Having a love-hate product

For some products and services it's easy to know exactly what you're going to get when you buy and there usually aren't a ton of surprises. Software and web applications don't fall into that category, so most intelligent businesses have trial versions and/or free trial periods so people can evaluate the real thing before buying. SportsLizard's Price Guide is no different - people like what they see when they watch the video on the homepage and read the sales copy, but they'll never know for sure until they try it out.

In our first month and a half I've done the best I could to "fool proof" the site by adding additional literature, tutorials, and features that make it hard to screw up. It's my opinion that anyone that spends a few seconds on the site and has an IQ over 20 can figure it out and see the value it provides. And most have - the feedback from the collecting community has been overwhelmingly positive, even more so than I initially thought it could be. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, not everyone feels that way.

Some people (many of them young kids), sign up, skip over the tutorials, try one price search that usually includes a bunch of misspellings or other blatant inaccuracies (you can't even Google something properly if you don't know the basics of querying/searching). Not only do many of them never come back, many of them find the need to tell me that "I shouldn't have the audacity to charge for such a product" or that "it's the worst tool they've ever used." At the same time, I've got the "wow, this is amazing" and "you're filling a huge need in the hobby" emails coming through. So what should I do?

Absolutely nothing. Read the negative comments, send them an "I'm sorry you didn't like the price guide" email, then delete the bad boys. It's true that for the 5,000+ subscribers we have that I'm getting more negative emails than I'd like, but I also know that we're meeting a need for a lot of collectors and that I'd be stupid to change. The majority of happy customers will never contact me, but when I couple the positive feedback from the hard-core collectors with the premium subscribers who have now been paying for over a month, I know we're on the right track. Sometimes it's real important to act on customer complaints. Other times you risk alienating the customers you really want by making adjustments for the ones you don't.

This definitely isn't unique to software or to the web - when I was an engineer we had one very unique product that solicited more hate mail than any in the history of the company. That same product also was a huge seller and had a more loyal fan base than any previous product in our history. From my brief experience, it seems like the more "out there" your product or application is from the norm (and lets face it, getting people to jump from a magazine to our price guide is pretty different), the more push back you'll get from some and the harder it'll be to hold ground and let the product do what it's supposed to do.

I contrast this with Detailed Image - our largest site - they get barely any complaints because there is no guesswork. They are an e-commerce site, and as long as people can place an order and receive it when they should, we never hear a complaint. If you go from one type of business to another, you have to realize the potential for varying reactions from your customer base or you'll go crazy trying to figure out what you did wrong. When in reality you're really doing something completely right. It's a different mindset, but it's necessary if you push the boundaries even a little.

On a side note - I haven't taken a vacation (that I can think of) since going to Orlando with my family in January 2005. Starting tomorrow I'll be camping up in beautiful Old Forge, NY for 3 days. It's only a 2.5 hour drive, but being up in the Adirondacks feels like you're in a different world. No cell phone, no laptop, no work - just my buddies and I with about 60 beers, some burgers, and a camp fire. Exactly what the doctor ordered :)

How to Reach ANYONE

Quick - what's the one thing that every person does? Regardless of age, gender, race, fame, wealth, or just about any other quantitative measurement you can come up with we all Google ourselves (and if by some off chance you don't Google yourself, I guarantee that your friends and family have Googled your ass). Personally, I Google myself about once a month, usually to check if this blog has surpassed the weirdo who owns Adam-McFarland.com (still not yet unfortunately).

So how do you reach that VC/Angel/Competitor/Celebrity that you've been emailing and mailing constantly to no avail? Buy an AdWords ad for their name. Believe it or not, hardly anyone has thought of this technique so you can buy an ad for nearly anyone for next to nothing. Seriously - even Bill Gates only has a few ads show up. You could bid the minimum and still end up on the first page (and those ads are horrible and generic so a personalized well written ad would definitely stand out).

As cool as this idea is, I can't completely take credit for it. Mark Cuban mentioned it last year on Blog Maverick and called it "the best sales idea I have seen in a long time". Ever since I read that I've been keeping it in my back pocket until I had a use for it, and now that time has come.

With our Price Guide having exceeded expectations in the first 40 or so days, I'm starting to look to ideas to take it to the next level. We've worked out the kinks (as with any new app there were a ton) and added a few minor but necessary features, and now I'm ready to let the whole world know about it. That includes the big boys in our industry - maybe they'll want to acquire us, maybe they'll want to partner with us, or maybe they'll just make note of what we're doing - either way I want them to know we exist.

Unfortunately, the sports card and collectible industry is very old school and many of the large companies in the industry would have a hard time seeing the value in what we offer. The same old school companies are also ridiculously hard to reach. So I gave up on them, and instead decided to target two very progressive companies in a very non-progressive industry - McFarlane Toys and NAXCOM. I'll spare the details, but let's just say that each has the type of track record that impresses me and makes me want to develop a long term relationship with them.

So a few hours ago I purchased AdWords ads for Todd McFarlane and Eric Beckerman (the founders of each company) and directed the ad to the Price Guide home page with a "special" message for them. Here's a shot of the ad for Todd McFarlane:

...and the special page he'll see when he lands on the Price Guide home page...

I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

You can compete with anyone

Really. I'm not lying. Regardless of the industry you are in, I bet you can find a way to compete with whomever you want. On SportsLizard, I recently wrote an article entitled Proof That You Can Impact and Industry where I showed how one article about the problems with autograph authentication now ranks in the top 5 when someone searches for "autograph authentication". Large authentication companies like PSA would KILL to have that article removed from the results because of the negative publicity it gives them.

And that's just one example. I'm competing with established price guides like Beckett and Tuff Stuff with SportsLizard's Price Guide. Psst - here's a secret: I spent $0 developing it. The only expenses thus far have been for our massively successful PPC campaign. Yes, I am a pretty good programmer. And yes, I leveraged the existing SL user base and strong domain to maximize impact. But to be honest, in the life of SL (2004-2007) I know I've spent less than $20k. And that includes every programming book I've ever read, every marketing dollar ever spent, and every other business expense....including three computers.

But Adam, don't big companies with tons of resources do it differently? Not really. It's like it's some big secret - they develop in the same programming languages and struggle to get pages indexed in Google just like you and I do.

Take this example: Guy Kawasaki's new site Truemors. When I first read about it on his blog, I assumed it was a site that he developed in concurrence with his venture capital company and figured he had a ten person staff and $10 million in venture capital. And then a few weeks later the truth came out in his post By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09.

Guy shows us dollar-for-dollar how he built Truemors. If you take a look at the $12k he spent, most YE's could cut that down to a few thousand dollars if they could program themselves and didn't spend $5k on legal fees (we spent about $1,500 on legal fees incorporating Pure Adapt, and Pure Adapt involved merging several established businesses together...you should never have to spend more than $500-$750 in legal fees in my opinion starting a business). In looking at the site, I know I could program it in a week or two, and I only consider myself an average/above average programmer. If you aren't a programmer and don't have the desire to learn, then either pay someone in cash or stock (hint: college programmers love to work for stock).

The other golden nugget in this post: no business plan and 7.5 weeks of development. He launched a new business after 7.5 weeks. There's really no need to spend more than a month or two developing your site. If you do, you either suck at programming or you're adding to much unnecessary crap to your site. Read a (free) copy of Getting Real by 37 Signals if you need to know how to rapidly deploy an app. The faster you get it out, the faster you get real feedback and make real money...it's as simple as that. Again, for reference, I developed our entire Price Guide in about 5 weeks...and if I hadn't been stressed out and losing sleep from my chronic back pain, it would have been 3 weeks.

I suppose the lesson is this grasshopper: don't let people tell you that you can't compete, and don't let people tell you that it takes years of planning to start a business.

I'm Already Retired

I just finished reading The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. The book was thought provoking on many levels, and to a large extent I WISH I had a chance to read this thing 3 years ago when I started my entrepreneurial journey. Much of what the book outlined about "leaving the 9-5" I'd already figured out the hard way, and any aspiring entrepreneur should snatch this book up immediately. And while the book has helped me improve my productivity, it's also helped me realize something more important: I'm already retired.

One of the main premises of the book is that the idea of retirement is bogus. Ferriss outsources all of his day-to-day operations, and spends several months at a time in "mini-retirements". He never plans on fully "retiring", but continuing to spread these 1-2 month retirements throughout his lifetime. One of the main problems is that you condition yourself for years and years to work every waking second, that waiting until you're 60 to begin relaxing is often confusing and depressing - best pump that relaxation and happiness into your lives when you're young so that you can truly enjoy life in it's entirety.

Which got me to thinking - what would I do if I was retired (maybe a similar but better question - what would I do if I had all the money in the world)? And at that moment I realized that I already do much of what I would do if I were retired. My largest hobbies have been integrated into my daily life and I've found a way to make sports and technology profitable for me. How freaking sweet is that?

Unlike most people, I'm not the type of guy who wants to do a ton of traveling, and I'm not the type of guy who enjoys chilling on the beach for a week or buying really nice things for myself. If I became a millionaire tomorrow, I'd still spend my time trying to change the sports collectibles industry. And it's not because I'm so entrenched in what I do that I can't break the cycle, it's because it's one of the handful of things in life that brings me true joy. The other things (friends, family, reading, video games, sports, etc) I already get my fill of...I don't feel like I'm lacking in those areas so it'd be hard for me to want to allocate more time there.

Figuring this out brought me incredible peace. I honestly don't feel like I've worked a day since I left my job in January of 2006. That might be hard for some to wrap their hands around - especially for people who have conceded themselves to 40 hours of misery for 40 years so that they can then begin living their life. I'm not saying that the lifestyle I live is for everyone, but I just wish that more people would consider it an option.

ClickTale Review - cool, but not a necessity

Last month I touted ClickTale as "the coolest new piece of web software", so I was thrilled when SportsLizard was accepted into their BETA testing program last week. For those who haven't heard of ClickTale, it essentially records visitors to your site so you can go back and watch recordings of exactly what they typed, where they clicked, and how long they were there.

With the BETA testing program I got a sneak peek at how ClickTale plans to monetize this software. Right now, the BETA plan is free but only provides 40 recordings/day. Paid plans will be tiered based upon number of recordings, history storage (how long your recordings are available to watch), number of domains you can look at, and the ability to record login pages.

That last one was the one that really got me - I wanted to watch users interact with the price guide, but since it's behind a log-in I was only able to watch up to the point where they logged in. But I digress - installation was a breeze (copy and paste a few lines of code) and I couldn't wait to watch my first recording.

The next day I logged in and had a few recordings to watch. I clicked the play button not really knowing what to expect - it's not every day that you get to sit over the shoulder of your visitors to see how they interact. I THINK I know what they do, but I'm not sure.

However, once I got over the weirdness of watching someone else's mouse and keystrokes, I realized something: I already knew exactly what they were going to do. Why? Because I have set up extensive analytics that tell me far more about use behavior than watching a few people tool around on the site. And that's what I really think about ClickTale - it's pretty cool to watch people on your site, but far more information can be gathered by studying click through rates, entry and exit pages, goal conversion rates, and time spent on the site - all of that and then some can be had for free with the new Google Analytics.

ClickTale does sum all of the information up for you in a heatmap (below), but again - anyone with half a brain can tell where people are looking and clicking if they study their analytics correctly. So while interesting, ClickTale just doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Would I install it and use it for free? Of course. Would I pay $20/$50/$100 a month for it? No way, not with Analytics being free. Sorry guys.

Here's the ONLY scenario that I would pay for it: if I were BETA testing a new site/feature and wanted to watch how people reacted to it, particularly if the quantity of people testing is so small that I could 1) watch every recording in a reasonable amount of time, and 2) it was the kind of site that Analytics couldn't tell the whole story (although off hand I can't think of a site that fits that mold).

I guess I'm just not sure who ClickTale's target market is. The "typical" site owner isn't going to get enough out of this, so the only people I think might pay for it would be consumer/market research firms so that they have one more weapon in their evaluation arsenal - it's kind of like a one of those two-sided mirrors where you can watch kids play with your toy...except you're watching people play with your site.

My tale of 3 customer service experiences

This week I've had three customer service experiences that have pretty much epitomized how a company can change your perception of them. For most companies, their customer service department is an after thought. Yet for most consumers, the customer service department is the only contact they'll ever have. One rude sales rep can change your perception of company forever.

Here are my 3 customer service type issues this week and how they were handled:

1. My external hard drive fried during a 30-second power outage (even while plugged into a surge protector). The 1 year warranty was up, but I decided to contact AcomData anyway to see what my options were. They had a lengthy sign-up process (10 minutes at least) to allow me to submit a question, at which point I was told I'd hear back within 3 business days. I didn't, and after a day I purchased a (far superior) Seagate 250 GB external drive at CompUSA for $70 to handle my backups.
2. We're interested in integrating all of eBay's historical data into the SportsLizard Price Guide to give us "the ultimate data source" (in my mind at least). For API access to their historical marketplace data, you have to request a quote. I did a few days ago and still haven't heard back. It's not the type of thing I NEED a reply right away for, but it's also not the type of thing that should take them more than 15 minutes to quote out, so I'm disappointed and left wondering "did anyone actually get my email?" as I think many people do.
3. The worst situation of all: IE7 decides that the price guide results page is a "suspicious website" and everyone who does a search gets blasted with a huge pop-up saying that the price guide is phishing for information. Not good at all. I contacted Microsoft and within AN HOUR they had removed the price guide from their phishing filter and apologized. WOW.

Three companies, three different results. AcomData - you suck. eBay - I'm disappointed. Microsoft - you completely rock.

Does your biz time = $?

We had a YTD (year to date) meeting a few weeks ago among the Pure Adapt brain trust. The middle of May is no special time, but it just felt like a great time to step back and take a look at how our first year as a corporation is going. George ran us a monster report, and the numbers were quite surprising. Revenue across the board was higher than expected, and we're much more profitable at this point in time than I thought...which is great.

I went back yesterday and looked at the report again and something disturbing stood out to me: about 75% of our revenue is coming from about 30% of our work (the good 'ole Pareto Principle). Which got me to thinking - wtf are we doing with the other 70% of our time?

I decided to go through and re-evaluate all four of our jobs (including my own) and realized that for every project (not just the company as a whole) we do a lot of crap that doesn't drive revenue in any way shape or form. Now, we've got projects like the SL price guide that we're invested in long term and no one expects to be pulling in what Detailed Image does, but it still didn't all add up to me.

So today I met with my partners and pitched them a plan to cut everything out of our business that isn't generating revenue. The things we think *could* bring revenue in the future will be limited to 1-2 hours/day so that everyone is spending the vast majority of their time on the things we KNOW are bringing revenue already (DI, some client work, and SL).

We all love being entrepreneurs, but sometimes we forget that the point of running a business is to turn a profit (I'm not downplaying the importance of doing it the right way and treating people with respect, but if that's all you're doing than you should be a non-profit). Particularly when you're a company like us that owns a handful of sites and also does work for clients, it's hard to figure out what the right balance both short term and long term is. We've done a pretty good job of identifying those things the past few months, and once I saw that report it was crystal clear that our resources could be distributed differently.

My partners all agreed and we're on a better path today than we were yesterday. I wonder how many other businesses suffer from the same problem? I'd venture a guess that it's most of them...I know at least most of the companies I've worked with have been that way.

The company I was an engineer with (large consumer goods company) generated almost all revenue and profit from two "classic" product lines, but spent most of their time and money in fruitless R&D. Yea some of that's important, but not to the extent where you're eating your profit. They would be a FAR better company if they cut 90% of marketing and new product development and focused on their core line...and then spent the remaining 10% of R&D that's left on future products. Instead they ignore their cash cow and keep throwing the kitchen sink at failing new products (I'm sure they'd disagree if they read this...but I know I'm not the only one who worked there that thinks this).

Common problem. Simple solution. So why don't more companies notice it?

The Lizard is back in focus

I haven't posted much in the last few weeks because I've been finishing up a monster SEO project. I have this problem where I agree to due dates that seem impossible to me - in this case the date was tomorrow (June 8th). It's like I need an extra push by "forcing" myself to finish in an absurdly fast time. Funny thing is, it worked: I emailed off a copy of the report to the client and the nice shiny copy from Kinko's should be on their desk first thing in the morning.

We've begun being really picky about the clients we take on. We can survive solely on revenue from the sites we own, so we don't NEED any client. I enjoy taking on new and exciting clients that will help me learn things I can bring back to Pure Adapt. This particular client is one of the larger ones I've ever dealt with, and certainly the most successful tech company.

Of course, since we're taking on bigger clients we have begun to charge higher prices (I'm charging about triple what I was a year ago to give you an idea) and then we can offer nice little perks like a high-quality bound copy of the report shipped overnight. A 50 page report cost about $100 to print in full color on nice paper, have it bound, and shipped overnight...something I couldn't provide last year but really adds value to the whole experience.

But so far this whole post has been a total digression. I can now get off this hiatus and get back on SportsLizard - particularly the price guide. Today was pretty monumental - it passed the 3,000 user mark (in about a month's time) and passed the number of users iPrioritize has. iPrioritize will probably never be the business I wanted it to be, but it has a fiercely loyal following with the people that use it daily and the price guide never would have had a chance if I didn't learn everything I did with iP. I've been a bit mum on iPrioritize lately because we actually had a Japanese company interested in purchasing the mobile portion, but that fell through a few weeks ago. We've decided to hold it for now - I've got some things I'd like to do with the platform in the future, and I've also got a spin-off idea using the i-Guy logo for a non-profit using the domain iGiveMyBiz (which I own).

The craziest thing about SportsLizard's price guide is that I haven't even started marketing the damn thing! I have done ZERO PR within the collecting community and the sports community in general. It's all been word-of-mouth combined with the worlds best PPC campaign. The PPC campaign is flawed a bit because it only attracts card collectors, and I personally think the price guide works much better for autograph and figurines...markets we haven't even tapped yet. On top of that, I have yet to officially announce the SportsLizard YouTube channel, and I've been severely slacking on writing the newsletter.

The thing that really floors me is the potential for 30k users in a year. That's a pretty massive amount of people. I'm sure that will entail some technical problems, but it will also entail plenty of money so I'm sure we'll be happy to deal with those problems :)

Automating Pure Adapt

Can a business really be automated? To what extent? From what I've seen, that depends on the foresight of the owners. There are founders of companies who work 70 hours/week and every second is vital to the success of his/her biz. There are also founders who can work whatever number of hours they want and the biz won't suffer either way.

Everything I built on SportsLizard was designed with automation in mind - some functions were automated from the get-go, and others have the potential to be. Now that things are going well and we've got a solid long-term plan in place, I'm going to begin working to automate the crap out of the site. Then I'm going to start automating everything else in our company. Sound crazy - I don't think so. I know it's possible and I think I can make it happen in the next few years.

One eventual goal of every entrepreneur should be to remove yourself from the business so that it can run without you. This frees you up to focus on the high level decision making, and also frees you up to take a vacation without seeing your company collapse. Our first (and easiest step) will be SportsLizard. With another week of programming I can get the day-to-day stuff can be 99% automated (there will always be a few legit customer inquiries) and I can spend my SL time writing interesting articles and marketing the price guide.

From there we'll have an interesting task of automating the monster that is Detailed Image - a much more traditional retail business. It will take 2-3 months to build a new site that automates credit card processing, inventory, and accounting - things that right now take a few hours a day. Next up will be hiring a $10/hr level employee to handle packing and shipping. I envision us hiring a full-time programmer by 2009 so that all four owners can be "removed" from the day-to-day operations.

Some companies never get where I want to take us. We all have this end goal in mind, but I'm really taking the lead here and trying to initiate the change and make sure my partners put a high priority on this as well (so far they agree 100%, and why wouldn't they?). We already see SportsLizard starting to run like a well-oiled money-making machine, and to be quite honest it's getting addicting. A well built system with intelligent processes requires very little maintenance.

It will be the greatest feeling in the world when I finally am able to say that my business doesn't need me to be successful.