Monthly Archives: May 2015

No Time. No Time. The Prequel.

Here’s my original post on Reddit that spawned what I wrote here.

I’m a 40 something guy who has been doing “try before you buy” software for more than 10 years. I have several products, but one has been my bread and butter for several years. I’ve also got a SAAS product in the same field. Now, my “business” is essentially me, my better half helps me out with bits and pieces but, essentially it’s me doing everything. Development, support, marketing, SEO, website maintenance, blogging, planning. My products do ok, with many thousands of sales and 200 or so new customers each month and monthly sales still good (low $xx,xxx each month) but not what they could have been if I’d kept up my growth curve. Recurring income is not what it should be because when I got started recurring income wasn’t the done thing in online software sales.

I’ve been trying to remove myself from certain aspects of the business and “out-source” work. Namely, blogging, social media, and some SEO. I’ve been trying for 2 years and have burned $30,000 on either free lancers or businesses who have either completely failed to deliver, required so much direction that I may as well have done the work myself, or delivered work of such poor quality that it was valueless.. My most recent experience is with a large company whose principal is well known in web marketing circles. I spent $6,000 in three months for NOTHING despite there being a well defined plan of action in place. Honestly, I have no idea how businesses can behave so poorly. It’s very demoralizing.

Anyway, I work long hours at tech support and product development and it continually eats away at me at the work that isn’t being done. The things that need doing every week, blogging for my users, doing keyword research for new articles, posting to FB and LinkedIn and Google+. Plus I am overloaded with ideas for new tools and link bait for my sites, nothing that requires much expertise but work that takes time. I know the type of person I need, and I only need them for a day a week. But I am out of places to look and perhaps I don’t know the right questions to ask to find the person. I’ve tried various online forums, freelancer sites, and local VA’s. The people I’ve found have been poor at best and require so much management that it’s not worth the money.

I am sick of wasting time on this, and wasting money and watching my online ventures fade away because there’s only one of me. Help. What do I do NEXT!!!!

No Time. No Time.

I’ve been struggling to find someone to do some work for me so that I’m not doing everything myself. I posted up something on Reddit about it a few weeks back and got a message today. I thought my reply was worth posting here.

Hi Tom, No, didn’t find anyone. To be honest I don’t really understand how I can really out-source much of my work without building a strong on-going relationship with someone, and that’s really only ever going to happen with an employee. Right now I can’t afford an employee.

I’ll give you an example. I post weekly tips for using my products better to Facebook. I can’t outsource the selection of the tips, it’s something that someone who does tech support for my product needs to do. So, that means I do it. So I spend a couple of hours every month writing tips. Then I could outsource the actual posting to FB and Google+. But you know what, that takes about 2 minutes. So no real point. Another example is writing user guides. I’ve tried outsourcing this multiple times and the outcomes are just rubbish, it needs someone intimately familiar with my products for it to work. And that’s only going to happen with an employee that spends multiple hours working the products and supporting them. I’d love to find someone to create flash demos for my products too, but I have exactly the same problems.

I’ll run a task past you and see if it’s something you think that fits within your skillset. My products are HR/time tracking/payroll based. B2B 100%. I have multiple free resources available on the websites that are designed to bring quality traffic to my site. Generally they are “inspired” by other free resources I find around the internet. For example, right now I am building a simple employee shift schedule tool in Excel. As I basis I use other templates I find around the internet, improve on them, put some smart formulas in Excel to automate some of it, and hey presto free resource. I am careful that they are “inspired” by other free resources rather that slavishly copied. I then write a 500-1000 word keyword targeted article on the tool, publish in WordPress, link to it from a few relevant internal pages on my website, post an update to FB and Google+ and job done. All up about 4-6 hours work.

If I provided you with a link to another tool along those lines that I need done would you take a look and let me know if it’s something that would fit in your skillset? Right now I’ve got three more of these tools I need developing and I’d happily pay someone to do so. However, what I am not happy doing is spending 10 hours explaining what I need done and then 10 hours doing it again because it’s rubbish. And that’s been my experience to date. Here’s a tool I’d like created:

*link removed*

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks for taking the time for reading all of this. I’d like to hear your thoughts.
By the way, I take a long time to respond to things on Reddit as I’ve locked myself out of accessing it during office hours (it’s a terrible yet compelling time-waster). Also, your PATH link isn’t going where it should I think. I am not sure at all what PATH is and would appreciate some more information.

Mark

AFL Tipping Spreadsheet – Round 5 Results

Again this week I think we’re seeing the weakness of systems that use ladder position and do not weight for the quality of teams played. Late in the season this will not matter so much but in early rounds the weakness will be apparent. I do not believe a sane tipper would have selected GWS against West Coast in Perth, a couple of the systems did. Similarly, choosing Richmond over Geelong was not (in my opinion) a sensible pick. My own tips are leading all the systems by a considerable margin now.

Results Round 5

My Tips System 1 System 2 System 3 System 4
8 5 5 6 6

Current Leaderboard (Round 5)

My Tips System 1 System 2 System 3 System 4
33/45 25/45 27/45 29/45 29/45

Redirecting Adwords by Operating System

My desktop software products run on Windows. I spend a significant amount each month on Google Adwords to drive traffic to my websites, which is problematic as Adwords does not allow you to filter traffic by operating system. It does allow you to reduce bids on Mobile traffic but it bundles Desktop/Full Sized Tablet with Browser traffic into one segment. In the last few years the amount of non Windows OS traffic I receive via Adwords has grown steadily and now makes up slightly more than 50%. I’ve been struggling for a while to work out what to do with this traffic as clearly users from non Windows devices cannot use my software. Yesterday at 4AM I hit on a possible solution and spent the day implementing it. Basically I’m now intercepting the clicks on my “Download Now” buttons/links, checking the client operating system, and if it’s not a version of MS Windows then redirecting them to a page targeted at my online SAAS products. Those products WILL work on their non Windows devices. Sure, it’s an obvious thing to do but I work in isolation and sometimes it takes me a while (years) to reach the “obvious” solution to a problem.

Here’s how I did it:

1) Installed the PGWBrowser plugin for jQuery. This plugin allows you to detect the OS, browser and viewport of web clients.
2) Enabled the plugin in WordPress by enqueuing the JS file:

wp_enqueue_script('pgwbrowser',get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/js/pgwbrowser.min.js',array(),false,true);

For non WordPress pages (my Adwords landing pages) I used the following (making sure it came after loading jQuery):

<script type="text/javascript" src="/wp-content/themes/Divi-child/js/pgwbrowser.min.js"></script>

3) Now I adjusted the onclick call on my download buttons. I know that using the onclick event like this is archaic but I’ve been doing it this way since 2004 and it works nicely so I’m not changing it! I use this event to redirect users who download the software to a “Download Complete” page that allows me to count downloads. Here’s what the HTML/JS looks like now:

<a class="button_class button_icon_download" href="/downloads/some_file_name.exe" onclick="SetUpRedirect('some_file_name.exe',event)">

You can see I’ve passed the file name to be downloaded to the JavaScript function as well as the event (click) object.

4) The final step was to adjust the SetUpRedirect JS function to accomplish my goals. Here’s what that looks like now:

function SetUpRedirect(destination,event_object)
{
		var pgwBrowser = jQuery.pgwBrowser();
		var os=pgwBrowser["os"];
		var os_name=os["name"];
		os_name=os_name.toLowerCase();

		if (os_name.indexOf("windows")>-1)
		{
			setTimeout(function(){window.location='http://'+location.hostname+'/download-file/?file='+destination;},3000);
			return true;		
		}
		else
		{
			event_object.preventDefault();
			location.href="http://"+location.hostname+"/some-landing-page/?file="+destination+"";
		}
	}

That’s all pretty self explanatory. We’re making use of the PGWBrowser plugin to get the Operating System of clients and checking if it contains “Windows”. If it does those users get redirected to the download success page as usual. However, if they are not Windows users we use the jQuery preventDefault method on the event object to stop those users downloading the trial version of my software. They are then redirected to another landing page that says something like “hey we noticed you’re using a non Windows device, why not try out our spiffy web-based product instead?” Neat.

Brew Day 3 – 4 May 2015 English Cider 6 Litre Test Batch

I saw this recipe for English dry apple cider on HomeBrewTalk and thought it looked interesting (and I like cider). It’s a long term brew with people saying the cider only comes good sometime after the four month mark. The recipe itself uses store bought clear apple juice, yeast nutrient, and ale yeast. It also makes use of an acid (lime juice) and steeped black tea for the tannins. The cider seemed like a good (and easy) recipe for a smaller test batch and the only real cost to me would be the apple juice. I am switching out the lime juice with lemon juice (as we have tree in fruit), there’s English black tea bags in the pantry and I have a packet of (unknown) ale yeast from a brew can. There’s no “yeast nutrients” on hand but some Googling suggests that plain old bread yeast boiled in water for 10 minutes works well as a substitute. Finally, it’s coming up to winter here and I can leave the fermentation vessel and secondary outside and not worry too much about temperature control. So, it’s all systems go!

Recipe
6L of store bought clear apple juice
The juice of half a small lemon
2 cups of water
7g packet of baking yeast
1 English black tea bag
Packet of ale brewing yeast

Boil a cup of water with the juice of a lemon for 10 minutes. Turn off heat, steep tea bag in hot mixture for 7 minutes. In another saucepan boil a cup of water with the packet of bakers yeast for 10 minutes. Let both mixtures cool to room temperature and tip both in fermentation vessel. Pour in apple juice making sure to get plenty of air into the mixture. Pitch the yeast, seal FV and let it ferment. Rather than use an airlock on my FV this time I’ve used a large rubber band and several layers of cling (GLAD or Saran) wrap to seal the top of the vessel. Apparently this works well and I can see what’s going on for once as my vessels are all opaque plastic. I didn’t take an SG reading as there’s not enough depth. I doubt I’ll bother except perhaps when I move it to a secondary. Expected FG is 1.000 or a bit less (it is DRY cider after all).

I plan on leaving it in the primary for a month, then into a secondary for another month or two before bulk priming and bottling.

30 May 2015 – I washed and sterilised the juice bottles today and racked off the cider from the fermenter into the bottles for aging for a couple of months. You can see the cider below. The bottle on the left was racked first and is quite clear, the bottle on the right was last and is quite cloudy. I tasted a little of the cider. On the nose it was quite a strong apple scent but had little apple flavour. It was extremely dry and the mouth feel and after taste was very reminiscent of dry white wine. There was a strong flavour of alcohol. I took an SG measurement at 1.004.

Cider racked into original 2L juice bottles

Cider racked into original 2L juice bottles

Update 18 July 2015

It’s been nearly two months since I started aging the cider. I put a bottle in the fridge today to cool and have had a glass back sweetened a little with regular apple juice. It is smooth and has a strong apple flavour. The dryness has dropped off a little and the dry harshness I noted a couple of months ago has gone. It’s also dropped out extremely clear. I guess because it’s flat it’s apple scrumpy. I’ll carbonate the other four liters and see how they turn out.

Apple Scrumpy?

AFL Tipping Spreadsheet – Round 5

Last week was a tough tipping week and this round is no different. I think this week shows some of the flaws in an automated tipping system that doesn’t include some sort of power rating that examines the quality of teams defeated as well as comparing relative ladder position. For example, the Adelaide v Pt Adelaide match sees all four systems selecting the Crows but I’ve chosen the Power. They’ve beaten two quality sides in the last two rounds, sides that played very well. Adelaide lost badly last week, and their three previous wins have been either unconvincing or against a side (North Melbourne) that was diabolical. All four systems are suggesting that the GWS/Eagles and Gold Coast/Lions games will be close ones. Personally I think the West Coast will win easily while the battle of the cellar dwellars could go either way.

Game My Tips System 1 System 2 System 3 System 4
Carlton vs Collingwood Collingwood Collingwood Collingwood Collingwood Collingwood
Richmond vs Geelong Geelong Richmond Richmond Richmond Richmond
Sydney vs Western Bulldogs Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney
Gold Coast vs Brisbane Gold Coast Gold Coast Gold Coast Gold Coast Gold Coast
North Melbourne vs Hawthorn Hawthorn Hawthorn Hawthorn Hawthorn Hawthorn
West Coast vs GWS Giants West Coast GWS Giants GWS Giants West Coast West Coast
Melbourne vs Fremantle Fremantle Fremantle Fremantle Fremantle Fremantle
St Kilda vs Essendon Essendon Essendon Essendon Essendon Essendon
Adelaide vs Port Adelaide Port Adelaide Adelaide Adelaide Adelaide Adelaide

AFL Tipping Spreadsheet – Round 4 Results

A poor tipping week for many this week, with 5 or 6 the most a tipper with any real logic could get. My own tips are now doing considerably better than any of the systems.

Results Round 4

My Tips System 1 System 2 System 3 System 4
5 2 3 5 5

Current Leaderboard (Round 4)

My Tips System 1 System 2 System 3 System 4
25/36 20/36 22/36 23/36 23/36