirm their account when they signed up and now is complaining about not being able to log in. Don't go on the attack and blame them. A common way to start an email that I like to use is "I apologize for the frustration". It shows that you feel bad and wish they didn't have to struggle - even if it's their fault. From their on you should offer the solution, but starting with an apology gets everything off on the right foot.
4. Try to be prompt. In SL's auto-email response, it says you'll get an answer "within 2 business days, usually much sooner". I try to get back to people within an hour or two during normal hours, and within 24 hours on the weekend or a holiday. Most of the time a response only takes a few minutes, so it makes sense for you to just get it done right away anyway. And it shows the customer that a real person is actually running the site, and that they are on top of things. The perception is that you're a more efficient business if you get back quickly (whether that's true or not is irrelevant).
   
5. Don't just copy and paste. Yes, I have a list of standard responses and we have an FAQ section with twenty more standard responses, but I try to customize each response to the problem of the customer. Sometimes it's just as simple as looking up their first name in the database instead of saying "Hi person@yahoo.com" or saying "Enjoy the long holiday weekend!" this past weekend.
6. Realize that some will get away. Don't try to fight with a customer who wants to cancel their account. Make it easy for them to cancel and there's a chance they might come back. Process their request quickly and with respect and there's a chance they'll even tell their friends about your product. It's impossible that every customer can fit your target market, so you're going to lose some, and it's not really a bad thing. And I always thank them for trying out the price guide - they could have just clicked away but they took the time to sign up and evaluate it.
   

All of that can pretty much be summed up by saying - be nice to your customers. Seems pretty obvious, but most of us have experienced a lot of companies that for some reason don't seem to like or respect their customers...so maybe it isn't that obvious.

Taking back control of the other stuff

I was discussing something interesting with one of my partners the other day. Actually, it's been a recurring issue that all of us have struggled with (maybe with the exception of Mike) since we formed Pure Adapt. What is this problem? Getting on a regular schedule. Might not sound like a big deal, but hear me out.

When you're in school you've got a set schedule and you work the rest of your life around that. Most people go to work and continue that. With our business (especially me) it doesn't matter if I work 8AM to 5PM or 8PM to 5AM most days. Sounds awesome, but even the best of us turn into slackers when there are absolutely no boundaries.

My partner and I were discussing how when we worked full time jobs we hated our jobs, but we had the rest of our lives together. It was EASY to get on a set sleep schedule, diet, and exercise schedule. Now that we love our jobs, those other things are suffering and it's beginning to catch up with all of us.

Simple solution really - we just need to set a few boundaries. My alarm clock is now set and I'm getting up 7 days a week at the same time. My back injury is almost all better, so I'm going back to the gym tomorrow. Both of which should lead to consistency in my diet.

I'm going to devote the month of June to getting those things back. It's a weird feeling - I've always had control over those things for my entire life until recently. Pressure with work coupled with a back injury will do that to a guy.

I suppose it's all part of the eternal struggle to be happy with everything in your life, but I really think it's realistic for me to be in control of both sides of things. I can definitely work the same hours I work now and be more productive while doing it if I get control of that stuff. So tomorrow starts day 1. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not the type of guy to focus on something and not go through with it, so this is a big deal to me.

The alternative is to continue to live out of control like I have been. Stress from too much alcohol and eating bad and sleeping bad would catch up eventually (if it hasn't already). I've always been a healthy guy, so I don't want to let a few months in my entrepreneurial journey sidetrack me.

Pure Adapt - the big picture

I tend to get caught up in talking about SportsLizard and the price guide, and really don't mention the overall shape of our business enough. We're at one of those points where you hurdle to the next level. We've only been incorporated for less than 4 months, but sites like SL and Detailed Image have been around for so long that they bring a lot of sweat equity with them and were far from babies when we started.

Detailed Image is doing really well, and is becoming our backbone. SportsLizard is still more of a home-run swing type of business - we're making money off advertising/affiliate sales, and premium subscriptions to the price guide. We're signing up several premium accounts each day, and about 100 free accounts so at that rate the money will be pouring in soon enough, but it's still just a blip compared to DI. Hotteeez, our t-shirt rating site (not sure if I ever even mentioned it before) is in place to drive traffic to our Cafe Press store, which is slowly but surely growing in sales. Mike is planning on continuing to make several t-shirts each week based on keyword research and what's popular at the time. We expect compounding sales from Hotteeez to the point where it's a major revenue source in the next few years, probably a little while after SL, which could realistically compete profit-wise with DI by the end of '07. Along the way I'm going to keep taking on the occasional SEO client because I enjoy it, I learn a lot, and it's good money (oh yea, and I'm good at it).

So how do we get there? It's been interesting conversation, but we all have agreed upon the necessary order of operations. First, we need to complete a new site for DI - not because the current one sucks, but because the current one requires too much work for Greg and George. I plan on automating everything, including accounting and inventory, which should save each of them a few hours/day. At that point, we are going to buy a warehouse to expand DI (and give me a place to go to work everyday rather than my basement), and possibly hire someone to do the packing and stocking of products.

Now we've freed up Greg and George to market DI, and I'm now back 100% on SL, and I envision Mike dancing between Hotteeez and some DI/SL...he's the versatile guy that knows enough about everything to do whatever the biz needs. From there we should be able to double our salaries by the end of the year, and we can stop living like we're making minimum wage :)

It's the most crucial point for us thus far because we should come out the other side with a highly efficient business that makes more than enough for the four of us to live comfortably off. At that point we can really focus on growing the way we want. We've decided we want to stay small, so I don't envision any other people besides our one full time packer for a long time.

It's extremely exciting to see everything fall into place like it has been the past few months, and the next few months should be fun as hell (entrepreneurial tip: in my opinion, if the next few months aren't ALWAYS the most exciting in your journey you are doing something wrong).

Philanthropic Football Players

Philanthropy is not something that you automatically associate with NFL players...or athletes in general. Most people think of Pacman Jones and Chris Henry when they think of the typical NFL player. It's just not the case. Take yesterday for example - AJ Nicholson got cut by the Bengals for his repeated arrests and that gets all the headlines, but at the same time a much better story got buried by the media.

As is custom with superstitious athletes that switch teams, new Texan Ahman Green wanted to "buy" his #30 jersey number from long-time Texan Jason Simmons. Instead of asking for money or a free vacation like most athletes, Simmons asked that Green make a down payment on a home for an under-privileged family.

"He said what he wanted to do and I said: 'Yeah I'm all on board. That's easy,"' Green said. "Tell me where to write the check to. So instead of putting the money into his pocket, he's going to put in into somebody else's home, house and help them get their life started."

Oh yea, and Warrick Dunn's Foundation has its "Homes for the Holidays" program:

"Homes for the Holidays" assists single mothers in owning their first home by providing the down payment on a house and then filling the house with everything a first-time homeowner would need including: furniture, food, linens, lawn mower, gardening supplies, washer, dryer, dishes, pots and pans, etc. This program is the primary focus of the Warrick Dunn Foundation and to date has assisted 60 single mothers and more then 140 children in Atlanta, GA, Baton Rouge, LA and Tampa, FL.

It's not that the good stories don't exist, it's that the media doesn't cover them.

What I think about Google Universal

Google Universal - it's being pegged as the most major change to search results in years. As both a site owner and an SEO professional what do I think? I think it's barely news at all, and anyone freaking out about it has been missing the point with search engine optimization.

Let's take a step back. For those of you who didn't see the announcement:

The first [announcement] is the launch of universal search results, meaning a query from Google.com will now show results from Google's vertical search engines, including images, videos, news, maps, blogs, and books. Instead of putting these various results in a set position on the page, Google will rank all types of results based on the query. A user will still have the option of segmenting results based on media type, with tabs at the top of the search results for each type.

Anyone who has been paying attention has seen this creeping in for years. Maps from Google Maps showed up when you searched a city, products from Froogle when you searched a product, and images from Google Image search showed up when you searched someone famous. So now Google just took the next logical step and added video, news, blogs, and books to the results.

The webmasters who freaked out were the ones who were bad at SEO. The point of SEO is to optimize a site so that search engines can understand its content and rank it appropriately. It's NOT to trick search engines into ranking you higher than you deserve. And with that, if you continue to have something relevant to a search result (be it a video, a product, or an article) you will rank high. If you don't, you won't.

A search engines job is to give the most relevant result to the user, not cater to your keyword stuffing or algorithm twisting. This update will give people more relevant results than before. As does personalized search. The way that we track an SEO campaign is going to change from "where I rank for a term" to "how much search traffic I received" if it hasn't already, because algorithms that factor in search history, up-to-the second news, and location are going to be too hard to game.

The other thing that's puzzling me is the perception that this is somehow groundbreaking. Normalizing search results from several different sources is nothing new (see Dogpile), and considering Google's pulling all results from their existing searches (news, images, video, etc) it was a matter of testing different coefficients for each that did the appropriate justice. I'm not saying that it's easy to do, just that it's not really that special...nor does Google Universal search change SEO or search very much in my mind. It's just a logical step forward.

Success and happiness - myths all over the place

One of the common traits among entrepreneurs is that we take the bull by the horns - we want to control our own destiny and carve our own niche. While that's great, I think we need to make sure we're doing it for the right reasons. If you find yourself saying "I'll be happy when I become a millionaire/sell 10,000 parts/have a 50 person company/go public" then you might want to take a step back and look in the mirror. Do you look down on people who work menial jobs and think "man what a waste, at least I'm living life to the fullest"? Or do you feel alone and think that your business is how you are going to "show the world"? Come on, don't lie...whether you mean it or not that those thoughts have crossed your mind...they've certainly crossed mine.

Over the last few years there's been a wave of happiness studies, and guess what? They all come to the same conclusion: once basic needs are met (food, water, shelter, plus a little more) money has no correlation to happiness. I'll say that again - money has no correlation to happiness. So if you're in it for the money, you won't be happy (and you probably won't have much success anyway). That's why there are miserable rich people and there are happy rich people, just like there are miserable grocery store clerks and happy garbage men.

Don't believe me? Read this interview with author Penelope Trunk (and this one too) on Guy Kawasaki's blog:

Question: How much money does it take to be happy?

Answer: It takes about $40,000. It does not matter how many kids you have or what city you live in - that's splitting hairs because peoples' happiness levels are largely based on their level of optimism and the quality of their relationships. So as long as you have enough money for food and shelter, your optimism level kicks in to dictate how happy you are.

You'll be happier if you have a job you like.

The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated. The most important factors, by far, are your optimism levels and your personal relationships. If you are a pessimist, a great job can't overcome that. (Think of the jerks at the top.) And if you have great friends and family, you can probably be happy even if you hate your job (imagine a garbage collector who's in love).

The glass ceiling still exists.

The glass ceiling is over, not because people crashed through, but because people are not looking up. Life above the glass ceiling is 100-hour weeks, working for someone else, and no time for friends and family. And it's not only women who are saying no to the ladder up: Men are as well. People want to customize success for themselves, not climb someone else rungs. So if no one is climbing to the top, the glass ceiling isn't keeping anyone down.

And also Check out this study presented in Men's Health:

But maybe it's not about big things, after all. We often stake our happiness on things that we know, deep down, will quickly leave us feeling empty -- acquiring the next big promotion, the slick new car, the hot date. We act as if all hangs on, say, our team winning this Saturday's big football game. But real life is not a vacuum in which a single event (acquiring the job of your dreams or the house you always wanted) changes everything.

Saturday afternoon comes and goes, says Harvard researcher Daniel T. Gilbert, Ph.D., and all the emotions stirred up by the game get "pushed, pulled, dampened, exacerbated, and otherwise altered by postgame pizza, late-night parties, and next-day hangovers.

"The surgeon can't afford to feel happy during a demanding operation, or a musician while playing a challenging score," writes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who first proposed the concept of "flow." "Only after the task is completed do we have the leisure to look back on what has happened, and then we are flooded with gratitude for the excellence of that experience -- then, in retrospect, we are happy."

The key to happiness, Csikszentmihalyi suggests, is figuring out what gives you that feeling of flow. For me, it happens when I'm writing, or rowing a boat. For you? Sailing a catamaran, or cooking Thai food, or even revising a profit-and-loss statement are all equally legitimate contenders.

Our happiness depends finally on other people and on the strength of our connections to them. This may be hard to swallow. We like to think, after all, that we're rugged individualists. But it turns out, when we get back down from the mountaintop, that we are still social primates with a physiological, intellectual, and emotional need for companionship.

Makes you think huh? If you're miserable being an entrepreneur than don't do it any more. I'm fifty times happier than I was working a shorter work week because I spend all day doing stuff I love with people I love, and it gives me purpose and meets an inherent need I have to push myself. Accomplishing great things (or trying to accomplish them) with people I genuinely like being with is when I'm at my happiest. But if you'll be happier working 40 hour weeks and spending the rest of your time with friends, family, and hobbies, then freaking do it. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that if you aren't happy, find a way to do what will make you happy :)

The coolest new piece of web software

Check out ClickTale. I have no clue how they do it, but it's the most amazing piece of analytics software I've ever encountered. Coupled with the new Google Analytics, a webmaster can truly maximize design, site structure, and verbiage to get the most out of every user. It costs a lot to get someone to your site, so you best get as much from them as you can while they're there.

Crazy week - random thoughts

I started this morning with an idea about what I wanted to post about. Then one thing happened that gave me another idea...then another....and so on to the point where I had enough material for a crap load of posts. So in the essence of time, here's what I was thinking:

• I noticed a lot of SL price guide subscribers weren't confirming their accounts and I was getting a few emails a day about it (all you need to do is click a link to confirm your email before logging in). Turns out people's email programs were splitting the link into two lines and it was broken. I added a line of text explaining this to the email, and put a screenshot on the "confirmation failed" page to show what I mean (see example here). It worked - today we're getting no complaints and more people are confirming their accounts. Lesson - pay attention to your customers, and pay attention to your data.
• We've had a few inquiries (only one I consider serious) to buy iPrioritize and SportsLizard. It's always cool to hear someone likes your site enough to inquire about purchasing, but I'd imagine not too much will come out of this other than the practice of negotiating a deal...which in and of itself is pretty cool.
• I noticed something about myself - I really, really like challenges...doesn't really matter the challenge, just that it's something people think I can't do. That's why I like working out and playing bball, that's why I like playing hundreds of hours of Madden, and that's why I love business. I thought about this while thinking about what life would be like without SL or iP if we sold them. Then I realized I'd just take on another challenge.
• With things heating up, we're noticing that every good thing that happens creates a few immediate problems and a bunch more potential problems. That's expected, but it tends to diminish your accomplishments and we're working hard to put "celebrations" in place for when we hit major goals. We all work hard and sacrifice so we have to make sure that we don't spend our entire lives living in the promise of the future. We have weekly dinners as a team (every Wednesday) and we're planning on taking days off to have fun and celebrate Pure Adapt and it's accomplishments.
• Like it or not, the ability to sell is one of the most important things in life. You need to sell to get a client or on your website to get a sale, but you also need to sell yourself in a job interview or sell yourself to a girl if you ever want to get some attention from the opposite sex. Just because you don't work in sales doesn't mean you don't need to sell. People will believe in you and your business in large part because you can sell the idea, and that leads to opportunities down the road (see next pt below).
  
• Recently I landed a large SEO job (with a tech company you've probably heard of). I got the opportunity to bid on the project because my cousin works for them and talked to the CEO about me when they were out jogging together. I'm meeting for drinks tomorrow with a great businessman who happened to be my racquetball coach in college. I landed Pure Adapt a huge development job because I'd been discussing business with the person over email for about a year now. Biggest lesson of all - treat other people fairly because it's the right thing to do, but odds are that if you do, good opportunities will come your way.
  

A problem that needs a solution

OK so I'm a now down a bit from the high of yesterday. There's one trend that I want to nip in the bud - people signing up and cancelling. It hasn't happened a lot, but there have been a handful of people who have cancelled after a day or two. There are two possibilities as to why:

• They have looked up everything they wanted and saw no further use with the premium account.
• They aren't getting values and think the price guide sucks.
  

The first one we'll ignore for now - that's the equivalent of the person that picks up a Beckett at the news stand once a year to value their collection and sees no need in getting monthly pricing....this will always be a "problem" but they really aren't the subscriber we want anyway.

At first I thought the second one had to do with the user's ability to query the system, but I've gotten some feedback that they really are looking up cards that we don't have a price for. Personally, I want to say "if it's not being sold online than how would ANYONE go about getting a price? Some things just won't have a price" - but I know better than that. They'd rather get an estimation than nothing.

Here are the possible solutions I see:

1. We research and enter prices for every collectible ever....based on our best guess, and if there are no values returned we show this value (not very scientific, or a very prompt solution in my mind - it would probably take years to complete).
2. Integrate eBay's historical data, using their API. This might take a while, but would give us substantially more data points and help with establishing trends.
3. Allow users to post their own prices. This is the "Web 2.0" solution - the community is allowed to post prices of what they think it's worth based upon what they paid for it, what they saw it for sale at a show for, or what it's priced at in a magazine.
   

Personally, I like both 2 and 3....but I'm not sure which to attempt first. Any thoughts?

//UPDATE
After discussing this with my partner Mike, we've decided to go the "Web 2.0" route and allow the community to contribute prices. eBay's API looks like a pain in the ass, and from the test queries we ran there's actually not as much of an improvement in the amount of data as we suspected. This makes sense to a degree - if it's not being sold now then there's a good chance it hasn't been sold in the recent past.

The community pricing aspect is unique and not really done at all other than on forums.

Now comes the question - how do I go about managing my time. Do I go balls out and try to implement this feature? Or do I stay course and do a lot of the marketing and get to the feature in a few weeks when I planned my 30 day upgrade?

I'm leaning toward getting it done ASAP, but I'm one biased by the "perfection" of my product and I feel like I always need it to be the best I can make it. I'll probably do half a day of marketing and half a day of programming for a week or two so I can launch sooner rather than later.

Wow - price guide on fire

Ok, so the Stumble Upon campaign turned out to be nothing more than some affordable market research. The feedback was nice, but my $0.05/visitor didn't result in many accounts. I spent Friday planning out my PPC campaign (keyword research, writing ads to split test, configuring AdWords to only show results in the US and not on AdSense, etc) and launched the bad boy on Saturday.

I awoke this morning to a slew of premium accounts and probably the best AdWords campaign ever in the history of the internet...EVER. For all of the "sports cards price guide" related terms we have a click through rate (CTR) of over 30% and an average cost per click of only $0.11! You read that correctly. Nearly 1/3 of people who search click on my ad (and yes, there have been over 1k impressions so it's not just 3 clicks in 9 impressions). How is this possible?

Well, primarily because we met a HUGE need in the industry that no one else has addressed. It's searched a ton, and no one has a solution. SO I can buy really cheap keywords, and people will click on my ads instead of the organic results because it's more relevant. I noticed that Google has begun showing SL's ads on the top (not on the side, this happens when you have a real high CTR) and highlighting them :)

In the 2 days the campaign has been running, we've been paying $10 for one premium account ($4.99/month) and about 25 free accounts!

So what does this mean? A few things:

• I can now worry a little less about marketing and spend a little more on customer service, upselling free users, and adding features to increase accuracy and improve the satisfaction of our users (all really good stuff that is very important).
• We'll almost certainly be trying Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN, and all of the smaller search engines....Google aint the only place you can run a profitable PPC campaign.
  
• Just for shits - if we continue at this pace, we'll have a larger subscriber base than any of the print price guide magazines by 2010...hopefully we'll pick up the pace because I'd like to out do them faster than that :)

No doubt there are still things that need to be improved with the price guide, but it's hitting big so far and I'm still not even 30% through my initial wave of marketing. So far, so good.

I'm off to grab a beer and watch some hockey - Let's Go Red Wings!

Passion

What's my favorite word?
What do I look for in a potential business partner, new friend, or new girlfriend?
What is the one thing that separates good from great?
What can accelerate professional development and mask all sorts of weaknesses?

Ask me any of those questions, and my answer is passion.

Defined by my good friends at Dictionary.com:

any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling; a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything;

Why is passion so important? Because it translates. If there's one endearing quality about myself that I hope I project onto others it's passion - passion in the way I work, passion for the people around me, and just overall passion in the way I live my life. I've met people who make the most trivial tasks in the world seem important and interesting because of their passion for life - and it brushes off onto the people around them...it gives us all a shot of life . And we've all seen countless athletes and celebrities squander brilliant careers because they have no true passion for what they do.

Life is good part 2 (or 3)

I'm an intense guy and sometimes I get frustrated that I don't see faster growth with my sites, or that the freaking muscle in my lower back that's been wreaking havoc with my sleep schedule is taking months to heal. Sometimes I wish I was back in high school, or college, or that I was retired, or occasionally that I was back at a 9-5 and I didn't have the pressures or stress that I do.

This has got to be at least the second time I've entitled a post "life is good" and you know what, I'm going to continue to do it every so often. I've been blessed with the abilities I have and I'm blessed to have such a great group of family and friends to interact with on a daily basis. Overall I'm in good health, and I've never really lacked anything I needed (there are people out there that would KILL for some food or water, or a friend to talk to).

Someday I hope to devote the majority of my time to helping those people. In the meantime I think it's important as a stressed-out young entrepreneur to take a step back and realize just how good I've got it sometimes. Life is short, and sometimes it's taken from us abruptly, so I never want to be that guy that's always chasing happiness and not embracing what's around them.

As you can tell, I'm in one of those "life is good" kind of moods today :)

Detailed Image Kicking Ass

Although I've primarily been focusing on SportsLizard on the blog lately, it's worth noting that my Pure Adapt partners have been kicking ass and Detailed Image is exploding in sales - to the point where Mike is now spending the majority of his time working with George and Greg, and the revenue can almost support the company as a whole on it's own.

It's a little weird because now I'm the odd man out - doing some SEO work and working on SL - while they work on DI. But it takes a little pressure off me in the sense that I can grow SL the right way and not feel pressed to see results immediately. A lot has changed on the site (new site design, changing ad models, the price guide, etc) and I only have so many hours in a day, so it's going to take some time. I feel that as long as I cover my salary with SEO and other side jobs, I can take as long as is necessary on SL.

I've been getting emails from people telling me how, with the price guide, SportsLizard is just absolutely amazing and is helping them sell their stuff, get their collectibles news, find out what their items are worth, etc. I probably have received an email a day like this since launching the price guide, and (again) it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside because the CUSTOMERS are starting to fall in love with what I'm doing, which to me means I'm on the right track.

Couple that with the support of my partners who would slap me upside the head if I was f*cking up, and overall I feel good. Oh man, I'm good at getting off topic. Anyway -congrats to DI, their growth is a testament to my partners hard work and dedication, and I'm excited to see us challenge the market leaders in an industry I know absolutely nothing about :)

Stumble Upon - the solution to everyone's PPC problems?

Like most site owners I've tried PPC (pay-per click) marketing like Google AdWords several times over in an attempt to start a campaign that was even close to profitable. Every time I've done it for one of my sites I've come up short (I'm usually working on small margins and just can't show profitability with it). I have however, seen several clients be VERY profitable with PPC so I continue to buy eBooks on it and refine my skills hoping that some day I'll have an opportunity to use PPC that makes sense.

Will that be the price guide? Who knows - I'm going to start a campaign in the next few days and I'm optimistic, primarily because there are A LOT of people searching for "free sports card price guide" and no sites come up.

Regardless of whether that works or not, I've recently discovered a new traffic-generating tool - Stumble Upon. I've used Stumble Upon since it's inception because it's a great tool and because I've noticed that when I "stumble" my sites I get a few hundred visitors from it the next day :)

But they recently launched their own version of PPC - a pay-per-visitor program. For those who don't use it, Stumble Upon is a tool bar that you install in your browser. You hit the "stumble" button and you're brought to a site that matches your interests. You give it a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" and the stumbler continues to learn your interests based upon what you like.

Essentially their pay-per-visitor program allows you to pay $.05 for a stumble to your site. The most interesting thing about it is that you also get a little market research - it tells you how many people have approved your site and shows you the comments they left...invaluable information for any new site.

The downside is of course that the people that use SU are site-addicts who hit the little stumble button thousands of times each day, and many times your $.05 results in someone looking at your site for a millisecond.

For the price guide the jury is still out. Only 2.5% of stumblers have signed up for price guide accounts (weak) but I've got a high approval rating which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. We're paying about $1.50 for a free account through SU. I'm not sure if that's worth it or not yet, but I'm going to continue the campaign for the feedback alone...at least for a few weeks.

This is my first real marketing effort for the price guide. It may turn out that $1.50 for a free user is a great deal...or it may not, depending on our other marketing efforts. It would seem to me that we could get that $1.50 back in advertising and up-selling to premium accounts, but we'll see.

Next up is PPC, followed by PR and box-breaks (explained in my biz plan). Once the dust settles from all of that stuff we'll see what works best. Oh, and no surprise thus far - the natural search traffic to the site and the traffic from newsletter subscribers has accounted for the majority of the accounts, and is converting much higher than the SU traffic.

Becoming more efficient with my time

To me, programming requires 100% focus and determination. When I'm programing an app like iPrioritize or the price guide, I want to spend every waking second pushing closer to launch. I get addicted to the rapid accomplishment. But once I "flip the switch" and become an online marketer, things change. You don't get out exactly what you put in. If I program for 8 hours I guarantee I'll make progress. If I market for 8 hours, who knows.

To an extent, marketing is a crapshoot. Should you try a whole bunch of stuff and hope something works (the throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks strategy) or should you focus on one core concept? I like to mix both strategies, and dedicate myself to four or five well thought out, sound techniques for driving traffic and ultimately acquiring customers. After some time, I'll start to prioritize those techniques based upon their yield.

Since marketing doesn't always show results right away, it's more important to set boundaries for myself and force myself to become efficient with time. I tend to set a schedule and tell myself I'm going to accomplish A, B, and C today, and then D, E, and F tomorrow. I focus on becoming efficient at my tasks and the accomplishment of said tasks, as opposed to solely focusing on the immediate results like I do with programming.

Programming turns me into an instant-gratification guy - I have tangible results that I can see right away. So naturally I always struggle a bit switching over to spending my time on SEO, PR, and other marketing that may or may not show results immediately...or ever. So to keep my sanity I'm really trying to do a good job executing the plan we've outlined. My three partners and I all agree we've got a sound plan, so the way I look at it the primary way SL will fail is if I panic or get lazy and the plan doesn't get executed properly. Hence the emphasis on small task accomplishment each and every day - keeping me motivated and sane.

Update on the actual Price Guide Marketing:
Now that I'm part of a corporation and not an individual, I'm willing to spend money a bit more aggressively. With that, I'm starting with paid marketing like PPC BEFORE doing things like PR (the type of PR I'm talking about involves contacting influential people in the industry and offering them free premium accounts in hopes that they'll spread the word) or the other marketing I outlined in my business plan. I'm intentionally "flooding" the price guide with traffic almost solely for the feedback and to get some baselines for conversion rates (i.e. what percent of visitors will sign up for a free/premium account). Hopefully I'll learn a lot about what needs to be improved with the site AND accelerate growth faster than I have in previous instances.

I'll keep you posted on how the next few days go, and whether or not that was a sound decision on my part.

Avoiding Over-Reacting

From my experience with iPrioritize and now with SportsLizard's Price Guide, I've learned that when you initially launch and get your first 50-100 users you'll get quite a bit of feedback - especially if what you're doing is a bit different than the status quo. It takes every bit of mental power you have to resist a knee-jerk reaction to that feedback.

In Getting Real, one of the most valuable lessons you learn is to listen to feedback but not necessarily react to it. With iPrioritize I scrambled around trying to tweak everything to make everyone happy - big mistake. They suggest a 30-day revamp, and I'm holding strong with that for the price guide.

But the price guide has been a bit different. The IDEA alone gets a lot of "holy crap that's an awesome idea" feedback. Where there are (and will continue to be) problems is with the pricing algorithm. It's hard to tell EXACTLY what item someone is trying to price out based upon what they enter in a search box. I don't want people to get a few wacky values and never come back.

My first thought was "I better step up this algorithm ASAP". Then I realized we will always be fighting a losing battle with the algorithm for just that reason. When I search for stuff, I can usually find what I'm looking for because I'm an experienced user. I know how to query the system and go through a few iterations to fine tune the results, but a first time user doesn't.

So the solution is really simple. Today I'm going to add a "training" section to the FAQ, and link from it from below the search box so everyone can see it. It'll say something like"learn how to get more accurate prices."

Would I prefer to have the perfect algorithm? Of course. But even Google doesn't have a perfect algorithm, the difference being that if Google slips in a few bad results you'll just ignore them. If we slip in a few wrong items, the price is all sorts of inaccurate. So I think there's going to be a bit of a learning curve for people to work the price guide correctly and I'm going to have to do a good job of presenting and teaching them so that the learning curve is minimalized.

SEO with PHP - a must-read for all programmers

One of my favorite SEO blogs is SEO Egghead by Jamie Sirovich. When I heard that Jamie was writing an SEO book for programmers, I jumped at the opportunity to get my hands on an advanced copy. Unfortunately since I've been swamped I'm just getting around to writing the review now, a few weeks after the book came out.

The book, officially titled Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP by Jamie Sirovich and Cristian Darie is one of the best resources I've ever encountered. I think I should preface this review with my background, because this book certainly isn't for everyone. I consider myself an above average PHP programmer, and I consider myself to have advanced SEO knowledge. Although I'm not actively soliciting SEO clients at the moment, I still have a lot of clients (including my own sites) that I'm still performing SEO services for AND am the programmer for.

I read several blogs each day to keep up with the latest in the SEO world. Every once in a while, I'll purchase an SEO book or access to a premium resource to see if there's anything I didn't know. For instance, last week I purchased SEOmoz's link building guide. SEOmoz is great, but to be honest with you I didn't learn anything - not that it wasn't great info, but it just wasn't info I didn't already know.

The primary thing I wanted to learn from Jamie's book was more effective URL rewriting (changing sl.com/page.php?product_id=1 to sl.com/page/product_1.html). URL rewriting helps with indexing, but also helps produce URL's that will help click-through-rates on search results and be more memorable to visitors.

I didn't expect much else. Boy was I wrong. Not only do they have an extensive chapter on URL rewriting, they also covered:

• An extensive explanation of SEO and WHY it's important, something I didn't expect.
• Sitemap generation (another thing I needed better code for)
• Black hat SEO techniques, an interesting read to learn what bad SEO's do...I learned a few things.
• Foreign language SEO, something I've never really encountered but was very interesting.
• Specific tutorials for Wordpress and an eCommerce site
• Geo-Targeting
  
• Link building strategies, something I didn't expect it to cover but they did a surprisingly good job
  

The best part is that you'll find all of the PHP scripts you need for SEO in one spot. I've accumulated many of my scripts over the years piece by piece, and it's taken a long time and a lot of testing. These all work out of the box, and that saves time, stress, and money.

Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP hit's it out of the park. It's easily the best book out there for a PHP programmer looking to step up their SEO skills...or an SEO looking to step up their PHP skills.

Positive response thus far, but I'm worn out

It's been about 24 hours since I launched the price guide. The responses I've heard from the people's opinions I value the most have been overwhelmingly positive - much more so than other things I've done. Even when I showed my partners their jaws dropped...which re-asserts the fact that I think I've got something special.

On a more personal level though, I'm worn out. When I'm programming like crazy I shut out my entire life - I exist for one purpose and that's to get the job done. Now that it's done, everything else is catching up with me. My back is still driving me nuts, is much worse than anticipated, and has sidelined me for over a month (although the doc just cleared me for light exercise this week which rocks). My free time/social life is still lacking, although I blame myself for holding back...it's not like the opportunities aren't there, just that I turn them down frequently to focus on my work (and recently cuz I can barely walk). And there's some drama in my family which led to a huge fight yesterday, kind of stealing my price guide thunder.

So I'm just worn out. I've caught up on sleep the past few days, but that's not it. It's the cumulative wear and tear of the last few years of overworking myself and teetering on the line of having a work/life balance. Anyone who works hard needs to find a way to draw lines and give themselves time away from their job, and without being able to go the gym the past month I've lost my escape and overall I've been in a pretty irritable mood.

I'm hoping that the switch to marketing from programming, combined with the beautiful spring weather and the fact that I now am healthy enough to move around a bit will solve the problem...at least temporarily. Long term I'm going to need to find a way to dial back the time spent working, but that's nothing new.

Price Guide Live - is it ready? am I freaking out?

About ten minutes ago I officially launched the SportsLizard Price Guide - I took down the splash page and replaced it with the real home page, I emailed our newsletter subscribers, I added it to the nav bar, and I put a banner on the homepage.

As I've previously stated, I think we've got a monster marketing plan and this is the best work I've done in my life. I am much more experienced than I've been in the past and I'm banking on that helping immensely. So why am I freaking out?

Answer: because when you first launch something you ALWAYS freak out. No matter how solid your plan or your product, you realize that all of the hard work you put in thus far has generated exactly $0 and you've really accomplished very little. I purposely posted immediately after I put it up to capture my feelings:

Did I add enough features? Will people be able to figure it out? Will people even care? Did I quality check it well enough? etc, etc.

The reality is that you can never add enough features to satisfy every user, so you add just what the user needs to start out and nothing more. People are smarter than you give them credit for and if you think you do a good job of explaining your site, they'll probably figure it out. Some people will care, others won't - just try to focus on finding the ones that will and forget about the rest. And you check it the best you can before launching, knowing full well that you can never simulate every scenario and that unanticipated problems will always arise.

I'm going to take a 15 min break and then get started on making our first dollar on the price guide. Some day when I don't have so much at stake with every new venture, I'm going to miss this exciting/anxious/nervous/exhilarating feeling I've got right now.