| Best days for e-mail |
 Paul Allen Blog mentions stats for how likely people are to open e-mails on various days of the week, and how likely they are to click on something in them. This is the chart.
Well, e-mail marketing isn't generally anything to recommend nowadays, as it can a bit hard to distinguish it from spam. But say you have a legitimate reason for mailing a lot of people, like a newsletter they've signed up for, this is of course useful. Send it Friday or Sunday. I suppose because people have less to do on those days, and are more looking for new stuff that might entertain them. [ Articles | 23 Nov 2005 @ 15:36 | 536 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Lots of small business bloggers |
Small Business Trends:There are 700,000 small business bloggers. At least, that is what Warrillow & Co. says, in its most recent weekly newsletter. 700,000, that's quite a bunch. Yes, one will probably have to reckon with them. Well, anybody who has a blog is somebody to reckon with, to some extent, as one can't just treat them as silent consumers who'll just take what you dish out, or at best return it if it doesn't work. And if they're in business by themselves, they're even more likely to be savvy. [ Articles | 23 Nov 2005 @ 15:24 | 437 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| OpenBlog |
| I just notice on Wealth Esteem that the OpenBC network has a Blog now. OpenBC is one of the best online networks, and is particularly good for people who are in Europe. But, alas, I haven't paid overly much attention to online networks recently. Top guys behind OpenBC are Lars Hinrichs and Bill Liao. Bill Liao is one of my idols. Great networker and entrepreneur and motivator. I had a superb coaching session with him once, which I'm still processing. [ Articles | 23 Nov 2005 @ 15:14 | 436 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Increasing your Adsense revenue |
 Many people have Google Adsense ads on their sites. And it is one of the best things around. But how would you go about it if you'd like to get more people to click on them. Here's one discussion of a particular simple idea. Basically just that you put interesting pictures next to those ads. People are so used to filtering out anything that looks like ads, so many people don't even see them. So, if you put some catchy unusual pictures next to the ads, they're more likely to see them and click on them. Is that cheating? I don't know. Not necessarily. You could of course obscure the fact that they're ads, and trick some people into clicking on them, thinking they're something else, and that might not be quite kosher. But basically it is just guiding people's attention a little bit.
So, see the top of this thread here. Also an example of the strange things people sometimes have success with. The guy has made a site for people who draw pictures of pigs. Who on earth would be interested in that? I don't know, but clearly thousands of people have contributed to it, so something is working about it. The pictures are supposed to show something about one's personality. And then he found that when he moved his ads around a bit and put pictures above them, he got 4 times as many clickthroughs. Even though he actually moved the ads down, "below the fold", so you had to scroll down a bit to see them. And one can kind of see why that would work there. His random pig pictures end up strangely complementing the random ads, bringing out some hidden meaning that isn't really there, but suddenly making those links more meaningful to click on. OK, it also makes them look more as a part of the site, rather than just ads, and that might be part of it. Anyway, it shows that people who have better results than others will often have experimented quite a bit to get there. They'll try different things and watch how well they do, and they'll change things around until they find the best possible solution. One typically doesn't get it right in the first try. [ Articles | 12 Nov 2005 @ 00:01 | 499 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| One Red Paperclip |
     A guy named Kyle got an idea for how he could get a house. A crazy idea, but so crazy it is likely to work. He would start with a paperclip, and he would offer to trade it up for something bigger and better. And he would keep doing that until he has a house, or preferably an island with a house. Who would want to trade anything for a paperclip? Well, he ran into some people who had this fun fish pen, and they were vegetarians, so they'd just as well want the paperclip. Then he swapped the fish pen with a door handle with a face on it, made by a sculptor. And there was a guy who thought that was just what he needed to replace a handle on his coffee machine, and he gave Kyle a camping stove for it. And then a guy really needed that stove, more so than the portable electricity generator he had standing around. So, in four transactions Kyle went from a paperclip to a 1000W generator. He could very well have a house in another 4 or 5 jumps. Just you wait and see. And not just that, but his idea is so original and cool and crazy that he's getting a LOT of attention. Suddenly he has 10s of thousands of visitors per day, and he has sponsors for the site, and he's going on talkshows and being interviewed by the New York Times, etc. All for one little paperclip and a simple little crazy ambitious idea. And a blog. An important part of what makes it work is that he's a real guy, there are pictures and stories, and you can talk to him. So, should you go and do the same? Probably not exactly. But you need to get an original idea, and put it out in the world, and be there to talk about it. [ Articles | 11 Nov 2005 @ 14:54 | 500 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Million Quarters |
 I can't believe it. I mentioned the million dollar homepage, saying that's pretty much an idea that can work once, for the first guy who thinks of it. And I had noticed a couple of copy cats right away, who didn't seem to be getting anywhere. But one of them, the Million Quarter homepage is. It is a blatant rip-off copy of the million dollar page. same layout, colors, heading, menu items. They just copied everything, made it a quarter instead of a dollar, and started promoting it. And have made a hundred thousand dollars already. Now, I'd be rather embarrassed to just go and copy somebody else's page exactly, but these folks aren't ashamed. And obviously I'm wrong about it only working once as well.
Doesn't work every time, though. Others had the exact same idea. I saw several doing the exact same thing. Million quarters, same menu points. But somehow they didn't promote it as well, and they don't have any success stories, and there wasn't much there. Million Penny home page was one of the first copies, and worked too. But a full page 'only' makes the guy $10,000. Others have clever new variations. World's Most Expensive Page tries to make an auction, where you get placed higher if you pay more. But it doesn't look to me like it will work. So, what can we learn about all that? Well, your idea doesn't really have to be brilliant, it just has to be catchy. You don't have to be the first to do it, as long as you manage to get people's attention. You don't have to be terribly original, it sometimes works better to look exactly like something people recognize. And business opportunities are there for people who move on them, rather than for those who site around talking about why they won't work. But it isn't automatic. You still have to find exactly what it is that works. The right mix of elements, and some way of gaining critical mass. [ Articles | 4 Nov 2005 @ 13:07 | 523 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| How to avoid being blogbashed |
Some companies are very worried about having their products and services bashed on a swarm of blogs. They think bloggers are somehow the enemy. It is really quite simple. Here's a list of what a company ought to do to secure itself against being bashed. From Politech via BoingBoing: 1. Create quality products and services. Pretty much adds up to running an honest business, eh. And I could add: Be willing to communicate openly with your customers. Nobody will have any great need to bash you if you don't try to fool them, and you're willing to talk about anything anybody has an issue with. [ Articles | 3 Nov 2005 @ 17:36 | 699 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| How to be creative |
 Hugh MacLeod has written a wonderful book, How to be Creative, which can be downloaded online. Very inspiring stuff, from a very creative person. In part about how to succeed with your ideas, also economically. 1. Ignore everybody. [ Articles | 1 Nov 2005 @ 15:48 | 485 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| What's your blog worth? |
 Dane Carlson used calculations from Tristan Louis on the sale of Weblogs,Inc. to calculate what your blog is worth. It is a slight bit silly, but not entirely. Weblogs, Inc. is essentially a collection of blogs. They were sold for somewhere between 25 and 40 million dollars. And in the blogosphere we have some nice tools for checking how popular and well visited blogs are. Like, the number of incoming links in Technorati. So, if we compare our blogs link situation with the Weblogs,Inc. blogs, and we assumed that somebody gives us a similar offer, then what should it be. You can do it yourself here. So, it says this blog is worth $5,000. My ming.tv blog is worth $45,000. Which wouldn't be bad. Hey, offer me a straight $50K and you can have it, and I'll change my nickname.[ Articles | 27 Oct 2005 @ 13:27 | 483 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Magnitude |
| I can't say I've mastered it, but I think one of the things I'm getting a sense of in trying to make websites that are successful is the sheer magnitude that is necessary. OK, there are other, maybe better, ways of making money online than by having advertising, but it still applies. You need a hell of a lot of visitors. You need to reach a lot of people. It is the same if you have something to sell. Lots and lots of people need to hear about your product or service, and then some of them will want to buy.
There are maybe things one can do that don't work like that. Where maybe a couple of phone calls get you a customer. But for most kinds of business, it takes a certain magnitude of activity and exposure. And I can guess that this is something that many new entrepreneurs are likely to miscalculate. You know, you hand out 100 fliers and you're surprised that nobody bites. Or you make 5 phone calls and you're dishearted because you only got NOs. Where maybe you should have handed out 10,000 fliers, or made 500 phone calls. Now, some limited examples. As I mentioned, one of my websites, Opentopia, makes a little money. Not that I can live off of it or anything, but enough for me to pay attention. Like, $1000 on a good month, where I'm not having trouble with Google. It does that with around 150,000 visitors per month. 150 thousand different people! That's a helluva lot of people. Three football stadiums full. Just so that I can make a lousy thousand bucks. It gives you an idea of the needed magnitude. OK, maybe if I were selling something, and I were good at it, and I had a good margin on it, I could make the same with much fewer visitors. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect 1 out of a 100 people to buy something, if they came their looking for it, and I had it. And if I made $10 on each widget, whatever it might be, I'd only need 10,000 people to come by to make $1000. But 10,000 is still a whole damned lot of people. When the web first started happening, many people thought that if they just got a website, everything would be happening automatically. That millions of people suddenly would know about their product. But by now there are billions of webpages, and they're not going to come to yours unless there's a good reason. And of those who come, only few will really be interested. So, if you have a book to sell, and you set up a website, and you're lucky that 10 people come by every day, nothing will come of it. To get any kind of result you'd have to get wired up so that 1000s of people come by every day, and you've better have something interesting to show them. I'm personally somewhat reluctant to think like that. You know, I'd prefer just to talk to the exact people who're interested, and I optimistically think that a few words and a few contacts might get me what I need. But I'm afraid that what one usually needs is something massive. If you think you need fliers, you probably need billboards. If you think you need 10 people, you probably need 1000. Massive attack. And that's what I find a slight bit distasteful, even if it is true. Of course, it doesn't change that you've better have something worthwhile and valuable to offer, and you've better do it honestly. I'm not talking about tricking people into falling for your scam or anything like that. But even if you have something good, you need some kind of massive way of getting it out there. Because the world is big and busy and in motion, and nobody's going to notice you unless you make enough noise. [ Articles | 26 Oct 2005 @ 02:51 | 433 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
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