Archive for the Marketing Category

May 19th, 2009

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics – Guest Post by Eric Ries 90 Comments

Topics: Marketing


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 HacksRead More

May 15th, 2009

Tim Ferriss + Kevin Rose – Random Episode 2 22 Comments

Topics: Interviews, Marketing, Random

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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Want to get Random episodes delivered to your iPhone or iPad? Now you can! Just subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or get the audio-only version here).

May 13th, 2009

Start-up Strategy: To Change the Game, Change the Economics of How It’s Played 112 Comments

Topics: Marketing


(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

April 22nd, 2009

Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi on Blogging Techniques and Self-Publishing vs. Big Publishers 114 Comments

Topics: Interviews, Marketing, Protecting Time

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.

March 9th, 2009

The Tweet to Beat: Paying $3 Per Twitter Follower 475 Comments

Topics: Filling the Void, Marketing


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

February 27th, 2009

How to Buy Domain Names Like a Pro: 10 Tips from the Founder of PhoneTag.com 127 Comments

Topics: Marketing


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

February 19th, 2009

Jedi Mind Tricks: How to Get $250,000 of Advertising for $10,000 117 Comments

Topics: Marketing

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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

January 4th, 2009

Measuring What Really Works on Twitter: Post Timing and Headlines 53 Comments

Topics: Low-Information Diet, Marketing

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(Photo: da100fotos)
“What gets measured gets managed.”
-Peter Drucker

I like data and enhancing performance through following the numbers.

I use half a dozen tools to track metrics on this blog, and I have similarly used tr.im to track click-through on Twitter links, demographic and geographic splits, etc.. I find retweets interesting, but only to the extent that they attract meaningful attention (not just impressions), which can be approximated with clicks on embedded links. In the last two weeks, I’ve found bit.ly to be more reliable and robust than tr.im.

Below I’ve included my top-30 most-clicked Tweets from 12/21/08 to 2/13/09… Read More

August 8th, 2008

The Philosophies of Work: A Conversation with Derek Sivers of CD Baby 71 Comments

Topics: 4-Hour Case Studies, Interviews, Marketing

Derek Sivers is a stud. I thought I’d share the conversation we had at SF MusicTech Summit. Dozens of topics covered include:

- Testing asssumptions vs. cheating
- PR and reaching out to unreachables
- Micro-testing ideas and products: from The 4-Hour Workweek to Trent Reznor
- Personal outsourcing for creatives
- Filling the void and creating meaning outside of the inbox and office

Derek is a programmer who lost his stage fright by doing more than 1,000 gigs as a circus ring leader. He is also the musician who started CD Baby, the world’s largest online music store for independent musicians. Here are some current numbers:

- 242,846 artists sell their music at CD Baby
- 4,574,622 CDs sold online to customers
- $83,590,381 paid directly to the artists

With more than 2 million digitized tracks under management, CD Baby is also the largest provider of independent music for iTunes… and it all started as a hobby.

How does it work now that it’s enormous? From Derek’s blog:

When I was the owner and president of CD Baby, it ran without me, and I hardly spent 4 hours on it in the last 6 months. It’s wonderful.

Here are a few snippets from our conversation… Read More

June 24th, 2008

The Margin Manifesto: 11 Tenets for Reaching (or Doubling) Profitability in 3 Months 124 Comments

Topics: Automation, Marketing


Profitability often requires better rules and speed, not more time. (Photo: Jetta Girl)

I wrote this “margin manifesto” several months ago and somehow neglected to post it. Your requests for more content on start-up economics and processes reminded me.

These are the principles I review whenever facing operational overwhelm or declining/stagnating profits. Hope you find them useful.

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The financial goal of a start-up should be simple: profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees: more profit.

Based on my interviews with high-performing (using profit-per-employee metrics) CEOs in more than a dozen countries, here are the 11 basic tenets of the “Margin Manifesto”… Read More

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