Ravi's Rants

Rndaom, Yet <Well Formed/>

Better Than Disneyland

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How Your Online Course Can Be Better Than Disneyland

How Your Online Course Can Be Better Than Disneyland

So recently, along with my family, I visited Disney California Adventure.

And a few months ago, in December 2016, during the holiday break, my family and I went to Universal Studios.

Now, I live in San Diego, which is about 1.5 hours from Anaheim, which is where Disneyland and California adventure are located. And about a 3 hour drive from Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

Universal has something called “Front of Line” access. It is about $100 dollars more on top of a regular ticket, which by itself costs about $100.

So when you pay an extra $100 for front-of-line access, you basically get to go to the front of the line for every single ride, only once per ride, of course. And even if you go on a week day, let alone going during a major holiday, the lines are absolutely crushingly long. 1 to 2 hours wait for each ride. And because we paid extra for front-of-line access, we were able to get to the front of the line for every single ride, thus saving us at least 1 hour per ride.

So paying $400 extra for 4 front-of-line passes, was totally worth it, considering we saved about 4 to 6 hours in total of standing in line. Now that’s a win-win, if you ask me. Universal wins because it gets to squeeze out an extra $100 per ticket for the front-of-line access, and it was a win for us because we saved so much time, and that made it so much more enjoyable, and we were able to get to all of the rides, and it only enhanced the experience.

But here’s the problem with what Disney does, which is completely the opposite of what Universal Studios does. And here’s why you shouldn’t make the mistake of following Disney’s model, and should instead use Universal’s model….

Listen to the rest of this via my podcast episode above.

How To Over-deliver

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Imagine the little girl in the beginning, dropping just a few coins in your hat, as one of your customers.

And the musicians as your team.

Now imagine how thrilled your customer would be if your team could over-deliver like in this video.

Think you would get a standing ovation (great ratings and testimonials) and everyone flocking towards you (viral marketing, social proof) and have happy customers (repeat business)?

“But.. it was all planned”, you say? Well, who’s stopping you from executing a well-planned service like this?

Who said it has to be on-the-fly?

Who said it’s not OK to generate a “planned WOW!”?

DigitalAccessPass.com’s 1st Birthday

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1 year ago, I launched a membership plugin for WordPress, called DigitalAccessPass (DAP).

It had some ground-breaking features – many firsts for its niche. Like “Content Dripping”, for example (I even coined a new word: ContentResponder :-).

Yesterday (October 11, 2009), DAP celebrated it’s 1st birthday!

Just some proof that with a lot of focus, hard work, persistence, passion, great customer service and a little bit of smarts, it is possible to create something a lot bigger than what was in your dreams 🙂

Click here to see how the birthday party went down…

“Simple” and “Easy”

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The difference is pretty simple, actually 🙂

Quit Smoking
Simple: We all know the health benefits of not smoking. Quit smoking, live longer.
But Not Easy: The actual act of quitting is really hard.

Losing Weight
Simple: Do it and you will look good, feel good, and have more energy
But Not Easy: Working out frequently, cutting down on your favorite fatty foods, and eating healthy, is the hardest thing to do when you’re overweight.

Raving Fans
Simple: Take good care of your customers, and address their questions and concerns quickly.
But Not Easy: The amount of time and effort spent and processes you need to put in place. And sincerely caring about your customers.

Creating Something “Remarkable”
Simple: Build something that people want or need with a unique twist, go really deep in features, and address all the benefits.
But Not Easy: Think Microsoft. All the money and resources and clout in the world, yet they give us Windows ME and Vista.

Earning A Recurring Income
Simple: Build a membership site, add great content, price it well and market it well.
But Not Easy: Implementing the right membership software, creating great content consistently, doing the research and testing on pricing, implementing solid marketing.

If you just looked at what needs to be done, a lot of things in life are actually quite simple.

But the act of just doing it, doing it well, and continuing to do it well, is never ever easy.

Hope you don’t settle for the easy in life. Because nothing worth doing in life is ever easy.

Simple, may be, but never easy.

Chat With Your Visitors: Google Chat For Your Web Site

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Until last night, I thought I was quite tech-savvy and very up-to-date with the latest and greatest in the web world. But I guess I was wrong 🙂

I started on a (brief) quest last month to add live-chat to some of my sites. After looking around, I couldn’t find a decent free solution. Of course, I always pay money gladly if I can’t find a free solution or find that a paid solution will solve my problem. And my search ended concluding LivePerson as the best option.

But then of course, my primary project took precedence, and I forgot all about it (eADD anyone?).

Recently, I picked up the thread again, and stumbled upon Yahoo Pingbox. It seemed very cool – simply add a piece of code (the gadget) to your web site, sign in to Yahoo Messenger as usual, and your visitors to the page with the gadget can chat with you, and you’ll get the messages in your YIM client. And the best part is, Yahoo notifies you every time someone arrives at the web page, even if they don’t initiate chat.

So, I tried it, but the gadget on my site always showed me as “Offline” even though I was online.

After a lot of searching, forum-posting and soul-seeking(!), I finally gave up on Yahoo’s Pingbox. But it was this search that led me to Google’s own Chatback solution.

It is rather surprising that Google and Yahoo would offer such services and do absolutely no marketing whatsoever.

And the irony is that even if you Googled for “google chat gadget” or something similar, you would probably still not find the link I’m about to share with you, as Google seems to have hidden their own service quite successfully from site owners like you and me – who can really use something like this!

Here’s a live example (you’ll see a live ‘clickable’ link if I’m ‘available’)…

When you add a Google Chatback Gadget to your site…

1. Visitors can chat with you anonymously, but you get all the instant messages in GoogleTalk or within the browser if you’re just chatting from within Gmail.

2. Your visitors won’t know what is your gmail id – so you don’t have to worry about spam.

3. Whatever status you set in Google chat, that’s the status your web site visitors will see too.

4. You can add the same widget to any number of web sites/pages.

Here’s how you add the Google Chatback Gadget to your site:

A. Go to http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New .
B. Log in to your Google account
C. Customize the Gadget style
D. Copy the code to your web sites/pages.
E. Sit back and wait for your visitors to start messaging you! Done!

So, spent 3 days and couldn’t get Yahoo Pingbox to work. Spent 10 seconds and got Google Chatback to work.

There, I just saved you a few hundred dollars 🙂