Did you know that the incredibly famous Nike “Swoosh” logo was created by a graphic design student desperate to pay for a dress for an upcoming party, for a stunning total of $35 (at $2/hour)?

I watched a Nike documentary recently, where they interviewed  Philip Knight (one of Nike’s Founders), “His Airness” Michael Jordan, and the legendary designer of all (or most?) Air-Jordan shoes.

Knight talks about how when he first met the folks at Wieden+Kennedy (the media company that helped launch Nike as an international brand, with mainly remarkable marketing), he told them that he didn’t believe in advertising!

There is a clip at the end where LeBron James, one of the highest paid basketball players in the world today, says he grew up watching Michael Jordan, and how he and every single kid he knew felt that if they wore the same “Air Jordan” Shoes that they saw Jordan wearing in the commercials, they too could “soar in the air” and make all sorts of magical moves on the court – Just Like Mike.

Did the kids know deep, deep, deep inside that just wearing a specific brand of shoes won’t make you a better player? Of course, they all did.

But did they still convince themselves (and their parents) against reason and common-sense, that the shoes were really what counted? Of course, they all did!

How much did the association with Michael Jordan help Nike become the sports-wear-juggernaut that it is? Probably a LOT.

That just proves one thing: When you have a really strong brand (remarkable shoes, remarkable computers, remarkable prices, remarkable advice), people are much more likely to  buy your products – AND your recommendations – without thinking too much.

My hero Seth Godin recently recommended a book called “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions“. All he wrote was, (paraphrasing) “It’s remarkable, just go buy it”.

Had never heard of the author. Didn’t read any reviews. Didn’t care about the price.

I just went and bought it  – just because Seth Godin thought it was good (yes, he has worked hard to build that level of trust, and I’m sure he knows better than to dilute it by recommending purely in return for money (say, commercial endorsements?).

If you read only one book this year, then make sure it is this one.

Incredibly exciting, inspiring, and motivational video. 50% of the credit goes to the music and the “style” of presentation.

Last week, I searched YouTube (not Google) for how to “change wiper blades“, and watching a couple of the videos helped me change the wiper blades on my car in under 2 minutes (something I had been putting off for almost a year!)

Here is an interesting article about the shift in the way people are searching for information…

In November, Americans conducted nearly 2.8 billion searches on YouTube, about 200 million more than on Yahoo, according to comScore.

If you are not using video on your site, you are leaving a lot of money (and visitors) on the table.

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 $5,000 in fine for every match that Michael Jordan wore these banned (then) shoes on court].

Not even Apple – to this date – has been able to match the hysteria that these shoes created (have you ever heard anyone getting mugged or killed for an iPod or iPhone?)

And yes, I was a teenager when I read and watched news about people getting mugged and killed for Air Jordan shoes.

Now go make your own Purple shoes.

Maybe quite a lot, and mostly not a lot.

“Huh?”, you say?

If you look at this “top bloggers” list, you may end up buying into the fantasy that blogging will make you big bucks.

Not every blog will make that kind of money. Actually, it would even be fair say, that less than a fraction (less than 1%) of all blogs will make big money. Maybe a little more than a fraction will make decent money. But 95% of all blogs will not make any money. Why? I think there are quite a few reasons.

In my new book “No Business Like E-Business” that is being released shortly, I quote figures from Guy Kawasaki, about his self-disclosed ad revenues on his extremely popular blog. Here is a snippet from the book:

Excerpt from “No Business Like E-Business”

Imagine blogging for a whole year, ending up with a very popular blog that has 23,457 subscribers, ranked #45 out of all blogs in the world, and earning (brace yourself) a whopping $3,350 for the entire year!

Now stop imagining – this stuff is real.

I’m talking about Guy Kawasaki’s blog (blog.guykawasaki.com). These statistics only prove my theory further, that:

1. It is very hard to get tech-savvy folks to click on ads the way the average surfers (moms-and-pops) do.
2. It is not easy making a living just by blogging.

I myself own a site targeted at moms-and-pops, and I made many, many times more than what Guy’s #45-ranked blog earned. And mine is a very small niche, and a lot, lot, lot less less popular than Guy’s blog.

Here are some key stats from his blog:
• 2,436,117 page views (about 6,200/day)
• 23,457 RSS feed subscribers
• Total advertising revenue: $3,350 for 1 entire year (= $1.39 cpm)

You’ve got to take these stats with a pinch of salt, because these stats could be skewed due to a number of things – especially due to improper optimization for Adsense (or ads in general). Like mentioned earlier, Adsense optimization requires a lot of continued experimentation and tracking – in other words, a lot of focused effort – in order to make it work, which I’m guessing Guy probably didn’t due for various reasons.

But then there’s the other school of thought that overrides common sense. If you read the actual article, you will see that most of them did not start the blog with the sole intention of making money.

The main take-away here is that blogging may not make you directly cash-rich, but there are a lot of indirect, intangible benefits of blogging that simply cannot be overlooked:

• Build your brand: Develop a group of regular readers who are more likely to buy stuff that you actually sell down the line. Brand yourself as an expert in your niche. You will sell more books, get more paid consulting gigs, and all of that will eventually snowball into…. selling more books and getting more paid consulting gigs.
• Looks great on your resume: Unless you are putting up personal pictures or talking about stuff that you did when you were drunk, it adds a lot of value to your profile, because not everyone is capable of writing, and even among those few, not everyone is capable of writing about a focused subject in a professional way
• Ad-revenue: When you eventually start getting a lot of traffic, there will be plenty of ad-revenue opportunities (mostly CPM types); don’t count on PPC revenue, because tech-savvy folks just don’t click on ads.
• Develop original content: If you sat down to write a book, you may get overwhelmed by the amount of writing that needs to be done, and the sheer amount of effort that needs to put in. Instead, just start blogging chapter by chapter, and you could eventually compile those into a book (or other product).
• Blog posts can be transformed into articles: Writing an article for the sake of writing one can be extremely boring and painful. Instead, write short and crisp posts, and over time, you can pick each one up, expand it a little, and convert it into articles that can get you some incoming links.
• More traffic: Writing great posts that are instantly digestible and usable, and submitting to sites like Digg and StumbleUpon can not only get you tons of traffic, but also potential new subscribers and maybe even sell more of whatever it is that you are selling.

- Ravi Jayagopal
Author, “No Business Like E-Business“

Found this article about Sergey Brin – it covers everything from Sergey’s casual attire at work, to his electric massage chair, to his Russian-Jewish upbringing. Even if you don’t like Google or Sergey, you simply cannot pass up on reading about the founders of one of the largest corporations in the world.

Some highlights from the article…

• A typical workday finds him in jeans, sneakers and a fitted black T-shirt
• Sergey and Larry share the title of president
• Google’s workers enjoy such family-friendly perks as three free meals a day, free home food delivery for new parents, designated private spaces for nursing mothers, and full on-site medical care, all of which recently led Fortune magazine to rank the company as the #1 place to work in the country
• Dad: Michael, 59, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland; Mom: Eugenia, 58, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• They had to leave Russia due to anti-semitism. For many Soviet Jews, exit visas never came. But, in May 1979, the Brins were granted papers to leave the U.S.S.R. They were among the last Jews allowed to leave until the Gorbachev era.
• At Stanford, he was known for his habit of bursting in on professors without knocking.
• His father once remarked, “I asked him if he was taking any advanced courses, and he said, ‘yes, advanced swimming.’”
• In the spring of 1995, during a prospective student weekend, Sergey met an opinionated computer science student from the University of Michigan named Larry Page. They talked and argued over the course of two days, each finding the other cocky and obnoxious. They also formed an instant connection, relishing the intellectual combat.
• Larry and Sergey shopped (Google) around to various companies for the price of $1 million. No one was interested.
• Sun Microsystems cofounder Andy Bechtolsheim (himself a Jewish immigrant from Germany) wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.” The only problem was, “Google, Inc.” did not yet exist—the company hadn’t yet been incorporated. For two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young men had nowhere to deposit the money.
• He shops at Costco
• Finally, “Don’t Be Evil.”

Enjoy The Story of Sergey Brin

- Ravi Jayagopal / LinkOverLoad.com

Check out the oldest domains ever registered.

It’s very easy to see the long-term big guns here. See if you recognize the others.

Here’s the full list.

Ravi Jayagopal / CheapDomains.ws