From the category archives:

Industry News

How To Destroy A Brand In 30 Seconds

November 8, 2009

I’ve been a fan of Guy Kawasaki for a while now.
Not a fan-boi type, but still admired him enough to call myself a “fan”.
I follow him on Twitter, read his blog occasionally, and love to watch his videos as he is a great presenter and speaker who adds a lot of humor and wit to [...]

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No More Amazon Commissions For Paid Traffic

April 6, 2009

Here’s the email I received earlier today, notifying me of the change to Amazon’s Affiliate Commissions policies. Relevant portion is highlighted below.
We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay [...]

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‘Curiosity’ starring Seth Godin

March 16, 2009

This is turning into a “Seth Godin Week” at RavisRants.com.
But if you’re like me, you can’t get enough of what Seth has to say. So enjoy…
‘curiosity’ from Nic Askew on Vimeo.

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Marc Andreesen on Video, iPhone, FaceBook and Google

February 22, 2009

Excellent interview by Charlie Rose.
And the discussion about monetizing FaceBook is very interesting.
And a cool thing about Google Video (not to be confused with YouTube) is that you get a link right on the page, to download the video (iPod/iPhone friendly). So load up for offline viewing at the gym or on the train!
[...]

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Do We Really Need Yet Another Search Engine?

September 2, 2008

We all know what turned out to be the answer to that question.
So, here we go again: Do We Really Need Yet Another Browser?
If it’s coming from Google, then it’s definitely worth checking out.
It sends my brain tingling when I read this:
Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind [...]

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Ubiquity: Mozilla’s Mother Of All Mashups

August 27, 2008

If you don’t know what a “Mashup” is, fret not.
You’re now going to witness one of the greatest “mashup” tools ever developed…

Full story: Introducing Ubiquity

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Google Launches Affiliate Network

July 2, 2008

Performics > DoubleClick > Google Affiliate Network
Google finally completed it’s DoubleClick Performics merger and started operations as the “Google Affiliate Network” on June 30th.
They’re now accepting applications from Advertisers, and knowing Google’s famous processing lag time, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get an application in right away.
I just did, and I guess I’ll [...]

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Purple Shoe from Nike

January 9, 2008

It’s not really purple in color. But I did mean that it is Purple.
Why?
It’s because of the way it was successful in creating an entirely new industry of “athlete marketing” like never before. Because of how it created a frenzy among consumers. Because of the innovative ways Nike marketed it [for instance, they paid [...]

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My Chat With A (Rather Clueless) Google AdWords Support Specialist

January 3, 2008

My question was very simple: I wanted to know how I could promote products using CPA (Cost Per Action) on the Google Network and allow publishers who have access to “AdSense Referrals” to promote my products by placing a piece of code on their web sites, and when someone clicked over to my web site [...]

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Amazon Kindle: Not kindling my passion for, er, anything

December 12, 2007

The folks who buy a new product when it first comes out, are commonly known as the early adopters.
These people – who are not the same as the “beta testers” – actually spend money to buy the product.
They risk the annoyances, technical and usability issues of First-Generation products in exchange for the “Wow” factor [...]

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Can I get my morning breakfast without the “Bacn”?

November 27, 2007

“Bacn” – pronounced as “Bacon” – is spam (kind of), but not really the lewd, disgusting, “killing my inbox” type.
From Jargon Watch at Wired.com:
It’s not really spam. You want to read it (and probably would), you just don’t have the time. Thanks to the folks at PodCamp Pittsburgh, there’s a new web-term you can now [...]

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GOOG-411 comes out of Beta

October 16, 2007

This has been around for a while now, but its coming out of beta (a.k.a Google Labs) means that Google is serious enough to support this going forward.
Here’s how it works:

Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (800-4664-411)
Say where you’re calling from – City, State or Zip
Say what you’re looking for (Pizza delivery, from the video below)
GOOG-411 connects you with [...]

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Adsense For Video (YouTube) Is Here

October 10, 2007

My “Video Unit” link wasn’t available yesterday when the announcement was first made.
Was able to see it today.
“Linked” my Adsense account with my YouTube account.
Got the confirmation from Google in a few minutes (they do warn that it could take up to 12 hours).
Created my “player”, got the code.
The ads load asynchronously, and [...]

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Membership Sites: Not Easy To Monetize. Proof? NY Times

September 25, 2007

In this era of the open web, it is hard to monetize information that you can easily get elsewhere.
Want to read about what’s going on with the presence of Iranian dictator Ahmedinajad in NY City? Just Google-News it up (yes, that’s different from Googling it up), and you’ll get all the latest relevant news stories [...]

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Google Supplemental Index

September 24, 2007

In my book “No Business Like E-Business“, I write about the Google Supplemental Index (GSI – Ravi’s acronym). Basically, this is like the “alternate” Google database, where sites that are “on the way in” or “on the way out” show up.
If yours is a new site, it may show up in the GSI before it [...]

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Google says it loses $1 billion a year to false ad clicks

September 18, 2007

“Our invalid clicks rate – the activity rate – has remained in the range of less than 10% of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. At Google’s current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million/year in potential revenue foregone.”, says Google’s Inside Adwords [...]

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Animoto.com: Making your pictures come alive on video

September 15, 2007

I found this amazing site yesterday through one of the feeds on LinkOverLoad.com. Awesome video coming right up…
Animoto basically turns your pictures into a fantastic MTV-style video, with some great soundtracks available on their site for free, or you can use your own audio – with your pictures almost flashing in rhythm to the beats [...]

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Woot Sells Out – In Style

September 12, 2007

“The _____ swept down from the hills like a dark and hungry wind.
The first thing anyone would notice would be the _____, its long white hair flew wildly in the breeze generated by the two swinging katanas that had been enchanted to draw blood from anything, even lamp posts and cheese.
Raised in a [...]

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Google Finally Starts Video Advertising on YouTube

August 23, 2007

We all knew this day would come, but I had been more curious about the type of video ads that would show up: would they be pre-roll (first show the ads, then the actual video)? Would they be post-roll (after the video) or some kind of pop-up (probably not, knowing their Adsense policy about pop-ups)?
Well, [...]

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Google Acquisition History

June 11, 2007

Check out this pretty cool list of Google’s acquisitions, from Deja to YouTube to Doubleclick to Feedburner.
If you notice the trend, they’ve pretty much tried to stick to their core competency and have bought companies with products that complement their core niche of search and analysis.

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