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Five reasons Ron Johnson failed at JC Penney

From a Time article, five reasons Ron Johnson failed at JC Penney:

  1. He misread what shoppers want
  2. He didn’t test ideas in advance
  3. He alienated core customers
  4. He totally misread the JC Penney brand
  5. He didn’t seem to like or respect JC Penney

One thing missing in the main story that shows up in the comments: He never bothered to move to Texas, where Penney’s corporate headquarters are.

The full story: http://goo.gl/m394g

By Alvin Alexander on April 24, 2013

Please help - Stack Overflow is copying my content

So what I learned tonight is that the Stack Overflow (SO) website has copied my content almost 800 times without linking back to my website once. This image shows the Google search results:

Google search results

By Alvin Alexander on November 5, 2012

devdaily.com for sale?

Since I changed devdaily.com to alvinalexander.com, I've received several emails from people saying they're interested in buying the devdaily.com domain name. All I can say is that if you're interested in buying it, using the contact form here to contact me and make me a solid offer. I'm pretty sure that if the offer is $1M (one million dollars, US currency) or more, you'll get my attention. Otherwise I'll probably put it up for auction next year, and at that time you'll be bidding against a lot of other people.

By Alvin Alexander on November 1, 2012

devdaily.com is now alvinalexander.com

Way back in late 1998 (think "before Google"), I started devdaily.com in the hope that it would one day grow into a website where authors would offer tips and tutorials for Java, Perl, C, C++, Linux, and any other open source programming language and technology that came along. Then in 1999 I started a company named Mission Data, and I put the dream of devdaily aside.

By Alvin Alexander on October 6, 2012

Good news in the mailbox: A royalty check from the Amazon Kindle eBook program

I found a little bit of good news in the mailbox this morning, a little royalty check from the Amazon Kindle eBook publishing program:

The check wasn't for much, but hey, it's a start. If you're new to my website, the check is for my two Kindle eBooks, shown below:

By Alvin Alexander on October 3, 2012

My new business: The Zen Foundation

There's a long story behind my new nonprofit business adventure, but in short, I've created the Zen Foundation to fulfill the following mission:

"The Zen Foundation will freely distribute classic Zen books to libraries, schools, healthcare facilities, and other locations where people can discover Zen."

When I say "other locations" in that mission statement, I'm currently thinking of motels, hotels, B&Bs, and many other places where people can "discover Zen".

By Alvin Alexander on May 31, 2012

Amazon KDP Select free promotion program - The Day After

As I wrote in my two previous articles (Amazon KDP Select free promotion - Day 1, and Amazon KDP Select free promotion - Day 2), I've been participating in the Amazon KDP Select free ebook promotion program for the last two days to see how that would affect sales of my new ebook, How I Sold My Business: A Personal Diary.

By Alvin Alexander on May 5, 2013

Don't buy my book! (It's FREE this weekend)

Wait - Don't buy my book! Thanks to a very cool Amazon.com KDP promotion, my eBook, How I Sold My Business: A Personal Diary, will be made FREE this weekend.

I don't know how all of the Amazon KDP promotion works, but I do know they set aside over $6M per year to let self-publishers like myself make their books freely available to the public for brief periods of time, so I'm making my new eBook free this weekend.

By Alvin Alexander on March 11, 2012

Amazon KDP Select free promotion program - Day 2

I began an experiment with the Amazon KDP Select free promotion program yesterday. I just released my new eBook, How I Sold My Business: A Personal Diary, on Monday of this past week, and when I learned about the KDP Select program, I thought I'd give it a try, so I made my ebook from on the Kindle Store this weekend.

By Alvin Alexander on May 5, 2013

Amazon Kindle eBook self publishing for Mac (and Windows) users

I just went through the process of self-publishing my new eBook (How I Sold My Business: A Personal Diary) on the Amazon Kindle store, and after trying a number of different approaches to get my ebook to look the way I wanted it to look, I thought I'd share what I learned here.

By Alvin Alexander on October 20, 2012
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