Anyway, I think Lisa has done it big time viral with her backend advertising tactic after offering an ad spot on her lower back (way lower back) for a mere $100k, personally, I think models can get more for such advertising, body advertisements aren’t new to the media but this is more like Blog monetization that’s why it’s a new one even for long time bloggers such as John chow. Since there aren’t many attractive bloggers, I’m supporting Lisa and her cause here!
Either way, monetization tactics are always evolving so much that its hard to keep up sometimes.So, kudos to Lisa and let’s hope Kevin doesn’t get that spot for digg, that wouldn’t be much of a turn on having DIGG written at that certain place. (pun intended, again :p)
Constant growth is really important to make money online and learning from your mistakes is the biggest step in making money online, most importantly you need to actually go for something in order to have mistakes, like in an video i saw last night on Michael’s blog where he mentions a quote from the video interview of Farah Gray
Everything we want is on the other side of FEAR
An important quality needed in an entrepreneur is the ability of taking the risks to learn from any mistakes that occur during the way, when I started working online for a living I had more then my fair share of mistakes but i never regret them because there was a lesson to be learned on every step and even now after 2 years of online work, I still learn a new lesson every now and then and if you do lose money to learn an important lesson, so be it. Some reasons to go for risky steps in order to learn from them are highlighted below.
A few weeks ago i covered a visual search engine by google and i knew there would be more who would follow in those footsteps in order to make an “even better” search engine and here we are, ManagedQ has released their visual search which is said to be the visual search engine experiment that actually works.
I ran a few queries at MQ and it seems to have a really great sorting system where it sorts the results of your query by Person, Place and Thing. I think that is what i am looking for mostly at google to find a certain person with a certain thing in a certain place..
Although MQ has its flaws such as query result page titles and various text problems on the main windows of results and the keywords on the place/person/thing area where the keywords are really irrelevant to what’s being talked about.
Happy valentines day everybody! (Happy bday to me)
Here are some eye candy wallpapers for all of you out there!!
I made these last night, these are really motivating for me at least.
The wallpapers were motivated by (once again) FreelanceSwitch, I had the wallpaper “Hired Guns - Skills to pay the bills” watching it everyday gave me a bit of kick and motivation to work harder , make more money.
So, here are my Make Money Online wallpapers, I’ll try to make more soon.
This reminds me, i have to work on my resources page, add all the cool stuff im giving away ;).
Apparently microsoft made a 44 point something billion offer to yahoo, people are concentrating on what would happen to yahoo as a search engine but what about the adnetworks?
Yahoo has the highest payouts and Microsoft provides the hihgest ROI that i know of, if msft buys out yahoo and they form an ad network that would pay out like nothing else online, ppc wise and cpa wise. Personally i support msft to take over yahoo, as far as i can see:
Yahoo is a portal - more user oriented - more interactive and entertaining - its based on services for users like games, news..etc its main functions include mail,gaming and news not search.
Microsoft offers a number of services just like google and are really good at them too, at a seminar months ago they stated “Google is good at search we are good at everything else” i’ll post the source as soon as i find it. Msft is also doing amazing with its search engine most of the traffic to this blog is from MSN search anyway.
Above all that :
Yahoo has way too many failed projects in the past
Yahoo was never considered seo-able
It fluctuates more then google does
Its serps are really confusing, misleading and in some cases useless
I’m just waiting for the takeover to happen already so that i can milk their adnetwork ;p
SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and is a cognitive tool used in business to evaluate both the internal and external aspects of a business entity. SWOT analysis is used in conjunction with the Mission Statement (see here for the article on Mission Statements) The general rule is that strengths and weaknesses are internal, that is they are aspects of the existing business. Conversely opportunities and threats are external to the entity, and include the business world at large and competition. Using again my own business as an example I have developed the following strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths
Weaknesses
High level of technical writing ability
There is an upper limit to the amount of work that can be taken on
Strong reputation with existing customers
Existing Customer base is small
Good turnaround of projects
Not enough time is spent generating new contacts in the industry
As a general rule of thumb, there should be as many weaknesses as there are strengths. This is because it is natural for many of us to focus on the positive things about our businesses. Whilst it is important to focus on the positive it is equally important to focus on our weaknesses so as to develop strategies to combat them. Focusing now on the opportunities and threats
Opportunities
Threats
Constant Demand for new content
High Levels of Competition
Ease of accessing the customer base on web forums
Quality of content often sacrificed to price by consumers
Specialist Business Market increasing daily
Sourcing new work is time consuming
Again it is important to assess the threats in as much detail as one assesses the opportunities, as really knowing the limitations of the external environment will help to develop the strategies needed to maintain the competitive edge. From the use of SWOT, as well as having a good Mission statement, the business owner will be able to develop a good Balanced Scorecard, which is the focus of the next article. For more information on SWOT analysis see www.quickmba.com/strategy/swot/, a good site with much detailed information on SWOT analysis, it is also probably a good idea to look briefly at PEST analysis, which takes SWOT a step further and details on this can be found on www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_PEST.htm , but the level of detail here is sufficient to develop our business plan.
This was quite unexpected, Reps from Gizmondo pulled an odd stunt at CES 2008 where they closed all the flat screen displays on all shows using a TV-B-Gone IR remote, which was kinda funny but mostly just mean and wasted so many people’s time and for this the CEA has banned them. For some reason all of this to me seems like a big publicity stunt for TV-B-Gone.
The conference was held by CEA and they took action against Gizmondo by banning them from further conferences and sent the following statement to the people at CNET:
We have been informed of inappropriate behavior on the show floor by a credentialed media attendee from the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media. Specifically, the Gizmodo staffer interfered with the exhibitor booth operations of numerous companies, including disrupting at least one press event. The Gizmodo staffer violated the terms of CES media credentials and caused harm to CES exhibitors. This Gizmodo staffer has been identified and will be barred from attending any future CES events. Additional sanctions against Gizmodo and Gawker Media are under discussion.
Wow, Bill is really funny! If you haven’t watched his retirement video yet, go watch it now. Well worth the 8 minutes in my opinion.
He uses a cast of celebrities and the front runners for the presidential election to really put on a good show. The people at Microsoft are giving their last thoughts on Bill Gates and the things they have to say about him are hilarious. They are saying how he has it all together while the video shows him driving down the road with his briefcase on top of his car.
It’s an inside look to what Bill really does while at the office, one scene shows him playing with his Star Wars action figures while talking about the magic and power of software.
You wouldn’t think that a man of his status would do some of the things he has shown in the video. He was cutting a rap album with Jay-Z as his producer. What fun his rap was, they even talk about how to come out of retirement just to get people interested again.
Bill Gates is definitely shown in a different light than ever before as he struggles through the thought of retirement. The succession of ways he tries to spend his time is hilarious. He calls the presidential candidates one after another to see if they already have their running mates picked out. Hillary Clinton just turns him down and Obama thinks that the call is from Bill Shatner from Star Treck, and then when He says no the other Bill, Obama replies, Oh Bill Clinton?
The video ends with Bill Gates walking out of his office with his box of stuff and he sits it on top of his car as he previously did with his briefcase except this time it all falls off when he drives away, a great way to describe through video how different life for Bill will be now that he isn’t working at Microsoft anymore.
I can’t see him stepping away completely, but I’m sure the time clock on his life is ticking and he wants to be able to spend some of that money that he has made over the last 30 years.
Unless of course you are living in a cave, in the middle of nowhere, with no media, not even a newspaper (in which case you’re not reading this Blog), you cannot have missed the news that we are on the brink of a global credit crunch (the new, sexed up term for a depression.) So what? I’ll probably still have a Job/House/Computer etc and I’ll still be able to read TimK’s wonderful blogs? Right? You’re probably saying to yourself, things can’t be that bad. Well, you’re right, things are never as bad as the Financial Press make it seem, they are just as desperate for things to write about as all of us, and Doom and Gloom sells like hotdogs at a ballgame. Yet there are some surprising consequences of the Global Credit Crunch that are going to significantly affect the way all of us access and utilise technology. This current crisis is because of the long period of sustained growth that most mature western economies have experienced in the last ten years, fuelled by the emerging markets of India, China and Russia, amongst other things. Much of the funding for new and existing web based technology is based on share issues and venture capitalism. These are two areas which have benefited with large amounts of surplus cash washing into the investment markets from generally good economic conditions, and as such investors were willing to take a higher than average risk. Now the money is being choked off, the investment community will be less likely, or have more stringent conditions for prospective stat ups. In an economic downturn there will be less investment, especially in high risk areas such as the dot com industry. Moreover the big players in the market will start to both rationalise and consolidate their positions (read about the business brains behind Vivendi and Activision here)
This could lead to a reduction in the number of products hitting the markets (there is unconfirmed speculation that the iPhone was rushed to market in the last half of last year as Apple knew the midden was about to hit the windmill.) Companies looking to prop up their Balance Sheets may begin to cut R&D back, as there will be less consumer cash for the new products anyway, and existing products may fair better or worse depending on how bad things get (for example the Wii V PS3 battle will become one not of game play, but of price, as the Wii is significantly cheaper than its rival, an economic downturn will actually benefit Nintendo.) The fact is that it effects us all, sometimes in positive, but mainly in negative ways, so buckle up for a bumpy 2008.
Anyone wanting an introduction to finance and investing can read my blog, same user name TimK, happy trails everyone.
The battle lines were drawn in the sand on the desolate and windswept beaches of DVD land. The old format, sickening quickly now from its great age, had been unable to choose from amongst his offspring, his successor. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were the strongest, fastest and most wise of them all, and had agreed to the ancient rite of succession, to swim in the market place until only one survived. To the victor, the spoils of a long reign of supremacy, to the loser a one way trip to the Deadpool. This was clash of the titans all over again, two major contenders for global technology dominance, almost nothing to tell them apart in terms of backing and specification, Like Hollyfeild Vs Tyson (without ear biting of course.) Now, after a fierce battle it appears that the final nails in HD-DVD’s coffin have been hammered home by Paramount, which is rumored to be switching to exclusive Blu-Ray in the near future, according to www.crunchgear.com. So all of the R&D money poured into the Blu-Ray is about to come good, or is it? Many beleive that with the increase in online viewing, from both rentals and streaming video direct from the net, that it might all have been pointless, leaving dangerous holes in the Balance Sheets of all the companies concerned with next generation DVD technology. It seems that the Land of DVD is about to be overtaken by the burgeoning poulation of On Demand TV Land.
A few weeks ago i covered a visual search engine by google and i knew there would be more who would follow in those footsteps in order to make an “even better” search engine and here we are, 
The battle lines were drawn in the sand on the desolate and windswept beaches of DVD land. The old format, sickening quickly now from its great age, had been unable to choose from amongst his offspring, his successor. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were the strongest, fastest and most wise of them all, and had agreed to the ancient rite of succession, to swim in the market place until only one survived. To the victor, the spoils of a long reign of supremacy, to the loser a one way trip to the Deadpool. This was clash of the titans all over again, two major contenders for global technology dominance, almost nothing to tell them apart in terms of backing and specification, Like Hollyfeild Vs Tyson (without ear biting of course.) Now, after a fierce battle it appears that the final nails in HD-DVD’s coffin have been hammered home by Paramount, which is rumored to be switching to exclusive Blu-Ray in the near future, according to 
