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.

Why WordPress Is The Absolute Best Platform For Your Membership Site

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NOTE: WordPress is right for you, only if you want to actually launch your membership site some day, make money from your site, and do not wish to spend an insane amount of time creating and maintaining it, and only if you do not wish to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars outsourcing the creation and maintenance of your site

I recently happened across a blog post that presents an argument about why you should not use WordPress for your membership site.

That seems to have caused quite a stir among my target audience (who are basically people who want to start a membership site using WordPress).

A couple of them wrote to me and asked me for my opinion, 1) because I am such a big evangelist of WordPress, and 2) because I have developed a Membership Plugin for WordPress.

I read the argument with interest, and of course felt that it was a very extreme, one-sided worldview of WordPress. I tried to comment there on the site itself, but I got a message that “the site owner has blocked you from commenting”. Not sure why. I will try again. But in the mean time, I simply had to post this here.

So, after you’ve read Alex’s argument for why you should not use WordPress for your membership site, read my (well-rounded, well-educated and balanced, IMHO 🙂 opinion about why you would be foolish NOT to use WordPress for your membership site – especially if you’re a small-biz owner, info-product marketer, blogger or Do-It-Yoursef’er, and don’t have a big team or a big budget to outsource your membership site development.

My note to Alex…

Alex,

Having developed WordPress and Non-WordPress scripts for almost 15 years now, I have to respectfully disagree with your argument for not using WP for membership sites.

Let me try to present an objective argument here.

You wrote:
>>it doesn’t matter which one you will choose to use as they all share one big flaw – their dependency on the core of WordPress!<<

I am the developer of a plugin called DigitalAccessPass (DAP), which does *not* have a dependency on the core of WordPress. DAP is a separate piece of software, that can be plugged on TOP of wordpress, and only needs a simple, light-weight “Plugin” that acts as a “bridge” between WP and DAP. In the 15 months since the launch of DAP, and 10 months prior to that when we were developing DAP, WP has released a huge number of updates in those 25 months (2+ years), and we have *never* had a single instance where a WP update affected our script.

Again, it’s all in the design, right? DAP was deliberately designed from the ground up *not* to have a dependency on *any* CMS, not even WP. That’s the reason why DAP works right out of the box with regular, plain-ol HTML web sites, and using the “bridge” plugin concept, can be integrated into other CMS like Joomla, Drupal, etc (Joomla plugin for DAP is in the works as I write this). In fact, with just a little bit of work, DAP can be made to work with every imaginable CMS out there, for this very reason.

>>By themselves they will not function and same goes the WordPress core<<
See above. DAP will function all by itself with just regular HTML web sites.

>>WordPress is Open Source and its code is constantly under scrutiny not only by the good guys but also by people who are looking for a way to compromise your site<<
I can kind of agree with you there, but then, even software and services from even high profile companies, like Google and Microsoft get hacked or gamed. So, just because it’s open source doesn’t mean it’s more vulnerable, and just because it’s “closed source” doesn’t mean it is secure. It all depends on the developers and the community behind it.

I mean, non-WP sites get hacked all the time because the shared-site owner left a PHP script in there that’s vulnerable to XSS attacks, or left the permissions wide open inviting hackers to come join the party. That actually says more about the security of PHP itself, and the security of a shared-host environment. But why blame WP for that?

>>You quickly contact support of the developer who created the plugin you use for Membership Management before jumping into upgrade, as you have to ensure that it will continue to work with new version only to learn that he is taking romantic vacation on secluded island somewhere in Fiji and will not be back for next couple weeks…<<

Yes, I agree, that if you went with a small-time, one-man-developer solution, then regardless of whether they are in Fiji, or get hit by a bus, you’re going to be in trouble. That’s why you pick software from companies like mine, which have been around for 15 years, have written millions of lines of code for small businesses as well as for the enterprise, have a team in place for support, and won’t be going away any time soon (we can’t, because this is what we do :-).

>>I personally prefer that my membership script is separate and with dedicated support!<<
DAP totally fits the bill here :-). It is separate, and has dedicated, “non-outsourced” support 🙂

You are recommending a downloadable script solution at the end of your post – one which is developed in PHP. PHP has always been (arguably) one of the most insecure programming languages, just because, if you didn’t quite know what you’re doing, it allowed newbies to easily shoot themselves in the foot. Of course, PHP has come a long way since then, but it’s still not the most secure language.

Are we next going to start recommending that no one should use PHP scripts at all, and instead use something like Java or .NET?

So, whether it’s a programming language (PHP), a content management system (WP) or an operating system (Windoze), the solution is only as secure as its developers, the company backing it, and the community supporting it.

And most importantly, the security of a site is only as good as the actual “user” using it (if you download spyware and infected .exe files from the web and your computer gets infected, can you really blame Microsft for it?).

I guess you could blame MS, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.

So, when it comes to the quality of code, extensibility (hooks and filters and plugins) and the community, and the insanely large user base, WordPress simply can’t be beaten.

And when it comes to a membership script for WordPress, DAP also can’t be beaten 🙂

My humble $0.02 🙂

Appreciate the soapbox, the opportunity, and for your great post which seems to have evoked so many great responses 🙂

Thanks much!

– Ravi Jayagopal
Founder & Developer, DigitalAccessPass .com
(Membership Script for WordPress)

I’m hoping to augment this soon with a more detailed article about using WordPress as the platform to build your membership site.

So stay tuned by subscribing to this blog or by following me on twitter.

Feel free to pass this link to other WordPress lovers, and don’t forget to add your comments below. And no, I won’t block them – even if you’re Alex 😉

How To Destroy A Brand In 30 Seconds

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I’ve been a fan of Guy Kawasaki for a while now.

Not a fan-boi type, but still admired him enough to call myself a “fan”.

I follow him on Twitter, read his blog occasionally, and love to watch his videos as he is a great presenter and speaker who adds a lot of humor and wit to his speeches.

And then, I started reading about his recent keynote speech at SES 2009, NY (Search Engine Strategies).

Watched a couple of videos. Read a couple of articles.

He says stuff like… (paraphrasing here)..

* Twitter is just a marketing tool

* It’s all about how many followers you have

* Go get as many followers as you can

* Autofollow everyone just because they followed you

* It’s ok to “Ghost-tweet”.

Wow, that’s like Seth Godin saying it’s ok to spam, and email is just a marketing tool you should use to spam folks thoroughly.

Wow, that’s really shocking!

Someone I held in such high esteem, talking with such emotional disconnect and impersonal attitude towards followers (who are basically your fans – like me!).

Yeah, it did take more than 30 seconds. It took probably about 15 minutes. But the Guy Kawasaki brand has been irreparably tarnished, from where I stand. And where I stand is all that matters to me, doesn’t it?

Yeah, it doesn’t take too much to lose your fans. Just a little bit of disrespect will do the trick.

Guy Kawasaki: Un-followed.

1) Article: Guy Kawasaki: Twitter As a Tool for Social Media

2) Sage Lewis Interview: SES 2009

What Would Microsoft Do?

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Here’s something I completely forgot to add to my earlier post about “What Would – – – – Do?“…

Yes, I do occasionally think “What Would Microsoft Do?“.

And then of course, I do EXACTLY the OPPOSITE – especially when it comes to the quality of their products, their marketing, and their branding (or lack thereof).

So here’s yet another brilliant piece of marketing from Microsoft.

It really makes you cringe – and makes you wonder, is this the best they can come up with in spite of having all that money?

(Original) Brilliant “Host Your Own Windows 7 Launch Party” Idea from M$ (Original)

And here’s a parody of the ad….

(Parody) Brilliant “Host Your Own Windows 7 Launch Party” Idea from M$

Saving Money vs. Making Money

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I have a friend whose main purpose in life is to find deals and bargains and cut costs.

He once spent several weeks filling out an insane number of really long forms and processing rebate information, for a mail-in rebate promotion for a laptop. And he purchased that crappy, low-end laptop because that was the only one which had a mail-in rebate promotion available.

On top of that, he then wasted hundreds of hours in lost productivity because of the terrible performance of the low-end crappy machine which was very slow and kept crashing because it didn’t have enough memory and other resources.

He spends at least an hour a day looking at how else he can save money.

Switching his Phone, TV and Internet services from Cable Co. to Phone Co. when the former has a new customer promo. Then 6 months later, when the promo expires, switch back all of his services – Phone, TV and Internet – back from Phone Co. to Cable Co.

He is on the phone several hours a week, asking companies for discounts, looking for deals, filling out rebate forms, browsing online for deals, clipping coupons, driving tens of miles because some store somewhere is selling something for less, spending several hours during the weekend picking up used free stuff that people would rather give away (than trash them) on Craigslist.

He is the ultimate money-saving-machine. And he probably saved about $3,000 by being on top of his game.

The Flip Side

And during that same time, I have created 3 new products, tripled the size of my mailing list, wrote blog posts which brought me new paying clients and business contacts, improved several of my existing products, re-wrote and optimized multiple sales pages, launched 2 new membership sites with paying members, gave away my book for free online and still ended up selling several hundred digital copies, and made thousands in profits, and primed my business to make several tens of thousands more within the next few months. You could say roughly about $20,000 in profits in the same time frame.

$3,000 SAVING money.

– OR –

$20,000 MAKING money.

Doh!