Posted in Business - 2 Comments »
This isn’t exactly about building a successful website, but it is related.
I just finished my first week on the job as a programmer at TownNews. TownNews is a company that helps newspapers make the transition online. We do this by offering a completely customizable solution for papers to extend their business to the Internet with full support for our products.
We have a sales team that trains customers for selling ads online and a complete design and development team all in-house. We also have systems administration and customer service divisions, all under the same roof.
This allows us to offer a complete package you won’t find many other places.
Now am I praising TownNews just because they’re my new employer? Of course not–TownNews was my first pick for employment here in the Quad Cities. They are bringing innovation to a declining market, which from a business perspective I find fascinating.
The founder, Marc Wilson, started the company way back in 1989–before the Internet hit its growth spurt and saw an opportunity for existing papers before the medium was fully established.
That takes an amazing ability to see a vision before all the pieces are complete, something I’ve been working towards developing lately.
The people I’m working with are all very talented and passionate about what they do–and it shows by their work. I’m extremely lucky to work in a field I love and for a company thats passionate about what they do.
I won’t be posting too much more about TownNews here, but I wanted to give a small update and talk about an opportunity I have to see an innovative technology company first hand.
Posted in Advertising - No Comments »
Adpinion is a new advertising network focused on serving ads that users actually want to see. They do this by allowing users to vote for ads. The next time you visit, they show ads based on your votes or by what similar users voted for.
When I heard about this idea I loved it. So much in fact, I found myself voting multiple times just to see what ads they would show me next.
I immediately signed up for the beta of Adpinion and last night I was accepted. I quickly put a few ads up on MacTips:
My initial reaction is Adpinion needs more advertisers. Only a few ads have been showing up, but so far I really digg the idea. I’ll keep you up-to-date with my performance.
Because they’re in beta, they’re giving publishers 100% of revenue. I think this is a good idea to get the network off the ground. I e-mailed and suggested a referral system to help build the publisher network, but as I said–they also need to build up the advertisers to make this idea work.
I love innovative ideas such as Adpinion, especially when it comes to web advertising.
Posted in Site News - No Comments »
Today I’m relaunching BradJasper.com as a blog for making money online.
Why?
Well it’s great to have a personal blog, but I feel like I can contribute more in areas I have expertise in.
I’ve decided to use BradJasper.com as opposed to another domain for a few reasons.
- BradJasper.com is already indexed and has links coming in, making the transition that much easier
- I can brand myself as an Internet Marketer easily using my own domain
- I don’t have to worry about my own personal ramblings being public. I don’t have an issue with my ramblings being public–I just think I can provide more value focusing on things I know
What makes me an expert on making money online? I certainly don’t know everything, but I’ve certainly learned a lot since venturing into web development nearly 6 years ago.
I’ve built countless successful websites for myself and for clients. I understand what it takes to make a successful website–and I’d like to share that with people who are interested in learning.
That’s enough of an introduction, let’s get started.
Also, as a side note; I’ve locked the comments on all my previous entries and moved them to the “Archives” category. This way anybody visiting from search engines won’t get a 404.
Posted in Business - No Comments »
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. One of the books I finished was Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin. Seth is a well known marketer here in the Blogosphere, but I’ve only read one other book of his: Permission Marketing. I thought it was good, but I already understood what he was talking about. I thought this meant I knew everything Seth was talking about, boy was I wrong.
Free Prize Inside goes to another level for me. It talks about how because of more noise, traditional marketing is failing. And because of that, remarkable products are the only ones that succeed. Stop spending money on marketing and start making your products remarkable. A remarkable product markets itself.
He then goes into the idea that having a remarkable idea is not enough. You need to champion your idea so that it catches on. He talks about a number of ways to do this–but he emphasizes how important this part is.
The last part of the book talks about how to find remarkable ideas by going to the edge. Being a fast company doesn’t get you talked about, being the fastest does. Having good customer service doesn’t get you talked about–remarkable customer service does. He stresses that going 90% of the way isn’t enough, you need to go all the way to the edge.
This is a short summary of what the book talks about–but I found the idea of "going to the edge" fascinating. He argues being good in multiple areas is worse than being phenominal in one.
Pick an edge and get as close to it as possible.
Food for thought. That Godin knows what he’s talking about. He runs a great blog.
