knofun

When I got a new desktop machine a while back I went to staples to pick up some speakers and ended up buying some cheapies for $20 or so. Got home and found that they had a crazy interference with any GSM phone in the area and emitted an ear-splitting noise to let you know it. So I google ‘best pc speakers’ and get this cnet article which said: “If you’re looking for a set of 2.1 speakers, buy these. It’s as simple as that.”

Perfect, simple, to the point. I bought the speakers immediately off Amazon for about $100 with shipping and they rock.

Thanks, internet. Great team effort.

knofun geek stuff, hardware best, pc, speakers

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.

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

I harvest a lot of keyword data for my Zintext product, both from the eBay API and various other sources. One of the things I do is scrape the hot terms from buy.ebay.com. Here’s what they say about the terms listed there:

eBay Keywords is a list of highly popular terms that people search for on eBay. Each eBay Keyword has its very own page that allows you to view all the items eBay has for that keyword.

Sounds great right? Should be some really good hot keyword data in there. I was refreshing some keywords today and just happened to notice this keyword that got picked up: “picture of proper sexual intercourse for the elder” from page two of the P’s.

In case they took it down here is a screenshot:

Wow well thats not really what I was looking for, um, thanks anyways? Leaving out the buy.ebay.com keywords from now on..

knofun Uncategorized ebay, keyword, 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.

knofun web marketing swoopo

A while back I mentioned in a blog post that I was buying a domain name.. here’s what I said: 

So I am trying to buy this domain I want, and I want it so badly I offered what I considered a ridiculous sum. We haggled back and forth for a while and to my dismay I offered twice my original (and already ridiculous I might add) offer. Guy said great, just wanted me to submit the bid through his domain parking service so they could handle the escrow and all that. I said great because I wanted that security, after all I was talking about a lot of money! Turns out when you submit a bid on this particular domain parking service, the domain holder can then open an auction for said domain as the original bid as the first bid in the auction. Not so great for the unwitting buyer but an amazingly useful tool in the hands of an opportunistic and fortunate seller. *sigh* Oh well hope I get it but I am not raising my offer.

So I didn’t raise my offer. And I didn’t really pay attention to when the auction closed. I got off a plane in vegas a few weeks ago, turned my phone on, and got two emails. “You’ve been outbid” “This auction is closed”

Ever since then I have been kicking myself. Over and Over. To me, the domain was worth 5x-10x times what I was paying for it. Easily. 50x maybe. So every morning I wake up and feel like a jerk because I was trying to save a few bucks, and ended up costing myself millions. The lesson? Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Don’t be greedy and if you really want something don’t be afraid to pay for it.

knofun rant, web marketing greed, lesson

I have never really been into PPC. Never had success with it, never could fathom it.. just seemed too tedious and boring, plus I hate to spend money. I do have a Google account, of course, for AdSense and Analytics and whatnot. When Shoemoney posted something about using Adwords to post radio ads promoting fighters.com, I got interested. 

My Dad is in traditional radio, so over the years I have been witness to the massive reach of radio content and advertising. My favorite pet project right now is carsforagrand.com, where you can find a cheap used car for under $1,000. I thought this would be a great fit what with the economy and all, so I used the super easy Ad Creation Marketplace and had Tony Brueski whip up an ad for us - for only $100!

Here’s our commercial

I have been testing it seriously since the beginning of the year and the results have been phenomenal. So much so we are preparing a little TV spot and going to try Google for television advertising.

I see what’s going on here, the big G is desperate to create some additional revenue to compliment its search business. It’s doing a damn good job. There is no way, no WAY I would have just been all “oh hey I’m gonna walk into a clearchannel office and buy some radio space for my website.” So much hassle, have to deal with people, whatever. And producing a commercial? Forget it! Google makes all those headaches go away with their system… its literally like ordering a pizza online, just pick what you want and click go. So in the process, G has sold more radio advertising, converted a new believer, made some sound guy some extra bread for making my commercial, made me some money, and made themselves some in the process. THIS IS THE AMERICAN WAY, we don’t need no stinking bailouts!

knofun geek stuff, ventures, web marketing advertising, adwords, google, radio

I mentioned a dinner I had at Switch in Encore at ASW with DK and Michael from Market Leverage. Our conversation ran five hours and spanned topics from international travel, mountain climbing, federal bailouts, laissez-faire economics, the constitution, and much more.

One part that stuck out in particular came when we were discussing the horrors of war. I argued that the same atrocities have been committed by both sides of any war for tens of thousands of years, the difference now is people who aren’t on the front lines can witness the horror on ustream or CNN. This age of unprecedented transparency and availability of information has ushered in a new morality, one where a politician can no longer say one thing publicly and authorize another privately. I’m not saying we know everything about everything, but it is definitely harder to hide something from a person today who decides to educate themselves. 

I drew parallels to the Milgram experiment, where students would knowingly “shock” other students at the behest of their superiors. They would deflect blame by saying they were just doing what they were told, and the superiors claimed they didn’t do anything wrong because they didn’t actually do the shocking. We discussed Jefferson thouroughly during the dinner, but now I am reminded of a Benjamin Franklin quote: “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.” 

So now, with all this information and heretofore unprecedented transparency, is it not harder to find a reason? If you can no longer do one thing privately and claim another publicly, will people do the right thing? These are important questions as we enter a new era under President-elect Obama. I for one hope personal responsibility, the core of the American spirit, will triumph. Let the Information Age lead us into the Age of Transparency.

knofun rant asw09, morality, transparency

Yo, I had a really great time at affiliate summit this year. Shoemoney was there doing his thing, PepperJam had an awesome presence. I spoke on a panel with Kris Jones, CEO of PepperJam, on where affiliate marketing is headed in 2009. Some really good insights on the industry, plus I got to sit next to Brad from BradsDeals.com. He is a smart dude, wish I had gotten more time to talk to him.

Which brings me to my next point, I didn’t have much time after the panel because it went 12-1 on Sunday, and the Chargers v. Steelers game started at 1:45. I ducked out of there quick sorry folks did not mean to be rude but come on for San Diego sports the Chargers are all we have and I think that says volumes. So yeah the way that game ended sucked. I was supposed to do a webmasterradio show with all the other panelists after and I kinda bailed. Sorry.

Anywho, that night I went to an awesome dinner hosted by the nice folks at Market Leverage curtesy of my boy DK. I somehow got seated next to the CEO Michael, who turned out to be a fascinating guy with tons of knowledge about all kinds of fun topics. The three of us talked and talked through an amazing five hour dinner at the new Encore tower. Wow. Big thank you to DK and Michael.

The next night was kind of a blur, I remember tons of suite parties and seeing E40 rock a sick show at Rain. Ran into him later at the blackjack tables. Good times.

knofun web marketing affiliate, asw09, pepperjam, shoemoney

In a move demonstratory of extreme idiocy, Comcast has this page specifically made to educate people who use Google Chrome or other browsers not on their list. Interestingly enough, Opera works fine even though it’s not on their ‘recommended’ list.

Read more…

knofun geek stuff, rant chrome, comcast, google

How I can always tell when things are going well: I work well into the wee hours of the morning and the only thing that has a chance of stopping me is my laptop running out of batteries and the prospect of walking to the living room to get the power cable.

Many many years ago (almost 9 now??!!?!) I spent a week straight staying up till 5-6am working in a little makeshift office in a run down house on Grand avenue in Pacific Beach. Not because I was trying to be a billionaire but because I was learning new things and challenging myself, and that was the most fun I could imagine. Out of that week came Zeropaid, born of the hard work and frustration of two young men. Years later I find myself staying up late, learning new things, challenging myself. How great is this world when a guy can do exactly what he pleases and somehow make a living at it? God bless you all.

So what am I up to up late? Well watching some roman history DVDs my Dad gave me. Playing around with looks / concepts of Yumm.com, just too good of a domain to not do anything about. Playing with promotional ideas for cars for a grand. Oh that reminds me of a messed up story.

So I am trying to buy this domain I want, and I want it so badly I offered what I considered a ridiculous sum. We haggled back and forth for a while and to my dismay I offered twice my original (and already ridiculous I might add) offer. Guy said great, just wanted me to submit the bid through his domain parking service so they could handle the escrow and all that. I said great because I wanted that security, after all I was talking about a lot of money! Turns out when you submit a bid on this particular domain parking service, the domain holder can then open an auction for said domain as the original bid as the first bid in the auction. Not so great for the unwitting buyer but an amazingly useful tool in the hands of an opportunistic and fortunate seller. *sigh* Oh well hope I get it but I am not raising my offer.

So yeah doing that, trying to find some possible end to the Zeropaid WordPress Conversion (yes it deserves the capitalization). Damn that has taken a long time.

I am liking my new theme and my new home on knofun.com. Hope u are too.

knofun geek stuff domains, hard work, zeropaid