Quote: Why Be An Entrepreneur?
March 6, 2008 | 2 Comments
love this quote…
If you don’t take advantage of yourself, someone else will.
-Jakob Lodwick
F YouTube, Viddler Is The Sh*t!
February 29, 2008 | 5 Comments
Seriously, the thing I think is the coolest ever is what Viddler has done with their videos — users can add comments throughout a video. It’s interesting to watch a video and see all the user comments pop-up as commentary throughout the video.
Here is one by the lovely iJustine. And then the video page itself has a list of all the comments with RSS of course. Just way totally cool. You can also put tags throughout and advertisers can place an ad where there are tags.
When Did You Get Your Big Break?
January 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
One thing I find fascinating is finding out how people got their “big break” in their career — such as that big promotion, or career shift, or going independent. Everyone has a story. Kanye West tells his story in the outro of his song ‘Last Call’. It’s an inspiring listen — the guy went from being broke (evicted from his apartment) to the top of the charts.
So when did you get your big break?
Lyrics from the outro of “Last Call” from Kanye West’s debut album “College Dropout”:
[worth the $0.99 purchase the MP3 from Amazon.com -- it's about 8 minutes of him telling his story]
So this A&R over at Rocafella, named Hiphop
picked the Truth beat for Beanie. And I was in the session with him
I had my demo with me. You know, like I always do
I play the songs, he’s like “Who that spittin?”
I’m like “It’s me.” He’s like “Oh, well okay.”
Uhh, he started talkin to me on the phone
going back and forth, just askin me to send him beats
And I’m thinking he’s trying to get into managing producers
cause he had this other kid named Just Blaze he was messin with
And um, he was friends with my mentor, No ID
And No ID told him, “look man, you wanna mess with Kanye
you need to tell him that you like the way he rap”
[No ID:] “Yo, you wanna sign him, tell him you like how he rap”
I was all, I dunno if he was gassin’ me or not
but he’s like he wanna manage me as a rapper AND a producer
[Hiphop:] “I’ll sign you as a producer and a rapper”,
I’m like… Read more
Shoemoney to Uber: “S.eriously?!?”
January 31, 2008 | 2 Comments
Shoemoney doesn’t name names, but in his latest podcast w/Azoogle CEO Don Mathis, he basically calls out Uber’s new S.eriously.com website — as well as anyone else doing what Uber is doing on that site, which is showing photos of big money checks and screenshots of earnings reports, then linking these images to their 2nd-tier affiliate links (thus if a user signs-up for the affiliate network from that link, Uber starts collecting a percentage of what the new user earns).
Azoogle recently took a stand towards people trying to exploit 2nd tier referrals and reduced their commission structure on referrals so that 2nd tier referrals only last 6 months with a mere compensation of 2% (and your own account must earn at least $1,000 in revenues).
Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this. If you’re showing off a big money check or big earnings statement, it’s inspiration to others, gets them fired up, and they want to know how/where they can go to do that. If a user signs up through your link, then you exposed them to that affiliate network and should get a little perk (you’ll also more actively link/mention the affiliate network most likely).
Regarding S.eriously.com — Uber just happens to be capitalizing on things by assembling all those images together on one website. The real question for Uber is — does he have the permission from respective copyright owners to host all those images? Because he is using his referral links on their images.
My Guest Post on Shoemoney: Gaming Google AdWords
January 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I did a guest post over on Shoemoney’s blog yesterday — “Gaming Google AdWords with Google redirects“.
No Cell Phone Commissions on Amazon.com, Bleh
January 29, 2008 | 3 Comments
Looking through my Amazon Associates stats today, I noticed I sold a Sony Ericsson W580i with AT&T Nation 450 Rollover Minutes. The phone itself is only $0.01 with a 2-year contract (new or extension). The service is as follows:
AT&T Nation 450 Rollover Minutes
(Monthly service charge of $39.99 billed by Cingular)
AT&T 2-year Contract (One-time activation fees apply: first new line of service, $36; each new additional line, $26; contract extension, $18.)
(No Charge: Included with Cingular’s Monthly Rate Plan)
Regulatory Fee
(Monthly service charge of $1.25 billed by Cingular)
So while I earned commission on $0.01, the user will end up paying:
$0.01
+ $479.88 ($39.99 * 24)
+ $36 (assuming new contract)
+ $30 ($1.25 * 24)
—————
$545.89
At 4%, that should be a $21.84 commission. Instead, I earned $0.00. No wonder I don’t like working with Amazon.
Editor’s Note: This post guest written by Eric Nagel. Disclaimer: his Amazon affiliate link is used on that cell phone link above — not that he’ll make any money off it, but it should be fully disclosed 
Behind Every Successful Man is a Woman
January 29, 2008 | 7 Comments
Shoemoney and Chow in recent posts on their respective blogs have said that they didn’t find success until they had met their wives.
Shoemoney because he was able to become better disciplined (and thus focus):
My success can be traced back to the day I met my wife. You take a brilliant marketing mind and apply some discipline and work ethic and magic things happen.
Chow because of the support the significant other gives:
I was doing OK before I met Sarah. However, I didn’t hit big time until she came into my life. No, she wasn’t some Internet guru or superstar blogger. She knew nothing about that stuff. What she did offer was a positive family environment and unwavering support for whatever it was that I wanted to do. She was my number one cheerleader and inspired me to levels I never dreamed possible. You will be amazed at the things you can do when you have a truly supportive wife or girlfriend backing you.
Both obviously had the ingredients/talent to become successful (as they have), but that didn’t happen until they lined up the support and discipline from a significant other.
Having the support of a significant other is huge — someone that believes in you and will be there to lift your spirits even if you fall flat on your face as an entrepreneur. They are also a time savings — in my case, when I have a significant other, I spend less time at bars til all hours of the night (and then wasting the following morning), and instead can focus to accomplish more.
What’s your situation? Do you find having, or not having, a significant other to be beneficial to your success (support and focus)?
I’m back!
January 28, 2008 | 1 Comment
Alright, let’s hope the title of this post isn’t a bunch of fluff. I’m going to try to pump out 10 blog posts a week on this Site. The focus is changing slightly and thus I’ve shifted all my writings from the original Techquila Shots website to this one.
This Site will still focus on my ideas, but I’m going to dip into my creative marketing abilities, as well as my Internet marketing background — and I’m going to focus on trying to help people make money online. Thus I’ll be doing writing about affiliate marketing, various “offers” to promote, deep dives into specific niches (thinking outside of the box regarding keywords/users to target; ad copy; etc), reviews of tools, interviews with those in the field (super affiliates; affiliate managers; etc), and websites that could be built.
Of course I still love the ‘web tech’ field of start-ups and technology companies; and I also can’t stop my mind from thinking up crazy web start-up ideas — so you can expect to still see analysis/reviews and my ideas, as some of you have come to expect from my Techquila Shots blog. Note: Techquila Shots is now officially closed — and I’m redirecting all traffic to this Site.
I hope to benefit the newbies with my blog, as well as the experts (”super affiliates”) by getting them thinking out of their boxes. So I hope you’re able to pick something up from my writings to put some extra cash into your pocket.
Communication is always open — and I’m always looking for things to write about, so if you have anything you’d like me to write about, or brainstorm about — just let me know.
Twitter Business Model
January 2, 2008 | 4 Comments
Jason Calacanis is talking about it after Allen Stern brought up the issue.
While I agree with their various ideas, I see the ad model being similar to what Facebook has done with their newsfeed advertisements — but more importantly, where users after making a purchase on Amazon.com could opt-in to share that purchase via Twitter [and even earn 4% of any purchases from that]. I mean Twitter begs the question, “What are you doing?”. I just purchased something I’m really excited to get!
Somehow the user’s Amazon.com account would be tied to their Twitter account, and post the purchase to Twitter (”Steve just bought the book ‘The Richest Man in Babylon’”) — then people that click the link and buy that item, and the user ["Steve"] is compensated with 4% of the sale (for promoting the sale of the book to their friends; and Twitter makes 1-2% as well from Amazon.com).
Or Twitter just works a deal with Amazon.com [and others], where on the purchase receipt page, it asks if the user has a Twitter account — if yes, they input their username [or full login credentials] and the item is posted to their Twitter account. If no account, Amazon.com is promoting the Twitter service to their millions of users, which adds millions of more accounts to Twitter.
The question is, how are etailers working with Facebook now, to have a purchase added to their newsfeed in Facebook? Maybe the etailer adds a line of code that contains the newsfeed info and is shot over to Facebook, where the user logs in to confirm?
Google Ornaments - a Holiday Easter Egg?
December 22, 2007 | 2 Comments
I was just doing a search for “.at” domain, and the results page had ornaments displaying. As of right now, this search still does that, but I can’t get any other searches doing that:
