Monday, January 10, 2011

Being Right or Making Money

Luck's father, Oliver, says the decision was based purely on "staying in a place he loves, playing beside teammates he adores and getting the degree he covets." Perhaps, I can relate to Luck better than some because I have the perspective of a 19-year-old high school senior that wants nothing more than to be in college right now instead of high school.

Being a senior in high school is not a horrible experience by any means, but right now, if I could be anywhere I wanted, I would be a second-semester freshman in college. Maybe a lot of high school seniors say that, but I am in my 14th consecutive year at the same independent private school. I have gone to school with more or less the same people for that entire time. I am ready to change schools, take some new classes, meet new people, and leave home. So when Andrew Luck announced he wanted to stay at school instead of going pro, I totally understood how he felt. I wouldn't want to leave school either.

On another note, even though the current NFL Collective Bargaining situation reported influenced Luck's decision very little, it is still a major issue worth examining in the context of Luck's decision. A major crticism of Luck is that he will lose tens of millions of dollars for not turning pro.

On the surface, that is almost guaranteed to be true even if his draft stock doesn't go down at all, and he doesn't get hurt playing for Stanford next year or the year after that because the new CBA realistically has to have a rookie payscale, which would result in Luck receiving a significantly smaller salary than the one he would have gotten had he gone pro this year.

But a closer analysis of the broad financial picture reveals that Luck made a sensible decision that very few big-time college athletes are capable of making. Assuming Luck gets his architectural design degree, he will still be set up to make good money regardless of what happens to his football career.

If something bad happens, he has a college degree to fall back on. If he plays for 20 years and makes more money than most of us will see in our lives, then he will have options for a real job beyond football if he wants to leave. Most former players who don't want to coach or don't make good coaches and don't have enough education, end up on the street because they spend too much money during their playing careers. By getting a degree, Luck assures himself that he will not share that future.

Andrew Luck has the right ideas of how to build a successful future. The rest of the world of big-time college athletics should take notice. And his critics should think twice before saying anything.

I recently watched the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop from well-known artist Banksy. I got a kick out of this film for multiple reasons having liked Banksy's artwork for years now.

What most amused me though is how well it goes about making you question what celebrity is and how much you can achieve by becoming famous. The key point for me is questioning whether you really need to be creative and innovative above and beyond being famous.

Then Mike Butcher over at Techcrunch went and posted something this morning about startup teams trumping celebrity tech entrepreneurs. In summary, he too is making the point that execution far outweighs celebrity.

Basically, what I'm getting at, is all the parallels you're starting to see between the startup world and the movie business. I am definitely not an expert on the movie business and can only imagine what it's truly like from afar. Yet, we've all seen enough of it to realize a bit how things work in Hollywood. You basically have a couple large companies or studios as they're usually called. There you have management at the top who are the power-brokers in the industry. They back films which are used as vehicles to market actors who either succeed or not. If they do succeed, they are cast in further films and a ton of marketing is thrown at these films, regardless of whether these actors have talent or not.

Ultimately, the goal is to make as much money as possible and if you're the one making all this money, keep other people out so you can continue to make as much money as possible. Sure, there are some stand-out actors, managers and studios who go against the grain but basically it's an industry optimized to make money. Simplified by me immensely but I believe you understand what I am saying.

Now let's switch over to the startup world. It's no longer Hollywood and we're now a bit north in Silicon Valley. You have a couple firms who call all the shots and are known as Tier 1 VC's (with some major players like Google, Apple, and Facebook thrown in for good measure).

These VC's fund firms instead of films run by entrepreneurs instead of actors. Some of these entrepreneurs are successful and some are not. Those who are get funded further by these Tier 1 firms. Lots of companies are started and sold since these power brokers in the Valley sit on each other's boards and pass deals back and forth. The power brokers continue to make money and those entrepreneurs who don't lead to successful exits get weeded out (where's the reality TV version of "out to pasture" for entrepreneurs?)

Ultimately, as in the movie business, you make as much money as possible and keep out the riff-raff who would keep you from making tons of money as long as possible.

Now don't get me wrong. I am in no way arguing about whether the movie or startup business is right or wrong or skewed in someone's favor or not. I'm also probably simplifying it too much as well. But the point I am making is that we are in a world where it's about making money. Sure, you can get your touchy-feely on and say you're changing the world but ultimately you wouldn't "work" if it wasn't about making some money.

Hence, my advice to any entrepreneur is to take advantage of whatever you have if you ultimately want to be successful. If you are naturally good looking, get your face out there. Be on TV and in the press. If it helps you make money, go for it.

At the same time, if media attention doesn't help you make more money, don't focus on it. Get your pretty head down to business and execute like hell to innovate, optimize and sell your product. Or have the best of both worlds. Be a CEO focussed on getting your brand or product out there and have a number two (great blog post by Ben Horowitz) who takes care of business. What you need to focus on is making money and being the scrappy entrepreneur that you are, you'll optimize wherever you can to achieve your goal.

In the end it's never about who was most popular that determines success. Just think back to all those football players and cheerleaders in high school. (I've seen some of them from my high school....thank you Facebook.....and had a good laugh!) So often there are people you never hear about making tons of cash since they don't need to focus on media.

On the other hand, if Twitter/Foursquare/Zynga/Groupon hadn't received so much media attention, you think they'd be where they are now? I highly doubt it and I guarantee you that they had a clear strategy in place to use media (and position their founders) from the start. Hence, don't waste time focussed on the wrong things. If you're a celebrity entrepreneur who's counting his millions hats off to you. If you've become a media darling and are broke, well tough luck kid. Try something new.

By the way, here's what Exit Through the Gift Shop is about cut and pasted from Wikipedia. Think what you will about whether it's a real story or not but reast assured the dollars earned by "Mr Brainwash" were real!!

Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film is a Gonzo Documentary which tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. It is presented as a documentary, but reviewers have questioned its factuality. The film charts Guetta's constant documenting of his every moment on film, to his chance contact with his cousin, the artist Invader, and his documenting of a host of street artists with focus on Shepard Fairey, and also Banksy though the latter's face is never shown, and his voice is distorted to preserve his anonymity

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Friday, January 7, 2011

Ways of Making Money

Ok Go Explains There Are Lots Of Ways To Make Money If You Can Get Fans

from the everything's-possible dept

Over the last few years, we've covered many of the moves by the band Ok Go -- to build up a fanbase often with the help of amazingly viral videos, ditch their major record label (EMI), and explore new business model opportunities. In the last few days, two different members of Ok Go explained a bit more of the band's thinking in two separate places, and both are worth reading. First up, we have Tim Nordwind, who did an interview with Hypebot, where he explained the band's general view on file sharing:

Obviously we'd love for anyone who has our music to buy a copy. But again, we're realistic enough to know that most music can be found online for free. And trying to block people's access to it isn't good for bands or music. If music is going to be free, then musicians will simply have to find alternative methods to make a living in the music business. People are spending money on music, but it's on the technology to play it. They spend hundreds of dollars on Ipods, but then fill it with 80 gigs of free music. That's ok, but it's just a different world now, and bands must learn to adjust.

Elsewhere in the interview, he talks about the importance of making fans happy and how the band realizes that there are lots of different ways to make money, rather than just selling music directly:

Our videos have opened up many more opportunities for us to make the things we want to make, and to chase our best and wildest ideas. Yes, we need to figure out how to make a living in a world where people don't buy music anymore. But really, we've been doing that for the last ten years. Things like licensing, touring, merch, and also now making videos through corporate sponsorship have all allowed us to keep the lights on and continue making music.

Separately, last Friday, Damian Kulash wrote a nice writeup in the Wall Street Journal all about how bands can, should and will make money going forward. In many ways the piece reminds me a bit of my future of music business models post from earlier this year -- and Kulash even uses many of the same examples in his article (Corey Smith, Amanda Palmer, Josh Freese, etc.). It's a really worthwhile read as well. He starts by pointing out that for a little over half a century, the record labels had the world convinced that the "music" industry really was just the "recorded music" industry:

For a decade, analysts have been hyperventilating about the demise of the music industry. But music isn't going away. We're just moving out of the brief period--a flash in history's pan--when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. Music is as old as humanity itself, and just as difficult to define. It's an ephemeral, temporal and subjective experience.

For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. Records not only made it possible for musicians to connect with listeners anywhere, at any time, but offered a discrete package for commoditization. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.

But, he notes, that time is now gone, thanks in large part to the internet. But that doesn't mean the music business is in trouble. Just the business of selling recorded music. But there's lots of things musicians can sell. He highlights Corey Smith and Smith's ability to make millions by giving away his music for free, and then touring. But he also points out that touring isn't for everyone. He covers how corporate licensing has become a bigger and bigger opportunity for bands that are getting popular. While he doesn't highlight the specific economics of it, what he's really talking about is that if your band is big, you can sell your fan's attention -- which is something Ok Go has done successfully by getting corporate sponsorship of their videos. As he notes, the sponsors provide more money than the record labels with many fewer strings:

These days, money coming from a record label often comes with more embedded creative restrictions than the marketing dollars of other industries. A record label typically measures success in number of records sold. Outside sponsors, by contrast, tend to take a broader view of success. The measuring stick could be mentions in the press, traffic to a website, email addresses collected or views of online videos. Artists have meaningful, direct, and emotional access to our fans, and at a time when capturing the public's attention is increasingly difficult for the army of competing marketers, that access is a big asset.

...

Now when we need funding for a large project, we look for a sponsor. A couple weeks ago, my band held an eight-mile musical street parade through Los Angeles, courtesy of Range Rover. They brought no cars, signage or branding; they just asked that we credit them in the documentation of it. A few weeks earlier, we released a music video made in partnership with Samsung, and in February, one was underwritten by State Farm.

We had complete creative control in the productions. At the end of each clip we thanked the company involved, and genuinely, because we truly are thankful. We got the money we needed to make what we want, our fans enjoyed our videos for free, and our corporate Medicis got what their marketing departments were after: millions of eyes and goodwill from our fans. While most bands struggle to wrestle modest video budgets from labels that see videos as loss leaders, ours wind up making us a profit.

Of course, that only works if you have a big enough fanbase, but that doesn't mean there aren't things that less well known bands can use to make money as well. He talks about an up-and-coming band in LA that doesn't even have a manager that was able make money:

The unsigned and unmanaged Los Angeles band Killola toured last summer and offered deluxe USB packages that included full albums, live recordings and access to two future private online concerts for $40 per piece. Killola grossed $18,000 and wound up in the black for their tour. Mr. Donnelly says, "I can't imagine they'll be ordering their yacht anytime soon, but traditionally bands at that point in their careers aren't even breaking even on tour."

The point, Kulash, notes, is that there's a lot of things a band can sell, focusing on "selling themselves." And, the thing he doesn't mention is that, when you're focusing on selling the overall experience that is "you" as a musician or a band, it's something that can't be freely copied. People can copy the music all they want, but they can't copy you. "You" are a scarce good that can't be "pirated." That's exactly what more and more musicians are figuring out these days, and it's helping to make many more artists profitable. And, no, it doesn't mean that any artist can make money. But it certainly looks like any artist that understands this can do a hell of a lot better than they would have otherwise, if they just relied on the old way of making money in the music business.

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Case Study: How Dave Matthews Band Has Embraced The Modern Music Industry In Extraordinarily Profitable Ways

from the but-that's-impossible... dept

Over the last few weeks, we've noticed a few of our usual critics attacking the basic claims concerning successful music business models, because some of the bigger concert tours this past year ran into trouble, and because some of those tours seemed to realize they were charging too much. Of course, it's unfortunate when people misunderstand basic statistics and what data shows. First of all, we've never claimed that concerts were the only way to make money in the music business. There are lots of ways to offer scarce goods that have nothing to do with touring. Second, the fact that some big tours had trouble -- and misjudged the market is hardly a condemnation of touring as a money maker. It just means that some tours misjudged the market. This is hardly a surprise. For years, many tours had underpriced tickets, leading to a valuable aftermarket for scalpers. But over the past few years, major acts and venues have tried to capture more of that for themselves, leading them to push the market ever higher. There was obviously a limit as to how high those prices could go, and people have started to figure that out. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.

But the key point to recognize is that just because some acts misjudged the market, that's not a condemnation of these other ways to make money. This claim reminds me of similar claims back in the early 1990s about the productivity of computers in the workplace. A few companies did massive implementations that were done poorly, and turned out to be way too costly. And with poor implementation and poor planning, the end result was that these new computer systems didn't increase productivity. Suddenly, there were claims and press coverage about how computers didn't lead to any productivity gain. The mistake was conflating a bad implementation with what would happen if you implemented stuff properly. No one here has said that "just touring" automatically is a successful strategy. That's because it's not true. Instead, a properly implemented multi-prong strategy, that fits with both what the musicians want and their fans want, can work quite well.

A perfect example of that may be the Dave Matthews Band. Slate recently did an article on the massive success of the band. A big part of that, not surprisingly, is a relentless touring schedule. However, as the article notes, DMB is making a lot more money touring than most people realize. It's consistently one of the top earning touring acts in North America, despite not being as "big" a name as the others on the list. In 2010, for example, DMB was the 3rd largest grossing tour in North America, after Bon Jovi and Roger Waters, and ahead of such names as Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga and The Black Eyed Peas. And they did this with significantly lower prices than most of the other acts in the top 10. While tickets to Lady Gaga concerts averaged $98 and Sir Paul's concerts went for a staggering $138.49, DMB's average ticket price was $57.38. And, as the article notes, they did this in a massively profitable way, unlike some concert tours which cost so much as to have them losing money. On top of that, the band uses the famed Grateful Dead model for keeping fans coming back for more: changing up their songs each time, and having fun going off on different jams, that make each concert unique.

But, of course, it's not just about touring. The band has done its own version of CwF+RtB, with over 80,000 fans paying $35 per year for its fan-club (and the 80,000 number is three years old, so I'd imagine the real numbers are now much higher). That's $2.8 million from the fan club alone. Similarly, the band appears to sell a ton of merchandise. The article notes that, back in 1998, the band would sell $200,000 in merchandise per day, while on tour. Obviously, that data is way out of date, but the band seems to have little trouble coming with good "reasons to buy" for its fans.

I have no doubt that the usual critics will mock this, claim it's an exception, or somehow complain that this is somehow "bad." But it seems clear that it's working great for the band itself, and they're quite happy with it. And, really, in the end, that's what these business models are about. Finding the right mix for bands to connect with fans in a meaningful way, while setting up the structure that allows those fans to support the band. DMB seems like a perfect example of a band doing this on a massively large scale.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

foreclosure sales

Amherst Securities, whose mortgage research is well respected, published a new article on Monday which gives a sobering reading of the prospects for the housing market. It gives a detailed analysis of default rates among performing and non-performing mortgages, and concludes that the outlook is far worse than most investors assume.

The big source of risk is what they call the “non-agency” market, which is often called the “private label” market. They’ve argued in the past that 11.5 million homeowners are at risk of losing their residences. They contend that where other analysts and investors are missing the boat is by focusing primarily on loans that are already in trouble. Loans that have always been current but where the borrower has significant negative equity also have a reasonable risk of default.

Amherst Mortgage Insight January 3, 2011

One caveat about this report: it notes that once a borrower gets in arrears, the odds of the loan getting back on track, even with a mod, are low. Note that this is an indictment of the current way mods are done rather than mods in general. As Adam Levitin and Tara Twomey point out in a recent paper:

…servicers‘ compensation structures encourage them to stretch out defaults, but not too long. In other words, servicers want to keep borrowers in a default ―sweatbox to collect late fees and other junk fees, but only until the profit maximizing point. This may explain why servicers often do not vigorously pursue foreclosure at first, but instead allow foreclosure filings to lapse or defaults to linger for a year or more.

After hitting the profit-maximizing point on the cumulative net income curve (or more precisely, just before hitting it), the profit-maximizing servicer should want to foreclose and sell the property as quickly as possible before its cumulative income is eaten away by the rising cost of making servicing advances. Servicers are therefore incentivized to engage in quick foreclosure sales and REO sales, even at low prices, because they are indifferent to the amount of the sale proceeds due to the seniority of their claim while they are sensitive to the speed of the sale.

In addition, many so-called mods are mere payment catch up plans (and some require the borrower to make higher-than-normal payments). Servicers very rarely offer deep principal mods, even though that would be a win-win for the borrower and virtually all bond investors. The so-called “permanent mods” under HAMP were a mere kick-the-can-down-the-road strategy of five year payment reductions, with the shortfall typically added to principal. Why should a borrower try hard to save his house if even after his effort, he still faces a big loss upon resale?

Until investors and policymakers get out of denial and start to consider ways to cut the Gordian knot of the housing crisis, mounting foreclosures will exact a large toll on families and communities.

Nov Existing Home Sales totaled 4.68mm annualized, below expectations of 4.75mm. With the foreclosure disruption hitting in late Sept, Nov closings were likely influenced by this but it’s still the best level of sales since June and up from 4.43mm in Oct. All regions saw a rise and the gain was led solely by the single family sector. Distressed sales made up 33% of sales, in line with prior months but that may be impacted in the months ahead because of the foreclosure delays. Months supply fell to 9.5 from 10.5, the lowest since June but still remains well above a healthy level of 6 mo’s and some speculate that including shadow inventory, the level is more like 2 yrs. The listed # of homes for sale was 3.71mm, an 8 month low. The median price rose .4% y/o/y. Bottom line, while encouraging that sales are bouncing, they are still near levels last seen in 1997 with a lot more inventory ahead to plough through.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 1/6 - Arrowhead Pride

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 1/6 - Arrowhead Pride

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 1/6 - Arrowhead Pride

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 1/6 - Arrowhead Pride

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 1/6 - Arrowhead Pride

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 1/6 - Arrowhead Pride

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 1/6 - Arrowhead Pride

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Dallas Morning News publisher on paywall plans: “This is a big ...

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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Making Money Secrets

"The best part of blogging is the people you will meet"- Hugh MacLeod repeating wisdom from Loic Lemeur to me at the Big Pink at 2 am in South Beach after the Future of Web Apps 2008.

If you asked me to tell you a list of three of the best decisions in my life, I can certainly tell you that regularly writing is one of them. It's the reason I'm an author here at OnStartups, made many new friends, had interesting opportunities cross my radar, and most importantly had the chance to share knowledge that has helped other entrepreneurs.

Why You Should Write

You Will Meet Other Smart People

Writing has allowed me to meet a slew of smart people. Some of these people are now virtual acquaintances and some are very close friends on a personal and professional level. Each article that you publish is a synthesized thought process that may click with other entrepreneurs instantly. Have you ever had a feeling when reading an article that "Wow, they are thinking exactly what I'm thinking"?

By writing, you are likely to encounter a handful of people that experience the same thing. Occasionally one of those people will reach out to you via email or bump into you at an event. You might make a new acquaintance, a new co-founder for the future, potential investor, hire,etc. At the end of the day, being an entrepreneur is about finding other smart (hopefully smarter) people to collaborate with and writing frequently helps make this happen.

Example: I ended up becoming a writer here at OnStartups due to my own writing. A year ago, I put out an article called "Disruption and My Next Startup". This is how I first met David Skok from Matrix Partners. David later introduced me to Dharmesh, who has become a good friend since moving to Boston. After talking about all things entrepreneurial, we realized we both had the same altruistic goals with writing: to meet other smart people and help share the lessons we've learned. Small piece of trivia: OnStartups was started in 2005 on Dharmesh's birthday. I joined OnStartups on my birthday this year (September 8th).

Your Experiences Will Provide Insightful Knowledge To Other Entrepreneurs

Every entrepreneur has been through many of the same yet different experiences. We find co-founders, we all work at building a product/service, we all try to get customers, etc. Even though we're doing the same thing at a high-level, we all have different experiences. We may have found great co-founders, built a great product, but fail to acquire customers. Each entrepreneur+startup mix is a unique permutation that varies from the rest of the world, hence providing a snowflake of experience. Through writing you can not only help share your successes, but also the pitfalls that lead to your failures. There's no magic bullet to entrepreneurship, but the wealth of writing from experienced entrepreneurs out there such as Paul Graham, Dharmesh here at OnStartups, Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky have prevented young entrepreneurs from making mistakes that they might have made otherwise. Open source technology has helped entrepreneurs get started immediately with no capital while significantly reducing risk (you would have to raise a large amount of capital to launch anything with lines of code behind it a decade ago). I believe open source knowledge on entrepreneurship can help do the same when it comes to the business side of things. Getting as many entrepreneurs writing + sharing their insight is the very first start of this.

You Will Establish Domain Expertise

Every person is an expert in their own right at something. It might be user interface design, coding, leadership, raising money, investing, etc. By writing you get a chance to establish that domain expertise by sharing it with the world. Don't worry about people stealing your secret sauce either. Famous chefs share their secrets and hints all the time without fear that it will cause their demise.

It Helps Build Dedication

Writing on a regular schedule takes a lot of discipline, just like going to the gym or practicing a new martial art. Nothing happens overnight, including building an audience and becoming a good writer. Like most things in life, writing takes time and strong dedication. Unwavering dedication is a valuable skill in startups that many seem to forget. If you keep yourself dedicated to writing on a consistent schedule, those important values will carry over to other facets of life including startups.

Your Communication Skills Will Get Exponentially Better

It takes a lot of work to become a great communicator as an entrepreneur. You have to break down complex problems, very technical solutions, and intricate details into soundbites that flow logically. By writing, you develop the ability to communicate more clearly to an audience of many, by providing a logical argument with a unique angle to your position. In some ways, you've been learning this skill your entire life through schooling, but writing as an entrepreneur in a public medium is something completely different. Through schooling you write for an audience of 1-2 people. Those people will usually judge you based not upon the content, but whether you agreed with their point of view. Writing as an entrepreneur in a public medium puts you in the spotlight of tens of thousands to millions of unique readers. If your writing isn't cohesive, there are many that can call you out. I had some rough professors throughout my undergrad years, but no one will call you out like internet commenters, many of which may be trolls. By the third article, you start to subconsciously think "Is this cohesive/does it make sense?" as a gut reaction when writing in order to avoid negative feedback.

You Will Build An Audience That Will Give You Candid Feedback

If you're really lucky, you will start to build an audience that isn't full of trolls, but that consists of those that are genuine and honest. They may give you negative feedback, but it will be candid+honest. Don't just look at the number of re-tweets on an article, look at the articles that get the audience to participate. You will eventually find a groove of what your audience enjoys and what they consider good writing. Try to reply to every comment as well, even if it is a simple "Thank you."

It Is A Rapid Accelerator Of Serendipity

Startups are certainly impacted by luck, but I believe they are impacted just as much by serendipity. You never know who knows who or who you may run into at an event. By putting yourself out there and making yourself open to meeting as many people as possible, serendipity is much more likely to happen. Once you have even a minor audience, you are now likely to experience the effects of serendipity. One article might reach 500 or 50,000 people in a short span of time. Remember that we live in a world where content/information travels faster than ever before. Out of those 50,000 people, you never know who might be reading, who might reach out to you, or who might leave a comment. I can tell you this: The majority of good things that have happened to me in business can be traced back to my writing.

9 Tips How To Get Started

Many think that writing is as simple as registering for a Wordpress/Tumblr/Posterous account and all of a sudden they're the next Seth Godin. Just like anything in life, it takes time, practice, and finding the formula that works well for you. I started writing almost 2 years ago, but didn't get into it seriously until approximately 3-4 months ago. Here's a list of some of the things that I've learned along the way that will hopefully be useful food for thought.

1. Keep It Simple And Worry About The Aesthetics Later On

Sign-up for Posterous, Tumblr, or Wordpress. If you really want to customize things later on, host your own Wordpress install. Find a good, simple/basic theme, set up some basic settings + SEO, and get to the races with writing. Try to use your own name as the domain name. If you have a popular first+last name combo and can't own your exact name, try to get something similar. Last, but not least, try to have a picture of yourself somewhere on the site. It's good to put a face to your writing and this will help people identify with you when meeting up in person. Besides the simple stuff above, just start writing. Insightful content is king and that's where you should be focusing your efforts.

2. Define A Specific Audience To Write To

As you'll see in this link, which is also listed below, John Gruber writes for a specific audience- himself. You can further narrow down John Gruber as an apple fanboy who is geeky and educated. When writing I try to do the same thing. I write every article as if I owned a time machine and could mail myself letters five years ago when I was first getting started. To be honest, I still don't really know anything, but back then I knew absolutely nothing at all. Everytime I'm in the midst of an article, before completing it, I ask myself: "Would this have been useful to me five years ago?" If I say "No", then I stop writing, and possibly come back to it later to re-evaluate things if a new approach to the article comes up. Find your audience, that one exact ideal person, and write to them every time.

3. Set a regular routine

I get one article out every week and try to stay to that schedule regardless of what else is going on. I put it in line with working out everyday. It either gets done or not done. Sure the world won't end, if you miss a week, but that's not the point. It's about building dedication and putting something fresh out. I do all my writing on Sundays, edit throughout the week, and then release the articles when I have time to deal with comments/promote the article. The downside to this is writer's block or feeling like you have to write for the sake of just writing. I stray away from this by breaking things up into chunks and sections.

4. Don't Force It

Whatever you do: Do Not Force An Article. Set your schedule loose enough that you can get something out the door on time, but don't wait until the last second. Spend a lot of time thinking about your articles before hand. Most of my articles are formed before I write a single word in textmate. While I run, spend time on the T, and shower I usually think through the logic of articles. By doing this, you're not looking at writing an article like it's a high-school essay. It will flow naturally and won't be forced.

5. Initially Share With Close Entrepreneurial Friends

In the beginning there is a good chance you won't have a large readership, but that's okay. Send the article to close friends in the entrepreneurial community and just ask for some basic feedback. If they like it, ask them if they can share it with others. Also start sharing with other communities that you may be a part of, such as the one here at OnStartups or Hacker News.

6. Watch Your Analytics

Check to see where most of your traffic is coming from and double down on those avenues. Also pay attention to direct traffic sources. This means that people are either emailing your article around, sharing via instant messenger, or actually going to the URL directly. Also look at which articles ultimately become most popular with readers. Over time you will start to understand what your audience likes (ie- entrepreneurial advice, tech insights, interviews with other entrepreneurs, current event analysis, etc.)

7. Have a main topic + supporting points to avoid rambling

Each and every one of my articles has the same general format. Position/Argument usually found in the title, opening paragraph, supporting H2 tags, and then a closing paragraph. It might get repetitive over time, but it allows me to form arguments clearly + segment things out well enough into chunks.

8. No linkbait, just "thoughtbait"

I don't get into flamewars or write linkbait. It may work very well for some entrepreneurs to get recognition and increase pageviews, but it shouldn't be about that. It should be about sharing your knowledge and hopefully educating your reader. I like to write what I call "thoughtbait". A reader should come away with actionable knowledge that makes them think "I need to try this" or "I'm pumped up to get something done". Readers should also be sharing the link to help others gain the same knowledge as well.

9. Make Yourself Easy To Reach

Last , but not least, make yourself approachable and very easy to reach. Put your email addresss up, Twitter account up, and possibly your phone number. Robert Scoble still has the same phone number from when he first got started, and will still pick up/respond to texts. It may seem like a burden, but it's not. If you want to meet as many smart people as possible, you need to make yourself approachable and easy to be contacted. I get multiple emails a week from readers or people saying "thank you" re: my articles. This is one of the most rewarding things I've ever experienced. Great part is this: You can start experiencing it too. The goal of this article isn't just to inform and educate, but to hopefully start a movement to get as many entrepreneurs as possible to start writing. Whether you are a novice or a seasoned startup veteran, writing will not only benefit you, but it will benefit those who need your knowledge. If you start writing or already write insightful pieces about your experiences, please drop me an email: j@jasonlbaptiste.com . I'm certainly going to start compiling the list as it grows and will share it. One of my first additions was my buddy Wayne , who founded i2hub.

Here are some other useful resources on the topic:

Spencer Fry- http://spencerfry.com/on-writing

Marco Arment- http://www.marco.org/691438863

Interview With John Gruber On Writing- http://shawnblanc.net/2008/02/interview-john-gruber/

So, are you convinced you should be writing -- or writing more? If you're convinced, what will it take to get you to do it? If you've already been writing, have you found it to be useful? Would love to hear your stories and experiences.

This post originally appeared on OnStartups.com.

Is there anything these Jersey Shore kids can’t do? I watched Barbara Walters’ “10 Most Fascinating People” show hoping to get some decent quotes from Sandra Bullock, who wasn’t even interviewed. Instead, I was treated to an interview with the Jersey Shore gang in which they defended themselves to Barbara and then defined their stupid insider words, like “Smush,” “Grenade” and “GTL.”

That segment also revealed the many ways that these kids are raking in the big bucks. Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino earned $10 million this year, not just 5 as previously reported, from his endorsement deals and iPod app. J-Woww has a tanning line out and a clothing line, and now there’s news that she has her own book coming out on “dating.” This is from the girl who slept with Pauly, but I guess of all the Jersey Shore women she’s had the least hookups in the house. (See diagram below, although I don’t watch this show to properly judge.) Anyway I fail to see how she’s qualified to put out a dating book, but I guess that doesn’t matter when it comes to making money.

Jenni “JWoww” Farley announced on her Facebook page this weekend that she, too, is throwing her hat into the writing ring to become a woman of letters. According to Farley, The Rules According to JWoww will offer “a new spin on the dos and don’ts of dating, from ’smushing’ guys to avoiding booty calls to finding the guy of your dreams.” Rife with “empowering advice for a new generation of self-assured young women,” the book will offer “shore-tested secrets on landing a mint guy, staying fresh to death, and kicking the competition to the curb.”

The dating guide, which will be published by HarperCollins imprint William Morrow, goes on sale February 8, 2011.

[From Celebuzz]

The book is being released just in time for Valentine’s day, when all the single girls with aspirations of being like J-Woww can get wasted and get their fake tits out to land the “guy of their dreams.” I’m sure he’s heavily bronzed, roided up, and has his own special language with his buddies through which he puts down all the women stupid enough to put out for him.

Update: here are more photos of Jenni on Halloween. Credit: PRPhotos

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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

personal finance budgets

Intuit-owned Mint.com is heading to schools today with the launch of a free, online program designed to educate middle-school students about personal finance and financial management.

Mint has partnered with educational publisher Scholastic to develop materials that parents and teachers can use to teach children the ins and outs of personal finance management. The materials includes lesson plans as well as an interactive game, to teach children money management, budgeting and goals.

For example, the program teaches children the concept of compound interest with real-life math problems, and encourages children to set goals and budgets with their own current work opportunities (i.e. babysitting).

Mint says the curriculum will be expanded to 30,000 classrooms nationwide early next year. Considering the state of the economy and credit, teaching children financial literacy and sounds personal finance practices at an early edge is an incredibly important initiative. In terms of branding, this is a big win for Mint, which can start building awareness of its tools among students at an early age.

So thinking about starting 2011 with a new and fresh finance app for your new and fresh WP7 device?

You have the chance now! moBudget has just been released for Windows Phone 7.

moBudget is a user friendly budgeting and expense tracking application. It will help you drive and organize both your personal income and outcome budgeting. By doing so, moBudget will also hint you about possible budgeting and money saving opportunities. Its main screen features a summarized dashboard with a set of intelligent indicators which will tell you how you are doing depending on your budgets and on the current date.

Forget about grabbing a calculator each time you need to get any numbers or if worried about making it to the end of the month or not; moBudget will tell you all: what you have, what you will have, what you owe and more. It will either inform, alert or advice you when needed so you don’t need to worry.

By allowing stepping through months, allows you to whether look back to see how you did on previous months or how you will be doing in the upcoming months, so you can fine tune your budgets to the optimal.

Take it with you, record your data and you will see how money won’t cause you a headache anymore!

More after the break.

Key features

Today Hub featuring a main dashboard with intelligent indicators

Upcoming and overdue payments, incomes, bills

Color-based and snapshot styled budget bar graphs for easy reading

Easy and fast input for tracking either expenses, incomes or transfer between accounts

Budget adjustment helper

Actual balance and budget balance adhoc *

Accounts and credit cards usage recording *

Cash flow bar graphs and out of funds predictions *

Credit card payment estimations and warnings

Can create future operations and recurrent operations

Multi currency support

Easy month back and forth navigation

Account balances reconcilation

Password protection in two ways (partial and complete)

Encrypted backups

More…!

* Estimated. Does not pull your bank information, however you can sync balances up to a specific date and moBudget will estimate the current and future balance and cash flow according to the data you register day to day.

Screenshots

So give it a try! App has a 15 day free trial period and currently is at 50% sale for Christmas.

– or- direct download link for Zune.

robert shumake detroit

Apple's iOS market share tops Android, RIM | Apple - CNET News

iOS is leading Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry operating system in U.S. market share, but Nielsen says the race may be to close to call. Read this blog post by Jim Dalrymple on Apple.

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Apple's iOS market share tops Android, RIM | Apple - CNET News

iOS is leading Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry operating system in U.S. market share, but Nielsen says the race may be to close to call. Read this blog post by Jim Dalrymple on Apple.

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robert shumake detroit

Intuit-owned Mint.com is heading to schools today with the launch of a free, online program designed to educate middle-school students about personal finance and financial management.

So thinking about starting 2011 with a new and fresh finance app for your new and fresh WP7 device?

You have the chance now! moBudget has just been released for Windows Phone 7.

Take it with you, record your data and you will see how money won’t cause you a headache anymore!

More after the break.

Key features

Today Hub featuring a main dashboard with intelligent indicators

Upcoming and overdue payments, incomes, bills

Color-based and snapshot styled budget bar graphs for easy reading

Easy and fast input for tracking either expenses, incomes or transfer between accounts

Budget adjustment helper

Actual balance and budget balance adhoc *

Accounts and credit cards usage recording *

Cash flow bar graphs and out of funds predictions *

Credit card payment estimations and warnings

Can create future operations and recurrent operations

Multi currency support

Easy month back and forth navigation

Account balances reconcilation

Password protection in two ways (partial and complete)

Encrypted backups

More…!

Screenshots

So give it a try! App has a 15 day free trial period and currently is at 50% sale for Christmas.

– or- direct download link for Zune.

robert shumake

Apple's iOS market share tops Android, RIM | Apple - CNET News

iOS is leading Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry operating system in U.S. market share, but Nielsen says the race may be to close to call. Read this blog post by Jim Dalrymple on Apple.

CNN's John Roberts Joining Fox News | John Roberts | Mediaite

Nike Air Max LeBron Soldier V – Upcoming Colorways | SneakerNews.com

robert shumake

Apple's iOS market share tops Android, RIM | Apple - CNET News

iOS is leading Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry operating system in U.S. market share, but Nielsen says the race may be to close to call. Read this blog post by Jim Dalrymple on Apple.

CNN's John Roberts Joining Fox News | John Roberts | Mediaite

Nike Air Max LeBron Soldier V – Upcoming Colorways | SneakerNews.com

robert shumake detroit

Several million Americans including my self frequently listen to a radio show from 1 to 4 PM Eastern in the afternoon. Unlike most political and sports talk shows, this is actually a show about you, me and everyone else. The Dave Ramsey show discusses topics of personal finance largely, but also extends to other areas of life. Every now and then the show has "theme hours" in which they accept calls on a particular topic, such as college, automobiles, the minimum wage, giving, and tipping.

One of the more popular theme hours is that of marriage and money. It's no surprise that married couples are arguing about money, usually one person is a saver, and the other is a spender. Usually one is a nerd who budgets down to every last penny, and the other is a free spirit who just pays for things as they come in. One interesting thing that most callers in this theme hour have in common is that when they refer to their financial situation, they refer to their assets and debts as "his" and "hers". For example, a woman recently called in and the husband wanted to use some of "her" income to pay off "his" student loan. These people have some issues.

When you get married, the pastor or priest will declare "and now you are one." He doesn't say, "And now you are a joint venture" or "and now you are one, except when it comes to money." You and your spouse are two halves of one whole. The second you get married, everything that is yours is your spouses. Yes, this includes savings, debt, income, and the like.

Too many couples attempt to operate separately with money. Some couples just have separate checking accounts, others even have completely separate financial lives and just split the bills fifty-fifty. This is not how marriage works. Marriage is a holy institution designed by God for us, we don't get to change the rules in the middle of the game. There are several references in the bible which state that when a couple is married, they are one, not two.

Couples who separate their financial lives often have much deeper issues of trust in their life. If they cannot trust their spouse with their money, who can they trust?

We need to quit referring to our stuff as "mine" and "hers", it's ours. "We" have an income, "we" have debt, and "we" have a retirement program.

robert shumake detroit

Apple's iOS market share tops Android, RIM | Apple - CNET News

iOS is leading Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry operating system in U.S. market share, but Nielsen says the race may be to close to call. Read this blog post by Jim Dalrymple on Apple.

CNN's John Roberts Joining Fox News | John Roberts | Mediaite

Nike Air Max LeBron Soldier V – Upcoming Colorways | SneakerNews.com

robert shumake

robert shumake detroit

Intuit-owned Mint.com is heading to schools today with the launch of a free, online program designed to educate middle-school students about personal finance and financial management.

So thinking about starting 2011 with a new and fresh finance app for your new and fresh WP7 device?

You have the chance now! moBudget has just been released for Windows Phone 7.

Take it with you, record your data and you will see how money won’t cause you a headache anymore!

More after the break.

Key features

Today Hub featuring a main dashboard with intelligent indicators

Upcoming and overdue payments, incomes, bills

Color-based and snapshot styled budget bar graphs for easy reading

Easy and fast input for tracking either expenses, incomes or transfer between accounts

Budget adjustment helper

Actual balance and budget balance adhoc *

Accounts and credit cards usage recording *

Cash flow bar graphs and out of funds predictions *

Credit card payment estimations and warnings

Can create future operations and recurrent operations

Multi currency support

Easy month back and forth navigation

Account balances reconcilation

Password protection in two ways (partial and complete)

Encrypted backups

More…!

Screenshots

So give it a try! App has a 15 day free trial period and currently is at 50% sale for Christmas.

– or- direct download link for Zune.

robert shumake detroit