Publishers can’t get enough revenue from ads to support their efforts, so some of them are turning to paywalls as a solution. The logic is “we are losing money so you have to pay us,” as if the publisher’s business model is the consumer’s problem. I think it’s misguided, and so does Ashley Friedlein in …
Continue reading ‘Monetizing online content does not mean paywalls’ »
Had an interesting chat with some folks from PointAbout yesterday about iPhone development and the future of mobile. They say that if you want to go mobile, you should focus on the iPod/iPhone for now. Blackberry is too fragmented, with each different type of device using a different operating system or browser. And since the …
Nobody polices the internet, which means that it’s a cesspool, full of porn, scams and flagrant copyright violations. I can’t let my kids have unfiltered access, and even “filtered” access is very questionable. For some odd reason the Internet lives in a world apart. It’s okay to have laws that regulate the sale and positioning …
I’ve been in professional publishing since God was a lad, so I have a particular perspective on copyright and the rules for accessing content on the web. As you might suspect, the “if I can get your copyrighted material off the web for free that’s okay” attitude that many people have really bugs me. I …
Continue reading ‘A solution to online copyright infringement’ »
There are a few web design mistakes that particularly annoy me. moving the login / logout buttons around on the page disabling the back button not providing a search option But I think my #1 complaint with web designs is a printer-friendly page that isn’t printer friendly. I.e., it clips off the copy on the …
A professional marketing that I know says that “marketing ROI” is mostly nonsense. He says you really can’t accurately attribute marketing costs to sales. There’s just too much chaos to pretend that a simple formula really works. I’m not quite as skeptical as he is, but I do agree that it’s a far more complicated …
Continue reading ‘The problem with tracking conversions from your online efforts’ »
Here’s a helpful little video the good folk at ExpertClick have prepared that shows how you can automatically have content from an RSS feed show up in your twitter account. The video is specifically about their news wire service, but you’ll easily figure out how to use the same technique for any RSS feed.
If you want people to read your articles online, most of your visitors are going to find you through search, so you need to use words people are going to be searching on. Especially in the headline. For example, I was writing a post on my home brewing blog and my marketing hat suddenly slipped …
Continue reading ‘Blog seo how to — optimize your title before you post’ »
Sometimes an experiment just keeps dragging on because the difference between the winning and losing page(s) hasn’t passed Google’s criteria for significance. Generally speaking, I think it’s a good idea to keep going until Google announces a winner, but sometimes the pattern is clear, and you really want to move along to your next test, …
Continue reading ‘When it’s safe to stop an unfinished optimizer experiment’ »
Consumer product marketing isn’t my thing, so don’t expect any great insights here, but I thought I’d post a quick note about a campaign I saw this morning on the streets of D.C. Nescafe is firing back at Starbucks’ new instant coffee. Reps were handing out samples outside the metro this morning. The package says …