I’ve been spending time on a ranch in Southern California over the holidays and came up with a great idea for a series of promo videos for our upcoming BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing Summit 2012.

Check out Part 1 of the Cheesy Promo Series Below:

More to come soon . . .

The announcement came two weeks ago, but since then I’ve been so swamped with getting my act together and with travel for the Thanksgiving holidays, that I didn’t have a chance to mention it here.

On March 23-24, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center I am going to be throwing the first BiggerPockets REI Summit. This is going to be a ground-breaking event for the real estate industry — an conference designed for a national crowd of investors with no upsell, no back of the room nonsense, no “guru” BS!

As most of you probably know already, one of the reasons I founded BiggerPockets is that I wanted a place where I could discuss real estate without worrying that some self-anointed “guru” was going to constantly sell me their “secrets.” We’ve built an incredible community that is unmatched in the space, and which is run under the same founding principles today. This Summit is designed to do for live real estate investing events what our site did for the online space.

I’m very proud of what we’re trying to do, and I have gotten an enormous amount of support from many of the most credible businesses and people in real estate.

I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to try and spread the word, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted as things continue to progress.

Meanwhile . . .
Buy Your Tickets and Join Us March 2012 at the Conference

I just got the following email from Google regarding the delay of payment that I and many others have been experiencing as it pertains to our September 2011 earnings. I’m glad to hear that there is a resolution to the matter and I’m sure that I’m not alone in looking forward to the one-time mid-month payment.

Thank you Google!

Hi,

We’re writing to follow up with some important updates about your AdSense account. A recent bug affected the earnings and payments of some publishers who have Affiliate Network and/or YouTube listed as an “Active product” under the “Account Settings” page in their account.

While your aggregate September and October earnings are correct, you’ve probably noticed that they aren’t displaying properly on your Payments page. Most accounts affected by this issue will display September and October earnings as a single “September earnings” line-item on the Payments page. For example, if you received $50.00 of earnings in September and $60.00 of earnings in October, you’ll see a single line item that reads: “Earnings (Sep 1 – Sep 30) – $110.00.” As a result, while it might appear that your October earnings are missing, they’re actually displayed as part of your September earnings. Unfortunately, your September and October 2011 earnings will permanently display in this way. This is a one-time discrepancy, and moving forward, all future monthly earnings should be displayed correctly.

You can verify the total amount of your unpaid balance and estimate your monthly earnings totals by customizing a report on the Performance Reports page of your account. Please keep in mind that as usual, estimated earnings may include earnings that were subsequently removed due to invalid activity. Therefore, your estimated earnings may not exactly match the sum that appears on your Payments page.

For all active accounts that experienced a payment delay and whose September and October earnings exceeded the payment threshold, we will send a special mid-November payment. This payment will include all of your unpaid earnings from September and October, replacing the November payment that would have typically gone out in late November. To ensure that you’re eligible to receive this payment, please log into your AdSense account as soon as possible and remove any holds.

Going forward, your earnings should be paid out according to our normal payment schedule. If your November 30th unpaid balance exceeds the payment threshold, your next payment will be issued in late December.

We take all issues affecting your earnings and payments very seriously and apologize for any inconvenience that this has caused. Thank you for your ongoing patience and understanding throughout this process.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team

It is always great to have the opportunity to share your knowledge with others, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to do so at BlogWorld. As a panelist on the topic of Promoting Your Blog in the Age of Social Media, I dealt with many questions on promoting a corporate blog and using social media to do so. Overall, the attendees of our session saw the benefits of blogging, and of using social media to promote their blogs.

Before we spoke, the good folks at WebProNews (Abby Johnson) did an interview with me that I wanted to share with you on whether social media was going to somehow replace blogs. There are some good tidbits in there, so pay attention.

Is Social Media Replacing Blogging?

As you can tell from the interview, I don’t believe that social media will replace blogging. I think that there is a place for both and each serves a different purpose. In particular, social media and micro-blogging will continue to grow and be used as a means for sharing information on a small scale, while blogs will serve as destinations for in depth looks at various topics. Ultimately, these different tools will continue to work hand in hand, as one is used to promote and share the other.

What do you think?

Will the rapid growth of social media platforms lead to the death of the blog? Leave your thoughts below!

I’m just getting back to reality after my trip to BlogWorld, and while going through my camera, I found this little gem that I recorded for your viewing pleasure. I’ll be posting about my experience shortly, but in the meanwhile, please enjoy the always entertaining John Chow, as he does the Cookie Monster song, complete with cookie destruction…

Hey everyone. There’s plenty of cool news in these parts . . .

• I’m going to be a speaker at Blogworld LA 2011 on a panel titled, Promoting Your Blog in the Age of Social Media with Doyle Albee, Brett Greene, Jeannine Crooks and Dave Taylor. Make sure to check out all the great speakers who will also be presenting, and of course, my bio page. Finally, the entire panel put out a joint blog post that I hope you’ll check out: Blogging in the Age of Social Media [Panel]
• Last week, the first post in a new BiggerPockets column on AOL Real Estate went live. I’m extremely excited about this syndication deal and the opportunity to bring the expertise of the BiggerPockets team to AOL; I very much look forward to the doors that will hopefully open as a result. Don’t miss my article, Real Estate Investing: Learn What the Pros Know.
• Prior to the AOL column, BiggerPockets established another syndication deal thanks to the great guys at Move.com, over at Realtor.com. Make sure to check out some of the awesome articles from the team over there.

I’ve also been dealing with a real headache on the personal front. I hired a contractor to rebuild my back patio, and it has turned into a complete fiasco. I’ve shared some details about the concrete issues already, but it turns out that there are far worse problems then those I’ve already discussed. I’ll likely be sharing photos for all to see in the not too distant future, but if the contractor decides to stop playing games and do what’s right, I’ll likely keep the pics and videos of the absolutely sloppy and careless work to myself.

Image: Steve Jurvetson

As someone who oversees a large growing community for real estate investors of almost 75,000 members, I understand the need to moderate your community, and that’s exactly why I think people have to have some kind of home base outside the rules and regulations of other sites.

Falling Back Into Old Bad Habits . . .

I’m guilty of losing focus and posting exclusively on other social networks at the expense of this blog. That said, while I have certainly ignored this blog from time to time over the years, I do manage over a dozen posts per week on the BiggerPockets Blog and our new weekly Investor’s Corner column on Realtor.com.

I should be focusing my efforts here once again and will be doing my best to share content and ideas via this platform . . . if I have a lapse, just scream at me (or remind me on any of those other platforms: G+, Facebook, Twitter); I’ve got to thank Dave Taylor, who inspired me about a week ago to get off my backside and revive this place.

What about you? Are you still blogging or have you given it up to the great black hole of the social networks?

What a damaged reputation can do to a career...

I see the average Joe, large speakers and other personalities who participate online and use a VA to do so on their behalf. While in a perfect world, it would be great if we could outsource our personalities, in my opinion this is a dangerous thing to do.

I can almost always tell when someone is using a VA, and my instincts are almost always correct. The comments and posts are typically very generic and often-times make the person that the VA is participating on behalf of, look like they have FAR less knowledge then they actually do.

Just today, a VA posted several comments on behalf of a very experienced real estate expert on our site, BiggerPockets:

Everything has started to increase nowadays and it?s even getting higher. If you are an investor you should always look for a long term investment and be wise about your investment to stay long and be successful in the industry.

It?s just a matter of bravery in investing and a full knowledge in Real Estate business in order to be successful in this industry. Let?s just have a positive attitude towards it.

Oh wow those numbers are so overwhelming. but we are still hoping for the fast recovery of the US economy.

Do they jump out at you? Do they sell “experienced?” Do they exude confidence that the poster knows what they are talking about?

They definitely don’t to me.

If you were looking for someone to work with, would you turn to this person, or would you rather connect with the person who knows what they are talking about?

If you’re just looking to get your name posted next to some fluff, it’s one thing, but you can’t outsource years of experience and knowledge to someone charging $2, $5, or $10 an hour to act on your behalf anonymously online.

Your reputation should be worth far more than that!

Photo: Audrey Pilato

In a sign of the times, with our economy hitting lower lows and no hope in sight, some savvy entrepreneurs have come up with creative ways to survive. Below you’ll find an actual email I received today from a friend – Charles Feldman. As you can see, the cost of connecting is not cheap, and the price for messing up is even more expensive.

The Actual Email Containing a Communication Rate Card

Dear friends:
In these recessionary times, new sources of revenue are always being sought after. With that in mind, please refer to the new rate e-card below for future communications with me. I look forward to hearing from you. And, yes, I DO take AMEX.

Charles

Will you be implementing a similar cost structure yourself? Please leave your feedback below.

I recently posted on various rails job sites about a new open position available on BiggerPockets (BTW – If you’re a ruby on rails developer and are looking for work, please get in touch ASAP!).

In going through the various replies, I came upon one that seemed interesting, but the developer didn’t supply me with access to any code on GitHub or otherwise, to review. I sent a follow up asking for him to provide me with some code and as part of his response, he wrote:

In case you couldn’t read it (and yes, I removed his name and the name of the repos to protect the guilty), here it is again:

I have two repos xxx which is public you can use it. Another one is xxxxxxx which I will like you to keep confidential as I am under NDA, please do send me your git-hub account so that I can give you access to this repo.

So, in the name of satisfying a potential employer (me) who wants a sample of his code, this joker thinks that sharing an NDA protected selection of code and asking me to “keep it confidential” will endear him to me? He just violated the trust of a previous contract!

Yes, there really are people that stupid out there.
Yes, there are people who would have taken him up on the offer.

Don’t be that stupid guy or the guy who takes him up on it.

It looks like Yahoo has made it official . . . on May 24, 2011 the MyBlogLog service will be “discontinued.” While I haven’t used the service in some time – about 2 years ago I saw this coming when their business development team all but completely blew off several attempts I made to connect – I am still saddened, as I did find the service to be the first truly valuable social tool for building traffic to my blogs.

For more information about the official announcement, please read the following email sent by the Yahoo! MyBlogLog team:

I’m a fan of several Yahoo products which simply don’t get the support that they deserve . . . I hope the Yahoo team can get their act together going forward; it is hard to see the grand-daddy of the internet looking so feeble these days

This story can be applied to any kind of business, so pay attention . . .

Almost a year ago we found a local company to clean the house. They worked on a few homes in the neighborhood and did a great job. Unfortunately, that relationship came to an unfortunate and abrupt end today.

We had been paying them $85 to come and clean the house, and in the early days they would typically stay between 2.5 and 3 hours. Over the course of the year the amount of time they spent declined as did the attention to detail that was present early on. As we noticed this, we began to get somewhat disillusioned, but not enough to get rid of them.

Fast forward to this morning . . . they arrived and began to clean while I worked perched on the couch. A few minutes in, one of them walked towards the kitchen, stopped, turned to me, and told me that “from today onward we’re going to have to charge extra to clean the dishes.”

“Really? From today onward?” I remarked. “How about giving someone a little heads up before springing something like that on us” I continued, annoyed by this revelation.

Silence.

The kitchen sink had a handful of dishes, some cups and a bit of silverware.

I told her that we weren’t going to be paying them any more to clean our dishes and proceeded to clean out the sink for the next 5 minutes.

I was not happy and immediately called my wife to pass on the new info. Now mind you, two weeks ago we asked them about cleaning some of the dust from under the bed and was told that there would be extra charges for doing it.

I’ve been asking to get rid of them for a while now, but was always rebuffed by my wife. That wasn’t going to happen today. She immediately told me to fire them . . .

We needed the house cleaned, so I held off and simply went on with my business.

When they finished up, I handed over my check for $85 and they told me that they’d see us in a few weeks.

“Hold on. That’s not going to happen,” I said as we all walked out the door. “If you’re going to nickel and dime us on everything, we’re going to just find someone else. Thanks for everything and good luck to you.” I was talking to the back of one of their heads as they stormed off, annoyed at me, while the other guy was very cordial and nice about it.

Do You Run Your Business Like Them?

Forget the decline in quality of service, but when they stopped offering services that are typically standard and started trying to upsell us on these very services, they lost us.

Think about the stupidity of this move . . . they were going to charge us an extra $5 or $10 to do 5 minutes of dish cleaning. There’s no way we would pay that kind of money to clean a few dishes for a few minutes, so had we not fired them, they would never see any dishes from us to clean going forward. The most they would possibly have gotten from us on this up sell would have been the $5 – $10 had I decided to eat crow and let them do it today.

Instead, we felt like the principle of their nickel and diming us was something we couldn’t deal with, and fired them as a result.

Mind you, we pay $85 every 2 weeks or $2210 over the course of a year.

They lost that steady cash-flow because they got greedy and wanted to make a few more bucks from us.

Not only did they lose our money, but it is going to cost them money to acquire that next steady customer, so the losses compound themselves.

Was it worth it?

The fact that I was talking to the back of her head as she walked away, tells me that she probably realized at that very moment that it probably wasn’t.

What would you have done?

Photo: Paul