The Aardvark’s Tongue

And we thought some items only lived in our imaginations, like the Flying-Squirrel Trap-Shoot-Kit. Apparently we were wrong. Very very wrong:

Today we installed All-in-One-SEO on the blog. Sure, partially because it makes sense if we ever want to achieve some visibility, but also because we like the name of the developer Uberdose
Serious about Search Engine Optimization? Drop by Newfangled.

The Bully Bag. Now here’s an item that you would think was torn straight from the pages of Sun-Dried Aardvark-Tongue Swizzle-Sticks (except for the fact of course that it’s real - and the write-up on the sellers website isn’t nearly up to our creative writing standards).

As entertaining as it might be to have a polyethylene coated Bull’s Scrotum filled with nuts on your table, might we suggest that you just pick up the book instead (yes yes we know, shameless self promotion).

~

Last week we tried a new feature - the free weekly book excerpt here on the blog. We already had the newsletter but we had requests to put it on the blog, so we have. We will probably keep the two or three most recent newsletters available. You can click the navigation above to go to this weeks, #7 the Elephant-Ivory Disposable-Toothpicks.

10 short days until Earth Hour - March 29, 2008 8-9 PM. Earth Hour is a global event that symbolizes that each one of us can have an effect on global climate change. For one hour, by turning off your lights you will help show your commitment to the need to address global climate change.

This is the perfect opportunity for individuals, governments, businesses and communities around the world to unite for a common purpose, in response to a global issue that affects us all. - Carter S. Roberts, President and CEO WWF

This week we updated the format of the blog.
We gave it a new look and while we were at it we decided to add a weekly book excerpt page - if you don’t want to buy the book you can read it for free. This week’s installment is the Flying-Squirrel Trap-Shoot-Kit.

Be sure to check it out and to check back. We will be adding a RSS feed to it to help those that don’t want to receive it by email. Any other suggestions are gladly welcomed.

My friend David Alison started blogging recently and yesterday made it as high as #5 on the front page of Digg with his entry What happens when a Windows developer gets a Mac? The post was Dugg over 1900 times yielding more than 65,000 unique visitors to his blog. And the upshot for us? We received 8 referral visits from David’s post about our book and two of those visitors signed up for our newsletter - a 25% conversion rate! Thank you David, we are grateful for every reader.

So, it looks as if things have leveled off. Now 5 weeks in for every un-subscriber there is one new subscriber. Sales are at 4% of the newsletter subscriber base - which is better than anticipated (if only slightly). Web site traffic has also leveled off. There is a peak after every newsletter then it tapers off daily until the next one. It is time to move to new tactics but thankfully nobody’s career is riding on the sales of the book so we can go about changes in our leisure time if necessary.

So tonight is mailing #4 of the weekly newsletter, this week’s installment is the Disposable Box-Turtle Poop-Scoop. This should be a good litmus test of who wants to stick around (I was going to send the Yawning-Hippo Stereo-Speakers but I thought the sphincter reference might be a bit too much too soon. Much safer to go with poop).

Last week’s installment saw an equal number of unsubscribers and subscribers. Perhaps we are turning the corner. In terms of sales - for every 10 subscribers we have sold one book. That’s good (I think).

If you have advice, please feel free to share.