Jack and Jim talk about the Authorizenet outage that affected countless online merchants, including us, resulting in an untold but surely massive loss of revenue web-wide today.
Also discussed: Tactile Feedback possibilities for iPhones, Chimpanzees proven to learn to make things by following video instruction, “white flight” from Myspace to Facebook (completely hearsay), and other juicy bits. All in 34 minutes!
July 4 is Independence Day here in the States, which, for most of us, entails the risk of losing:
your fingers to cheap fireworks;
your waistline to hot dogs;
your liver.
All of which, as a red-blooded American, I support wholeheartedly. But if you’re spending today celebrating the country’s independence, how about putting some attention on your own personal independence?
It might be independence from a day job, or financial stress, or even a mindset that’s keeping you from making things happen.
Here are a few of my favorite tips for declaring your own individual independence.
Expand Your Audience
Andy Warhol had it wrong. Now that we’re living in the future, everyone isn’t famous for 15 minutes. We’re each famous with 15 people.
Each of us online, whether or not we’re technically selling anything, has our own little village of customers. Customers for our products, our ideas, and our funny pictures of cats.
And most of us would like to expand that village, at least by a little bit. Especially if we want to build a business around it.
July 02, 2009By: ClickZ News Blog Category: Blogging & RSS
There’s something that seems especially appropriate about a Google surge campaign focused on the Governator. Starting yesterday and running through Sunday, two union groups are blasting Caleeefohrnians in Sacramento County with ads pushing for state citizens to contact their representatives to push for “common sense solutions to close a $24 billion state budget deficit.”
The ad calls Arnie a “corporate special interest doormat” and suggests he should “be a hero for California families.”
If you’re not familiar with the surge tactic, a.k.a. the Google Network Blast, there’s lots more on it here and here.
The Service Employees International Union and the California School Employees want to make sure when state legislators finally pass a now-overdue budget, that schools, healthcare and other services are not cut. The ads link to www.commonsense4ca.org.
Sacramento is, of course, the state capital, and apparently the unions are hoping to hit state legislators with the ads as the budget crisis drags on. Still, one may wonder why they’d expect to reach lawmakers over the Fourth of July weekend. If they were real Americans wouldn’t they be heading to their home districts to BBQ and watch fireworks with their families this weekend?
You’ll see one theme come up again and again on Copyblogger. If you want to create real revenue with your blog, you need to have something worthwhile to sell.
Most sites are disappointed by the nickels and dimes that come in from advertising. If your site gets massive amounts of traffic, it can work, but if not, you’ll want to find a much more profitable source of revenue.
But most of us find that it’s not all that easy to translate high-quality content from your blog into a high-quality product for sale.
Four or five years ago, you could have slammed together an ebook over the weekend and created a decent income with it. But in the current environment, buyers are more careful with their money, and you’ve got an awful lot of competition.
The good news is, most of your competitors still think it’s 2003, and most of their products are astoundingly lame. And there are still lots of buyers who need to solve their most pressing problems.
So there are still plenty of opportunities to monetize with an ebook. But it has to be terrific.
July 01, 2009By: ClickZ News Blog Category: Blogging & RSS
Microsoft is investing big ad dollars in big splashy display ads for Bing.
In case you didn’t notice, Microsoft is the latest advertiser to use a pushdown ad — a new unit introduced by the Online Publishers Association. The Bing ad appeared on wsj.com today and nytimes.com yesterday and June 8. A similar ad also ran on Msnbc, according to a Microsoft spokesman.
What’s more, Microsoft is using creative from the campaign in other placements — including including interstitials, homepage and channel roadblocks — on Huffington Post, Slate, and Federated Media, the spokesman said.
July 01, 2009By: ClickZ News Blog Category: Blogging & RSS
Sporting events and beer go together pretty well. Now ubiquitous sports sponsor Bud Light will sponsor part of ESPN’s re-launched casual games destination. In addition to baseball, basketball, air hockey, and bowling games, ESPN Arcade offers a game in which players decipher differences between two seemingly identical photos (like the photo-based game you may have played in your local bar, but in this case, the photo subjects keep their clothes on.)
Bud Light will add its branding to the “ESPN Zoom” game, available both online and in the free mobile app.
July 01, 2009By: James Chartrand Category: Blogging & RSS
Canadians are a funny lot.
They use strange words and spell with a U. They kiss cod. They enjoy being frozen solid nearly 8 months a year, and they call their money Loonies and Toonies.
Don’t get me wrong; they’re nice people just the same. They’re nature lovers and humanitarian and they like things simple and friendly.
And contrary to popular belief, they’re actually pretty smart.
But there’s just one problem. Your marketing strategies? You notice how they’ve been changing? That the old-school methods aren’t working anymore . . . at all?
Well, I’ve figured out whose fault it is.
Blame Canada
You see, Canucks have a strange mindset. They’re gentle people, and mostly kind of quiet. If you drove up to the frozen tundra and started screaming, “Buy my stuff!” at the top of your lungs, you’d probably startle the wildlife and be ushered off (politely) by Mounties in red coats and really great hats.
It’s happening all over. Those wily Canadians are causing a marketing revolution, and it’s spreading too fast to contain.
Randy Gage is a world class speaker, author, consultant, and prosperity guru. In this Webside Chat, learn how such a successful guy (who has admittedly few technical web skills) can become massively successful with blogging and social marketing. How Randy does Twitter alone is worth the time to check this one out. He’s doing Twitter right. Real right!
Check out Randy Gage’s blog and grab some killer free stuff just for stopping by. He’s one to follow! (And if you have $60,000.00 or more burning in your pocket, you can hire Randy to speak to your group.)
June 30, 2009By: ClickZ News Blog Category: Blogging & RSS
If you want to convince someone to share her Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, and a credit card number, will these smiley and frowny faces do the trick?
Experian, a reputable credit scoring service, apparently thinks so.
Experian’s ConsumerInfo.com ad, as seen on AOL.com, before activating animation:
Experian’s ConsumerInfo.com ad after activating animation:
Perry Marshall is the original Adwords how-to-get-traffic guy. His training on pay per click traffic is the most popular and recognizeable on the web today. On this webside chat, learn how Perry actually uses Adwords to run traffic to his blog landing pages and how he views the role of social media and blogging in online marketing today.
