You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

Thus begins the classic 1980 computer game known as Zork I. The player is suddenly thrust into this world, and given little direction. The possibilities are endless, and it turns out that the narrator understands English fairly well.

It occurred to me that someone’s response in this situation could serve as a psychological test of sorts. Like an inkblot, there’s not really a right answer, but your choice could reveal factors such as motivation, temper, patience, initiative, persistence, creativity, assertiveness, etc.

Left to your own devices, what would you do if you found yourself standing west of a white house, next to a small mailbox? (The following are all valid commands and actual responses from the game.)

>look at house
The house is a beautiful colonial house which is painted white. It is clear that the owners must have been extremely wealthy.

>walk
What do you want to walk?

>walk me
You should supply a direction!

>walk to house
It’s here!

>find house
It’s right here! Are you blind or something?

>knock on door
Nobody’s home.

>enter house
I can’t see how to get in from here.

>kick door
Kicking the door has no effect.

>hit door
What do you want to hit the door with?

>hit door with hands
I’ve known strange people, but fighting a door?

>look at mailbox
The small mailbox is closed.

>clean mailbox
If you wish, but heaven only knows why.

>eat mailbox
I don’t think that the small mailbox would agree with you.

>drive mailbox
What a bizarre concept!

>kiss mailbox
I’d sooner kiss a pig.

>burn house
What do you want to burn the house with?

>inventory
You are empty-handed.

>burn house with hands
With a pair of hands??!?

>destroy house with mailbox
Trying to destroy the white house with a small mailbox is futile.

>destroy mailbox with house
Trying to destroy the small mailbox with a white house is futile.

>kill myself
What do you want to kill the myself with?

>kill myself with hands
Suicide is not the answer.

>kill troll
What do you want to kill the troll with?

>kill troll with hands
You can’t see any troll here!

>wait
Time passes…

>stand
You are already standing, I think.

>swim
Go jump in a lake!

>jump in a lake
You can’t see any lake here!

>jump
Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!

>jump
Are you enjoying yourself?

>jump
Do you expect me to applaud?

>jump
Very good. Now you can go to the second grade.

>talk
What do you want to talk to?

>talk to house
You can’t talk to the white house!

>talk to myself
Talking to yourself is said to be a sign of impending mental collapse.

>damn
Such language in a high-class establishment like this!

>eat myself
Auto-cannibalism is not the answer.

>pick up mailbox
It is securely anchored.

>pick up house
You can’t be serious.

>pick up house
A valiant attempt.

>what is
What do you want to what?

>what is love
I don’t know the word “love”.

>kick mailbox
Kicking the small mailbox isn’t notably helpful.

>touch mailbox
Fiddling with the small mailbox doesn’t seem to work.

>open mailbox
Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet.

>take leaflet
Taken.

>read leaflet
“WELCOME TO ZORK!

ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!”

>zork
At your service!

>xyzzy
A hollow voice says “Fool.”

>destroy leaflet
What do you want to destroy the leaflet with?

>destroy leaflet with hands
Trying to destroy the leaflet with a pair of hands is futile.

>drop
What do you want to drop?

>drop all except leaflet
It’s not clear what you’re referring to.

>drop myself
You don’t have the you.

>drop leaflet
Dropped.

>say “hello”
Hello.

>say “hello”
Good day.

>say “hello”
Goodbye.

>say “hello”
Nice weather we’re having.

>listen to myself
The you makes no sound.

>take myself
How romantic!

>win
Naturally!

>lose
Preposterous!

>mumble
You’ll have to speak up if you expect me to hear you!

>yell
Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

>repent
It could very well be too late!

>find myself
You’re around here somewhere…

>count myself
You have lost your mind.

>look at myself
That’s difficult unless your eyes are prehensile.

>smell myself
It smells like a you.

>damn myself
Insults of this nature won’t help you.

>don’t
I don’t know the word “don’t”.

>say “goodbye”
Nothing happens.

>quit
Your score is 0 (total of 350 points), in 75 moves.
This gives you the rank of Beginner.
Do you wish to leave the game? (Y is affirmative?): >y
***END OF SESSION***

This is gonna be a really short review, because some things just don’t need a hard sell.

1. Skellie wrote an ebook called the Blog Business Funnel. People love everything she writes, and this ebook is no exception.

2. It’s about how to build a freelancing business from work that comes to you through your blog. Mind you, it has to be a relevant blog – you can’t get banner design work by blogging about underwater basket weaving. But if you already have a blog that’s related to what you’d like to freelance in, you’ve got a big head start.

3. If you’re a freelancer who doesn’t have enough work, or if you have a blog that’s not making money, you should take a look at this. It only took Skellie 11 months to go from zero to $8,000 a month in her freelance writing/copywriting/consulting business, and she was even a full-time student at the time.

If you haven’t thought about freelancing before, this might be a great option for you. Skellie makes a good point in the opening of her ebook – instead of working your butt off in search of the elusive 4-hour workweek, you could be making good money and enjoying flow moments right now – using the skills you already have.

What kinds of skills are we talking about? Writing, drawing, programming, designing, and photography are common examples. If you have a skill that people will pay for, you can turn it into a freelancing business. And if you use a blog to funnel traffic to your portfolio and services pages, it can become a pretty darn profitable one.

Others have done it. Why not you?

What does physics have to do with making money online? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

Our scientific understanding has advanced greatly over the centuries. But while our knowledge has brought plenty of complications, in a way it has also made things simpler. We can now explain the workings of the universe with just four fundamental forces:

- Gravity
- Electromagnetism
- Strong nuclear force
- Weak nuclear force

The number of fundamental forces has come down over time. For example, electricity, magnetism, chemical bonds, friction, etc., once thought to be separate forces, are now known to just be different aspects of an electromagnetic field.

If we’ve now reduced physics to four fundamental forces, might we someday get it down to just one? This is the search for a unified field theory.

Physicists disagree about whether one is possible. There have been proposals for how to combine electromagnetism with the weak force, but incorporating the strong force is problematic, and gravity really throws a wrench in the works.

There have been different unification theories, but so far they’ve all had holes. Maybe there really are four fundamental forces that can’t be put under a bigger umbrella.

Making money online

Much has been written about how to make money online, but when you look at the big picture, what are the principles at work? How many truly different ways are there to make money online? Does it all come down to just one?

People say that to make money online, you need to write for people, not search engines. Well, no, you don’t. Nor do you have to solve an urgent problem, or be authentic, or target a lucrative niche, or any of the other things that people say you have to do.

Yes, these are all good ideas, but each one has plenty of counterexamples. For any “must do” principle, there are success stories from people who violated it.

Why is this? Because there’s not just one way to do things. Here are four fundamental forces, if you will, for making money online:

- Being cool
- Being spammy
- Satisfying a want
- Satisfying a need

Maybe there are more, but these are the ones that came to mind. They appear to be independent, in that while you can certainly combine them, you can also succeed with one while ignoring the others. But are they really independent, or is there a larger force that unifies them?

Let’s first look at them separately.

Being cool

“Cool” here includes likeable, funny, entertaining, etc. People in this category make money by leveraging their personality.

Johnny B. Truant went from making practically nothing online to five figures a month in nine months, once he started being cool. Officially, he sets up websites and such. I’m sure he’s good at it, but the reason people want to buy from him isn’t because he’s better at websites than everyone else. He gets fans because he swears, he tells clients he doesn’t care if they work with him, he blogs about stuff that has nothing to do with what he sells (like why Christmas is gay), and he confesses to crimes he didn’t commit. In short, because he’s cool.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the face behind another personality-driven business. Today he has the whole “crush it” and branding expert thing, but he didn’t have that when everyone first started talking about him. I watched his videos trying to see what he was all about, and he was very entertaining, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he actually does (other than screaming about wine). And then I realized that was it – screaming about wine; i.e., being cool.

Stuff White People Like became an instant hit on humor value alone. Sometimes sites like this get a lot of traffic that can’t be monetized, but Christian Lander reportedly received a $300,000 advance for his book based on the blog.

Being spammy

I don’t necessarily mean actual spam, or doing anything unethical or illegal. I’m just talking about focusing on tactics for converting visitors into cash as opposed to providing value.

The guy known as Grizzly has a number of sites, but I only know one of them. And he was nice enough to spill his money-making secrets for this site in How to Increase Your AdSense CTR.

His blog is about making money online, and filled with content containing relevant keywords. It happens to be very good content, but that doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t make his money from regular readers. He just needs relevant content so Google will send him search traffic.

He deliberately went with a blogspot blog because it’s ugly. When visitors see this ugly blog, they want to get out of there, and 7% of them leave by clicking the huge ad in their face (at the very top, above the post title). I’d guess that most of his other sites use this same approach, but minus the good content.

(Actually, I just checked out his site for the first time in a long while. It now looks much less ugly, and the big AdSense ad is gone. Not sure what happened.)

Satisfying a want

This is the category for professional problem solvers: copywriters, blog consultants, marketing consultants, and so forth. They don’t create stuff first and then try to find people who want to buy it. They start by identifying their ideal customer and getting to know them.

When they understand the problem that is keeping their ideal customer up at night, they’re in a position to give the customer exactly what they want. They show this by listening, establishing trust, telling stories, highlighting benefits over features, giving a call to action, etc.

Satisfying a need

You’ll have a hard time selling something to someone who truly doesn’t want it. However, you don’t need to sell to their wants per se.

Steve Pavlina has done quite well by ignoring what his readers want, and just telling them what they need to hear. He positions himself as an expert with advice to give, a position that would only be weakened by asking for permission. He makes enemies by calling his readers Nazis for eating eggs or selfish for being underpaid teachers, but he also makes tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Is there a unified theory of making money online?

In practice, people don’t necessarily restrict themselves to just one of these. Naomi Dunford is cool in addition to being a problem solver, Grizzly quite possibly parlayed his reputation for AdSense success into an additional income stream, Steve Pavlina asked his workshop attendees for detailed feedback so he could improve, etc.

Still, these methods appear to be different. Is there some higher thing that ties them all together, or are they really independent? Albert Einstein failed to unlock all the secrets of the universe, leaving questions that may never be answered. But maybe we can unlock the secrets of making money online, which would be almost as good.

Photo by Victorrjr

You know how sometimes you read or hear something, and you have the feeling that you’re missing an inside joke? People who read my novel Mesothelioma Lawyers, New York may have that feeling every few pages. While some of the Easter eggs are obvious, many are not.

As I had always planned to, I’ve updated the epilogue to point out the hidden references, symbolism that may have been overlooked, notes about the actual writing of the novel, etc.

Here are some of the questions that are answered:

• Where do the characters’ names come from?
• What is the significance of the photon with a wavelength of 400 nanometers?
• What is the meaning of Jack’s cryptic notes, which even he doesn’t understand?
• What blogger is referenced twice, though not explicitly named?
• What’s special about the exact time that Jack wakes up?

etc., etc. To get the full Mesothelioma Lawyers, New York experience, you need to read the epilogue – but it contains spoilers! (The full text of the novel is still freely available at the link above.)

Economics professor Daniel K.N. Johnson thinks that the world is much more predictable than you would expect. It’s no surprise that he can use economic models to predict unemployment rates. But one day, he decided to see if he could predict Olympic medal counts the same way.

He didn’t expect it to work, but it did. From the 2000 through 2008 Olympic games, he predicted total medal counts by country with 94% accuracy, and gold medal counts by country with 87% accuracy.

It’s amazing how little information he need to give the computer, and in fact, he doesn’t look at individual athletes at all. He only considers five factors: per capita income, population, climate, political structure, and home court advantage. His track record speaks for itself:

In Beijing, he predicted 103 medals for the U.S., with 33 gold. The actual count: 110 and 36. In Athens, he predicted 103 medals for the Americans, with 37 gold. The final results: 102 and 36.

He admits that China causes problems for his model, because there’s no one to compare them to. But other than that, the key to Olympic victory is clear: a successful country should be rich, big, and cold. It should also have a single-party government, and most importantly, it should host the games itself.

The model has held up remarkably well, and not even the anomaly of Michael Phelps threw it off much. But while it’s interesting that a handful of variables can tell you so much, it’s also a bit depressing that the world is so predictable. You could say they might as well just hand out the medals and skip the formality of actually competing.

When I heard about Daniel K.N. Johnson a few weeks ago, I made a note to see how well he predicted the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. The results are in, and surprisingly, he did a really awful job:

Not sure what happened here, but it looks like the world isn’t so predictable after all. I guess computers don’t believe in miracles.

Photo by Duncan Rawlinson

John Hoff is a guy who knows way more about WordPress security than most people could ever hope to. He offers a security upgrade service that I’ve recommended before, but now he has an option for people who want to save money by doing the work themselves.

His new ebook is called WordPress Defender: 30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From Attack Anyone Can Do. Do you see the double meaning in that title? John meant:

(30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From Attack) Anyone Can Do

That is, you don’t need to be a techie to implement these steps. You just need some basic skills, such as installing plugins, editing files, etc., and he spells out what you need to do to secure your blog.

But the title could also mean:

30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From (Attack Anyone Can Do)

You see, hacking a blog isn’t all that difficult. The problem is that almost all WordPress installations have the same out-of-the-box security configuration. So when a new vulnerability is discovered in WordPress, a hacker knows that he can exploit it on most blogs. He can even set up a bot to automatically carry out attacks on huge numbers of blogs while he sleeps.

Don’t think that you’re not a target because your blog is too small, or it’s not making that much money, or you’re too nice. It’s almost inevitable that you will be targeted at some point. I’ve been hacked at least once, maybe twice, and every now and then someone else will try. Fortunately, John’s system has made me much safer, and I get notifications when someone is trying to hack me.

I get a little more paranoid about hackers each year. Last week, the head security guy where I work gave a presentation about how big the threat is. He thinks that antivirus software is basically useless, because it only protects you from the hackers who aren’t trying very hard.

He told us about companies that sell viruses to people who want to hijack other computers. Many of them offer live support – if you buy a virus from them that gets caught by antivirus software, just call their toll-free number and they guarantee they’ll fix the virus to put the bad guys back in business.

He told us about how the hackers we catch in the U.S. are at the very lowest levels of their organizations. The big guys operate from certain countries in eastern Europe, where they’re safe from prosecution, and free to recruit people to carry out their evil deeds.

In other words, hackers are a very big threat, and one you can’t afford to ignore. John found that out the hard way when his wife’s online jewelry business was completely shut down by a hacker. And millions of other people have learned this lesson after it was too late.

WordPress Defender is 150 pages of solid information about how hackers think and how you can thwart them. It also comes with 14 videos (nearly 2 hours worth) to make things crystal clear and easy to follow along.

Unfortunately, people often make the mistake of waiting to get hacked before they start thinking about security. It’s far better to get prepared now, so you can relax knowing that you’re not an easy target. While nothing is completely secure, the system in this ebook will make your blog far more secure than it is now.

It’s easy to look at famous people and assume that they must have stumbled onto overnight success somehow. We think they were born with amazing talent that was immediately appreciated by the world. Unfortunately, this makes it easy to think that if you’re not successful by now, there’s no point in trying.

Of course, this isn’t true, even though it may seem that way. It’s always good to be reminded that even the biggest successes are almost always preceded by numerous failures, and that persistence is the key to eventually being a success.

Someone emailed me to say they featured my blog in their post 50 Famously Successful People Who Failed At First. I was annoyed that this turned out not to be true (apparently the email was a sloppy copy and paste job), but anyway, it’s a good list of people who reached success only after they had gotten failure out of their system.

It’s broken up into categories: business gurus, scientists and thinkers, inventors, public figures, Hollywood types, writers and artists, musicians, and athletes. But be warned that I noticed a few factual errors.

Here are some of my favorites that I hadn’t heard before, and which appear to be true:

• Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
• Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a television reporter because she was “unfit for TV.”
• Elvis Presley was fired and told “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”

Do you know any successful failures who should be added?

Photo by Hammarstrand

What’s the difference between bloggers who grab and hold readers’ attention, and those who don’t? It often comes down to whether the blogger has studied the art of effective writing.

New bloggers consistently make false assumptions about what works. They learned many rules of formal writing in English class, and they understandably think that they apply to blogging as well. Very often, they don’t. The blogger puts in lots of effort, only to be frustrated and confused when their readers don’t react the way they expected.

Ali Hale has a new ebook out, called The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing. It’s focused purely on the actual writing aspect of blogging, aimed at getting you writing with ease, enjoyment, and results.

Its 82 pages are shockingly comprehensive, and it comes with a whopping six month guarantee, so you have plenty of time to try out all the ideas. If you’re a new blogger, it’s very simple – you should buy it. That’s really all I have to say, so click the link and check it out.

Now, what if you’re a more experienced blogger? Well, as with any ebook about blogging, parts of it will surely cover things you already know. These parts will be a good read anyway, but that alone might not be enough of a reason to buy it.

Why might it be worthwhile then? Because experienced bloggers often get stuck in a rut without knowing it. You might have settled on certain ways early on, and perhaps never revisited them to see if they were working for you.

Maybe your style isn’t quite right for your content, or maybe your headlines aren’t grabbing all the attention they could, or maybe readers are having a hard time following the structure of your posts. These kinds of problems aren’t quick to resolve themselves.

It’s much easier when you learn about what makes writing effective or not. Then you can throw away your assumptions and take a fresh look at where you’re doing things right, and where you can improve.

Even for an experienced blogger, predicting what will work is sometimes difficult. But instead of blindly guessing, it’s better to make decisions based on a solid understanding of the foundations of effectiveness. Give The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing a try, and see what it can do for your blogging results.

“You cannot do anything to make America not like you. You’re one of those people…[like] Charlie Sheen…I always kid him. I say ‘You could beat a nun to death in a pile of dead puppies’ and America would just go, ‘Oh that Charlie, we love him, he’s hysterical!’…and you’re the same way.”

- Bill Maher to Brad Pitt

Yesterday’s post How To Ruin Your Reputation Instantly And Permanently was about how easy it is to shatter your reputation by acting unethically for a short term gain. In the comments, Chad at Sentient Money said:

“True, but reputation is secondary to making money. If you can make money for someone else they will hire you even if you are a baby killer…sure there are companies who won’t hire ‘baby killers who make money,’ but there are tons that will. Just ask Goldman Sachs, GE, Morgan Stanley, Citi, virtually any of the oil companies and large international construction firms, the Fed, etc.”

While I’m not exactly thrilled that this is true, it definitely is. And that got me thinking about why people vary so much in their ability to get away with things. Of course, money is one way to get a free pass.

I’m normally not a fan of ruining someone’s career just because they slipped up and said something they shouldn’t have, but John Rocker would be an exception. It would be hard to come up with something more racist, homophobic, and sexist than what he said about New York in 2000.

But when people speculated about whether it would ruin his career, a common thought was “Yeah, but he still throws the ball at 95 miles per hour.” Translation: he makes money, so he’s untouchable.

His career did fall apart, but only because his pitching performance declined, not because of what he said. (BTW, I haven’t closely followed many of the stories referenced in this post, so correct me if I’m wrong on anything.)

If John Rocker is someone who got off too easy, Tiger Woods is someone who’s taking far more heat than he deserves. Yeah, affairs are bad, I get that. But I haven’t heard a decent explanation as to why what Tiger did is so much worse than what David Letterman did.

What is so different in Tiger’s case? Is it the number of affairs? Is it because he has more money and therefore more responsibility? Is it because his image was a bit more squeaky clean?

The main reason I’m hearing is that Letterman apologized before the public found out. But what difference does that make? He only did it because he had been caught and knew the truth was coming out whether he liked it or not.

Do you really feel that Tiger Woods owes you an apology? His wife certainly, but why is it any of our business? (I just learned that he’s issuing an apology later today, though I doubt it will change anything.)

Chad also said, “In 2 years no one will care that Tiger Woods got caught having a massive number of affairs. He will get back all his sponsors and more.” Yes, I believe so, assuming that his performance doesn’t tank from staying out of the game too long, losing focus, etc. But today, why is it such a huge controversy compared to some much worse offenses?

Mike Tyson was convicted of rape and no one really cared. In fact, his first fight out of prison set a pay-per-view record of $63 million. And his career wasn’t ruined by biting off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear, assaulting two people in a road rage attack, throwing punches after the bell, knocking down a referee, failing one drug test and refusing to take another, racking up more sexual assault accusations, or saying he wanted to eat Lennox Lewis’ children. Nope, his career ended only when his performance declined.

But it’s not just money making ability that gives someone immunity. There’s something else, though I’m not sure what. Why can Brad Pitt and Charlie Sheen do no wrong, while other people of similar stature pay dearly for offenses that should be within the bounds of forgiveness?

John Kerry’s 2008 presidential hopes were dashed when he waited too long to apologize for a botched joke. Seriously? Why is that even an issue?

On the other hand, George W. Bush got re-elected after, in some peoples’ minds, bombing the World Trade Center. (No, I don’t think he deserves any blame for the 9/11 attacks, but a lot of people think it was his fault for ignoring the threat and allowing it to happen, and some people actually think he planned it…people like Charlie Sheen.)

Shock jock Don Imus found that your immunity can wear off. He was fired for his infamous “nappy headed hos” comment, despite apologizing immediately. Yeah, it’s offensive, and I’m certainly not a fan of his, but that comment was consistent with the material that won him honors such as a place in Talkers magazine’s 25 greatest radio talk show hosts of all time. So why did the line suddenly move for him? He’s said some things that were far worse, without much consequence.

Does anyone really expect Simon Cowell to apologize to everyone he’s judged?

Anyway, if anyone knows what the rules are, let me know.

The Blizzard of 2010 brought about 3 feet of snow to D.C. A few days ago, I got on a plane to go someplace a bit warmer (Charleston, SC). I got on the plane and looked out the window at the weather I was leaving behind.

I was busy thinking about the trip, so I didn’t notice there was a small delay. Nor did I notice when the small delay became a big delay. Not until someone got on the PA system and said “If you’re wondering why we’re not moving, we’re having some trouble locating the captain.”

Eventually they sent us back to the gate, and shortly afterwards they cancelled the flight. They didn’t say why, but after I finally got there on the next flight, I found out what had happened: the captain just decided to quit his job right before takeoff.

This guy did some serious damage to the airline. I don’t know what the situation was, and maybe he can get away with it. Maybe he isn’t getting a pension anyway, maybe he’s safe from legal action, and maybe he doesn’t need to work for anyone else ever again. Maybe.

But all too often, people find that the world is smaller than we realize, we need each other more than we think, and you only get to betray someone once.

I’ve heard trust described as a bank account. When you say you’ll do something and then follow through, you’ve made a deposit to the trust account. When your balance is high enough, you can make withdrawals by asking for favors, and you can afford penalties when you slip up now and then. But once you try to rob the bank, it’s never the same again.

I know a system administrator who responded to getting laid off by deleting all the data on a server, causing what he thought would be about $1 million in damages. The company ended up not needing what was on the server, but why do people do things like that? Actions have consequences. For God’s sake, you can hire a hitman for just a few dollars.

I recently tried to collect payment for some freelancing work from a freeloading client. First they pretended they had paid me, then they pretended to be “researching the problem,” and now they’ve broken off all contact. OK, they win on the money front, but to save a few bucks they branded themselves as deadbeats. Not a good tradeoff.

You can survive divorce, bankruptcy, and cancer, and possibly even come out of it stronger than ever. But once you sacrifice your reputation, it’s really hard to recover. And sometimes you only get one chance.