Day 50: Questions and Answers

Again, I would like to thank all of you who sent supportive mails, questions and suggestions. I appreciate all of them. Here are the questions.

I thought it was a big no no to go silent for a long time with Blogs as this would cause your readership to drop. Why the big hiatus?

You are absolutely correct. It is a big No No. Nothing kills readership more than long lay offs. In my case, I could have done that. But for me, it was a choice between juggling a couple of tasks within a 24-hour day and doing a less than good job on all of them. Or focusing on getting a single task done one at a time to the best of one’s ability. I chose the latter and had to make the call on which of the tasks get priority over the other.

Did you get the job done on your project?
It was a close shave but Yes!

Hmmm… now that I’ve sat down on it. All of the other questions are questions on when will I get back. I guess this post answers that effectively.

I’ve updated the timer to reflect current reality. And I’m going through my notes. Amazing how a month away from the task can suddenly make your own written notes seem like a stranger wrote them and the connections between concepts and ideas you’ve formed back then don’t come as easily as now.

Cheers!

Day 48: Product Launch Roadblocks

Other than this StomperNet Review blog, I haven’t updated the website much for a while now. Here are some of the problems I am encountering as a one-man band:

The Threats

The Holidays. So much of the holidays is family-oriented in nature. With my family being the main reason why I am pushing myself hard to complete this website, I am hard-pressed to say no to them when they ask for little escapes as a family. I really feel guilty that I have to call them escapes. But that is what they have turned out to be. I keep convincing myself that I am paying my dues to make this work.

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Day 47: The Evils of Article Spinning

There seems to be 2 schools of thought with Article Spinning in StomperNet. The first is that Article Spinning is okay as long as the spun article is humanly readable. The second wants no part of Article Spinning. The argument is that they give no true value to the Internet because they give the same idea as the original source article. They further argue that Spun Articles only clutter the Internet.

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Day 45: Alarm Bells on The Mastermind Group

Yesterday, I met up with my StomperNet Mastermind Group where I mentioned that my website underwent major renovation from a blog about StomperNet Review to a website that is geared towards my product, “Competitive Intelligence”. I was able to get my website on screen and get feedback from my peers.

Here is a list of the changes they suggested I make:

1. Make the font smaller for the Countdown clock.
2. Make the countdown more like a digital clock font.
3. Change Sun-Tzu’s Quote font to match the image of the two swordsmen fighting.
4. Add a Phone Number and if possible a timezone converter.
5. Remove the Captcha.
6. Just use Name instead of First Name & Last Name for the Newsletter signup.
7. Juggernaut is not understandable to everyone. Too bad, I really liked the wordplay of the J’s with the phrase, “Jumpstart The Juggernaut.”

So far, I have accomplished numbers 2, 6 and 7.

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Day 44: Anatomy of a Pre-Launch Email

As promised yesterday, today’s StomperNet Review will show you what I can glean from a Pre-Launch Letter. This came about after a Facebook message was sent to me asking if I can repeat what I did in Day 38. Just a quick update, I had the asker just choose one email. Jeff Walker sent a succession of email for this recent launch. I’m pasting the chosen email below in it’s entirety. Then I will re-paste it below in black font with my thoughts in green font.

Dear Jeff in case you are reading this. This is just me trying to pick up lessons from your emails as per request by a reader. I have never taken your Product Launch Formula Course. But in all honesty, I wish I could.

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Day 43: My First Video is Downright Ugly

I produced my first video today. Ha ha ha! It was without a doubt – downright ugly! The lighting was off. By this, I mean one side is bright while the other side is dark. This is because of a strong light source on one side. This causes shadows and actually has a nice, dark edgy feel to it if a nice, dark edgy feel was my goal. But it wasn’t. I wanted to present something that is in the light because I want to come across as a means of obtaining Intelligence ethically. So the shadowy feel runs counter to my goal as it seems to project the dark, sinister side of Intelligence Gathering.

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Day 42: Product Launch Writing and Video Preparation

By the time I have finished this blog post, I will have written the equivalent of 7 average length blog entries including this one. I timed it. It took me 4 hours. But it did get most of the menu items to have their text content in place. People who are able to read through it should have a good idea what my product is all about. I know. I know… You’re saying, “Chris, your content is putting me to sleep.” Some visuals will come by the next post or on Monday. I want to have the time to hunt around for the proper images so I won’t rush it.

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Day 41: Making Videos

Today’s entry will be short. I attended a real-life seminar on Videos. Sad to say. I left very disappointed. This is because I feel I am getting more information from my StomperNet teacher’s (Sherman Hu) website: http://www.shermanlive.com.

A friend, finding out I was on the look-out for any help on making videos, recommended this seminar very strongly. I won’t name the seminar or speaker anymore as it was just a one-day event. I do not doubt that the speaker was highly talented on all things video. The problem was he was neither a good speaker nor a good teacher. Out of respect for my friend, I tried to keep awake but she herself was dissappointed too and was pointing to someone else who strongly recommended the seminar to her.

Cheers!

Day 40: Product Launching Murphy’s Law

Murphy’s Law threw pie on my face on my 40th day of using StomperNet. Admittedly, there was a point there where I felt that I would not even make it halfway through my countdown. I’ll share to you what happened and how it got fixed.

I received feedback from a StomperNet veteran that my site had half the focus being stolen by this blog. It was staring me in the face and I missed this one. He is right. Even my menu had StomperNet Review coming right after Home. Since English is the language used. Almost all the people visiting my website would browse my pages from left to right. So on my Main Menu, StomperNet Review gets read first before Business Intelligence.

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Day 39: Product Launch No No’s I Did

I got good feedback from Industry Veterans on some of the No no’s I did. Let me share what I was able to address today, the reasons why they are No no’s and how I fixed them:

No Widget Control

My front page with the Countdown Timer still had all those Blog categories and recent posts displayed on the right. They cause distractions from the focus I wanted to give to my Business Intelligence product. This website is built using WordPress and those categories and recent posts are called widgets. The solution is a free plug-in called Widget Logic. It lets me control which, where and when my widgets should appear.

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Day 38: Product Launch Questions & Feedback

The Questions:

I received some questions via Email and Facebook messages yesterday:

Exactly how out of reach is Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Course?

It is $5,000 out of reach. Well, the exact terms are $5,000 up front then another $5,000 when you make your first $100,000. If you thought that was steep, your jaw might drop all the way to the floor if you hear that before this, he taught Product Launching to a limited number of students for $25,000 per head. I heard that all seats were taken. If you are interested, here is his link: http://www.productlaunchformula.com/?gclid=CKq9k8KxpZ4CFRhfagodEQhWlQ

I thought this is a 90-day thing. Why does your countdown exceed 90 days?

I don’t do any heavy lifting on Sundays. So no StomperNet or BusinessTeligence work and no posting on Sundays. So the dates will indeed be off. It will also be Christmas and New Year. I’m spending that time with the main reasons why I am pushing myself hard on most days. Read more

Day 37: Product Launching Juggernaut

I’ve been working hard the past couple of weeks and I’m really excited to announce and welcome you to look at the changes I’ve made to the site. Of note is the introduction of Business Intelligence. It currently has an intro and a sign-up page. But this is going to be my product so expect major additions and changes in the next week or two.

A fellow Stomper gave me a lead to a lot of eye-opening tips on how best to launch my product. He says the biggest thing is to build anticipation and need instead of just coming out with the product with maybe a press release. He made a lot of good points. He didn’t give details on how to build the anticipation and need so I did a search on both StomperNet and Google about doing a Product Launch.

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Day 36: Incubator – Mostly on the SEOQast Webinar

Woke up and immediately buckled down to continuing the build work on the product. I’m really excited about doing this and I can’t wait to get feedback when I launch it next week. I won’t bore you with the details of the build work though.

Instead, let me tell you about that second StomperNet Webinar I attended the other day. It’s about the benefits of SEOQast by Ross Goldberg and Ryan Taylor. SEOQast is one of the Software tools that comes with StomperNet Membership. It semi-automates the process of letting people know about your newly published content whether it is an article, an rss feed, a video, etc. It displays a huge list of websites you can announce your new content on. You have the option of submitting to all of them or just to a few of them, say just the top 10. Here’s a screen cap of what SEOQast looks like so you get an idea of the amount of websites you can announce your content to. The pic shows these websites sorted by Page Rank. Clicking on the pic will take you to the SEOQast page if you need more info.

Today’s post will be one of the shorter ones as most of the activities today dealt on getting the product built by Monday. Have a great weekend.

Cheers!