Okay.  It’s no secret that I’ve long decried the quality of tools available to the P/C programmer.

But after this last bit of nonsense I’m not sure who is to blame. The tool manufacturers, the people who work for them or their customers!

Now I’m not the world’s best art director.  My wife, the artist, would probably argue that I can’t match socks let alone colour schemes. Successfully I might add. I’ve been married for 18 years — she always wins arguments like that

But what I am is reasonably capable as a web developer (aka programmer).

So when we converted to WordPress I made the (wise ????) decision that I wasn’t going to design my own theme. I would go looking for a theme that looked good and then tweak it to have the sidebars & widgets that I needed & wanted. Should only take an hour or so right? WRONG!

What I found when I went looking is that there are a lot of really skilled web designers out there.  Some real artists.

And not a blasted one of them can program!

Virtually every theme I liked had at least one major flaw. I can’t tell you how many theme’s I checked where the menu didn’t work. And that’s not counting the number where they didn’t even try to get it to work! (Yo … Note to artists … the reason WordPress allows a structure with pages is that multiple levels are a pretty common technique for organizing what you’re doing).

Of course, every once in a while I ran into a theme that worked well. It was obvious that another developer had put it together.  Very obvious. But it was well structured. The only problem is that spending three days trying to understand “pea, pea, where’s the pea?” style coding just doesn’t turn me on anymore. Some day I”ll figure out how to change the framework to display the way I want … but don’t hold your breath.

I could go on with other examples but I won’t.

So what does all this come down to?

Lesson Learned #1:

Find a theme you like and then just live within it’s limitations.

At least initially.  Just get the site up with the basic theme as given.  Trying to tweak a theme is a study in frustration. Don’t worry about being unique. Don’t worry about it having all the elements you need. Just get it up as written.  Do the best you can. Then AFTER you’ve got it up, if you’ve got the time. You can always try to improve/tweak/fix it later.

Tags: artist, bit, book, Building an eBiz, Building an eBiz, Change, course, designer, developer, heck, how to, IM, Learned, Lessons, lot, nonsense, programmer, Quality, reason, secret, site, technique, theme, Themes, time, tool, tweak, web, word, WordPress, work, Write a "how to" book

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Well, that was fun NOT!

So here’s what happened. We originally set up one site — TrainingNOW.ca. It was meant to be a simple brochure type site advertising our company, its services and our courses.

Unfortunately, things change … (bad word, bad, bad, word) … and we realized that a) we needed to sell our training over the web rather than live b) that we needed to sell other products and c) we were trying to sell too much through TrainingNOW.ca.

Cool. No big deal. Sometimes it takes a bit of convincing.  A little learning. We’re not all born marketers, after all. ;>

So we set up a couple of new sites (learningcreators.ca, contentcreators.ca) to promote the extra services beyond the actual courses. No big right? Basic brochure sites. (Okay, so we started to …. it’s a work in progress. Work with me here).

Then we realized that LearningCreators should be doing more than just creating learning content or info products for other people. Better to teach people to fish than to do the fishing ourselves! So we set up LearningCreators.com.

That’s where the first of the problems came in. You see we started out by testing the waters using MyBestCopy.com.  When it looked like the market was viable, we created the LearningCreators.com site. Including the blog.

The problem was that we went with the basic Doteasy package. Great package. Great price. No complaints at all.  (In fact, if you are looking for a webhost go here . You won’t be disappointed).

But one of the things we learned was … in order to improve your SEO ratings you really, really need a blog.

No biggee.  We created a blog on MyBestCopy.com. It worked. It drew viewers. Just copy it over and we’re set. Right! Nope.

Try as I might, I couldn’t convince any of the sites that www.LearningCreators.com and apps.LearningCreators.com were the same site (domain). So nothing I did on the blog helped the main opt-in & sales pages.

Meanwhile, we’ve been approached to host the training courses of another company. Great. That’s what TrainingNOW.ca is all about. Publishing training and training materials (e.g. books, DVDs etc.).  But that meant we needed to upgrade from the basic Doteasy package to the fancy, dancy, super-special Unlimited plan.

Fine. Couple of headaches but no big woop! Cool so far….

But if we did that then there was no need to use the somewhat limited blog facilities provided by Doteasy for their basic customers. We’d be better off switching to WordPress like everyone told us to.

Silly sods … we believed them!

Sit back, grab a coffee. There’s enough material here to keep this blog alive for a week!

Tags: bit, blog, book, brochure, Building an eBiz, Change, company, course, Doteasy, IM, Learned, LearningCreators, MyBestCopy, package, point, Publishing, site, time, training, TrainingNOW, web, word, WordPress, work

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For those of you who were hoping I’d start keeping this blasted blog up to date …. sorry.

So what’s happenin’ now?

We’re changing again. We’ve updated the TrainingNOW site to better capabilities and are now going to host LearningCreators.com on it.

Why? Mostly because the site we have now is a proprietary blog tool (DOTEASY provides it) and is actually located in a different location. So Google et al. thinks this is a seperate site.

We, on the other hand, think it should be part of the main LearningCreators.com site.

By moving this site over to the upgraded TrainingNOW site, we get to use Wordpress (much more powerful) and also to include it inside the LearningCreators.com site.

But of course, there’s a heck of a lot of work involved. So that’s my focus over the next week. New blog entries need to wait until I can move the site over.

But I will be back …. probably with some comments on spending money.

Keep Learning & Get Earning

Glen Ford & The LearningCreators team.

Tags: blog, Building an eBiz, Change, course, Creating Information Products, Doteasy, Glen Ford, heck, LearningCreators, location, lot, Part, site, tool, training, TrainingNOW, word, WordPress, work, Write a "how to" book

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The second major reason to write how to books is because you want to sell them. There’s two major ways you can sell how to books.

The first is the traditional method. You can sell your book to a traditional publishing house (Random, McGraw Hill etc). I don’t have the space in a blog to discuss that technique in depth. However, the basic process is to:

1. Build a list of agents who are currently looking for authors
2. Create a package (letter, outline & 2 chapters) to sell the agent
3. Mail out the package to the agents
4. Follow up as appropriate
5. Repeat 1-4 until successful (or you get feedback saying you’re wasting your time)
6. Create a detailed package to sell the publisher
7. Send the package to the agent
8. Let the agent do their job

Once the agent is successful, then you need to think about promoting your book.

The second way to sell is to self-publish. Now there are several ways to do this (including imitating traditional publishing) but the best method is as part of a information products business. Effectively, your book becomes one in a set of products which teach the customer or client a particular skill.

You’ll find as you try this that a real book is a big credibility boost. Yeah, sure you can get little PLR eBooks for $7. But a real book (100-200 pages) or ebook (60 pages) will get you both recognition and a good return. The problem, of course, is that video is both easier and more effective. However, it doesn’t carry the same cache. So when you design your product funnel you’ll want to fit a book in there somewhere if only to boost your credibility.

Now here’s the good news. All that work you put into learning our system is transferable. It works for any media you choose to put your course into. Of course, there are differences — which is why we recommend starting with a new content map for every media.  It’s also why we teach the whole system in media based chunks. But the basic technique and process is the same no matter the media.

So get out there … get learning and get earning!

Glen Ford

Tags: agent, blog, book, Building an eBiz, business, course, Creating Information Products, credibility, depth, Glen Ford, Hill, house, how to, IM, McGraw, method, package, Part, process, Publishing, Random, reason, space, system, technique, time, work, Write, Write a "how to" book

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A little while back I posted a blog entry with a link to a free webinar on Expert Marketing. But I never really explained why it was important.

There are many reasons you might want to write how to books. But from a business viewpoint there are two key ones:

• Making money by selling the book
• Making money by giving away the book

We’ll deal with the first tomorrow. Today I want to talk about giving the book away.

One of the concepts that bricks and mortar businesses find hard to understand with internet business is the concept of freemiums.

There are three things that you can sell with any business. You can sell the product or service, you can sell your relationship with the customer or you can sell your expertise. (If you want more information check out this free webinar on Expert Marketing – not even an opt-in).
I’m not going to get into it but while the first two are possible on the internet only selling expertise really fits the media. After all people can’t see or touch the product over the internet. As for relationship — it’s hard to convince someone that you’re their local neighbourhood supplier from another continent!

But convincing potential customers that you really know what you’re doing is easy. All you have to do is give them a sample. A freemium! Think grocery store samples. But rather than selling the product you’re selling the ability to identify a solution — your expertise.

Books are perfect for this. They’re high perceived value, they explain points of view, and if done well can impress.

For a bricks & mortar business they can be a great introduction. But don’t just think business card. Think resume. Think salesman.

A free book costing less than $10 can easily generate thousands of dollars in business. How? By convincing your client that you are the one to call!

Tags: blog, book, Building an eBiz, business, Creating Information Products, heck, how to, IM, LearningCreators, Part, point, reason, training, TrainingNOW, web, Write, Write a "how to" book

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While using a secretary is a luxury most of us can’t afford, and using a computer to do transcription sounds rather sci-fi, there is a technique that is affordable and practical.

If you are one of those people who are unable or unwilling to type, then recording your book is a practical possibility.

This technique involves recording your voice using a digital recorder (or a tool like Audacity). The recording is then copied to the computer and emailed to a service like Inteliants or Production Transcripts or a number of other services.

There are three big problems with these types of services. The first is the cost. Generally these services charge from $1.00-$2.00/min.. For a normal ebook, that means they will be charging in the area of $1,000 to $2,000 or more. Less than a secretary but still quite expensive.

The second issue is the turnaround time. Most services run 2-3 day turnaround. One day turnaround is sometimes available but usually at a higher cost.

The third issue is that these services often use foreign transcribers and/or computer transcription to reduce their costs. The transcriptions are therefore often filled with errors and mistakes — not all the result of poor recordings.

This last issue means that it is mandatory that you review all transcriptions very closely and carefully. The errors that are made will quickly brand you as an amateur.

Despite these issues, this technique can be quite successful and can represent a major improvement in efficiency.

Tags: book, IM, secret, technique, time, tool, Write a "how to" book

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So for those of us writing a how to book without the advantage of royalty and money what are we going to do? You know those of us who stir our tea with stainless steel spoons and who don’t have secretarial staffs to write our latest romance for us!

Don’t worry we’ve got a secretary too! A cheap one (YAAAYYYY! I like cheap.) It’s called a computer.

I’m talking about voice recognition software. There’s a lot of it out there. Dragon Naturally Speaking comes to mind as the most well known. But there’s also e-Speaking and IBM’s ViaVoice and WhyType and julius and CMU Sphinx … you get the idea. Of course there are new ones appearing and disapearing on a regular basis (IBM ViaVoice for example).

This software translates the words you speak into a microphone into words that appear on the screen in a word processing program. In fact, some Word processors come equipped with built in speech recognition/voice recognition software.

The big advantage is that you are entering words at almost twice the speed of typing.

The disadvantages have to do with the need to train the software. And the need to correct the result. Training the software can take an extended amount of time and be very frustrating. The big frustration, however, is looking at your manuscript and finding all the mis-translations after all the effort in translating.

The second disappointment comes when you realize that you can only speak in bursts. While we speak faster than we type, we think even faster still. That difference is used by many writers to figure out what they are going to say next. A difference that reduces severely when speaking. As a result we tend to speak in bursts rather than at the full speed we have available.

Despite the sci-fi feel, speech recognition/voice recognition is a viable tool for writing and worh trying. Unless of course, you’re old fashioned like me!

Tags: book, course, how to, IM, lot, point, process, secret, time, tool, training, word, work, Write, Write a "how to" book

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Now I’ve got to admit that this was a bit of silliness on my part. After all, I only know one author who was able to use a secretary to write her books. Now admitedly she used four (one at a time thank goodness) and I’m sure that there are more. But I only know of one. The rest of us are just too blasted poor (and/or cheap but that tends to follow).

But if you’ve got the money … or a spouse or child with aspirations to an obsolete skill, using a secretary is certainly a viable method.

The advantage is that you get to blurt out your book using the fastest transmission method possible. Plus, because it is a live person, any problems with understanding should be questioned immediately. And although you won’t have the words in front of you immediately, you will have them back very quickly. (The lady mentioned earlier used four secretaries so she could have the result back the next day). And because your secretary is retyping it, they can perform an edit before you even see the written material. Imagine, having no typos and all the right it’s/its/its’ in the right place! At least in theory.

There is only one real disadvantage to this technique … $$$$$$$$ Unless you are born to money (The lady in question was a Lady, as in English Nobility), or are the CEO of a major corporation (and stealing secretarial time isn’t frowned on), the sad truth is that most of us can’t afford to use a secretary. Or at least, can’t afford to waste their time on transcribing our books.

Now if you can afford it on the other hand …..

Tags: bit, book, IM, method, Part, secret, technique, time, word, Write, Write a "how to" book

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