Chad Blodgett

Hilarious tool!  You can enter someones name and it will pull up their MySpace, FaceBook, and Friendster profiles, as well as conduct a Google Search, blog search and web-image search all at the same time.

Its fun to play with - and a great idea.  Its new, and so watching the traffic grow/change will be fun. 

I typed in Justin Bergener and it looks like about a million other people have “stalked” him too!

Here is the link. Enjoy!

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I have used Vonage for a while and really enjoy it.  As a customer we were given the opportunity to buy shares during the IPO last week at $17/share.  I thought about doing it because I like Vonage and believe VoIP will eventually be the future.  However, there are too many concerns right now…competition, bundled services from other prioviders, etc. and so I didn’t purchase the stock.

That was a good move.  In 1 week the stock has dropped 25%.  Here is an interesting article

Vonage’s future: gradual share price declines, strategic moves, return to private equity by ZDNet’s Russell Shaw — Yesterday, Vonage stock dipped to $12.50 a share-a more than 25 percent loss from last Tuesday’s $17 a share IPO price.I’ve seen mountains with less steep declines. Because those investors more affected by uncertainty have already attempted to bail, I sense that Vonage share prices aren’t going to tumble all that much more for awhile. Given […]

It will be fun to watch what Vonage does.

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This is one of those products that I would never use, but still want. I would pull it out when guests visited and show them this crazy product that someone actually manufactures. My dad used to take a nap on the floor in front of our Bose speakers, with one pillow over his ear – I bet he would love this product! I have a few family members that would die from electrocution – too much drool!

For those of you who can’t tell what this does…you simply plug your ipod into the pillow (there is a speaker in the pillow) and fall asleep to some of your favorite tunes. I heard about this product here.

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I found this very interesting post aout how much your blog might be worth.  You can go to this site and then change the URL address to your blog to see the results.

Ryanmoney.com is worth over 9 grand!

Paulallen.net is worth $14,678.  However his original blog is worth ~ $96,000

BrockBlake.com is worth $12,400

Shmula.com is worth about $25,000

Engadget.com is worth $8.7 million

Now, all of this is an estimate or course.  It is an estimate based on what AOL paid for Weblogs, INC.  Anyway, have fun playing with it.

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These lawsuits tick me off. Google is making a ton of money, and so lawyers decide to sue, knowing Google will just settle.

I received this email today indicating that I am a part of the Google Class Action Click Fraud lawsuit since I had a Google Adwords account in 2002. Here is some of the language…

Plaintiffs Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles and Max Caulfield d/b/a Caulfield Investigations allege that Google breached its contracts with class members, unjustly enriched itself, and engaged in a civil conspiracy by failing to adequately detect and stop “click fraud” or other invalid or improper clicks on online advertisements. Google denies plaintiffs’ allegations and contends that all payments that it has received from class members for online advertising were legally and properly charged, and that it has neither breached its contracts with class members nor violated any other law through the actions alleged in the case. The Court has not made a determination whether plaintiffs’ or Google’s contentions are correct.

Even though the court has not ruled, Google decided to settle anyway. What is the settlement you ask?

What do the Attorney’s get?

So the Lawyers get 30 million – and the companies who supposedly suffered from click fraud fight for the rest. Dirty lawyers.

read more about it here

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I just had a birthday and my beautiful wife bought me a video iPod.  So, naturally I have been exploring the WWW to see what is available in video blogging.

I have just begun my search, and so far…I am very disappointed in what is available.  Blogs have a lot of value and very interesting content.  Most of the videos I have found are obnoxious (http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/ for example).

This makes we wonder the value of a vlog compared to CNN, etc.  I will continue my search, but if you know of a very interesting video blog please let me know.

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I am sitting in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my flight and decided to pull out my laptop and do a little work.  I was shocked to see a free wireless connection sponsored by the airport!

Usually there is some sort of small fee and business travelers pay it, whereas I never did.  I was always wondering why they would charge, and when they would stop.  It looks like some people are getting it.

Thanks Las Vegas Airport!

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What is the value of an email address? What you pay to have one email address from someone in your target market?

The fact is businesses pay for email lists each day and most of the lists just aren’t that valuable. To really maximize your email campaigns follow these few steps from Paul Chaney.

1. Make the integrity of your list your number one goal: Double opt-in techniques will help make your list more valuable to you.
2. The Subject Line is Key: Spam and overcrowded inboxes are the problem. You have about two seconds to appeal to your audience. Check your subject line through a spam checking service like Spam Assassin (spamassiassin.apache.org) before you send. MarketingSherpa reported on a study that reveals that the boring subject lines with your company name in the subject have a much higher open rate.
3. Provide a Call to Action: Ask them to do something, and make it easy for them to do it.
4. Don’t Over Mail your List: There is no concrete answer to how often you should send email. Monitor your conversion data and open rates – if they drop off you might consider mailing less frequent (or more frequent).
5. HTML vs. TEXT ONLY: This used to be an issue, but today nearly every email client can receive HTML. One thing to note, however, is not to include all of your text within an image. Make sure there is plenty of text to offset the “text only” default view of most email programs.

Lastly, how well are you doing with your email campaigns? Do you have a list of subscribers that are valuable to you? Do you have any good tips, suggestions, or lessons learned that you would like to share?

If so, please share. Click the comment button below.

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How long should it take to increase your blog traffic (or your website traffic) to the point where you have 12,000 + unique visitors/day?

18 months?

12 months?

6 months?

One of my good friends has done it in just 3 short weeks. See his statcounter image below.

So, how did he do it? How can you do it?

First – he wrote something interesting and unique

Second – because of that interesting content his posts were being added to digg, del.icio.us, reddit, and a few of the blogs who are in the Technorati top 50.

Third – to keep his blog interesting he has put together an ongoing series of related topics

Now, those three steps are not very profound – but it demonstrates the power of good content. It also highlights the power of social book-marking sites like digg and del.icio.us.

Lastly it gives me hope. As humans we assign time-lines to certain goals. We tell ourselves “oh, that’s a big goal, so it should take XX amount of months, whereas that is a small goal that I can accomplish this week.”

I believe we limit ourselves when we assign time-tables. Why not take your site from 0-12,000 visitors in a week?

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