No Bullshit! - Millionaire Maker Dan Kennedy uses S9Y

[johncanary]

Hi folks!

I just discovered by chance that Dan Kennedy uses Serendipity for
his Blog (and Joomla for his site). (A fairly old version, but it works for
him an his million dollar business. Well, the Blog is only a small part of it.)

http://www.dankennedy.com/cblog/

Quite interesting.
Yours
JohnCanary

P.S. In case you never heard about Dan. Here's his teaser.

DAN KENNEDY'S "NO B.S."
APPROACH AGGRAVATES MANY,
BUT ENRICHES THOSE WHO ACT
ON HIS ADVICE

Dan Kennedy is internationally recognized as a 'millionaire-maker', helping people in just about every category of business turn their ideas into fortunes. He has been called the "Professor of Harsh Reality" because he's provocative, irreverent, sarcastic, and tells it like it is in a humorous, but chilling, serious fashion that cuts to the core of the issues in a way no other marketing 'guru' does.

Dan Kennedy's advice can be moved with remarkable ease from one very different field, industry, or profession to another with amazing success. He is a leading consultant in direct marketing, copywriting, internet strategies, and profit improvement systems.
http://www.dankennedy.com/

[yellowled]

I just discovered by chance that Dan Kennedy uses Serendipity for his Blog

Isn't it funny how every single "prominent" blogger using s9y seems to use a dull, out-of-date template? No wonder a lot of people think we don't have any good ones ...

YL

[johncanary]

That proves 2 things:

• S9Y simply runs, and runs, and runs, ...
• Remember the old UNIX rules, "Don't upgrade as long as it runs,... "
  It's actually a business rule as well. Those people know it's not
  about having the latest release and newest gadgets (at least in their
  business).

You can add BobParsons.tv (CEO and founder of Godaddy.com) to the
list. He probably catches the bird, wins the race, ... He's using S9Y
Version 0.7.1 ! At least he had his web people fixing up the layout a
bit.

Those people above are no bloggers, those are just business people
who happen to have a blog to show off a bit.

Chris Garret from http://www.chrisg.com (UK based) ran a survey and
found -- once again -- that the majority of bloggers are "sitting" in the
USA. S9Y's best 'market' seems to be Germany, but that doesn't count
much on a worldwide scale.

All prominent real bloggers use wordpress, some typepad (Seth Godin),
blogger or moveabletype. Something with a strong 'organization' behind
it. And S9Y isn't even available via autosetup with most hosts.

Garvin Hicking has published his book now, but that appeals to the
tech oriented folks only, not the average dude, who wants to start a blog.
I mean, the book is some sort of commercialization, but where does it go
from there?

No idea where the core-developers want to go. The product S9Y is
certainly great, but who cares?

As far as I am concerned, I hope it will be further developed for a long
time, and I even wish that the developers could make a living from it
(without charging for the software of course) so that they can focus on
what they obviously love to do, "Write some great piece of software".

Honestly, I don't no much about the open software development
community its players, their motivation, and possible opportunities to
make money from it.

[judebert]

Where do the core developers want to go? It's been a long time since I contributed, but I still think I'm in that circle -- after all, I still have the right to commit new code.

All Open-Source programming follows two mantras: "Scratch where it itches" and "If you build it, they will come."

Garvin (and a few others) scratched their itch to provide a blog engine. It works marvelously. We get more developers and designers who scratch their own itches, improving the product as we go. It's a big snowball, picking up features as it rolls along. Luckily we've got Garvin to make sure that the dirt, stones, and moss are avoided.

And people are coming. Serendipity fills a niche in the blog space that other engines do not. That's where most of our new users come from. In fact, it's "embedded installations", although we all know Serendipity does a lot more than that.

We'll never achieve wide recognition and acceptance that way, though. We'll never become millionaires, and probably not even thousandaires. If that's the reason you work on s9y, it's time to stop.

Why? Because there are multiple products in the market that fill the majority of users' needs. To get more users, Serendipity must either be the user's first choice, or provide a feature that he "needs", but that the competitors don't provide.

Can we be the user's first choice? I don't think so. I differ in opinion with johncanary in that Serendipity seems to be an installation option on almost every hosting service I've been involved with. But other blog engines are the user's first thought. To fix that we'll need advertising, for which we'll need money, for which we'll need to be the user's first choice. Checkmate.

So, what "need" would drive users to Serendipity? I still think that, right now, it's embedded operation. That's what makes people go looking for an alternative when their first choice doesn't work. (Sometimes its support for Postgres, or another obscure feature.) We wish users needed our other features, like security, speed, easy upgrading, Smarty templating, or SPARTACUS; but until the users feel that their first choice doesn't provide one of those things, they're not going to go looking for an alternative.

So how do we make users need our features? This is where my involvement in this conversation will have to end. I'm just scratching my itches. I can't reach that one.

[johncanary]

Hi judebert!

Thanks for the great write-up and the insights.

Let's not talk Garvin & Co. out of developing, but I am sure
they know anyway why and what they are doing it for.

[Don Chambers]

I've managed to find my share of "itches to scratch", and I've done my best helping others scratch theirs as well. I will say this - I don't think you can ever beat the s9y community. I have dabbled in other open source environments, and it is very easy to get lost in the crowd. How many questions here go unanswered? Not many, and they are usually answered quickly.

Not long ago, I tripped across a blog entry in which the author stated their personal views of sticking with s9y over the competition. The article is over a year old, but remains interesting:

http://raygunrobot.com/archives/Why-I-d ... -WordPress

[tpost]

Cosign what Don said.

I also dabble with some open-source products, but by far, the best support comes from S9Y.

I always get a prompt response from Garvin et al. and no question is left unanswered!

PS. Don, RayGunRobot.com recently switched from S9Y to Drupal.

Here's the old post in question:
http://raygunrobot.com/old-blog/archive ... -WordPress