Quote: Don’t ever let anyone tell you that something is too competitive
April 28, 2007 | 6 Comments
“Don’t ever let anyone tell you that something is too competitive. Once you subtract the people who don’t work very hard, or the people who aren’t as good as you, your competition shrinks dramatically.”
- Maggie Mason, entrepreneur, author, and founder of Mighty Goods
IDEA #55 - Flickr photo editing and printing software
April 26, 2007 | 6 Comments
Fact: There are tons of (Yahoo-owned) Flickr users.
I’ve always been intrigued by affiliate marketing — which basically allows you to promote something, then get paid if someone buys that product/service as a result of your promotion. I think there’s an opportunity to join affiliate marketing campaigns for all the photo printing companies (Shutterfly, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Ofoto, etc) and by using the Flickr API, you could create some Windows/Mac software (using Apollo?) that allows people to do some quick edits to their photos — and easily re/upload them (a la Google’s Picasa software). Then allow people to easily get their photos printed via the photo printing services you have affiliate marketing campaigns with — this will allow you to earn income from the users of your software (that you give away for free). If your software is good enough, then tons of Flickr users will come and use your software, and hopefully easily get their photos printed via your software.
The big affiliate marketing companies (”aggregators” basically) are Commission Junction, Linkshare, and Performics (which is Google-owned Doubleclick’s division).
P.S. Here’s another cool way to earn money via affiliate marketing with Flickr — upload photos of products, or take photos of products, then link them to an affiliate marketing link. Example, upload a photo of an Apple TV and link it to somewhere that the user could buy it — such as Amazon.com, but using your affiliate account with Amazon, so that if someone buys the product, you earn money!
Burnt Out, Refocusing
April 22, 2007 | 16 Comments
It was bound to happen again in my life — especially at the current stage. I started overworking — day job, Techquila Shots, TechCrunch writing, WeBothLike start-up, Web2.0forsale.com … too much and for what? I’m use to working 12+ hour days from the days of owning my consulting firm … and really for the past 8 years I’d say I’ve been a workaholic.
So Techquila Shots is trimming down. I had in the back of my head the hope that this could get a large enough readership that it might bring in enough revenue to sustain me — likely not going to happen, given what I write about. Fred Wilson said he makes $25-$30k/year for his blog and he’s got 11k readers — I have anywhere from 1000-1500. If I were writing breaking tech news or covering start-ups, there’d be a larger audience I could target — and people would blog about my posts, link back, and grow this more. But people aren’t really blogging about my posts, thus no linkbacks, thus not much awareness — and very difficult to acquire new readers.
With goals in mind, I went on a mission to try and write 2 posts per day to this site — the regimen can eventually really stress a person out, especially when I have so much other stuff going on. Techquila Shots is really therapeutic for me — I’m an idea guy; have been for the past 10 years and likely will be for the rest of my life. I read, I watch, I listen — and I generate ideas. If I don’t get those ideas out, I get anxiety — because I start thinking about how to accomplish them, then realize I don’t have the resources to do so, then get stressed. Maybe you understand, maybe not 
So I’m not going to stress about writing posts to this blog anymore. If I get an idea, I’ll post it — but I’m not going to put a demand on myself to get a post up every day, or every week. I thank you if you’ve been an avid Techquila Shots reader and commenter — expect posts in the future, but just not as often as they were.
I’m also re-evaluating a lot of other things in life and lowering my personal expectations of myself — going to try and relax a bit, be more realistic in my hopes of changing the world, and do the things I’ve been tossing to the side in exchange for over-working … such as working out more.
I’m an overly ambitious serial entrepreneur — and maybe this post is one big lie to myself that I want to believe I can do. Only time will tell…
Web2.0forsale.com — Latest Listings
April 18, 2007 | 4 Comments
Some of the more recent listings to the Web2.0forsale.com website:
FreePixelIcons.com, Domains (TagMeet.com, SlingVoice.com, etc), YouDanceLikeAFreak.com, VlogPlanet.com domain, ArtBlog.com domain, MagicMerchant (like Yahoo Stores), RSS.TV domain, MediaMingle.com (image search engine), PayByCellphone, WeeklyWarrior (shared calendar), Readr.com domain, MashedBlogs (blog mash-up website), OOCenter.com (offshore outsourcing resource site), Dodgy.com domain, SocialURL (aggregator of social networking profiles), YouYouMe.com domain, and much more.
IDEA #54 - The Food Made Me Sick
April 12, 2007 | 13 Comments
I’m sure you’ve gone out to dinner and had a bad meal — ended up not doing so well after it. I think those should go reported somewhere — a central website — it would provide awareness to the restaurants and the customers. “I ate at ______ in (city), (state), (country). I was fine til dinner - I had the alfredo w/chicken”.
IDEA #53 - Everyone Gets Sick
April 12, 2007 | 14 Comments
Right now I have a fever — an odd fever, because it’s lasted off and on since Monday. I’m curious who else has what I have in my area or around the world — I’ve spoken to some others around here and get the, “Oh yeah, something’s going around”.
I imagine seeing a Google Maps mashup that shows some fever/cold moving from one area to another — so that it could almost be anticipated. Or some other weird virus or flu. You could see a time-based trending and an anticipated upcoming trend. People could specify what the early symptoms were and whether they’ve had their flu shot for the year (and other shots). I see TV stations licensing this content and chatting about it during their weather forecast each day.
I’m also blogging over at WeBothLike
April 12, 2007 | 1 Comment
As many of you know, I was working on Ringside Startup — which you can read all about here if you’re unaware. That has evolved into an actual web start-up called WeBothLike that I’m pursuing with Dave Squires (programmer extraordinaire) and I’m blogging the entire web start-up process.
Tonight I just put up a couple posts, including one titled “Entrepreneurs Need to Stay Healthy” as I am currently battling a fever and cold.
Anyhow, I’ll be blogging over there for things related to that start-up journey. Look for some great insight from the panel of advisors I’ve lined up, whom will give their two cents on various posts of mine there when they desire.
Justin.TV - Looking for Guest on Tuesday
April 11, 2007 | 1 Comment
I’m sure you’ve heard about Justin — he’s been wearing a video camera and webcasting his life live on the web for the past 23 days. Everything he does is broadcast live — similar to those movies EdTV and The Truman Show.
He’s 23 and his plans are to have tons of people doing the same thing in the future — so you could essentially flip through the life channels of various people. I could see people letting each other know what’s going on in “so and so’s” life at any given moment, so that people would know that some “juicy” stuff is happening in someone’s life.
As I watch right now, he’s apparently on a date — the camera is stuffed into the curly locks of a blond. I’m wondering if this is the girl from the other night that some are thinking he “got lucky” with. It’s very intimate and I assume he doesn’t even think that the camera is there — he apparently wore it for 3 months prior to these 23 days thus far, as they were testing the equipment out.
So anyways, Justin is looking to take a day off (Tuesday) and is looking for someone to wear the camera for the day. I emailed him. I’m in Buffalo, NY, but I’ll be in San Francisco this coming Saturday through Wednesday attending the Web 2.0 Expo doing some writing on behalf of TechCrunch.
If I were to get chosen, what you’ll get to see is Read more
Ringside Startup Changed to WeBothLike
April 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This initiative is still moving forward, but over at ... — hop over there for the latest as we blog this entire start-up journey for WeBothLike.com.
This is the final post on this website.
Note: I kept the RSS feed the same, only it’s now showing all posts from blog.WeBothLike.com.
Interactive TV Ideas
April 11, 2007 | 5 Comments
Techquila Shots reader Andy Moeck wrote an idea that I don’t believe will ever happen (I believe the TV networks still hate the fact that DVRs exist), but I thought it was interesting and might spin some ideas:
Here’s something that bothers me – I record lots of stuff using my DVR (I watch almost 100% of my TV from my DVR) including sports shows like ESPN’s Around the Horn and PTI and political news shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Hardball/etc. During each show, ESPN and MSNBC have a scrolling news ticker thing displaying breaking news and sports stories – The problem is that if I record PTI on Monday and watch on Thursday I am watching “Breaking” news from Monday …. Which isn’t so Breaking on Thursday. Worse yet, when I see a score for BOS vs. NYY it’s not easy to tell which day’s game they are talking about.
So …. With my DVR connected to my Cable which is also my Internet the system should be smart enough to pull an RSS feed of Breaking news during *playback* and display the ticker in real-time, not recorded time. Add the ability to include Ads, auction off ticker space … might be enough to turn a bit of revenue back to the show.
This is basically talking about a feature for Interactive TV — by the way, what is the latest with Interactive TV? When will I be able to buy that “swell men’s jacket” with the push of a button on my TV remote when I’m watching QVC? What other iTV features do you foresee?
Note: I get a ton of emails with various ideas, I post likely 1 in 10. My apologies to the 9 out of 10 — keep the ideas spinning, just don’t take offense if I don’t post them. Keep them coming in.
