Reflections on 2005, Looking Forward to 2006

The latter part of December is my favorite time of year… not because of Christmas or New Years Eve (both of which I do enjoy), but because it’s time I always take to look back and reflect on what went right and what could have gone better.

I’ve been reflecting the past few days on Bourland.com, what is going well and what could improve.

What is going well is that we have a small, but gradually growing audience following the eBook and eTool reviews. I am thankful for that. For the most part, I’m happy with the reviews I have written and hope you are too.

Where could I improve?

I think that in my zeal to deliver a good product to you, I’ve been rushing things a bit. It may not seem that way right now, as it’s been over a week since I’ve served up a fresh review. But I have a pile of eBooks and a couple of disk folders full of eTools that I feel under a great deal of pressure to review and review now.

If I rush and put out a reviews every single day, you won’t be getting the perspective of someone who has spent some time with the product. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to the author of the eBook or eTool.

Why am I doing that?

To be painfully honest, I feel the same pressure many publishers do: to grow and monetize their audience as rapidly as possible.

But the truth is, if I rush out a bunch of half baked reviews, no audience is going to materialize and neither will the money.

If I take my time and deliver to you well considered reviews — good or bad — the audience and monetization issues will take care of themselves over time. People who stumble across the site in May or June will encounter a site rich with good information — one worth tracking on their RSS feeds and visiting from time to time. If I just keep the eye on the ball and aim for giving you the best I can as I am able, things will work out.

So I am intentionally going to slow down the pace a bit. I’m not the mega-blogger that others are and can’t pretend to be.

Another thing…

Back when I reviewed The Rich Jerk, I got caught up in the enthusiasm of it all and ran the title with affiliate links attached to it, and I’m sure more than a few of you noticed. Not that it’s a sin to do or anything, but looking back, I don’t feel right about it.

When I launched the site, I promised myself I wouldn’t tempt bias in my reviews by embedding affiliate links. I broke that promise, and think it may have cost me some credibility with a few readers. I’d rather be a trusted source than make a few bucks on an affiliate link.

So from here on out, no more affiliate links in the reviews.

I reserve the right to promote particular titles through a separate section or an ad, but I’m not going to mix my editorial with attempts to sell any more.

In any case, the joke was on me: not one person followed the links and bought a copy of the book, so that should have told me something right there.

Looking ahead, I have some good things on the cooker: I’ve been reading an excellent eBook from Ken Evoy, have four new titles from MarketingSherpa that I’m looking forward to digging into, have twice read but not reviewed AdSense Empire, have been fooling around with ArticleMiner, RSS2Blog and Wordpress Elite. I’m not even mentioning the dozen or so other eBooks I’ll start reading once I’ve prepared reviews for you on the above, so that’s no small order.

I’ve learned a great deal from these eBooks — even the bad ones — and am eager to share that knowledge with you.

As I set out to do from the beginning, my job is to give you the best peek between the covers I can before you spend a dime on any of these eBooks. If I can assis your efforts to succeed in site publishing, then I will have succeeded in my mission here at Bourland.com.

Over the next couple of weeks, I have my hands full and won’t be able to offer up any new reviews. Christmas is days away and we’ll have a house full of kids and some family visiting. I’m preparing to relocate to Santa Barbara, CA for the winter (for health reasons). I’ve got some research I’m doing for my major consulting client. I could go on, but suffice to say, I’m going to be a busy guy.

After the new year, I look forward to delivering to you a series of fair, balanced and honest reviews of the products I’ve mentioned and more.

I hope you’ll check here every so often between now and then, as I’ll be running some classic content from my old days at ClickZ.

In the meantime, my sincerest wish for a wonderful holiday season for you and yours, and a joyous and prosperous new year!

Take care,

Andy