Fake Metrics

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I’ve been thinking about something for years… since before I started JibberJobber.  A bit of history…

Back in the olden days, just 4 years ago, my old boss would talk about the number of hits on website.  When he reported hits the developers would snicker, because hits were not very well defined.

Most executives wanted to know how many people visited the website (unique visitors) or how many pages they looked at (page views).  But this notion of “hits”…. hm… let me tell you what a hit was:

Hit: the number of times our server served something.  You (the normal human being) thinks it’s something logical, like perhaps unique visitors or page views… but each time our server served an image we got a hit.

Get that?  If a page has 3 images on it, you get 3 hits.  Want to multiply your hits by 10?  Put 27 more images on the page, and now you got 30 hits!  Want to really impress the suits?  Put 300 tiny 1×1 (pixel) images on the site, you can even make them transparent (so they are invisible), and you get 300 hits!

Yippee!!!!

The programmers saw right past it.  The suits didn’t.

So there’s my introduction to this fake metrics crap.  If you like this stuff then pick up one of my favorite books, How to Lie With Statistics.

Now, fastforward to today.  There are some other metrics that a business like JibberJobber would measure.

Users.

What is a user on JibberJobber?  If I wanted to impress someone I would tell them the number of people who have signed up… which is usually called a “user.”

Not so.  Absolutely not so.

Let me differentiate between:

Signups: this is anyone who has signed up… regardless of whether they have ever logged in or not (much less use the system.  This is a super-easy metric to report, but most times I hear it I think it’s a fake number.

Users: Like… LinkedIn has 40M users.  NO, they don’t.  They have had 40 million people signup….!  I think users are people who… use the system.

Upgrades: These are people who fork over the loot… I’ve had peope in JibberJobber upgrade the day they signed up… without ever using the system.  Love that, of course… but it doesn’t guarantee they’ll be a “user.”

There’s a terrific post on TechCrunch talking about a freemium site called Evernote – the post is titled Evernote Stats: One Million Registered Users, 360,000 Active, 13,755 Paid

I love this because off the bat it declares the signups (which they call “registered users,” the users “which they call “active,” and the upgrades.  Nice differentiation!

Now, the concept on premium upgrades, conversion percentage, etc. is a totally different discussion (and I disagree with how TC got the percentages)… but this is a good place to start talking about real metrics.

99 Designs – graphics artists contests

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Here’s a site I meant to bookmark… the model seems super-cool… I was trying to remember what it was, and even asked on Twitter a while back, but could not forthelifeofme figure it out.

Until recently.

I finally came across 99 Designs (again)… it is contest based.  As of now they say they have 35,359 “talented designers” who are anxious to participate in contests for logo design, website design, etc.  Here’s how it works:

Step 1: create your design brief (costs $39 USD)

Step 2: set your budget (usually from $100 to $600, paid to the person who wins the contest)

Step 3: work with the designers (rate the designs and give feedback to those who submit designs)

Step 4: choose your favorite design (YOU choose the winner and then get the art with the copyright)

I don’t have any projects right now, and honestly would rather hire a full-time graphics designer,… but I absolutely love this idea.

My Twitter Baby

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Yesterday my wife gave birth to our fifth child.  Mom and baby are healthy, and we feel very blessed.  

I didn’t intend to share much about what was going on, as we’ve chosen to keep our personal life fairly personal… so all I did was write a blog post about going to the hospital (just a few sentences).  

When we got to the hospital, however, I found out we had a really nice internet connection. So I jumped on my email.  And I got on twitter.  And I had the crazy idea of sharing more than I intended about the birth.  Of course, I wanted to tie it into me, and my business, which is our life, and how we’re going to pay for this kid :p  here’s what I tweeted:

I wondered if I crossed a personal/private line, but the reactions I got were terrific!  It was fun, and I started to get some phenominal responses… you can see the thread at either of these (see jasonalba or #babytime (which has less)).  Really fun stuff, as you follow my tweets and some of the responses I got from others.

I was amazed, also, at how many Facebook responses I got.  On Facebook, I am Friends with a lot of people who know my wife… and I’m sure they were happy to get the news and updates.

I just spent an hour going through the reactions, and for the sake of recording history, I grabbed a few screen snippets of a few of my favorite parts of the conversations…. enjoy!

Here’s all of my tweets from the hospital… notice I tried to not flood the twittersphere with too much info.

An otherwise brilliant person, Mr. Druid (a good friend) was the only person who didn’t quite get the contest and submitted a guess on weight instead of time… !

Accused of not being supportive? Nah, not me :p

We kind of had a funky-cool communication thing going on… still, I wondered how many people (mostly women) would have echoed Gayle’s sentiments? (Gayle is a JibberJobber partner)

LOL – I thought my wife might not be too keen on this, but it worked out for us (maybe if I tweeted more she’d have been livid… )

After much frustration with all of the chair-things for me, I broke down and CUSSED!  Robert’s reply was classic 🙂

This was hillarious – advice from the wife of a guy who I used to work with.  I read this and then headed out for food :p

My coauthor, aka Mr. Sensitive, offering to help kill some time at the hospital.  I kindly declined his offer :p  ROFL

Al summed it up, and helped me realize there were people who were actually reading all of the updates!

This was a cool affirmation from Mari, queen of Facebook.

I was hopeful that @cnn would have picked up on this – alas, apparently they hadn’t 🙁

Hillarious.  If you have a fifth because of this, you have to name him Jason.  Or her Jason.  

Here’s the winner – he beat out the next closest by 3 minutes!

What started out as “should I??” became a really fun way to get to know my contacts and friends better!

Amazon Wins and Losses

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Almost a month ago I listed my DVD on Amazon… getting into a $39.95/month payment plan.  Shortly thereafter I had to take the listing down because I hadn’t gotten my DVDs yet, and by policy I had to ship within 2 days of any order. Once I got the DVDs I immediately went back to Amazon and relisted the DVD… but there was one little, er, MAJOR problem: If you look at LinkedIn book, my DVD would not show up.

Why?

Because I had to list my DVD in the DVD section, where it was buried amongst movies… and totally not related to books at all.  Even though they are the same (a) subject and (b) author, you wouldnt’ find my DVD on my book page.  And what I really wanted you to see was my DVD on ANY LinkedIn book page.

Alas, wasn’t going to happen.

I spent hours poking through the help pages, the advertising pages, listening to the advertising webinar, emailing support, and even trying to talk with them on the phone.  It was very frustrating trying to get an answer.  Amazon has a cool sellers forum, where I found some awesome information, so I listed my problem there.  I learned about more options, but didn’t get the answer I wanted.

Finally, I decided to try calling again, and finally got on with someone who had a suggestion that wasn’t going to work (he said to put the DVD as a book, and in there you can say what the binding is (I think that’s the section), and he said to say it was a CD ROM or Diskette).  The problem with this first suggestion is that I didn’t want Amazon to come back and say I was doing something deceitful… I certainly didn’t want my amazon account to get taken down!

The second solution sounded a lot better, and he reiterated three times that this was totally acceptable and would not get me in any hot water… he said to “package” my book with the DVD, and then I could put it in the books section.  That is what I did.  So here is what I came up with (the wording was almost 100% from the Amazon rep, as we were brainstorming it):

and here’s the image (which is the front cover of the CD sleeve… luckily it already had the book cover on it!):

You can click here to see the posting.

Fall 2010. My Dream.

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Today on my JibberJobber blog I announced the Now What??? series, where I have authors writing books, and I’m the executive editor.  It’s pretty cool, although I was jazzed about starting it.

A few days ago I was on the phone with my publisher and said “okay, I’m going to draw a line in the sand.  I’m telling you [and now I’m telling all my blog readers] that I’m going to have a Now What Authors Conference in Fall of 2010 in Salt Lake City.”

The vision for this conference is to have my authors (dozens?  more than 100?) come and learn from people on how to leverage being an author into other revenue streams.

I’ve thought about the buddies I’ve met at NSA, and others who have created various types revenue streams, to come in and speak.  Perhaps some workshops… who knows what it will be.

2 days of fun, education, inspiration, stories, ideas, networking, etc.

This wouldn’t be limited to just my authors… it would be for anyone who has (or wants to have) a book, and/or wants to take their “multiple revenue streams” to the next level.

Exact date? Dunno.

Price? Dunno.

Location? Somewhere in or near Salt Lake City.

Speakers/Presenters? Dunno.

Cool, huh?  What would you suggest to make this event amazing?

My Children’s Book

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I have an idea for a children’s book.  I’ve already started writing it. I got the idea when I made up a story one night, and told one of my kids, and I thought “dang, that’s a good story!”  Weeks later, I still think it’s a great story!

I don’t have any aspirations of developing a line of children’s books.  But my oldest kid is 11, my youngest is 2, which means I’ve spent the last 11 years reading kids books.

“I can write one of those,” I figure.  Geesh, 50 – 70 words is a kids book, right?  How hard can it be?

I know it will be harder than I imagine.  I really have no idea how do to it – what I’m doing now is just working on the story, trying to come up with the right words (it’s easier to write for adults, and just write and write and write, as opposed to thinking about attention spans and vocabulary levels).

The ONLY person I know who has written kids books is Kakie Fitzsimmons, who wrote the Bur Bur & His Friends.  Maybe I can have her on a radio show sometime to chat about what I do now!

My chances of becoming a billionaire

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I just read this article I found on Yahoo about billionaires… I like to read “where did they come from” and trend type stuff… here are the characteristics from the article, and where I fall:

Parents have a high aptitude for math. I’m not sure about my parents aptitude for math, but I’m going to say it’s not “high.”  Ask my dad about his failed math career and he blames his math teacher, Charlie Brown, who apparently sucked as a teacher and ruined math for my dad.  Nothing like Sergey and Brin’s parents :p  -1

Parents who are engineers, accountants of small-business owners. My dad was government (-1) but my mom has owned her own business for over 15 years, and always had an entrepreneurial knack… indeed, her parents owned a business for decades (+1).

Born in the Fall (specifically September, definitely NOT December). I was born in November – is that Fall or Winter?  I dunno. -1

Never started college or never finished college. I started and finished, and then got an MBA.  I guess that’s -2.

Billionaires from finance (the industry) have graduate degrees. +1.  But 9 out of 10 are from Ivy Leagues. -1.

Worked at Goldman Sachs. -1.  Isn’t that a clothing store on Fifth Avenue? lol (I know, I know, it’s not)

“Suffered bitter professional setback early in their careers…” Oh yeah, totally.  I should get bonus points for this.  +1

Yale’s Skull and Bones ultra-secret society. Not.  -1

Even with inferior math skills, I’ve added this up to -5 (out of a possible -10 to +10).  Maybe I can be a millionaire instead.  Or perhaps just a thousandaire.

Took my LinkedIn DVD off of Amazon.com (temporarily)

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So I got a response to most of my questions from Amazon… the didn’t answer the question about tying my DVD to my books… but they did say that I CAN NOT list something that I can’t ship within two days.  So I “closed” my product there and will relist it around the 5th.  Darn.

Also, apparently you can’t have a special price… you know, the one that has a strikethrough that shows there is a sale?

I guess those two things are only for really cool people, like this:

So now I’m going to hurry up and wait for my DVDs to get here.  Meanwhile, I’ve asked a question on LinkedIn about being a Pro Merchant on Amazon and hope to get some good answers.

Listing My Stuff on Amazon – LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD

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Last night I bit the $39.95/month bullet and listed my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD on Amazon as a “Pro Merchant.” I could “list a single item” on Amazon for free, ONLY IF they already have that item in their “catalog.”  In other words, if there is a book or DVD you can already find in Amazon, you can list yours to sell there… but if you want to submit a NEW item (like LinkedIn for Job Seekers) you have to pay $39.95 a month and become a Pro Merchant.

There is lots of help information available for this, although I find it to be a rather complex thing so I ended up reading a lot to do research on it.  Here are my initial thoughts:

  • I need to list this item on Amazon because I think that’s where most of the sales are going to come from.  I think around 80% of my book sales come from Amazon, even though I have a bunch of Happy About affiliates, and I’ve promoted the affiliate program quite a bit since we started.  But Amazon has gazillions of eyeballs and people going there to look and purchase.
  • I got sideblinded when entering the product because it requires a UPC.  DANG. For some reason I didn’t think that little-ol-me would have to have something so formal.  I did a search on UPC amazon and came upon a great blog post, which led me to IWantMyBarCode.com.  I read through the site and based on comments from that other blog post I decided to drop $22 for my UPC – a one-time purchase.  I LOVE the I Want My Barcode site style… not the design, but the personality and the story behind the site.  I ordered it last night (around 6pm) and got my UPC this morning (so I could finish submitting the LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD this morning).
  • When I submitted the product for some reason it took it as “LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD by” … UGH.  I clicked the edit link but the only thing it would let me edit was the quantity and some other thing.  I have no idea how to edit the title… but then when I clicked on the actual listing it did NOT have the “by” … so it looked good.  Still bugged me :p
  • I have seen plenty of items on Amazon that have a different “available” or “shipping on” date. I was hoping that I could set the “doesn’t ship until” date to April 7th, which is when the DVD company told me they would have the DVDs in my office.  Instead, the shipping date is TODAY, March 25th.  This is a problem, especially if people want expedited shipping.
  • When I put in my inventory, which is 980 units, I was surprised to go the the Amazon product page and see there was … drum roll… 1 product.  I am not sure it matters, but I was surprised to see something different than what I put in.  I think it would be better to not show 980, or anything over a couple of dozen…
  • Oh yeah, one thing I didn’t ask Amazon about was the price – for a limited time I’m offering it for 49.95 from my website… and wanted to do the same on Amazon, but I can’t find a way to change the price (or show there’s a special temporary price)…
  • Finally, and the most important thing for me, is I want LinkedIn for Job Seekers (the DVD) to show up when someone is looking at ANY LinkedIn book on Amazon.  This is critical.  CRITICAL.  I don’t think this DVD will show up on those product pages because, well, I don’t think that BOOKs and DVDs mix.  This is not good for me, because many people who are looking at any of the LinkedIn books could be potential purchasers of my DVD… especially people who are looking at MY book!  Doesn’t it make sense that my two products are one one-another’s pages? I hope this wall between product types (books vs. DVDs) is something we can get around.

So those are my first impressions.  It really will be interesting to see how many are sold through Amazon, which will likely be people who have NO idea who Jason Alba is, vs. how many are sold through my own network/audience and affiliate channels.

Here’s an image from the Amazon listing page: