It’s hot enough that it came out of the closet for today’s speech.
It totally transformed the way people treated me. Doormen, people on the subway… in an increasingly casual age, I was sort of stunned by how easily a $99 suit changed the reaction people had.
When everyone (men, anyway) wore the same thing, it was pretty difficult to make an impact with your clothes. Today, it’s a conscious choice and it matters whether you want it to or not.
PS six years ago, at Yahoo, Jerry Yang caught me wearing a suit while he was giving a tour to a bunch of hotshot visitors. He sent me home.
June 29, 2006
Fred Wilson (A VC) is a good friend and a terrific guy, and you really should read his blog. My guess, without seeing his bank statement lately, is that he doesn’t need the income he gets from the ads on his blog.
So why do it?
Well, I just posted on the squidblog about Squidoo’s experiment with AdSense. I think there’s something non-obvious going on here. Magazines are better with ads, and so are many websites.
Better? I know that Fred does his ads as an experiment/handshake with the firms he knows or is interested in. But for many sites, it turns out that sites with good ads ("Anticipated, personal and relevant" as I wrote eight years ago) actually give users more confidence and meaning.
In other words, even if you never cashed the checks from Google, you’d come out ahead. (Your mileage may vary, natch).
June 28, 2006
Ann Handley has a nice post here: What’s the Biggest Lie About Blogging? | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog.
Jeremy Wright had the best answer:
1. Blogging’s just a fad.
2. Always maintain a hostile relationship with your audience.
3. Don’t ever admit you did something wrong.
4. It’s just a PR channel.
5. Don’t have a personality if you’re blogging for business.
6. I can’t blog because I can’t write.
7. Bloggers should let it all hang out.
8. Facts just get in the way of blogging.
9. Without open comments, it’s not a blog anyway.
10. There are 10,000 new blogs launched every day.
11. I don’t have time to blog.
12. Fast is better than right.
13. It’s impossible to make money blogging.
Find the rest on Ann’s post…
When I was growing up, most marketers wore a white hat.
White hat marketers have jingles. They buy TV commercials. They tell the truth about what they sell and how they sell it. They offer a money-back guarantee and honor it. They belong to the better business bureau and to the Lion’s Club. White hat marketers donate money to charity because it’s the right thing to do. They build long-term relationships with people and with organizations. They belong to associations. They go to trade shows and have big booths staffed with struggling models, often in bathing suits. They offer a free bonus–and clearly state what you have to do to earn it. They have a sales force that sticks around.
Lately, there have been a bunch of black hat marketers in our lives. One firm offered to put my new book on the bestseller lists–not by selling more, but by manipulating the system. Many websites manipulate the search engines to rank higher. Companies are organized around spamming people. Firms hire squads of clickers in the developing world to boost their income or to punish their competitors. They say they are giving away something but are really harvesting names. There are rings of people who trade links to influence their Alexa rankings. Squadrons of fraudsters work the eBay universe, just barely staying a step ahead of the system.
It’s a slippery slope. Is it okay to vote for your site a million times in an online poll? What about encouraging your readers to vote for you a million times? Digital systems have so much leverage that sooner or later, a line gets crossed.
I worry that it’s inevitable that black and white are mixing. That brands we trust send out spam, but call it a legitimate use of their privacy policy. That they hide the results of this test or that ruling because the law permits it. I worry that their webteam is under so much pressure to deliver results that just a little black hat SEO feels just fine. It’s easy to shade your accounting and even easier to lie about your online presence.
Online, where a bit is a bit, where no one knows you’re a dog, where a big company looks just like someone in their garage… sometimes the people who succeed the most are the ones acting the way we’d least like them to. I wonder what happens next.
June 27, 2006
People are getting very strict in how they define "free."
Patrick Hurley writes,
"Hi Seth:
So I took my two kids to the Oakland Museum today to check out the Disney exhibit. Very informative. Everyone liked it.
We even got to have our picture taken in one the sailing ships from the Peter Pan ride courtesy of USA Today. Nice touch I thought. We were told that it would be waiting for us in my email box when we returned home.
Sure enough, there was a link (albeit in my junk folder). I clicked on it and ……………….. was taken to a survey. Sorry kids. Instant gratification delayed.
Okay, I thought, I’m a marketer. I can kind of understand and accept this, even though it absurdly "required" that I provide my income level and gave no option to decline. I completed the survey and……… was taken to a page notifying me that I’d have to pay a $1 "administrative fee" to the photo fulfillment company, Foto Fetch. That would have been a deal breaker but my kids really wanted the photo. I tracked down my wallet for my credit card, typed in all my personal data and got the photo.
My good feelings toward USA Today after this experience — gone. Wiped clean. The quid pro quo that I expected — me receiving a photo from the good folks at USA Today in exchange for possibly having some branding on the photo frame or receiving a special subscription offer — was instead a complete rouse. The file folder in my brain titled "USA Today" now has a sticky note on it with a sad face." [end of story…]
On a similar note, Gil got his "free" cell phone in the mail today. He knows it’s not really free, he had to sign up for a two year contract. BUT, also, just to make a few bucks, the box is stuffed with come-ons, offers and other subterfuge. Is it really worth the few cents they earn back?
Exactly how many times are you going to get tricked by a "free iPod" site?
Even when I was seven this irked me. "Mom," I’d say, "We really don’t get 33% more toothpaste free… we have to buy the toothpaste in order to get it."
And finally, today I got an email from a ten-year-old girl who had read Free Prize Inside. She was complaining because there really wasn’t a free prize inside the box.
The best free stuff is really and truly free. All you get in return is loyalty, consumer satisfaction and word of mouth.
Amy Cham sent me to the: Similarity Web.
Darren has a lens on his blog now, a very useful click magnet of resources for bloggers: A – Z of Professional Blogging.
Several people have pointed me to: CNN.com – Indian Web sites go with the flow – Jun 26, 2006.
Experts say using a combination of astrology and numerology, the ancient sciences will help you choose the right colors, font, placement of graphics and navigation bar to make the perfect Web site.
These, of course, are the very same experts who know the gender of Britney’s next kid. I missed that day in school when astrology got classified as a science.
But hey, it’s easier than working on the content.
June 26, 2006
When you first learned division, you were told it was against the law to divide by zero. As if something horrible would happen if you tried.
Check out the cover of this cookbook. There are way more than a million copies of the series in print. The key tagline? "Nothing is made from scratch."
Can you imagine ten years ago pitching that idea? It goes against everything a cookbook stands for. It’s inconsistent. An oxymoron. You’re a moron. That’s like dividing by…
Oh. It worked.
I love this: Dollar Bin | iStockphoto.com.
Cleaning out inventory? Making more room on the shelves?
Even in a world of unlimited inventory, humans can’t resist a garage sale.
