Mymotech

Once upon a time I needed to register a domain. And in my innocence I decided that Godaddy was for wusses and I needed something a little more geeky to register my domains on. Enter Registerfly. They seemed pretty cool and stuff and they also had some cool discounts on domain registrations. Awesome.

Over the next year I registered some 25 domains with Registerfly, because that is how I roll. (most of them $.60 .info domains meant for a small amount of blackhat SEO burnin’ and churnin’. Strictly for educational purposes mind you.)

Of course, in the ensuing time period I’ve had to recommend a registrar to many friends, and I have always recommended Registerfly even though the internet is littered with bad reviews of their service. link link link

(Continued)

I was sitting in a meeting this morning reviewing a statement of work with a client. As we walked through the project plan we were talking about some specifics related to the implementation of a web analytics tool. During our discussion I started talking about some exciting possibilities within the application for applying a whole new level of data analysis, and my eyes must have lit up because everyone in the room just stopped and stared at me for a second.
At first I felt a little bit sheepish, but it became immediately apparent that to the client this was a good thing. By showing a genuine interest in the capabilities of the tool and in the potential impact on their organization, I ended up making the client feel better about hiring us to do the project. Indeed, it was the first time I have ever seen someone sign a statement of work right in front of me.

I guess the moral of this story to me, is enthusiasm can be contagious. And when applied at the right time it can give confidence to the person buying your services.

web analytics, consulting, business thoughts

Seth Godin recently spoke at Google. It was awesome. I have been working on a project from the beginning of the produt lifecycle recently, and there are so many true things about how to market effectively in todays web. This is really long 48min. You need Google Video Player to play this.

Google, Seth Godin, Permission Marketing

When I changed the focus of my blog, I wanted all the things that a starry-eyed blogger wanted:

1. A million bucks from AdSense
2. A thousand feed subscribers
3. and a daily mention on BoingBoing or Slashdot

Surprisingly, none of those things happened. Overall, I am happy with my lot in blogging. I have a small but growing audience and a trickle of AdSense income. But what about those successful bloggers that make all that cash? Are they happy? A new post over at Performancing by Chris Garrett gives some good for thought. More and more, bloggers have to face the challenge of who and what they are blogging for. Is my blog just a pass through for a bunch of ad-clickers? or is it a meaningful content web site where I make a contribution to the field that I am a professional in? and can it be both?

These are good questions. I think that the answers are as individual as the blogs that litter the internet.

I ran across an interesting post on SEOBook today. It contained a link to a new site called 1000tags. This site is a new take on the famous Million Dollar Homepage idea that has been in the media a lot lately. This got me thinking about another conversation I have been having with Richard of Apogee Web Consulting. He maintains that while pixel ads are good, that tag based advertising like 1000 tags will not take off. Here is what he had to say:

I don’t think 1000tags is going to work. The first tag is 00000. That’s garbage, junk, spam. Tagvertising might work under a pre-defined taxonomy. Even one that can evolve but not one that’s completely free-form. Look at the tags on their site. It’s just garbage. The difference with pixel advertising is that people have been curious to click on the little pictures they see. Are you curious to click on 00000? I doubt it - you know it’s crap.

I don’t disagree with the fact that 00000 is a complete garbage tag, but there are some consequences to that, in my opinion. First off it only serves to emphasize a smaller pool of relevant tags. Also, I think a tag based folksonomy allows better targeting than a pixel ad. Targeted traffic is better than untargeted traffic, unless of course you are running a bunch of scraper sites. And since these tags will grow along with the amount of sites that invest in them, I think that over time the tag cloud will start to take the shape of the internet.
It will be interesting to see how these copycats of the Million Dollar Home Page fare over time.

Side note: Everyone knows that the original million dollar home page is sort of a hoax right?

pixel ads, million dollar homepage, apogee :), 1000tags

Is this the end? As you are probably already aware that Google and AOL recently agreed to a huge business deal. All the details are still being ironed out but AOL is going to get to place ads on Google’s pages and Google is going to attempt to legitimize AOL’s business. I can’t help but think that what we might end up with is a bunch of crappy banner ads and a new set of google coasters. Earlier today Marissa Mayer went on the interview circuit here and here. It appears that AOL ads are gonna be slapped up on Google image search and Google video. Additionally, there is talk of putting more AOL content in the various OneBoxes that Google uses.
This whole thing smells corporate. Frankly, I think it will take Google further than they want to go and stay there longer than they want to stay.

I found a music service via Seth Godin’s blog. It is called Pandora. The concept is that by taking components of music that you enjoy they can suggest new songs that you have never heard that you will also enjoy. I have to say that they are pretty good at what they do. This is a great example of people taking something they love to do and creating a valuable business idea from it.

Hows that for a little bit of insight into my musical tastes sometimes.

Pretty slick. This actually reminds me of the mid 90’s when I discovered broadcast.com. Eventually, of course, they got bought out by Yahoo, then it got corporatized, and then it sucked.

I hope this one continues to be cool. I think that eventually they are going to put commercials on it.

So I added an Adwords account and a Yahoo Search Marketing account. I started one up and now am playing around with the different options available there. Soon I will be placing AdSense words on this site to test that out as well.

It is all very fun stuff. So obviously when you set these things up you have to send your the people that click on the link somewhere, but where to send them?

I though of a perfect place. HERE Since my little sister recently finished up her NaNoWriMo project. I believe that stands for National Novel Writing Month, which was November. Anyway, I figure I would try to direct a little traffic her way to see how successful I could be with words that no one uses. Yippee.

OK, now everyone come back soon because there will be updates soon as I get results.

I should be in bed, but I have been perusing ye old internet as is my custom. And I believe that I am startin to put together a plan.
It has something to do with creating revenue with the internet by stringing together every possible marketing scheme until my reach is universal. Well, it still needs work, and since no one reads this blog anyway I am going to bed.

More to come.

I mean That.