May, 2006 Archive

Site Targeting is an Outstanding Invention

If they’re still running it, you’ll see an ad for the Mazda CX-7 EarthSearch Sweepstakes running at the bottom of this post. As much as I would like to be in good with Mazda’s ad agency, though, I didn’t sell them that ad. Google did. With Google’s Site Targeting, any advertiser can target ads to websites running AdSense ads.

I haven’t noticed a lot of advertisers doing this, though, despite the fact that it’s both very easy and, potentially, very effective. You simply find a site you want to advertise on and click the the “Advertise on this site” link somewhere around the AdSense slot. You enter a CPM amount and then track clicks, conversions, etc. just like you would from a normal AdWords campaign — the only difference being that you pay based on impressions, not clicks.

I, personally, have had a lot of success with it, and obviously Mazda’s agency sees the beauty in being able to get very wide coverage for their CX-7 on niche sites across the Internet.

You should definitely check out Site Targeting if you haven’t already. Find a site you’d like to advertise on and go for it. You’ll probably be very surprised at how cheap it is.

Stylegala for Sale

David over at Stylegala announced Tuesday that he has put the site up for sale. The starting price is $30,000, and he’s selling it via auction on SitePoint.

$30,000 seems very reasonable for a site with over 4 million monthly page views and 900,000 visitors, but this is one case where the buyer better be very aware of what he’s getting into. I know from having bought Unmatched Style that it’s going to take a special person to replace David. It has to be someone with real passion for CSS design and development. You can’t fake it.

It’s an outstanding opportunity, but definitely one to be taken very seriously.

Update: The bid is up to $40,000 now, and the auction is slated to last until June 15 or until they “the right buyer at the right price.”

An Absolutely Indispensable Tool

If you manage a blog, or multiple blogs, you know what a pain comment spam is. Until last week I had always just viewed it as a necessary evil — dutifully deleting them as they came in — but last week the spam storm hit.

One of the blogs I manage is Emergiblog — a well-known blog in the healthcare space. Last week, a spammer started running through his list of drugs, posting a spam for each in alphabetical order (Ambien, … Valium, Vicodin, Zoloft!). Every time it hit, the author got an email. That’s a whole lot of emails — especially when they’re all spam — so I needed an immediate solution.

My good friend Matt had mentioned Spam Karma to me a while back and recommended it very highly, so I gave it a try.

I do not exaggerate when I say that this may be one of the top 10 most impressive pieces of software I’ve ever used. It’s absolutely amazing.

Imagine if you could have a really smart person look at every single comment posted to your blog and approve or reject it based on whether it was spam. That’s exactly what Spam Karma does.

Now you’re probably thinking, as I did, that there’s absolutely no way someone could teach a computer program to do that…and you would be wrong, just as I was.

I don’t know how it does it, and I’m largely unconcerned. All I know is that I flipped the switch on it (which was eerily easy) and suddenly I had a personal assistant for everyone of my blogs. It’s caught comment spam that I wouldn’t have caught. It’s even smart enough to know to ignore my other built-in settings and just take over comment approval completely.

Absolutely, totally, 100% amazing.

If you don’t have it, and you run a blog, you must get it. Simple as that. It will change forever how you feel about managing your blog. It goes on every one of my blogs from here on out by default.

What Your Best Employees are Doing Right Now

They’re starting companies. Heck, even some of your worst employees are starting companies.

If you’re not treating them like you value them, sooner or later they’re going to look for an exit strategy. And if they’ve never thought about starting a company — and there may be ten people who haven’t — the latest issue of Business 2.0 clues them.

In 5 ways to start a company (without quitting your day job), Erick Schonfeld details five startups that started during work and went on to great things. It’s definitely worth a read.

And on the B2 blog, he details the five steps to moving straight from a day job to being your own boss:

1. Use Your Salary as Funding
2. Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan
3. Make Your Boss a Beta Tester
4. Cash In On Your Company’s Reputation
5. Convert Your Employer Into a Business Partner

Cost-of-living raises and nominal bonuses don’t say, “You’re an important part of this company.” They say, “This is the minimum we have to do, and if you leave we can just replace you — and probably pay your replacement less than we were paying you. It’s really a win-win for us.”

If you can’t answer the question, “Why would a top-level employee want to work here?” you’re probably already starting to see the exodus.