You have to read the story behind this quote about developing software on top of the .Net 3.0 framework:
“I want to develop for the .NET 3.0 framework”
I don’t think you could find a smaller market segment if you tried. Perhaps writing software for Bulgarian asparagus farmers?
Ken McCarthy, John Reese and several other marketeers are reporting the phenomenon known as GoogleSlap. This is the GoogleDance of Adwords, where cost-per-click has risen markedly for sites which offer “suboptimal” experience for users. Apparently any attempts at lead-generation now costs $1 per click, vs. $0.20 in the past.
Anik Singal, in Surviving Google Update of July 2006, reports four kinds of sites which were hardest hit.
and suggests among other things,
moving the landing page to a site with a high page rank;
increasing the number of words on landing page (at the expense of conversion rates!);
using another sites’ url (sneaky! read Anik’s article)
I wonder how this compares with pay per action ads that Google is introducing? In my opinion, Microsoft wouldn’t have been able to get away with this, since Microsoft would have been required to give competitors equal access to their services. It won’t be long before the Google Anti-Trust action takes off.
The comments section lists more resources and commentary from other adwords advertisers. Some are planning to take their businesses elsewhere. Surprisingly, no one is taking this to the Trade Practices Commission.
Interestingly, Amit Argawal points that Google is hiring telecommuters to work as adwords relevance quality raters. I’m not sure what kinds of qualifications these people have. It is impossible for someone without a particular need to rate adword landing sites. For instance, showing Swee the landing pages I’m excited about sends her into an absolute yawn.
One way to bring the topic of Wiki up is to look for trigger factors. When people leave the company, don’t their laptop hard drives get wiped? That’s a massive loss of knowhow. No executives would go unconcerned about how much informal knowledge about a project that gets flushed.
The main objections to wikis are:
1) adoption. People don’t give up their habits easily. Some wikis are designed around e-mails. This is pretty cool. You can CC your e-mail to a special email address that belongs to the wiki, and it’ll put it up on the intranet webpage.
2) Loss of control. There are already document management systems in-place. The person in charge is going to feel threatened. To counter this objection, explain that the document management was never going to archive informal emails, and work in progress. These are at the moment going into whiteboards, pieces of A4 notepads, stick it notes. The wiki is just another piece of stationery where ideas can go on. It’s the place for ideas that belong to a group of people.
3) Legal discovery. When a SNAFU happens in a project and lawyers take over, suddenly it becomes easy to find out that some one is negligent in doing something because there is a paper trail now. Well… There are wikis which implement simple document retention / document disposal strategies that comply with corporate record keeping policies.
The reality of corporate document management is they are more about filing stuff away than for keeping track of live interactions. They are also designed according to a corporate hierarchy: who works in what department, what are their formal roles. Real work is done through social interactions, not necessarily bounded by some preconception of the nature of work is about. A personal assistant might hold data critical to a project, such as someone’s scheduled flights.
If you can answer yes to the next two questions:
1) Do you have a computer that’s always on?
2) Does the computer have 2 Gb of disk space available?
If so, you are very close to having a live wiki in your intranet for assessment. No point of talking and musing over how people might use an electronic vefsion of a whiteboard. Just put one in people’s work environemnt and observe how they use it.
I stumbled on to the affiliate marketing blog today. Today there are hoardes of people writing no-brand articles / essays on the internet trying to make money off ads and affiliate sales. Tell you what, it doesn’t sound like a great way to make a living. Magazines on newstands suffer great mortality rates. True, that publishing on the internet is an order of magnitude cheaper… however, it’s not as if people are struggling for choice here. What I read, daily, are articles from people I trust and respect. Nothing else gets bookmarked.
If you have heard “the money’s in the list” but have not been able to build a big list or profit from your list you are going to love this…
http://www.thelistfx.com/ls/?secrets=2282
Keith Wellman put together one of the best list building and profiting courses I have seen in a long time…and no it’s not expensive ;)
Thanks,
Chui
Joi Ito remarks that parked domains are denying people useful domain names. Apparently this is big business.
How about a botnet of traffic to scam parked domain engines? So that it appears that the traffic is profitable when it actually isn’t?
Incidentally, Fabulous.com is Publicly Listed on the ASX, and is based in Brisbane. YTD profit? 4.2 million AUD.
Resources:
Yahoo Search on Domain Typo
Why are people spam blogging?
Researchers Kolari, Java and Finin at University of Maryland reports:
Interestingly, here’s their splog detection approach:
via Phil Windley
Can someone tell me what’s the catch to this ruse?
Err please don’t sign up. It’s probably a phishing site.
Update: Looks like they are a marketing firm. You’ve got to get 5 people sign up to Amex, Netflix, etc. before you get your iPod.
Just a heads up for people who have bought the infoproduct creator. It turned out to be pretty good value I though. I’ve just purchased James Brausch’s Artemis article rewriting software, at $10 again. It’s been priced down to $10 until midnight. I’m really curious why people have paid $10,000 to listen to him teach internet marketing, and this is coming from a guy who lives in a community of 300 in the US. It’s a great dream of mine to be able to live where I want to, and telecommuting has partly achieved that aim, although I’m still on the road a bit. Selling stuff on the internet is the alternate path. And James looks like he had done well with it.
The gist of it is to improve traffic to your website by moving up search rankings. You can technically up the page rank on your site by posting slightly rewritten articles so that Google doesn’t filter it out as duplicate content. I’ll try that with ZGDChart and see if we can get it’s ranking up. For those who’ve missed out on InfoProduct creator (it’s no longer 10 bucks, by the way), I’d like to report that it was pretty good value, in the sense it teaches one how to use Overture to determine whether a market is viable or not. If there’s one thing to selling, it’s about finding the right market. There were some interesting material on domain name selection as well.
ps. If you’ve ordered, can I offer you a little free bonus? Please email me.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link.
Hi guys, I’ve been studying James Brausch’s weblog for the past week and he’s fair dinkum intelligent about selling things on the internet. Like James, I’d gone out on my own before and did pretty shockingly, but unlike James, he tried again and worked out how to do it a bit better the second time around. I’m stick stuck in a cubicle. When it comes to making a buck on the internet there are plenty of gurus out there, some charging outrageous amounts. James does too … his seminars go for $10,000. Out of my reach.
Now I really like James, because his tone of voice and approach suited me. You’ll know what I mean once you read his blog. He was a software engineer out at a medical equipment company, so he thinks the way we think.
James is pretty generous and gives away plenty of hard earned tricks and techniques on his blog, so I feel compelled to tell you that he’s discounted one of his “courses” down to $10 for 24 hours. I’m not on U.S. time, so I can’t tell you how many hours there’s left. $10 - that’s the price a couple of pizzas. I’m so excited my hands are shaking as I type this. If it helps me out of this cubicle, it’ll be the best $10 I’ve ever spent. I’ve just got myself a copy already. Check it out. As much as I love programming in Python, there are days when I wished I didn’t have to program.
Disclosure:
A. I’ve just signed up as an affiliate, so there’s some pizza money for me. Let me know if you think it’s not worth the money, and I’ll PayPal you my commission when I get the commission cheque.
B. I’m pouring through the material now. I’ll do a review later.
These folks here RSS and News Aggregating Shit Splogs are trying to confound search engines by stringing together RSS posts and news posts and then using that to organically boost their page ranks.
These pages then link to pages like this one which certainly violates the terms of use of Google Adsense. Reported to the Adsense Blog.
The worst thing is that technorati is actually indexing these things. Shouldn’t technorati let people report this kind of miscreant behaviour?
Thankfully one of them is hosted on Blogger. Reported.
I was looking for a CMS that can run a typical software site, but ended up looking at Hot Banana. This looks interesting:
Landing Page Manager - All aspects of Landing Page creation and management is looked after by Hot Banana. Landing Pages have built-in lead tracking from multiple lead sources (search engines, affiliates, email campaigns etc.), A/B testing with click and conversion stats, multi-step form builder for conversion best practices, Web analytics, scenarios, report integration, and design template management.
A CMS geered for marketeers not geeks. How cool can that be?
This is the most creative use of a banner ad that I’ve ever seen. (That’s a gif file, posing as a text-ad appearing in the top fold of a major online daily newspaper)
Which then leads to this powersqueeze page.
So MySpace has to monetize their website.
And I happen to be listening to daughter of the late Ken Gidden on the System Seminar blog. Here’s Ken’s list of 11 Income streams for websites
Tagged on to the content website, directory submissions
Unfortunately, it appears that Google has already decided not to provide Adsense to MySpace.
Gary Halbert was playing with Google Maps and pops out a few outstanding ideas of using it to do direct marketing.
Go read Marketing from Outer Space.
Question to the audience:
“are resellable e-books rights the new Ponzi schemes of the 21st century? It simply doesn’t matter what the contents are, people are buying the rights to on-sell the rights to other people?”
Here’s an example: there’s one site which sells master rights to 75 e-books for $30. The titles aren’t even given, so the guy who’s paying the $30 is probably taking a punt they can sell the master reprint rights again. One site even touts that the products they’ll help you sell are master resale rights.
Just have a look at the e-book ads along the side of this Google search page.
Sounds fishy to you? It sure does to me. I’m an easy sceptic.
Do not struggle with grassroots buzz until you’ve learnt traditional buzz generation. Edward Jay Epstein achieves great insight into how products are created and marketed. Go read:
Eric, in response to your post, may I say that Marc Fleury, of JBoss is known for his ability to hype and market. He may well tout Alfresco as the first open source ECM, and that meme will stick he he shouts often enough.
My questions for you:
Architecturally, how is CPS differentiated from Plone? At the moment, Plone is enjoying good mindshare.
Like it or not, Marc is already halfway through claiming the Opensource ECM mountain. Plone has already claimed the accessibility mountain, with lots of demos repeated focussing on how the blind can edit content with Plone. CPS has a mountain too. But first it has to create a new category for itself, and push it to analysts.
I’m publishing this intact in case the page ever disappears from the internet. A classic from Sean D’Souza on making business cards useful.
A mangy street dog can live seven years or more.
A four-colour, embossed, laminated business card would consider itself a veteran if it survived till next spring.
Because spring brings along spring-cleaning
And mysteriously, all over the world, business cards meet a horrible, recycled death.
So why don’t business cards work as well as they should?
Pull out your business card.
What does it say?
It gives your name.
Your address.
Mobile Number. Office Number.
And somewhere smack in the middle is a logo of sorts, possibly telling me what services you offer.
Um…Does your business card teach me to increase my pro*fits?
Does it show me how to reduce waste?
Does it help me do my tasks more efficiently?
Does it help me get…er…more customers?
Does it do anything, that I would be remotely interested in, at this moment?
It probably doesn’t, huh?
So how about a card that shows me how to increase my profit.
Or help me do my tasks efficiently.
Or help me get more customers.
Or tell me just about anything, other than a boring name, address, and contact details.
We’re talking about a business card that creates in*stant attention And while you’re playing ‘God’ he*re are some solid rules to create an extremely action-based business card.
Rule 1: Make your card look like the cover of a book
And let the front part of your business card look like something a customer would want to buy. Put in a title.
Rule 2: Make the title interesting and captivating
You don’t need to go very far to get an interesting title. You’ll probably find something in about sixteen seconds at Amazon.com Once you’ve found a title, simply adapt it your business.
Examples:
Dietician: 7 simple tweaks that will stop over-eating for life Real Estate: 7 reasons why most homes are under-valued
Consultant: 7 powerful techniques to increase closing ratios Car Mechanic: 7 In*stant Fuel-Saving Techniques
Landscaper: How to transform your garden with less than $100 investment
Rule 2a: Write the report or booklet
I know this is spoon-feeding, but hey, you’ll have to write the report or booklet that you’re going to give away. Don’t aim to be Mark Twain–just write a few profound tips that will help your customers to get ahead in their lives.
Rule 3: Do not (I repeat), do not ask the prospect to subscribe
Yes, your card will give intimate details of how the prospect can go to your website; and yes, it can tell them to call you for the report or booklet, but under no conditions will you have the word ’subscribe’ on your card.
The prospect is solely interested in the information contained in the report. When the prospect calls in, or fills in details at your website, you should tell them that they will be subscribed to your mailing list–and that they can unsubscribe whenever they wish to do so.
But under no conditions are you going to put that dreaded ’subscribe’
word on your card.
Rule 4: Flip over your card
Put bullet points. Tell the customer what they can expect to see in the report or the booklet you’re offering. Put in at least five to seven enticing bullet points. You darn well want the prospect to act immediately. Well, make the information compelling, so that the prospect feels the need to take a decision sooner than later.
Rule 5: Your logo and contact details come last
At the bottom of the card, there’s always a little space to put in your logo and your contact information. Just so that the prospect knows exactly how to reach you…just in case.
So will these steps prevent your business card from ending up in the trash?
Business cards have a grim fate.
They all end up in the trash eventually.
But there’s a difference between the card you currently have, and the card you know you really should have.
And the difference is that the prospect has voluntarily gone to your website or given you a call. And voluntarily agreed to be on your database.
And here’s a solemn, profound, earth-shattering fact…
That even if the prospect loses your card, or horrors, throws it away (by mistake of course), you can still keep in touch, because YOU n*ow have their contact details and permission.
So that when a job next pops up, you’re in the prospect’s face.
They’ve read your booklet or report. They know you are the expert in your field. And it’s more than likely that the prospect will call you before they call any the competition– if they call the competition at all.
Your business card can be a piece of paper. Or a conversion tool.
What would you prefer?
P.S. If you would like a detailed PDF with graphics, showing you exactly how to create a business card like the one described above + more examples of business cards that work, and the mistakes to avoid when creating your card, go to:
http://www.psychotactics.com/artbizcardpdf.htm
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3) The bare bones secrets of the psychology behind a website that attracts, keeps and creates raving fans out of your customers.
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©2001-2005 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a sec*ret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sa*les conversion, psychological tactics and branding.
[Chui: Notice the asterisks? sec*ret and sa*les ? Probably used to get past spam filters]
Randfish over at SEOmoz.org blogs on the beginnings of a technique to work out how much a site relies on comments for their inbound links.
- Run a linkdomain command at Yahoo! with the following syntax; “linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com”, and record the # of results (sample for SEOmoz - 7810)
- Run a linkdomain command at Yahoo! with this syntax; “linkdomain:url.com -comment -comments -forum -reply -site:url.com” and record the # of results (sample for SEOmoz - 1770)
- Subtract Step 2 from Step 1 and divide by Step 1 - this is a rough percentage of non-forum / non-blog links to the site. (For SEOmoz 7810 - 1770 = 6040 / 7810 = 77.33% - no wonder we were in the sandbox forever…)
An additional refinement would be to work out if the site has an RSS feed. If it doesn’t then chances are it is a commercial site. However, if the site has an RSS feed, it could still be a spam site:
a) It could be a spam blog (a.k.a splog)
b) Spammer could have comment spammed a legitimate blog, which then inflates the page rank of its target site.