Postcards From My Life

Dear Seth,
(All my readers are welcome to read this but this is addressed to Mr. Godin himself)

I like you and I like your work. I owe you big for the knowledge you pass on free-of-charge.

Recently, you wrote “Paying for first“. I agree with the main point – that readers will pay for early access to content. However, unless you are…you, most authors can’t afford to put the time into a book project only to see it sell for $1.99. Given the number of copies that a long-tail author sells, financially we would be better off spending that time working in fast food, instead of sharing what we know with others.

The price of my book may well go to $1.99. With you setting expectations that all content should be cheap, it gets harder to sell ebooks for a price that delivers value to the buyers as well as the author.

The problem is, you are so well respected that when you say:

$1.99 ebooks. This is the clearing price for virtually all ebooks going forward.

People begin to question why I dare charge $9.95.

I charge that because of the time it to amass the knowledge represented in the book. In my case, the book represents 28 years of knowledge wrapped up in ~80 pages. I charge $9.95 because at that price, it delivers real value for the people buying it.

I am not asking you to retract your words, not even to explain them. I am only asking that going forward, you consider the weight your words carry. You can very easily set an unrealistic market expectation. One that those of us who cannot secure promotional partnerships, can’t live up (or in this case, down) to. Help those of us still in the trenches to show the book buying public that good content is worth a fair price, not just a sale price.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

p.s. I am under no illusion that Seth knows who I am or will ever read this. :)

Dear Reader,

Short answer:
I don’t need to. I don’t auto-follow and create the false impression that I want to engage with everyone who follows me.

Long answer:
At the beginning of the month, Chris Brogan, someone I usually respect and keep an eye on, posted on his blog that he was unfollowing all the people he followed on twitter. Then Michael Hyatt did the same. I’ve been amused as I’ve watched others tweet or post that they are following suit. Just recently now, Brogan posted an update on his unfollow experiment. In it he states that he has learned that it upset some people. Honestly, how could you expect anything but anger and resentment, along with a large dose of apathy.
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There are many questions you can ask when selecting a developer to build your website. Are you compatible with them? Do you like their portfolio? Do they have good references? There are, however, some non-obvious questions that you should also ask before making the final selection. Here are 3 that I recommend you ask any potential web developer before hiring them.

Read my entire post over at DIYMarketers.com:3 Questions You Should Ask Before Hiring a Web Developer

If you are looking about to hire a developer to build you a website and are looking for help and guidance. Jump over to “Avoiding a Goat Rodeo“. It’s my book on the subject. Investing $10 in the book could save you hundreds on your project.

Dear Reader,

Recently on twitter, @johncongdon asked me about proposals for conferences. Specifically, he asked if I had any examples that I can share because he was considering submitting to a conference. While I don’t have any examples to share, I can give you some advice on the topic.

First things first

Read Tips on how to get accepted as a speaker at a PHP conference, if you haven’t already. The process of getting accepted starts a lot earlier than the proposal, you need to lay the groundwork first.
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Dear Reader,

I attended my first DrupalCon earlier this year and was amazed by the fact that I was surrounded by people who were using a project built on top of PHP – a project I dearly love – and many had no idea. In fact, out of 3,000 people in attendance, I ran into 2 members of what most of us consider “the PHP community”. Granted, I didn’t meet everyone but I did expect to run into more PHP developers. What I discovered throughout the ‘Con was that there are many developers there that are intimately familiar with PHP but identify with Drupal; they are Drupal developers, not PHP developers.

With that thought in mind, I began to think back to MSWDC’09. A discussion “errupted” there during one of the sessions that was quite telling. A core PHP developer challenged a core Drupal developer with the statement “What would happen if development stopped on PHP tomorrow?” The Drupal developer retorted “Then we would move Drupal to another language.” The room got quiet for a second as what he said sunk in. The Drupal core is interested in Drupal, if PHP becomes a pain-point for them, they feel they can switch to something less painful.
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