Sorry about the lack of posts last week and no, we have not stopped doing the weekly questions. Its just been a crazy 2 weeks.

SnowBoarding

Last week I took my family 12,500 feet above sea level and stayed in a ranch about half way up Copper Mountain in Colorado. I never intended to Ski (bad experiences), I thought I would just watch and take pics of my 4 year old in Ski School.

At the last minute on the first day I decided I was going to try to snow board.

I have taken surfing lessons, wake boarded, and grew up skateboarding so I thought maybe snowboarding would be a better fit.

It was… I felt way more natural on a snowboard. The only thing a little hard to get used to was putting a lot of my weight on my front foot.

By the end of the day (6 hours of private lessons) I was turning pretty good, doing heel side to toe side, and even learned some freestyle stuff like manuals and ollie (which came easy from my skate board past) Felt great.

Now the next day my ass hurt like I had been raped by a rhino. But I *thought* I was ok otherwise. Outside our window was the sawmill ski lift and I was watching snowboarders and thought I would suit up and get after it.

*MISTAKE*

Going heelside or toeside was unbearable. My muscles were gone.

Fast forward 4 days later I think I had some altitude sickness or something. I just felt like complete crap. No energy to do anything, banging headache, and exhausted.

GoDaddy Fail.

While in the mountains I discovered Godaddy disabled one of my domains with no warning. Then held it hostage. Sucked cause I was running a lot of ppc through it so it cost me probably 5k-10k. But I always believe adversity is opportunity and this showed me that I really can’t afford to continue to use Godaddy as my registrar.

I am currently moving my entire portfolio to Moniker.

Got home late last Friday night. Long day of traveling. Especially with our kid.

Losing $1400 + credit cards + id then getting it back

Saturday morning was my mother-in-laws birthday so we were traveling about 80 miles to spend the day with her. Half way there our kids had to goto the bathroom so we pulled into a Subway. While inside my wife wanted to get some snacks for the kids so I handed her my money clip while I took the kids to the bathroom then back out to the car.

Once we got to Omaha, my wife realized she did not have my money clip. We searched the car for about 30 minutes… then drove back 60 miles to the Subway shop. My wife went inside and talked to the employees and even called the manager to see if they could pull the security tape. The manager said she would first thing Monday.

I had about 1400 in cash (I was going to vegas on Tuesday (tomorrow)), my amex black card, and my id in that money clip.

I wasn’t so concerned about the cash but since I was leaving in 2 days for Vegas this was really going to suck. I would have to get my drivers licensee and figure out how to get a new amex by the time I went to vegas cause I booked everything through the centurion finer resorts and hotels and needed the card at checkin.

Getting the amex overnighted to my hotel was not a big deal.

Just after I had everything canceled I got several phone calls from a lady who said she wanted to return my money clip. She said a friend of a friend found it in the parking lot but they lived far away so gave it to her to return. The story was really strange but whatever I was really happy.

I ended up meeting up with another party who didn’t know much about the person who found it. I offered him a cash reward but he refused to take money.

On the way home I stopped at a gas station to fill up and pick up some sodas. They were taking donations to the march of dimes and giving away free 20oz pops to anyone who donated $5. Now I was in a really giving mood cause I just had my money returned so I donated $500. They about shit and handed me a stack of those foot things to fill out. I told them no worries.

When I got home I called the police to tell them that the money clip had been returned to me. The police were very suspicious and asked me a lot of questions. They said they were not dropping the case.

To be honest I don’t really care if it was stolen. In the end it was returned. I was a kid once and did really really really dumb things but was very lucky that even when I did get busted people understood and let me off easy.

What a week.

If you want to know the “secret” to getting rich online, split testing is it.

However, it also might be the most “unsexy” part of the business.  It’s not fun to talk about like traffic or launch videos.  And it’s certainly not something you see any of the gurus teaching.

But if you want to make a bunch of money online, you MUST split test. It’s the biggest difference between the guys who are failing and the guys who are making a boatload of money online.

Split testing is really a “discipline” type thing.  And being a good Ohio boy with good work ethic, I’m pretty committed to testing everything.

So today I wanna open up my playbook and share with you the results of 2 BIG impact split tests I ran for The 31 Day Fat Loss Cure…

Everyday we get several people who contact us with their big idea for a product. Honestly a lot of the time the ideas are really good… but they have no clue what to do going forward.

• Where do they go to get it developed?
• Where do they go to figure out how to launch it?
• Who do they hire to build the site so that it sells?
• Where do they get a merchant account to process their own credit cards?
• How do they monetize partial data?
• How do they handle customer support?
• How do they do drop shipping?
• Now do they get their product in CPA networks?
• Did you know there are companies out there that will fund all of your advertising and product for you for a percentage?

So ya… When it comes down to it ideas are easy. The model is something that takes many years to figure out. Since we started selling our own products a couple years ago its sure been a learning experience for me.

So where can you turn if you have a good idea and need help from a company that has a proven track record?

My man Rich Gorman over at Direct Response is about as smart as anyone in this field. He has helped me a lot with our backend on our products and made introductions that were priceless.

Yesterday, after looking at the sheer volume of questions, I thought I would ask Rich to do a webinar with me to address any of your most common questions and also answer questions live that you might have.

Go here to register for the webinar.  It will be LIVE at 2pm CST tomorrow.

If you have not been reading the Direct Response blog you are really missing out. There are some really gem’s on there.

Check out some of my favorites:

• 13 Laws Of Overnight Success
• #1 Craftiest Direct Response Marketer
• 3 Clever Ways To Monetize Partial Data
• 3 Timeless Principles To Making Millions In Direct Response Marketing
• 38 Critical Books Every Direct Response Marketer Needs To Read
• 4 Secrets To Making Millions On Media Buys
• 5 Easy Steps To Screening New Clients
• 5 Simple Steps To Tripling Your CTR
• 6 Ways To Getting Consumers To Like You
• 9 Ways To Create Perceived Value
• Building A Million Dollar Offer – For Less Than 2k

So don’t miss the live webinar with my and Mr “Direct Response” Rich Gorman.

Seeing as how it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d focus this post on something I truly love: food. More specifically, there’s a burger place in Seattle called Lunchbox Laboratory. You could order up a huge sloppy, delicious concoction of your choosing — beef, “dork” (duck + pork), lamb, “churken” (turkey + chicken), game — adorned with bacon, truffle sauce, gorgonzola cream, you name it, complete with a fries or tots with your choice of salt accompaniments and one of many different milkshake flavors to wash it all down.  It’s the sort of place you could go to for lunch where you’d gorge on a meal and be so full that you wouldn’t (or couldn’t) eat anything else the rest of the day. It’s a pricey excursion (two burgers, shakes and fries would add up to about $45) but totally worth it. Lunchbox Laboratory is considered to be one of Seattle’s best burger places and has graced many culinary magazines’ lists of best burgers nationwide.

So damn good

Or so it used to be. One of my favorite burger joints in town was recently bought by a somewhat craptacular establishment called the Eastlake Bar and Grill, and they decided to move Lunchbox Laboratory’s location from the tiny, hole in the wallish building where it used to reside in Ballard to a larger location in South Lake Union. I initially thought this was both spectacular and dangerous news, as the new location is closer to where I live. However, after checking out the new location’s Yelp listing, I can’t help but feel a bit heartbroken.

old location's Yelp listing

The old (now closed) location’s Yelp listing averaged four stars out of nearly 500 reviews. The new location, on the other hand, isn’t faring nearly as well:

new location's Yelp listing

Thus far the new location has only amassed 37 reviews, but it’s averaging a surprisingly poor 2 1/2 stars, down from its stellar four star rating. What the hell happened? After perusing through the reviews, it’s apparent that the location isn’t the only thing that Lunchbox Laboratory has changed:

• “…they are no longer getting the kaiser roll from Grand Central Bakery, and are instead using a bread that is so dense it ends up overpowering the burger.”
• “Looks like the new owners brought in their frozen food tendencies from eastlake bar & grill, etc and ruined a classic..  you would think they would expand options with a bigger space/kitchen but they did just the opposite. “
• “burger size has gone down considerably while price went up?”
• “They’ve taken everything that made Lunchbox Laboratory worth going to, waiting in line for, and paying $25 for a meal for, and watered it down to another link in a mediocre burger/bar and grill chain.”
• “…the selection just isn’t what it was…”

Some reviewers are chastising the folks who left negative reviews for being too “hipster” and bemoaning the changes (I suppose it’s the culinary equivalent of scoffing and saying you loved this band when they were more underground…maybe an “I had this burger on vinyl” approach?), but when you love something and expect it to continue to be that thing you love, you’re understandably upset and disappointed when it’s changed so drastically, you barely recognize it. It’s akin to coming home to your gorgeous, lovely wife from a hard day’s work, only to find that she’s inexplicably gained 120 lbs and grown a bunch of hairy warts over the course of eight hours.

Lunchbox Laboratory’s reasoning for their new shoddy service and product (subpar ingredients, poorly cooked food, smaller portions, no substitutions, severely neutered menu with jacked up prices) is that they’re struggling to properly train their staff, and that once they learn the ropes, they’ll adjust the menu accordingly. This is a hardly an excuse — as a business, you should know that you need to get your ducks in a row before opening or unveiling something new. If you rush into something before you’re ready just so you can rake in some green a week or two early, the extra cash you make won’t be worth the customer dissatisfaction and disappointment (which will hurt your wallet in the long run). They should have re-opened with their staff properly trained and ready to bring the same experience that established the brand and made it so great to begin with.

This is exactly the same thing that happened to Digg when it revamped its site to its now-famous version 4. They rolled out a bunch of changes in an effort to appease publishers, which would have made the site more money, but the radical revamp alienated and outraged its loyal users and drove them away. They learned the hard way that they really shot themselves in the foot and scrambled to restore beloved features that had been cut out of the recent design, but by then the damage was already done — many users abandoned the site and flocked to other communities like Reddit, which is now experiencing record growth.

Put simply, there’s a reason why your loyal customers are loyal. You offer stellar service, a great product, friendly ambiance, a simple design. Whatever it is, it’s working for you, and that’s why your customers love you so much. If you’ve got a user-friendly website that’s highly praised by your users and completely revamp it so it’s overly complicated and technical, you’ve just alienated every single one of them. If you’re a mom and pop store who offered warm, personalized customer service but got bought out by some corporation who switches you over to an automated phone system and thick-accented guys named “Bob,” your customers will wonder where that unique experience went. And if you sell your awesome little burger place to a shitty bar and grill chain and change everything that made your business great so you can make a couple more bucks, your rabid fanbase will shake their heads and say “You’ve changed, man.”

You can scoff and say it’s hipster or douchey to bemoan change, and I won’t argue that some change and growth is good for your business. However, once you start tinkering with the very thing that sets your business apart and makes it great, you’ve embarked on a very slippery slope. You need to really ask yourself the following:

• How will these changes impact my business?
• How will they affect my existing customers?
• How will they affect new/future customers?
• Is the bottom line worth the drawbacks these changes may bring about?

Basically, will the quality of your product and/or service be negatively impacted by these changes? Is it worth it to cut corners in order to make a bigger profit? If you’re a brand-centric company, it might not be — your reputation for quality and your customer loyalty may be too valuable to compromise. If you’re convinced that your radical changes will bring about a new crop of loyal customers at the expense of your old ones, I suppose that’s a risk you can take. However, ask yourself how often you’re willing to cycle through a new throng of loyal fans every time you’re itching to “reinvent” your business. There’s a reason why Garth Brooks’ alter ego experiment in the 90′s was met with head scratches and puzzled looks. Don’t be the Chris Gaines of your industry.  Your customers don’t want that.

No. Just no.

Digicert is a SSL certificate authority with a focus on service as well as security. They offer Unlimited Server License, and Unlimited Reissues. They offer a 30 day money back guarantee and have certified many big companies such as Amazon, the FBI, and The US Department of Justice. Check out their site at www.digicert.com

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday, click here.

The first bet I ever made on a football game was like a shot of liquid cocaine…

It was my senior year of high school, and I put $20 on the #1 ranked Miami Hurricanes to cover the 17 point spread at Boston College.  Looking back it was a terrible bet, but that first bet was all I needed to get hooked.

Fast forward a few years and I had done pretty well making a part-time income with my sports bets.  Not alot, but it was enough to keep me from having to get a real job when I was in college.  However, like anything with gambling, you’ll have some major ups and downs. I had a particularly bad stretch of games in 2004 and before I knew it, I owed a bookie $1295 that I didn’t have.

I really didn’t know the bookie very well, but he was the kind of guy you don’t want to owe money to.