knofun

Well after some more digging we found some CNN coverage of the road trip:

ventures, web marketing carsforagrand, cnn, road trip

We have added functionality to Cars for a Grand so you can sell your own car on there. Well, as long as you want to sell it for $1,000 or less

Sell your cheap car

ventures, web marketing carsforagrand, used cars

As you may or may not know I run a used car website called CarsForaGrand.com. I thought it would be a great idea to buy a car for under $1,000 from the site and drive it coast to coast in an attempt to get some news coverage and visitors to the site. We were successful in appearing on a dozen news broadcasts and driving almost half a million visitors to the site in three weeks - all for free.

Here is an example of the coverage we got, this one is from San Diego:

The basic hope was that we could drum up some news coverage and backlinks with the unique story, especially amid the current economic climate and automaker bailouts. The initial idea was to get on a few local TV stations, you know the classic filler on a slow news day ‘Two guys are driving across country in a $900 car…’ stuff like that. It also sounded like a bunch of fun, never having been across country before. I thought about hiring a PR firm, or getting a consultant, but then I remembered that stuff costs money. So I talked to a few friends in the industry like PR guru Chris Winfield, whipped up a press release, and got to work. Here is the first release:

COAST TO COAST IN AN $899 CAR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SAN DIEGO, CALIF (April 2009)- Who says you can’t afford a reliable, safe, working car in this recession– for under $1,000 bucks! Early this month, two young entrepreneurs will set out from San Diego, Calif. to show the country that they do not need a bailout to get a decent car. Chris Hedgecock and Jorge Gonzalez, founders of the website CarsForaGrand.com, have purchased a car from the website for $899 and will drive from San Diego to Miami to prove you can buy a reliable car without the hassle and burden of financing one.

These two young guys will be cruising through your town and would like to stop by your station as they make their way across the country. You will find their story to be inspiring, interesting and humorous as they honk through towns just like yours.

The car is a 1974 Pontiac LeMans, purchased for $899.89 on February 26, 2009. To make sure the the car was safe and road-worthy, $200 was invested in parts like belts, spark plugs, and a much needed oil change. The car was purchased from CarsForaGrand.com, a website that only features used cars under $1,000.

Chris and Jorge’s journey can be followed at (http://www.carsforagrand.com/road-trip/) where daily updates will be posted including pictures and video. The entire trip is expected to last 14 days barring a major incident (fingers crossed!) The route and city list will be updated with dates daily as schedules might change, always find the newest information at (http://www.carsforagrand.com/road-trip/the-route/).

AVAILABLE IN SAN DIEGO APRIL 2, 2009

To schedule an interview or a drive-by please contact

I had the good fortune of having my friend Drew Schulte to help out with the PR legwork. Drew is not a PR professional, actually he’s my real estate agent but in this market he has a lot of free time So I had Drew put together a spreadsheet with all the cities we were visiting, and all the TV news stations in each city. He then called all of them and got the email address of the ‘assignment editor’. We learned early on this term ‘assignment editor’ was really important as this person decided who did what on what days. The great thing about TV news stations is they are open 24/7 looking for newsworthy stuff to put on the air. So we would pull into a town as it was getting dark, and while we would be getting settled Drew would be calling the news stations, harassing the assignment editors, and emailing the release to their ‘breaking news’ address.

After a few cities we altered the release to include the specific city we were in, and links to the previous news coverage. This really helped because it showed them that other stations were covering us and the last thing a news station wants to do is miss covering a story other stations might be covering. So once we got the ball rolling it was pretty easy, pull into town, get a hotel, wake up early, do a news spot, and get back on the road.

After we hit New Orleans we noticed the coverage kind of snowballing. For example, the news story we shot in San Diego got picked up by their sister station in LA, the one we shot in El Paso aired in San Francisco, etc. By the time we were done in Miami, the story had gone national… on the largest day we did over 110,000 uniques - all for free.

Not to say it wasn’t a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of this great country and meet a bunch of cool people. I also learned a whole bunch, which is really my favorite thing. I really knew nothing about PR, and was usually pretty shy in front of the camera. Now my smiling mug and my ‘74 LeMans have been all over the national and local news across the country. I hadn’t touched a Mac since the Apple II GS, and now I am zipping all over iMovie on my new Macbook Pro.

The real driving force behind this trip was attitude. I had the idea for the site a few years ago, and had the idea for the road trip around December or January, but it really took going to Elite Retreat to motivate me to get off my ass and go. There are just so many smart capable people there and the attitude of “We Can Do It” was just so infectious, I started planning as soon as I got home.

So to recap, if you have an idea get off your ass and just go for it. The worst thing that can happen is you will learn something new, and you might just succeed beyond your wildest expectations in the process.

You can see all of our video blogs at http://www.carsforagrand.com/road-trip/ or check out our YouTube channel.

UPDATE:

Here is the official count from third party site NewsPowerOnline.com:

Total Story Count: 28
Total Nielsen Audience: 1,220,161
Total 30-Second Ad Equivalency: $13,164
Total Run Time: 49:50
Total Calculated Ad Equivalency: $30,885
Total Calculated Publicity Value: $92,652

ventures, web marketing carsforagrand, ebay, pr

Hey just a heads up to everyone who reads this blog (yes, both of you) I am in the midst of a cross country road trip and video blogging it over at http://www.carsforagrand.com/road-trip/. That’s all!

ventures, web marketing carsforagrand, road trip

Wow so just finishing up what ended up being months of work on the new Zeropaid. We had to move everything from a hacked up custom CMS that was a combination of an old version of pligg, something I wrote in 2002 called ‘newsadmin,’ and 6 years of patch over hack over patch over grossness. The import contained over 500,000 users, 10,000 news stories, countless comments and posts.  We decided on Wordpress for our CMS and vBulletin for our user management.

An aside on that for a moment. I really like vBulletin and we have used it for user management and our forum software for years now. When we decided on redoing ZP, we were really high on wordpress. We had been turning out tons of blogs with it, and its capacity for customization is undeniable. I really like some of the features of WP, like for example its ability to handle comments and filter spam is great. Performance-wise, Wordpress is not the greatest. Yes, we are using WP-SuperCache. It’s really hard to load test to the traffic levels of ZP, and once we flipped the switch I was shocked at the server loads. We are definitely adding more hardware to the rack to make this setup workable. Kinda wish I would have investigated more to see if we could have used vBulletin for the whole job… then again our vbulletin forum has to be filtered hourly for spam - manually.

At any rate, the new site is working amazingly well. Participation and discussion are way up, and that was the total goal. Everyone seems to like the new design, which is a first. Big hat tip to Unique Blog Designs, Nate, Matt and Josh. If you need a design done for a site, call these guys. Seriously.

Jorge is really the guy who made all this happen, grinding out the vbulletin bridge and all the little details that made the big picture look so good. Props to ya my man.

So to kickoff the new site and to reward the people who really matter - the users, we are giving away a brand new Xbox 360. To enter all you have to do is interact with the site, rate a program, leave a comment, post in the forum, or follow us on twitter. We pick the winner end of April, so you have plenty of time to get in where you fit in.

Official Contest Page

file sharing / p2p, geek stuff, ventures, web marketing contest, php, vbulletin, wordpress, zeropaid

Kris Jones from Pepperjam is the man. Not only is he the CEO of a kickass internet marketing company, but he continuously hooks me up. He hooked me up and invited me to attend Pepperstock, their annual company party in PA. He hooked me up to speak on his panel at ASW 09. He hooked me up with a pass to Elite Retreat, an unbelievably effective internet marketing gathering.

Now, he has hooked me up further. Pepperjam is the first licensee of ZinText, my in-text advertising platform I built for eBay. If you are a Pepperjam affiliate and you have been approved into the affiliate program you can check out PJN InText here. There are also some reviews up on the web, here are some I have found:

http://www.masonworld.com/announcements/pepperjam-ebay-text-ads-review/
http://nailsblog.com/2009/02/23/pepperjam-in-text-ads/

So thanks Kris and thanks Pepperjam and thank you, the affiliate.

geek stuff, ventures, web marketing pepperjam, zintext

Finally back in my chair after last week’s Elite Retreat. I wish I could describe to you the vibe at that conference but man.. I can’t remember the last time I actually sat through a whole panel at a conference, but there I was on Wednesday, glued to my chair for 8-9 hours. Never happened at a conf.. never. Not only was every speaker completely qualified and had something really interesting and useful to share, but so did every attendee.

By limiting the attendance and raising the price Shoemoney has also raised the bar on who could attend. I honestly felt like I could learn something valuable from every single person in the room.

Then there was Gary Vaynerchuk. I had heard of Gary, both on a internet marketing level because of his acquisition of cork’d and on a wine level from Wine Library TV. But I had never heard him speak, watched one of his videos, nothin. Silly me. This dude is the real fucking deal. I can’t even imagine where Gary Vee is going to be in 5 years. He is just too smart, too motivated, and too tireless to ever quit. Hey Gary, when you own the Jets can I get tickets when the Chargers come to town?

Honestly, best internet conference I have ever been to. Hands down. I met so many cool geeky people I know I am going to be working with, it was just amazing. I would name all of you by name and links but I am selfish and want to keep that info to myself :). Big thanks to Kris Jones and Pepperjam Network for hooking it up, love u guys!

geek stuff, web marketing conference, elite retreat, shoemoney

So yesterday I was bummed to find that Google is leaving the radio advertising space. This is, in the immortal words of The Dude, a bummer man. We were having a lot of fun promoting sites on traditional radio, so much so I blogged about it. Oh well que cera cera, on to TV advertising.

But then today I get this email from the AdWords team:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

Beginning on May 31st, we will discontinue the current Audio Ads
platform. We have decided to exit the broadcast radio business and
focus our efforts on exploring internet-based solutions that will
deliver relevant online streaming audio ads. Stay tuned for more
information about these initiatives later this year.

What does this change mean for you?
- Campaigns: Your active campaigns will continue to run up until
May 31st, but will no longer run after that date. You will not be
able to create any new Audio Ads campaigns after May 30th.
- Reports: You will continue to be able to access your reports for
all past campaigns up until June 12th. If you would like to keep
records of your campaign data, please run the reports as soon as
possible while the system is still fully operational.
- Billing: You will continue to be able to access your billing
information indefinitely.

We’re sharing this information with you now so that you’ll have
time to make other arrangements for your audio advertising after
May 31st. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us at
audio-support@google.com.

Sincerely,

The AdWords Team

Hey, thanks for the newsflash!

digital media, geek stuff, ventures, web marketing advertising, adwords, google, radio

Well I have been working on a few wordpress plugins for a few days and finally figured one was ready for public consumption. So basically all this thing does is implement ZinText on your wordpress blog with no coding. If you don’t know already, ZinText is in-text ads for eBay affiliates. Check out a demo here, or its on this blog on posts older than 10 days. 

Oh yeah thats another cool feature you can say only display ads on posts older than X days so you have more control over where the ads appear. There’s also a whitelist if we aren’t linking the words you want, and a blacklist if we are linking things you don’t want linked. You still have to have a campaign ID from ePN, but if you are a good affiliate you have one already.

Check out wpZinText here

Please leave feeback here or on the plugin page.

geek stuff, ventures, web marketing advertising, affiliate, ebay, in-text, plugin, wordpress, zintext

I click on a lot of ads… sorry ppc guys I rarely buy stuff but I click all the time to see what other marketers are up to. So I was cruising a tech deals site, and saw an ad for this site Swoopo. The ad had like 3 products on it for ridiculous discounts:

Great deals right? Clicky clicky. On the homepage there are a ton of auctions going on, everything for amazingly low prices. You can see the bids in real time, so bids are updating all over the place and its very exciting. Clicky clicky. So I signed up, and got the normal verification emails and blah blah blah. I also got a strange email with their  terms and conditions attached. Usually when things come with too much cover-your-ass type material there is a good reason.

So the way Swoopo works is you buy “packs” of “bids” for $0.75 per bid. You then use these bids to bid on products. Each “bid” increases the price of the product by $0.15 and pushes the end time of the auction back by 20 seconds. This enables other people to bid and push the end time back, and the vicious cycle continues. Here’s where it gets really good. So assuming all the suckers get bored and someone finally wins the auction after spending bid after bid after bid, YOU STILL HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE OF THE ITEM!!!

So lets run this back with a lil test case. I just saw a Playstation 3 go for $126.15. With an MSRP of $399.99 this may seem like a heck of a deal. Let’s do the math. They state that every product starts at $0.15 and every time someone spends one of their $0.75 “bids” the price goes up $0.15. So that would be  840 “bids” that cost $0.75 each or $630 to Swoopo. Then the person who “wins” has to pay $126.15 + “shipping” however much that is. Lets give them the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume they only charge $10 for shipping. That is $766.15 in revenue to Swoopo for a PS3 they probably got in bulk at a steep discount.

The terms break all this down, anyone who is into internet marketing HAS to at least admire the hustle on this one.

web marketing swoopo