A Better Email Notification Service For You

Here we grow! You can now get email notifications of new posts from Feedburner, which Google bought for $100 million US in June 2007. As usual, Google made the service better and cheaper. The purchase shows how relevant blogging has become. As of today Feedburner burns blog feeds for 1,322,961 feeds for 743,793 publishers (see statistics).

Growing Pains
There's no seamless way to transfer your email addresses from the old service which was discontinued last month. For your protection, anti-spam laws require that you opt-in again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Please resubscribe by clicking on the links below

• subscribe to Marketing Actuary by email or newsreader
  
• subscribe to Riscario Insider (for consumers) by email or newsreader
  

During the transition, you may have missed

• Who's Reading: The Top 5 Posts of 2007
• Three Communication Tips: Jokes, Length , Offense
  
• How Would You Sell Soap?

What Happened to Zookoda
Australia-based Zookoda was terrific. A few months ago, they were purchased by controversial PayPerPost (now called IZEA), which pays bloggers to write posts that look real but are actually advertising (see Polluting the Blogosphere in BusinessWeek). A bad sign. Service did not improve.

Zookoda couldn't cope with spammers. On December 21, 2007, they suspended all broadcasts to make major changes. There was no advance warning or exemption for honest bloggers. Like me :(

Zookoda restored service on Jan 9 but there have been serious mixups. Content went to the wrong subscribers. I stopped using Zookoda last week after Spanish content was sent out.

Plan B
I'd been experimenting with another email service: Feedburner, which is now owned by Google. (Aside: my blog is hosted by Blogger, which Google bought in 2003, enhanced, and relaunched in 2007. Traffic is tracked by Google Analytics.) The service is very reliable but less flexible. Unfortunately, there's currently no way to move the mailing list from Zookoda.

New readers can now only subscribe via Feedburner. What about existing readers? You can

• re-subscribe to Marketing Actuary by email or newsreader
  
• re-subscribe to Riscario Insider by email or newsreader

Again, my sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

Who's Reading: The Top 5 Posts of 2007

Here are the top 5 posts of 2007

1. Five Presentation Tips From Steve Jobs (posted in July but read most in November)
2. Refuting Mistruths About Universal Life
   
3. Universal Principle of Influence 2: Scarcity
   
4. Universal Principle of Influence 1: Reciprocity
   
5. Four Habits of Highly Referrable People

This list shows that you like ideas that you can apply. That's great because that's the goal here.

Other Statistics
Traffic comes from three sources

• 36.0% direct visits primarily from readers who subscribe
  
• 33.4% from referrals from other blogs (even online, referrals help)
  
• 30.6% from search engines (92.3% use Google)
  

There are readers from 44 countries:

1. Canada: 56 cities from Vancouver to St. Johns
   
2. United States: mainly from California, New York and Illinois
   
3. Singapore
4. United Kingdom
5. Australia
   

Reader prefer Internet Explorer (60%) to to the arguably better FireFox (35%). Most IE users have the old version 6 but all FireFoxers are current. Maybe IE users have corporate computers where upgrades are slower? Overwhelmingly, readers use Windows (94.1%) but some use Macintosh, Linux and even the Nintendo Wii. In the Windows world, XP predominates: less than 5% picked Vista. About the same percentage use dialup internet.

Source
The statistics are gathered by Google Analytics and are surprisingly detailed. Your privacy is preserved: there's no personally identifiable data. There's plenty more

Business Applications
I'm simply blogging as a hobby, to help you become more successful. Imagine if you were blogging for business. The wealth of information is staggering. You can work from facts instead of impressions.

2008 Goals for Advisors

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. --- Michelangelo

You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
--- Yogi Berra

When a new business year starts, you can set new goals. Here's a list for advisors compiled by coach Ray Sclafani in Keep Your Focus:

1. Make this year my best ever
2. Network with my clients' other trusted advisors
3. Spend additional time with my family
4. Increase my revenue by 35% or more this year
5. Call my most important clients often

The basis of the list isn't provided (who was surveyed? how many?). The goals are generally vague. Even so, you might get some ideas. I especially like #2 and #5. More contact with centres of influence and key clients plants seeds. Here's proof.

December looked like a slow month. I visited key advisors to wish them well during the holidays and in 2008. Guess what? January has started with a roar. Today I'm conducting a morning seminar, lunch meeting, afternoon seminar, fact-finding meeting and a dinner/seminar for accountants. It's only Tuesday, my second day back.

Three Obstacles

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
--- Hannah Moore

Sclafani says three hurdles get in the way of achieving goals

1. procrastination
2. limiting beliefs
3. lack of accountability

Goals quickly fade, replaced by busy-ness.

Often one who does too much does too little.
--- Italian proverb

Links

• How to Write SMART Goals (PDF, Brock University)

Image from pictureperfectdigital