Here is what you do:
1. Find a subject that people desperately need help with. (WordPress)
2. Write a book about it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to write, because you are going to fill up the entire book with screenshots and long pieces of code. Don’t worry about explanations–they’ll figure it all out eventually. Spend about five hours writing the book.
3. Make sure that about 50% of the screenshots promote your publishing business. That way, about a quarter of the book is actually promoting your book biz, and the idiot reader is actually paying you to do it! Don’t you feel clever?
4. Sell the book on Amazon for 39 dollars and 99 cents. Make sure to get your friends to write some good reviews.
5. Wait for some sucker to come along and bite, like Bloggrrl.
6. Count your money and laugh.
The story:
WordPress doesn’t like me very much. It won’t let me install many useful plug-ins, and it likes to go all wonky on me for no apparent reason. For these reasons, and many more, I ordered the book WordPress Complete, by Hasin Hayder, from Amazon.
I anxiously awaited the book’s arrival, convinced that all of the frustrating glitches I have been experiencing would now be solvable. But alas, this was not to be. Not only was the advice in the book pretty much worthless, but the writing was annoying. Here is an example:
So if you make a post today and the crawler crawl to your blog after two weeks, people will get your post in these indexing services two weeks after your making that post, which is often quite bothering.
At this point, I realized that this book was a self-publishing project that had not had the benefit of an editor. This became more obvious as I realized that it would only take me twenty minutes to read the book because to all of the screenshots taking up space.
While the PHP gave me a headache, my brain was relieved when I came across the pages that explained what word processing was. Oh pleeeeze. If someone doesn’t know what word processing is, then they are even more out of their depth than I am. How such a person is supposed to be able to make the leap between a one paragraph explanation of word processing and creating (yeah right) their own template is absolutely beyond me. By the way, just in case you think this book will teach you how to create your own template, it doesn’t. Not unless you already know how to create your own template already. Then you might understand. I don’t know.
Anyway, that is how to make some money in self-publishing. Have fun. Make sure to change your name.
In all fairness, I must share the one useful bit of info I gleaned from this book. One should actually enter words in the post slug portion of WordPress. I admit, I’d never really thought about it, but it will help with SEO. Was that piece of advice worth $39.99? I don’t think I’ll think about it. However, Hasin Hayder is hot. Hasin, if you are reading this, will you give me my money back? Or maybe at least fix the RSS feed on my blog?
At any rate, I am truly inspired. I am planning my book already. The working title is 100 Ways To Make Your Blog Sexy.
Don’t forget to enter the Cow Patty Bingo Contest so that you can win an easy $50! Our cash cow is gearing up to pull a number by the end of the month!
$39.99 for a BOOK!! In college may be, if I couldn’t find someone who was selling their used book. Wow!! You should ask for good screen shots of Hasin to ease the pain…
Hmm… an interesting idea
I realized that this book was a self-publishing project that had not had the benefit of an editor.
Apparently, it also lacked the benefit of an author.
Wow! That’s a lot of money for a book but hey you got a hot picture out of it. Your feeder is fixed! I subscribed. Love your sense of humor.
I pull your feed on a daily basis, and the only issue that I’ve found is that your site shows the posts long before your feed. I’m good with feeds and such nad I’ve been using WordPress for years, so If I can help out, drop me a mail.
Keep up the writing!
All books explaining software are stupid and don’t tell you what you want to know. I have my own issues with blogger.
dood that blows!
I have NO IDEA how to use wordpress or CSS or PHP
I cant even add the mybloglog join my community boxy people thingy. (and I’m pissed)
If you ever DO find a GOOD book about it, please LET ME KNOW!
«I cant even add the mybloglog join my community boxy people thingy. (and I’m pissed)» Correct me if i’m wrong, but often the FAQ or blog/forums associated with the website (like mybloglog.com) can really point you in the right direction to the how-to related to their widgets.
Love your blog and humour, as always!
Saw you had visited my site. I dropped by to see yours. I love it. It’s refreshing to read about tech topics without the bland! Thanks for adding some spice to a generally sterile topic.
You are a riot. I discovered your blog today while reading “The Rising Blogger”. He could have picked a lot of your posts. That’s it. I’ve got to come up with something funny for tomorrow. Good blog.
Hmmm… send me the 39 bucks. I’ll give you my yahoo IM addy (Bowrag) and we can talk it through….
Or, you can just IM and we can talk it through for free. . lol
LOL - books about software that changes every week. Even if he had taken the eighth of a second to click the ol’ grammar check function on it before sending it to Lulu, much of the information would be obsolete by the time it printed, much less shipped.
Just dig around in the code, eventually you’ll figure it out. Evidentially a line forming of people willing to help you out.
I have to move soon…maybe I’ll send out a call on my site and see if I get any volunteers.
Um.
I don’t know what plug-in is or really, much about any of this post or the last post.
But it made me laugh that the working title of your book was followed by a picture of me in a cow suit.
And Editor would have caught that, though, so you’re golden.
Barb
Mmh what a great idea for a book.
I looked at your RSS it seems to be working fine. A lot of the time when a RSS feed stops working it is to do with a plugin having an extra blank line at the bottom of the code. So open up the php files of all your plug ins. Go to the last line, if there’s nothing there just backspace to delete the extra line, save it, re upload and then hopefully your RSS feed will work again
Michelle ~
I’ve just found your blog today and am really enjoying it, I’ve added it to my RSS reader.
I too have been a victim of WordPress cruelty. It loves to reformat my posts and all sorts of other wacky things. I briefly tried to remedy the situation by posting around at the “support” forum, without much luck. ..but at least my efforts failed without spending money. :p
Oh No, I just ordered the same book. I wish I would of read your review first. Keep up the good work.
[...] TAKE IT Anymore! HELP!, with the suggestion that I might find it to be a better read than the self-published book I blasted a while [...]