Welcome to Something for Nothing

I was listening to ESPN Radio 920 here in Las Vegas and they aired an interview with Bill Cower the former coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. During the interview, he talked about him coming back to football. He said that he loved football and would only come back in a way that could keep his priorities straight. He then went on to say that his Family was the most important thing in his life. He wanted to spend more time getting to know his family and seeing them.

Bill, you have to make a choice. You can’t be an NFL football coach and make your family the first priority. It’s impossible. You can take care of your family yes, but you can not put your family first and be a coach in the NFL. The two are mutually exclusive. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be an NFL coach. You can still be a great person and an NFL coach. I am saying that if you really want to put your family #1 in your life then you can’t go back to being a head football coach in the NFL.

I’m working on my masters degree in Information Systems at UNLV. One of my fellow students is working on his Masters Thesis on blogging. He’s asked for help in distributing a survey he’s created for his research. Here’s the message he sent me:

A group of researchers at University of Nevada, Las Vegasو are investigating effects of Weblogs on “Social Interactions” and “Trust”. Therefore, they have designed an online survey. By participating in this survey you will help researches in “Management Information Systems” and “Sociology”. You must be at least 18 years old to participate in this survey. It will take 5 to 12 minutes of your valuable time.

Your participation is greatly appreciated. Survey for Research on Blogging.

I’d appreciate anyone who takes the time to fill out this survey for my friend.

I recently blogged about how my days on the computer might be numbered (nobody has still bought me a Moby Wrap). Well, that day has arrived. Here’s some pictures of Alessia Kristine. Isn’t she so cute?

Well, I told my good friends over at PayPerPost that I would do something special for them. Here it is. I hope you enjoy!!

PayPerPost Baby

PayPerPost Momma

Tonight may be one of my last nights on the computer with no noise and no feedings. My wife is at a baby shower right now. She’s due in about 6 days and so our life is going to change. It is our second child and so you think we’d be use to it, but we’re not. I think I’ve forgotten what it was like to have a newborn in our house. I think I’m in for a rude awakening. It’s all good children are very worth it.

With my first child I always told my wife that all I needed was something that leaves my hands free and I’ll stay up all night with the baby. If my hands are free, then I have plenty to do on the computer and could stay up all night. I’ll pay for it the next day, but you have to do what you can do. Today I came across a Moby Wrap which looks like it might work. I could hold the baby and rock it while I played on the computer. It looks like there are a bunch of baby carriers that could work. The key is that it has to be something in the front so I can watch the baby and still sit on a chair.

Any other people with ideas on how I can get this accomplished?

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This is absolutely incredible. The things you are going to see on this post are amazing by themselves. However, when I tell you that someone made these works of art with MS paint, then you should be first amazed. Then, astounded. Then, shocked that someone would have that much time on their hands. My hats off to the Top 5 MS Paint Masterpieces.

Since I just posted about Italy I’ll give you just one example:

I’ve been planning for a couple years now to take my wife to Italy. We were this (imagine my fingers barely separated) to going this last year, but the timing just didn’t work out quite right. Well, since I won a little competition that gave us some cash, I told my wife that I’d like to take her to Italy. I absolutely love Italy. I would move there in a second if I could. I lived there for two years as a missionary and I think I left a part of my in Italy. Too bad my wife doesn’t speak Italian. It’s not her fault or anything. Who knows what will happen in the future. Anyway, let’s not dwell on that. There’s a lot of good in America and it will be fantastic to visit Italy again. Oh yes!! I said again. This summer, my wife and I are actually going. We’re ditching lovingly leaving the kids with my parents and we’re going to Italy.

The real problem is deciding where to go. I really want to go to Venezia because that’s a lovers paradise and I’m taking my wife. It’s the most incredible and unique city I’ve ever been to. I have friends in Napoli and on the island of Sardegna in a city called Quartu St. Elena. I would love to see them. Not to mention other friends in Salerno, Potenza, Teramo, Pineto (find that one on a map), Firenze, Milano, Roma just to name a few. My list doesn’t even include places like Ravenna which would be great to visit. I’ve heard the Emilia Romagna area has the best food. I should also not forget to mention how much fun it would be to go to Sicilia and find some long lost ancestors of my wife. I think they’d be blown away when to Americans come to visit and I speak Italian. How cool would that be?

Well, so much to think about. In the end, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about seeing friends and enjoying their company. Oh yeah, and the food.

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Today I was in a chat room with some friends from Cambrian House and one of the people is from Cyprus. I of course decided to make a fool of myself rather than doing a Google search to find out the information. So, I asked him whether Cyprus was the name of the island, the country and what the name of the city was that he lived in. I wanted to know this so I could try out my new Google Mashup that I’m creating for the free wish well called Robin Hood Fund. More on that later.

Well, turns out he lives in a city called Limassol, but that’s all the info I got. Well, except for a link to the CIA World Factbook. I guess there is tons of information in the fact book about every country. Someone in the chat commented that it was “The best thing that’s come from the CIA!”

So, here’s a link to information about Cyprus. One day I’ll get the guts to actually ask him why he chose to move to Cyprus.

I moved to Las Vegas about two years ago. When I moved here the first thing my sister told me is that they hold the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. I told her that I didn’t give a flip about the NFR. I wanted to get Professional Bull Riders Finals tickets. The PBR is so much cooler than the NFR. I’ve since learned that they are both huge and amazingly entertaining.

It really is an amazing event. I work on the campus of UNLV and so my whole life is affected when the cowboys come to Las Vegas. The PBR and NFR use up all of the Thomas and Mack, the Cox Pavillion, the intramural fields, they close down a street, the turn a parking lot into dirt to store animals. Not to mention almost half of the Thomas and Mack parking lot is some sort of reserved VIP parking for the rodeo.

I’m not bitter though. It’s really quite exciting with all those people coming to UNLV. Plus, the Thomas and Mack is a great place to hold the event. There really isn’t a horrible seat in the entire arena. Plus, half of the parking lot is turned into a few stages, some climbing poles, a mechanical bull, a bunch of sweet trucks and much more.

I had a late night class this year that kept me at UNLV until about 10pm. After my class I was walking to my car and the PBR had just recently let out. I decided to just walk through all the entertainment that was going on. Boy was I surprised. They were these tall beautiful girls on top of what looked like bars dancing around and singing much like the movie Coyote Ugly. Then, I kept walking and saw an over 18 tent. Don’t ask me what was going on there. Then, there were 2 girls on top of a truck and some other girls dancing on this container. I really hadn’t seen anything like it. Anyone want to go with me to the PBR?

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I’ve been pretty open in my enjoyment of PayPerPost. Well, recently I’ve cooled off on the PayPerPost product. I think the biggest problem has been the lack of great opportunities and the diminishing number of advertisers that are using PayPerPost. I absolutely believe that in order for PayPerPost to make good on their $3 million in funding, they need to sign up a TON more advertisers. I sincerely believe that if PayPerPost has enough advertisers, then they will have absolutely have no problem finding more bloggers for their product.

I was recently asked about these comments from Website Magazine who is doing an article on PayPerPost. I spent so much time on these comments that I decided to offer them on my blog. I call it some free consulting for PayPerPost. You have to read it from my point of view writing to a reporter, and no I didn’t proof read this. You’ll just have to enjoy it as is.

Finding advertisers is a huge challenge for almost any company. Advertising budget is one of the first things to go and is hugely hit or miss in my opinion. I haven’t thought much about it from an advertising perspective, but I’ll tell you the first thing off the top of my head.

A few things that PayPerPost has done recently to improve their ability to get advertisers:
-removed the countrackula link so that it isn’t as trackable by Google
-required saying that it was a sponsored post (although they could improve this part)
-purchasing performancing which will allow them to better filter bloggers for advertisers and also to provide advertisers with quality feedback on the ads on people’s blogs
-signing up HP

It’s going to be really key to see how well PayPerPost can implement performancing’s metrics program. That will be a big challenge and may determine their success in the long run.

HP’s success as the first major corporate sponsor will be crucial to signing up future advertisers.

I think PayPerPost has missed the boat in not creating an affiliate program for posties who sign up advertisers. I don’t think this would take much to accomplish and could yield new advertisers.

I think that PayPerPost could be very valuable in getting feedback on a product or service and creating a buzz over that product and service. The service could be refined a little, but getting good quality feedback on a website is worth a lot of money and bloggers are a great way to get feedback. It does take some managing of the responses, but I think there’s some definite value in bloggers feedback. Plus, as a review the blog post seems much more natural.

Major enhancements to the way advertising opportunities are displayed could significantly improve PayPerPost’s product offering. They have a sort of rotating links, but there is a whole lot more that could be done to better promote a company.

So far the community at PayPerPost has really been blogger heavy. PayPerPost’s promotion to bloggers has been excellent. The same can’t be said for advertisers. I think they should focus more effort on advertier testimonials and other advertising stories and promotions.

I’m not the best salesman in the world. In fact, I’d say that’s my weakness. However, these are some thoughts off the top of my head.

I just reread your question an realized that I answered a different question than you asked, but I think there’s a few things in what I said that apply to your question. Here’s my short synopsis of the value an advertiser can receive:
-SEO link value
-PR value
-Constructive feedback/Product Insight
-Blogger buzz (one blogger blogs and the other follows and the other follows that)
-Temporary Spike in Traffic

In order to allay fears:
-It’s very similar to a link from a blogger that just found your website and liked your product
-Make your opportunity creative so that you get a variety of responses that are valuable
-Use a higher Page Rank
-PPP should just be one layer in your internet marketing package
-Use a variety of links that are randomized

Those are really some tough questions [How do you sell advertisers on the value they can receive and how do you allay their fears]. I wonder what Ted would say to those questions. Also, if you want a good question to ask Ted. In the beginning almost all of the opportunities were from people that advertised with Ted’s other marketing company called MindComet. I’d be interested to know what percentage of advertisers have been MindComet clients. Second, how many of MindComet clients still want to use PayPerPost. In fact, why not call the MindComet people and see what they say about it.

Agree? Disagree?