Archive for the Marketing Category

The above video is one of my favorite presentations I’ve given in 2009, an opening keynote at the last San Francisco WordCamp, titled “How to Blog without Killing Yourself”. More than 700 people from 32 countries were in attendance, which made for a wonderful experience.

The original title was “Scalable Blogging Behaviors: How to Grow from 1 to 1,000,000 Readers” and the content did not change.

In the above presentation, including detailed screenshots, I cover… Read More

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I’m so excited about SU.PR, it’s hard to contain.

For the last few weeks, the brilliant team at StumbleUpon and I have collaborated on the creation of a new product designed to do one thing: get you more traffic in less time.

It might just become the hub of your social media empire… Read More

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Up to no (coherent) good once again, The Random Show returns.

In episode 3, Kevin Rose and I discuss our top 5 must-read books, how we use them, and who should read them.

The 10 books are… Read More

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Vanity metrics: good for feeling awesome, bad for action. (photo source: UK Guardian)

This is a guest post by serial entrepreneur Eric Ries. He was most recently co-founder and CTO of IMVU, which has more than 20 million registered users and generates $1,000,000+ in revenue per month. Eric is also a venture advisor to Kleiner Perkins.

How do you get to $1,000,000 per month in sales? By testing the right things. Eric is a metrics man.

Here is just one business-changing example, taken from the outstanding “How IMVU Learned its way to $10M a year” on Venture Hacks… Read More

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Random Episode Numero 2 from Glenn McElhose on Vimeo.

Kevin and I are at it again in this 2nd episode of what is still being called “Random”. Have a better name or topic suggestions? Tell us in the comments!

This time, we discuss recent discoveries and experimentation – from new internet apps and electronic gadgets to knives and functional MRI (fMRI). Looking for just the audio? Download or stream it here.

Have a great weekend!

—

Related and Suggested:
Tim Ferriss Fireside Chat at Google
Tim Ferriss on Twitter
The Top-7 Tim Ferriss YouTube Videos (4 million views and counting)

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(photo: laffy4k)

Several weeks ago, I found myself in the passenger seat of a car going nowhere fast.

My friend, Peter Sims, who had earlier introduced me to the Stanford D.School, was leading the charge into the unknown, hurtling us (hopefully) towards dinner in exotic Burlingame, where people from SF and Palo Alto compromise to break bread.

The “us” included Alan M. Webber, whom I’d never met. He sat behind me, and — as getting lost tends to promote — we ended up talking about nothing in particular and everything in general: publishing, the game of business, Mr. T, you name it. I didn’t know Alan, but it soon became clear that I should listen as much as possible.

Alan was co-founder of Fast Company magazine and former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review.

More specifically related to this post, Alan developed a very interesting habit more than 20 years ago, when he began to carry a supply of 3 x 5 index cards wherever life took him. He wrote down and collected the lessons and insights he gleaned from his experiences travelling the world and in his interactions with people ranging from CEOs and spiritual leaders to basketball coaches, novelists, and stars from dozens of other worlds… Read More

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Last week, Ramit Sethi and I recorded a private videocast for a select group of readers. The three short videos below, all 2-8 minutes in length, describe our blogging tips and techniques, as well as an examination of traditional publishing vs. self-publishing.

He and I have both had the privilege and tactical experience of:

1) Building highly-trafficked blogs in a crowded blogosphere of more than 120 million blogs. More important, both of our blogs are well-known for action-oriented readers (For data on this blog’s readers — that’s you! — check this out).

2) Publishing books that reached The New York Times bestseller lists. Ramit’s experience is fresh and most up-to-date from his last three weeks with I Will Teach You To Be Rich, while I wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been on the New York Times business bestseller list continually for 23 months, since its publication in April of 2007.

Here are some of the topics we cover in the a la carte videos:

Currencies Besides Royalties and Direct Income
Google Juice and SEO Misuse
Choosing Post Topics: From Google Keyword Tool to Stumble Upon
Post Length and Publishing Time
Tactical Redating of Posts

Regarding the plug-in I mention for keeping your best content on your homepage, the very smart Lloyd Budd at Automattic explains:

Have your WordPress theme developer to update your theme to take advantage of the simple 2.7 feature “sticky posts” to have articles stay on the front page: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_sticky

Self-Publishing vs. Big Publishers – 5:11

How to Build Traffic – 7:22

More Blogging Tactics – 2:35

In Ramit’s latest post, you will find an additional video on our mutual “false starts” and mistakes.

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48 hours ago in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Photo: Matt Mullenweg)

“Tweet To Beat could generate help for thousands of students in high-need public schools. My colleagues and I are cheering you on!”
-Charles Best, CEO of DonorsChoose.org

The Ethical Bribe

The gist: To benefit U.S. public school students, I will bribe the entire world to follow me on Twitter for $3 each.

I’ll also be giving away a round-trip ticket anywhere in the world and a fully-loaded MacBook Pro. But first things first… Read More

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A rose is a rose is rose… but not with domain names. (Photo: nickwheeleroz)

I am James Siminoff. I’m an entrepreneur.

I have founded more than a half dozen companies, exited from one and currently spend my time on PhoneTag and Grid.com. I have spent over $250,000 on approximately 200 domain names because I believe that a great domain is extremely important to the success of a start-up (I learned the hard way – PhoneTag used to be called SimulScribe).

It’s especially important if you are starting a virtual business as it’s both your company name and how people will find you. My overall rules for domains are: they must be easy to spell, easy to say, and .com (no .net, .us, etc.) domains.

What I find tricky about purchasing domains is that you cannot use comparable sales (like real estate) or actual intrinsic value estimates (as you can with a car, jewelry, TV, etc.) for your negotiations. Vibrator.com sold for $1 million, I spent over $100,000 on Grid.com, yet sometimes you can find names that will be valuable for $10.

I have used my success and failure in buying domains to create a step-by-step process that should help secure the domain you want… Read More

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These are not the prices I’m looking for. (Photo: hellochris)

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
-John F. Kennedy

In December 2008, well-known marketing consultant John Jantsch asked me what my small business predictions were for 2009. This was my answer:

2009 will be the year for small businesses to get advertising at 70-90% off. Recessions mean budget cuts for larger corporations, which means advertising cancellations, just as in the “dot-com depression” of 2001 and 2002. There will be fire sales on remnant advertising, whether print, TV, radio, or online. In 2002, I bought $250,000+ of radio advertising for $10,000 because a big pharma advertiser pulled out a week before the ads were to go live. If you play your cards right, you can cut your CPA (cost-per-acquisition) in half.

The following sample dialogue demonstrates exactly how someone can buy $250,000+ of media for $10,000, and how you can reap the rewards of an advertising collapse.

If you’d rather acquire profitable customers for pennies instead of dollars, this article is for you… Read More

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