The 4-Hour Workweek (23 page)

E-mail Sign-up Tracking and Scheduled Autoresponders

Both of these programs can be used to embed e-mail address sign-up forms on your site.

AWeber (www.aweber.com)

MailChimp (www.mailchimp.com)

End-to-End Site Solutions with Payment Processing

Shopify (www.shopify.com)

This is a reader favorite that, in addition to beautiful design, offers full SEO (search-engine optimization), drag-and-drop use, statistics, and product fulfillment through one of their certified partners such as Fulfillment by Amazon.com. Clients range from small-business owners to Tesla Motors. Unlike with Yahoo and eBay, however, you will need to set up a payment-processing service to accept payments from customers. (See below—PayPal is the easiest to integrate.)

Yahoo! Store (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce) (866–781–9246)

This is what Doug of Pro Sound Effects used. As little as $40 a month with 1.5% per transaction.

eBay Store (http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/start.html)

From $15–500 per month, plus eBay fees.

Simple Payment Processing for Testing Pages, from Least to Most Involved

PayPal Cart (www.paypal.com; see “merchant”)

Accept credit card payments in minutes. No monthly fees, 1.9–2.9% of each transaction (called “discount rate”) and $0.30 per transaction.

Google Checkout (http://checkout.google.com/sell)

Get $10 in free processing for each $1 spent on AdWords; 2% and $0.20 per transaction thereafter. Requires that customers have a Google ID, and is thus most useful as a supplement to one of the aforementioned payment solutions. Be sure to link your Checkout account to your AdWords account to receive credit. Important note: free transaction processing for nonprofits.

Authorize.net (www.authorize.net)

The Authorize.Net Payment Gateway can help you accept credit card and electronic check payments quickly and affordably. More than 230,000 merchants trust Authorize.net to manage their transactions, help prevent fraud, and grow their business. The fees per transaction are lower than PayPal or Google Checkout, but setup will require a merchant account, covered in the next chapter, and other time-consuming applications. I suggest setting up Authorize.net only after a product has tested successfully through one of the other two options above.

Software for Understanding Web Traffic (Web Analytics)

How are people finding, browsing, and leaving your site? How many prospective customers are being delivered by each PPC ad, and which pages are most popular? These programs tell you all this and more. Google is free for most low-volume sites—and better than a lot of paid software-and the others cost $30 and upward per month.

Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics)

CrazyEgg (www.crazyegg.com)

I use CrazyEgg to see exactly where people are clicking most and least on homepages and landing pages. It is particularly helpful for repositioning the most important links or buttons to help prompt visitors to take specific next actions. Don’t guess what’s working or not—measure it.

Clicktracks (www.clicktracks.com)

WebTrends (www.webtrends.com)

A/B Testing Software

Testing is, as you know, the name of the game, but testing all the variables can be confusing. How do you know which combination of headlines, text, and images on your homepage results in the most sales? Instead of using one version for a bit, then alternating, which is time-consuming, use software that serves up different versions to prospects at random, then does the math for you.

Google Website Optimizer (WO) (http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer)

This is a free tool that, like Google Analytics, is better than most paid services. I used Google WO to test three potential homepages for www.dailyburn.com and increased sign-ups 19%, then again by more than 16%.

Offermatica (www.offermatica.com)

Vertster.com (www.vertster.com)

Optimost (www.optimost.com)

Low-Cost Toll-free Numbers

TollFreeMAX (www.tollfreemax.com) (877–888–8MAX) and Kall8 (www.kall8.com)

TollFreeMAX and Kall8 both allow you to set up toll-free numbers in 2–5 minutes. Calls can then be forwarded to any other numbers, and voicemail and statistics can be managed online or via e-mail.

Checking Competitive Site Traffic

Want to see how much traffic your competition is getting and who is linking to them?

Compete (www.compete.com)

Quantcast (www.quantcast.com)

Alexa (www.alexa.com)

Freelance Designers and Programmers

99Designs (www.99designs.com) and Crowdspring (www.crowdspring.com)

I used 99Designs to get an excellent logo for www.litliberation.org in 24 hours for less than $150. I submitted the concept, more than 50 designers worldwide uploaded their best attempts, which I could browse, and I chose the best after suggesting a few improvements. From Crowdspring’s site: “Name your price, name your deadline, see entries within hours and be done in just days. The average project gets a whopping 68 entries. 25 entries or your money back.”

eLance (www.elance.com) (877–435–2623)

Craigslist (www.craigslist.org)

LIFESTYLE DESIGN IN ACTION

I’m a U.S. citizen and it was impossible for my friends and relatives to track me down by phone. Enter Skype In. It’s not new but allows you to lease a fixed U.S. (or other country) phone number which then forwards to your Skype account. About $60/year. Within Skype you can then set up call forwarding to ring you at your local number. You pay the rate as if you were calling from the United States to wherever you are. I’ve used this in about 40 countries and it works like a treat. The call quality is usually great and the convenience is amazing. http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/onlinenumber/. A caveat is to always, ALWAYS get a local SIM card for your unlocked GSM phone. Roaming is for amateurs. A local SIM also gets you GPRS, Edge, or 3G. Sometimes even free Wifi. Cheers,    —TY KROLL

Basically I try to keep all of my tools online so that if my laptop gets stolen, I can buy a new one and have everything up and running within 24 hours. Here are a few of the tools I use on a regular basis:

RememberTheMilk.com has been really crucial to me keeping on top of my daily tasks.

Freshbooks.com for online invoicing

Highrise (http://www.highrisehq.com/) for online CRM

Dropbox (getdropbox.com) for easy file sharing/automatic backup of critical files while on the road

TrueCrypt (truecrypt.org) for keeping your laptop data secure while on the road. [Tim comment: This can also be used with a USB flash drive, and another cool feature—it provides two levels of “plausible deniability” (hidden volumes, etc.) if someone forces you to reveal the password.]

PBwiki.com-Wiki site that helps me keep on top of the notes and ideas that I collect as I go through life.

FogBugz on Demand: http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/IntrotoOnDemand.html. It’s a “bug tracker” aimed at software development companies, but I use it every day for both personal and business tasks. It’s almost like a VA, as you can route your mail through it and it will help you sort it and keep track of it. It has great features to track e-mails, and there’s a free version for two users (me + VA!).    —RB CARTER

A really useful service is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. With a small investment in time or money, a business that requires hundreds of people doing small bits of defined work becomes possible for extraordinarily low work-per-unit costs. Examples include the search for Steve Fosset (literally thousands of people looked at satellite photos that would have overwhelmed SAR agencies) and a trouble-ticket business that utilizes qualified labor all over the world (see Amazon.com/webservices). I am not an owner nor do I have any stake in Amazon—but I have used their services and some are trans forming when it comes to muse creation. Cheers,    —J MARYMEE

FAST TO MARKET

The fastest way to market with a product idea is: Registera.com. Get hosting from dathorn.com [a cheap reseller account, like www.domainsinseconds.com]. With two clicks set up a wordpress blog. Apply a theme to it. Add your content and a buy now button. The buy now button links to an enter e-mail address, phone number, etc., page. The user then clicks a continue to PayPal button. This automatically e-mails me their details, but then shows the user a message stating that the link to PayPal is currently not working. I use this to determine how many sales I would have achieved. I use Google ads to drive traffic … I calculate theoretical ROI (ideally using Google analytics). If after a week or two I can see a positive ROI that’s worth my effort I create or outsource the creation of the product (emag, PDF, whatever). I set it all up with a working link to PayPal, and then retrospectively send a message to the users who already tried to buy. Normally within hours I’ve got all my money back, and the cash starts to roll. An example is the DIY public relations pack at www.mybusinesspr.com.au. Great work of the 4HWW … looking forward to the next edition.    Regards, MATT SCHMIDT

39. http://news.com.com/2100–1017–269594.html?legacy=cnet.

40. It can be illegal to charge customers prior to shipment—so we will not charge customers—but it is still common practice. Why do so many commercials state “allow three to four weeks for delivery” if it only takes three to five days for a shipment to get from New York to California? It gives the companies time to manufacture product and use customers’ credit card payments to finance it. Clever but often against the law.

41. This applies to Sherwood and not Johanna.

42. How did I come up with the most successful BodyQUICK headline (“The Fastest Way to Increase Power and Speed Guaranteed”)? I borrowed it from the longest-running, and thus most profitable, Rosetta Stone headline: “The Fastest Way to Learn a Language Guaranteed.(tm)” Reinventing the wheel is expensive—become an astute observer of what is already working and adapt it. I keep a folder of all print and direct mail advertising that compels me to call a number or visit a website, and I use www.delicious.com to bookmark websites that convince me to provide my e-mail address or make a purchase.

43. Sherwood includes shipping and handling prior to the final order page so that people don’t finalize the order just to confirm total pricing. He wants his “orders” to reflect real orders and not price checkers.

44. If you are rolling out after a successful test or building a large e-mail database, tools like www.aweber.com in the resources are better at scaling.

45. Keeping in mind that 100 specific terms at $0.10 per click will perform better than 10 broad terms at $1.00 per click, the more you spend, and thus the more traffic you drive, the more statistically valid the results will be. If budget permits, increase the number of related terms and daily expenditure so that the entire PPC test costs $500–1,000.

46. This is a checking account for receiving credit card payments.

47. Set this up using services detailed at the end of this chapter and the next.

48. See the online bonus chapter on www.fourhourblog.com to understand all of these terms in context. Search “Jedi Mind Tricks.”

49. “Paper trading” refers to setting an imaginary budget, “purchasing” stocks (writing their current values on a piece of paper), and then tracking their performance over time to see how your investment would have done had it been for real. It is a no-risk method for honing investment skills before putting skin in the game.

MBA—MANAGEMENT BY ABSENCE

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

—WARREN G. BENNIS, University of Southern California Professor of Business Administration; adviser to Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy

Most entrepreneurs don’t start out with automation as a goal. This leaves them open to mass confusion in a world where each business guru contradicts the next. Consider the following:

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear…. If the employees come first, then they’re happy.

—HERB KELLEHER, cofounder of Southwest Airlines

Look, kiddie. I built this business by being a bastard. I run it by being a bastard. I’ll always be a bastard, and don’t you ever try to change me.50

—CHARLES REVSON, founder of Revlon, to a senior executive within his company

Hmm … Whom to follow? If you are fast on your feet, you’ll notice that I just offered you an either-or option. The good news is that, as usual, there is a third option.

The contradictory advice you find in business books and elsewhere usually relates to managing employees—how to handle the human element. Herb tells you to give them a hug, Revson tells you to kick them in the balls, and I tell you to solve the problem by eliminating it altogether: Remove the human element.

Once you have a product that sells, it’s time to design a self-correcting business architecture that runs itself.

The Remote-Control CEO

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

—HENRY WARD BEECHER, U.S. abolitionist and clergyman, “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

RURAL PENNSYLVANIA

In a 200-year-old stone farmhouse, a quiet “experiment in 21st-century leadership” is proceeding exactly as planned.51Stephen McDonnell is upstairs in his flip-flops looking at a spreadsheet on his computer. His company has increased its annual revenue 30% per year since it all began, and he is able to spend more time with his three daughters than he ever thought possible.

The experiment? As CEO of Applegate Farms, he insists on spending just one day per week at the company headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey. He’s not the only CEO who spends time at home, of course—there are hundreds who have heart attacks or nervous breakdowns and need time to recover—but there is a huge difference. McDonnell has been doing it for more than 17 years. Rarer still, he started doing it just six months after founding the company.