Page 1 of MSN Search!

After working hard on emphasizing the word "math" on my website, MathScore.com now shows up on page 1 of MSN search for the query "math"! Now I'm getting a few extra users per day who visit the free trial. I'm still trying to raise my page rank for Google results. I just modified a bunch more pages to have links back to the home page. Hopefully that will help...

Brochure Mailer
I'm also going to try my first ever physical brochure mailer to 8,500 school teachers/administrators. I've heard that mailing brochures can get a tremendous response, so I'm hoping for a .5% or better response rate. If that is the case, I'll be able to generate 40+ school leads. I'll let you know how it goes!

Ritz Carlton / A Chorus Line
To celebrate our new reseller agreement with OdysseyWare, Pearlin and I dined at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco recently! We dined there becase Ron Siegel is currently their head chef. We've had his food before at Masa's, and the food was amazing, so we had to follow him to the Ritz. Once again, the food was incredible. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to do his 8-course tasting menu due to the fact that our seating time was 5:30pm and we had tickets to A Chorus Line at 8pm. Anyway, this was the second time I've seen A Chorus Line, and it was just as good the second time. It's not a flashy musical like Phantom, but it's still amazing, and Pearlin liked it too!

Sudoku / MathScore Progress

I've been playing a bunch of sudoku at websudoku.com again. This time I've gotten good enough not to have a bruised ego. I can usually finish easy sudokus in about 2:30 with a best time of 1:58. I can often complete evil sudokus in less than 8 minutes.

I'm still having difficulty getting MathScore.com ranked high on search engine results. However, for the query "math", I do show up on page 2 of MSN search! I just added the word "math" a few more times on that page in hopes that it will eventually boost me to page 1, which is where all the action is at. My Google page rank just isn't high enough to show up nicely on Google searches. At some point, I might just break down and pay a search engine optimization firm to boost my relevancy on Google.

On the bright side, there is a TV show called Living in Style that will air a "Back to School" episode starting August 21 that will feature MathScore.com. There will be about 20 airings of the episode on a variety of channels. I hope that generates some nice traffic. I'm also going to be featured on mathgoodies.com as an endorsed site.

The number of school inquiries has also increased lately, so I have been making some sales. Starting this school year, I will have confirmed customers in California, Arizona, Minnesota, and Texas. I have a great shot at getting something going in Nevada. On the local front, I have a shot at Redwood City.

I got a good look at Bishop Elementary's STAR test results today. My product was used in their 2nd, 4th, and 5th grades last year, and all 3 grades went up in score! Overall, the school jumped from 45% proficient to 50% proficient (this is very significant). 3rd grade dropped by 5%. Otherwise, the improvement would have been even better! I look forward to seeing how they do this year because some of the kids this year will already have one year of MathScore experience behind them. 3rd grade will also get on the system, so I'm expecting another jump in proficiency this coming school year. My goal is to get the school to at least 56% proficient this year.