Blogging for money: what is value?

So I've been thinking long and hard for quite some time about how to increase my income. My Landscape Architect Intern salary just isn't cutting it. And the salary of a licenced landscape architect will not cut it either, at least not without another 15 years of experience. And I dont' have 15 years to wait. I really want to kill my student loans long before then, which are currently clinging to me like a cluster of persistent tumors.

I watch my adsense account closely every day, like checking your mailbox in olden times to see if you got that love letter yet. My adsense account has brought in more than zero consistently for three weeks now. But not enough to live off of. Not even in Nairobi.

Clearly I've done something right in gaining enough blog traffic to convert some links into sweet google money. How to do more? Like $50000 a year more. That's $1000 a week, no small amount. At the current level of conversion (less than $1 per 100 pageviews) I'd need 14000 pageviews a day to replace my current salary. And my current salary is below my minimum acceptable ideal salary.

There just isn't enough interest online (or anywhere, really) in Landscape Architecture to generate that kind of traffic. Now if I could transition to gardens and residential garden design, I could get that kind of traffic. But that's a different audience from Landscape Architecture job seekers, interns, and students. Totally different. And a very saturated space. And honestly, I'm much more interested in about 40 decent subjects than in gardening right now: including wine-making, investing, founding businesses, real estate, beer, music, parties, parenting, saving money, paying off debt, clothing, computers, programming, website design, writing, chemisty, history, technology, travel, nutrition, to name a few.

I read a post from Steve Pavlina today, the web guru of self-help articles. He actually has a lot of great stuff, although much of it wreaks of new-age neo-hippy incense. Sorry, you'll have to wade through that.

I like the part near the end where he talks about wealth accumulation as the trade that the world gives you in return for value you've created. It's a very entrepreneurial viewpoint, and one that comes naturally to me. I haven't been capitalizing on it in the last many years because I've been chasing the dream of becoming a designer, but my entrepreneurial instincts are restless and desperately in need of excersice.

It's food for thought, and I am considering re-branding this blog (or basically scrapping it and starting another one in a new vein). It doesn't matter if I re-brand or start over since no one is reading this anyway, so I'll just save the time it takes to re-design it up front and let it evolve. I also need a new name, methinks. I am considering using this blog as a behind the scenes "how I built my other blog" blog. A kind of practical how- to for making a blog that actually gets traffic and creates value (and of course cashes that value out in the form of cold, hard currency). Is this space saturated? Of course. Do I have time for it? Not with my current schedule.

I'm also considering blogging about business ideas. I have shed loads of business ideas. Most people are really scared to talk too loudly at the pub about "their great idea", much less blog about them. But having the idea is the fun easy part that comprises about 0.1% of creating and operating a successful business. So I'm not worried about you steeling my business ideas. On the contrary, if you think any of them are good enough to discuss, let's talk! There's few things I like more than talking about business ideas, strategy, forming a team, and dreaming big.

Customer Service: 3 strikes in one day

(I haven't written much in a long time, I've had a hectic couple of months. Luckily my dedicated readers will forgive me. I'd love to be able to sit around and just blog all day like Scoble does. What is that guy selling anyway?)

Things, as they say happen in three's. Perhaps because I've been reading a lot of Seth's Blog, I noticed a disturbing trend in three encounters I've had in the last 24 hours. I've broken it down into three posts 'cause I'm wordy. Here are links to posts 1, 2 and 3.

--- I think of customer service as a subsection of the Golden Rule: treat others in a way that you'd enjoy being treated. Obviously if you're a masochist this won't always pan out well, but you know what I mean. People are lazy. We have narrow areas of interest, and most things outside of this area of interest fall into a category called "shit I wish I didn't have to deal with".

For example, I used to have a folder in my filing cabinet marked "TAX" where I put all my income tax forms, phone bills, student loan applications, bank statements, receipts, etc. I thought 'tax' was the correct label because it included all the organisations in the world that pick my pockets. But when I realized I was also filing appliance warranties, apartment leases, and passport renewal applications in my "TAX" folder I realized that it was actually my "shit I wish I didn't have to deal with" folder after all. But I digress.

Good customer service takes something out of the "shit I wish I didn't have to deal with" pile and puts it into the "shit that someone else took care of so I can get on with enjoying my day" pile. And that's a great pile, even when it's a bit steamy and smells of beef. The best way to help people out is to take care of their needs. If you have some skill or ability like a car to lend, a delivery network, or a service that people find useful, make it easy for them. After all, you need them more than they need you: there is often competition just around the corner.

I don't want to hear "there's nothing we can do". That goes nowhere but straight into the "shit I wish I didn't have to deal with" pile. Give me "here's what we can do", "there has to be a work-around somewhere, I'll take a look", or "I'll take care of it for you". Give me some initiative. Great service does make a difference and it does get rewarded. And it's not about subjugating yourself to the customer, it's about taking control of the situation and being a good host.

Anyone want a job tending my filing cabinet? Hey, maybe Scoble will hire me to file his blog posts...

Continue to strike 1

Customer Service: Strike 1!

1. Yesterday I went to rent a car for work at Avis. I was renting on the company account, which is on a Gold Visa so includes insurance. The customer service agent couldn't add insurance to my bill because the feature was locked 'off' on his computer. It's locked this way to prevent redundant coverage being added to the Gold Visa (aka accidentally overly-covered accident coverage). Unfortunately only the names of the firm's partners are on the card so the insurance does not cover me (I am but a young peon). I don't know how it is that I can rent a car on the card but not be covered by its insurance, but that's a matter for Visa to address. Apparently Avis can do nothing. And that's what the agent told me again and again, and what he then told my office manager over the phone in incrementally ruder tones.

Now I've worked my fair share of minimum wage service/retail jobs and I know that sometimes you are just in a bad mood, or tired, or hungover, or going through a bout of philosophical depression: working for minimum wage is not high on The List of Things that Add Value to One's Life. But come on! Work with me people! It wouldn't kill you to think outside of the box for just five minutes would it?

So this agent, his co-worker, and manager all watched me walk 30 feet to the Hertz desk across the hall, exchange my card for a set of keys, and get on with my now substantially delayed day. They didn't just 'lose a customer' in some figurative manner of speech, they physically watched me go, and take the rest of my company's corporate account with me. We are now proud members of AutoShare, although Hertz isn't so bad despite their 'death and decay' colour scheme and the tragic onomatopoeia of their name (why not Burns brand condoms, or Choke bread company?) Hertz turned out to be less expensive than Avis, too.

Avis, you're fired.

Continue to strike 2

Customer Service: Strike 2!

2. We sent out an important document to a client with a tight deadline. Purolator (Puro-later?) ensured us that it would be there by 9am, just like the stickers on the package declared. Our client called in a panic at noon asking us where the hell the document was. Now we look like fools, thanks to Purolater . We called the couriers to see what the hold up was. They accidentally delivered it to the wrong city, so they are delivering it back and will send it to the correct address tomorrow, a day late. What?!

They are couriers. They carry packages. Just one thing that they do. That's it. And they didn't get it right. Ok, we're all human. People make mistakes. That's cool. But when you make a mistake, and you know that you made a mistake, and it's perfectly clear that your mistake is going to ruin someoneelse's day, FIX IT. Clearly if tomorrow was ok, we wouldn't have stuck a bunch of colourful stickers on the package that said 9am today!

Again we are reminded that just because a job doesn't pay well, doesn't mean that anyone can be good at it. This is the second time they've lost our packages and made us look like fools to our own customers.

Purolator, you are fired.

Continue to Strike 3

Customer Service: Strike 3?

3. I called Rogers, the local telecom/ISP company, to get some issues ironed out with my bills and to address a few promises that they had failed to deliver on since the last time I had enough motivation to sit on hold waiting for one of the agents to get to me. While I'm on hold I'm thinking, 'this fucking sucks! Why can't they call me back? I should have the option to either hold or just put my phone number in 'priority sequence' and the next available attendant can give me a ring when they're ready. They are the phone company, if anyone should be able to call me you'd think it would be them. They own my phone dammit.' Of course being a cable company too, they'd only be able to do as good as 'call you back sometime in the next 1 to 5 hours' and we all know how well that turns out...

Anyway, eventually I get a super-helpful agent who solves all my issues. She was so good that I was going to ask for her manager's email so I could write a thank you letter. Hey, you can't tip a call centre worker, but good service should be noted and duly rewarded, I think. Unfortunately, 36 hold-ridden minutes later, while she was getting ready to transfer me to a tech person to finish off my call, my phone died and we lost connection. Now I can't call back because I'll just be on hold for 10 minutes before I'm transferred to some new attendant. I will have to explain everything over again because it's never "on their computer". I don't remember the name of the attendant I was working with, and even if I did I'm sure there is more than one Julie or Amanda or whatever working there. They have my number. It's right there on her screen. They have my address, my name, my credit card number. There are about 5 different ways that they can find my number, even if they didn't own my damn phone. And they didn't call back. Why the hell won't the phone company call me back?

God damn it, I'm going to wait a month until my next bill comes. I hope it shows the changes I spent 36 minutes of my life working on. If not, then Rogers will be fired too, unless that agent can think outside the box for just a second, take some initiative and call me. How sweet would that be? Sadly, it would set a new bar for customer service in the telco industry. Just like the 73 helpless minutes I spent on the phone with Primus set a new low. Primus (fully and forever Fired since 2005) still owes me $3.70 but they "can not process returns through a credit card" like that's fucking rocket science.