patio11 Greatest Hits

You might want to refer to Bingo Card Creator’s web site as you read this. Suppose, for the moment, I am able to find some effective way to drive qualified traffic to my website.

Well, I faxed in my contract to eSellerate today.  Unfortunately, the convinience store charges for the fax by 12 second increments and their positively ancient fax machine took 8 minutes to transmit...

If you search “bingo card creator”, I’m now result #8 through my download link at Payloadz, one of the folks I’m using as a payment processor.  Whee.

So I’ve got that one Ad Group which is selling to people looking for Dolch words, and while its not precisely targetted at what they’re looking for (I give them something to teach with which happens...

There don’t seem to be any good crystalizations of the reams of data on the Internet, and the one thats do exist are on crazily SEO’d sites and I always feel a little dirty visiting them, so I...

If you’re like me, you can’t afford at the moment to actually absorb a click from everyone who wants to click on your AdWords ad.

Disclaimer: you know your market and your customers better than I do. Some of these will likely be different for people who are not pitching products to teachers.

Every day I get roughly 10-15 PPC visits from Google and 6-8 from Yahoo (I actually get slightly more clicks than this, but some people apparently abandon the page view before the Javascript at the...

(Note: If you were looking for software to create printable bingo cards , Dolch sight word bingo , or Dolch sight word lists , you should check those three links.

I decided to check my Yahoo Search Marketing stats today, which is always an ordeal.

I’m going to assume there are multiple possible paths to get your your Buy Now button in your trial software.

Forgive me for indulging in a bit of a rant here. I recently checked a particular RSS feed and, of the first ten articles, 7 of them were in the style of this post’s title.

Sometimes I visit uISV websites which are very minimalist: they have about 5 pages total.  One page about the product, one for ordering, one for support, one about the company, etc.

I’m almost leery to mention this because the company approaches the seedier side of the SEO industry, but one of my experiments that I engaged in this month after getting destroyed by AdWords (I’m...

Previously, every time someone has posed the question “Should I make my blog part of my business domain, on a subdomain, or as a different domain altogether?

So if you’re like me, you’ve been obsessively tracking folks through your website using Google Analytics, using the information on what the visitor paths are (home page -> trial explanation -> trial...

Well, I just woke up on the 26th and checked my mail, and it seems I’ve now sold 100 copies of Bingo Card Creator on the dot (since launching the program — not, regrettably, since December 1st).  Yay.

Ben Yoskovitz of StartupSpark has posted his interview with me .  “Bingo!  Patrick McKenzie lays his cards on the table.”  What can I say, that title warms me to the core of my bad-pun-loving soul.

( All images in this post are cut off by WordPress.  Click to see the full versions.  I suggest opening them in a new window.

Here is a question which comes up all the time on the Business of Software forums. Hello, my name is XXX and I created an application N months ago which sells for $Y. I have gotten Z sales so far.

“So what did you think of the Season Finale of Heroes?””Dude no spoilers I haven’t seen it yet.

I renamed my Free Resources page, which is the #3 most popular page on my site, to Printable Bingo Cards , which both more accurately describes what is available there and is a much better title for...

This was posted on May 30th, 2007, Japan time. If it is after June 5th where you are, I predict that I’m pretty high on Google for the search arbitrary organic search query .

I’ve been patiently waiting for a while for Google to finally come out with CPA (Cost-Per-Aquisition — essentially, affiliate sales) AdWords for a while now.

Earlier this week I mentioned that I had started using Conversion Optimizer , Google’s new thingamagig where you bid Cost-Per-Action (CPA) on the content network instead of Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and...

Thank you to all of those who responded.  Due to overwhelming interest, I’m going to have to withdraw the offer for additional people to work on this, or I will be unable to pay everyone who has...

Meet The Linkerati The old computer science joke has it that there are 10 kinds of people in the world: those that understand binary, and those that don’t.

Capsule summary: Powered largely by several hundred dollars in sales driven by conversion optimizer and the effect of a Halloween advertising campaign which I didn’t plan but the machine ended up...

I have been using Google Conversion Optimizer since late September .  The program has been extraordinarily successful for me, enabling me to double revenues (and profit margin) in a month.

If you have a post which ranks very highly for a particular query of high value to you, you can use it to springboard additional products in conceptually related spaces.

I’m currently the #1 result on Google for the [ conversion optimizer ] search which is not actually controlled by Google, as a result of a pair of posts on the subject.

2007 was my first full year running Bingo Card Creator , and I had impressive growth over last year (about a factor of four on both profits and sales, looking at my last tax return).

I’m sorry, this post was due a week ago but I have been a combination of sick and busy.

Recently, there was a question on the Business of Software forums, asking whether someone could recommend a good SEO firm which was not booked solid.

I will post more about this topic in the future, but one of the reasons to have a blog is that it allows you to establish a reputation as an expert in your field.

My little brother, with the blog set up to sell his eventually-going-to-be-published superhero novel , has started some pretty hard-core-for-a-college-student optimizations to make his writing more...

Today, on the Business of Software forums, a newer software developer asked how I managed to get people to link to me.

Every year around Christmas time, I get literally thousands of requests for Christmas bingo cards.

Images are thumbnails, click to see the larger versions. Background info: I sell software called Bingo Card Creator which makes educational bingo cards, largely for teachers.

Well, it is that time of the year again: home for Christmas, jetlagged like crazy, and up at 2:00 AM after passing out for 11 hours.

(This post recently got linked on Japanese blogs.  英語より日本語の方が楽な方：これを和訳しようとしています。日本語版は こちら です。) Every once in a while, somebody on the Business of Software forums asks whether there is any point to...

[Editor’s note: this is the Japanese translation of “ How To Successfully Compete With OSS “, which I prepared because some Japanese blogs were apparently interested in the topic.

Today after reading a thread or three and watching a Google-produced movie about landing page optimization (over an hour long and worth your time) I was inspired to make some changes to my site.

Recently on the Business of Software forums I gave someone advice regarding web design.

Recently, I finally got around to making a proper landing page for Bingo Card Creator.

Recently I blogged about how I was redesigning my landing page to increase conversions from AdWords.  I am almost embarassed how well this is working.

Breaking up has always been difficult for me.  I tend to fall in love with being in love, and continue a relationship well past the point of futility.

For three years now I’ve been running a small software business in my spare time.

// Many software/web-app developers naively assume that demand for their product is roughly static year-round, despite the fact that this is true for very, very few industries.

// I run a small business selling software (downloadable and online) which lets parents and teachers make bingo cards.

My name is Patrick McKenzie and for the last three years and change I’ve run a small software business selling Bingo Card Creator , which creates… OK, so I’m not the world’s most creative namer.

// I visited Thomas Ptacek and the gang at Matasano (who are developing a firewall management product) over Christmas break and had a very productive discussion about marketing.

The prototypical customer of Bingo Card Creator is a woman between the ages of 30 to 50 who plays bingo with her classroom. I like to think of her as Martha.

One way I’ve found to cut down on support requests is to make sure I write publicly about any issue that keeps coming up for my customers.

Peter Christensen had a few questions for me regarding my last blog post about SEO for startups .

Some weeks ago I mentioned that I was implementing a user survey in Bingo Card Creator, using Wufoo .  About forty of my customers have now taken the time to give me detailed advice.

Some four years ago, I started Bingo Card Creator , a business which sells software to teachers.

Downtime severely annoys customers.  Downtime annoys sole proprietors even more, because it has a funny way of invariably striking at the worst possible time.  Apache has no respect for date night.

[Readers have translated this essay. You’re welcome to translate it into any language; I’d appreciate you sending me an email so I can link to it.

This is a rough outline of my verbal remarks while giving a presentation at the Software Industry Conference .

One of the attractions of having a website is that it operates twenty four hours a day, 365 days a year.  However, depending on what your market is, it might not operate evenly on all of those days.

I apologize in advance for spelling mistakes, because I am writing this on my iPad on the bullet train to Tokyo. Wonderful device, not so great for writing lengthy blog posts like my usual.

I’m Patrick McKenzie.  For the last few years, I’ve run a small software company which, most prominently, makes Bingo Card Creator .  It creates… well, you probably get the idea.

[日本の方へ：読者が日本語版を翻訳してくださいました。 ご参照してください 。] I run a small software business in central Japan.

They’ve posted my talk at Business of Software 2010 .  I highly recommend watching the video first, prior to reading the slides.

If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity.

This post includes video, slides, and a full-text writeup. I recommend bookmarking it if you’re on an iPhone right now.

I’m Patrick McKenzie (patio11 on the Internets) and for the last several years I’ve run a small software company.

[ Editor’s note : At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice.  Bookmark it and come back later.] Imagine something a wee bit outside your comfort zone.

Patrick notes : Hiya long-time blog readers.  Last year I wrote two articles on career advice for young engineers, largely informed by conversations with a buddy of mine, Ramit Sethi.

NYT bestselling author Ramit Sethi and I continued our earlier discussion about getting your first consulting client by addressing a common pain point for freelancers/consultants, particularly those...

I’m Patrick McKenzie (occasionally better known as patio11).

I’m Patrick McKenzie (and often go by patio11 online). I started the world’s least ambitious software business in 2006, and it took over my professional life.

I’m Patrick McKenzie, perhaps better known as patio11 on the Internet. Back in 2006 I created a side project selling software. This eventually morphed into something a little more.

Several years ago I wrote a blog post on salary negotiation for engineers .

I sold Bingo Card Creator, the business I’m probably best known for, through FEI last year.

I’m Patrick McKenzie, perhaps better known as patio11 on the Internet. I ran a succession of small software businesses from 2006 through 2016.

Jonathan Siegel is a buddy of mine who lives in Tokyo. I can’t decide whether I’m more floored by the fact that he runs five businesses at once or has eight kids.

This is outside my usual brief, but one of my hobbies is that I used to ghostwrite letters to credit reporting agencies and banks.

A friend of mine, who works in finance, asked me to explain what Tether was. Short version: Tether is the internal accounting system for the largest fraud since Madoff . Read on for the long version.