Elvis Presly Hollywood Star

Michael Robertson Interview

I work closely with an outstanding man named Rod Underhill.  Rod was a co-founder of MP3.com, the early dotcom rocketship that IPO'd for over $2 billion and ended up selling for $450 million.  Rod often talks of the business prowess of Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com.  Because of this high praise, when I can take something from Michael's brain, I jump at the opportunity.

I just read an interview of Michael Robertson about his new startup SIPphone.  The interview itself is very informative.  Michael talks about business models, he talks about open standards, and why MP3.com was such a big hit.  He justified my theory of digital business models being the best businesses to start.  A little creativity can go a long way.

"I like businesses that are purely digital, which can really change the whole economic structure. What I mean by pure digital is things you can digitize and shoot around on the Internet, such as news, music, videos, and phone calls. You can't shoot a pair of shoes, or a loaf of bread, or physical goods like that. If you can digitize it by moving to the Internet, it's going to happen. And with that change, it knocks out old incumbents and makes new room at the table for new leaders. You get a seat at the table with adults and make some money during that transition period. The businesses I do are pretty obvious to me because they are all about digitizing an industry that previously was more offline, and moving those industries 100 percent online."

Read the Michael Robertson interview here.

One last quote for your reading pleasure. I love the way this guy thinks!


"As an entrepreneur, stop talking about it, go do it!" ... "If you don't have a URL, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to read about your vaporware plans in the paper. You have to be different, and you have to move and move quickly."

RideOnTime gets a facelift

Today we rolled out the new facelift for RideOnTime.com. I think it's a home run... but then again, I helped to design it - so why wouldn't I? We've incorporated a lot of newer design elements of (don't say it!) Web 2.0 sites. Damn, I said it - now I have to roll with it.

Yes, we've web2'd our site. Simple layout, bright colors, plenty of white space, big text, rounded corners, and a sweet little icon thrown in here and there. These elements are typical of the latest and greatest on the web, and RoT is no exception. This design is hot.

Old logo, circa 2004 (gasp!)


New logo, Web2 applied


Many thanks go out to Dave Martinez at Futurefront.com. If you want the best of cutting edge design - he's your man.

Thanks to our customers who have given us the feedback to continue making RideOnTime a solid solution to booking online ground transporation.

Sailing Santa Monica bay 2

Sailing Santa Monica bay 1

Bees attack Hollywood

Tips for startup companies

Good article on tips to a successful startup. I've heard and read a lot of "reasons" that you should start your own business, but never one quite like this.

The tip that he concentrates on the most is "3. You have a better understanding of one kind of customer than anyone else." The premise is solid - you need to solve a problem for someone before you can run a successful business. If you don't know the customer, how can you solve their problems?

Mini-digg effect numbers

For anyone that doubts the power of digg.com. Here's a mini-case study on the traffic that flows through digg - for even the smallest of items. I submitted a blog post about making money with creativity to digg last week and measured the amount of traffic that came directly from it. The post didn't get any diggs. It didn't get anywhere near the front front page. But it did send a lot of traffic my way:

	time	digg visitors
before	9:45am	0
after	10:02am	26
	10:15am	62
	6:10pm	122
	11:30pm	158

The traffic from digg went down to a trickle the next day, showing that it's a short term effect. Interesting, none the less.

If you've got a time sensitive story that needs a burst of eyeballs - digg.com is definitely a place that deserves a submission.

How do you make money on the Net? just be creative!

EricB is very creative, and he's collecting a little extra cash over at FerraiChat. He's not making "Ferrari Enzo in Red" kind of money, but it's some nice extra change. Just by staying in tune with interesting things that are going on, and having the capability to talk directly to people that are interested in them you can make things happen. Makes me wonder if his approach couldn't be made into a process and performed serially.



The catalyst is a red Ferrari Enzo (very expensive and rare Ferrari) that crashed in Malibu. It's a strange story involving a driver that fled the scene, and an owner that might be in the Swedish mafia. And it just keeps getting weirder every day.

When you start reading Ferrarichat, it doesn't take very long to figure out that it is a vibrant community full of very opinionated and outspoken people. I imagine this is true of all successful forums and online communities. You need the colorful, unpredictable personalities to keep everyone else coming back. If they like something, they go on about it for weeks, compiling several hundred posts, spanning pages of reading. Every good forum is like that...

In an environment like FerrariChat, a greedy capitalist will be sniffed out very quickly. If all you're interested in is making a buck off the members of the forum, you're toast - burned by everyone.

On March 4, EricB shows up in the Southern California section of the forum. He says he's never posted to the forum before, but he's been reading it for a long time. Then he says that he's got an idea for a t-shirt based around the strange Enzo story, and he's interested in how many people would be interested in owning one. The community loves it and jumps on it immediately. EricB even works with the community on the final design of the t-shirt, and asks whether he should order 24 or 48 of them... he orders 48, and sells them for $15 each. He accepts money orders to his office, or through a paypal account. He has limited quantities and is concerned about how to refund money to people that don't pick up their shirt before they run out.

For a grand total of 6 posts, and a little creative design, EricB makes $720 (minus his shirt printing costs). Because he's smart? He noticed an opportunity and jumped on it, so that makes him smart. I don't think he's a serial forum crasher - but isn't that an idea? Could you make money by posting a thread saying you're a long-time lurker and have an idea for something and want to see if anyone is interested? ABSOLUTELY - I think it's a great idea, if you're creative enough to sniff out the catalyst and the market.

Here's the process.

1. Stay tuned to the news. Focus on strange stories where nobody gets hurt (a key part of EricB's inital post). Stick to wide interest, and massive distribution. Ongoing sagas, where people have been talking for some time about it. One that I could think of right off the bat would be Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie. How about the tunnels that keep appearing under the Mexican border?
   
2. Come up with a simple T-shirt design based on the story. Don't break any laws! Don't infringe on any copyrights!
   
3. Identify where the community congregates. Forums, newsgroups, social networking sites. In the Brangelina story, it might be the alt.gossip.celebrities newsgroup. In the Mexican border story it might be a pro-legalization group.
   
4. Approach the community with an "idea" to see if anyone is interested. If you receive any feedback, flow with it and mold it into something that they like.
   
5. Collect checks. Collect paypal payments. Collect cold hard green.
   
6. Repeat!
   

EricB - my hat is off to you!


PostScript - I've come to find out that low quantities of original design shirts aren't that cheap. The cheapest price I could find for 48 shirts is $12/ea. That makes EricB's profits a grand total of about $3 per shirt - and he's probably spending that on shipping to the people that are getting one. After reading the FerrariChat post though, I'm sure he could have sold the shirt for more $$. At $20, if you could find a drop shipper for the shirts - it might be worth it.

Euphoria turning to disappointment

I've now tried Amazon's Simple Queue Service, and it doesn't work like I expected.  Once I queue stuff up, and try to retrieve it, it doesn't all come back.  It comes back in random chunks of data.  I never know how many of my queued items will be returned, or what order they'll come back in.  This despite running the proper queries to retrieve everything.  I need to run the "return all" query a minimum of 5 times before I get all 10 items in the queue back to me.  I posted to the (empty) developer forums for the simple queue service 6 hours ago, and have received no reply.  I'm not sure if the lights are on over there because the forum is totally empty...

So then I tried to make REST requests to the Alexa Web Information Services (AWIS) web service.  Despite using Amazon's own signing test page, I only receive a very non-descriptive "not_authorized_11456" error.  That sucks!  Browsing through their sparse forums, I've found a couple of people looking into the same issue.  I even saw one post of somebody from Amazon that said "we're looking into it" and then never responded back saying it was fixed, or that it was a bigger issue.

Same non-descriptive error as above for the REST request to the Alexa Web Search Platform (Beta).

So my question to Amazon is.  WHY SHOULD I USE YOUR WEB SERVICES IN MY APPS?  I can't get them to work.  The documentation is incomplete, the forums are empty, the support avenues are limited, the response is non-existent.  

The potential is great!  The ideas are awesome!  Oh the cool stuff I could build - if only it worked!  aurgghhhh!  That's the answer - that's why I'll use them.  I'll continue to be frustrated and wait for Amazon to get it together because the promise of these web services are too great to ignore.

In the mean time, don't ask me anything - I might bite your head off...

One time offer -or- The value of an email address

I've been aware of a growing trend in the online marketing industry called "The One Time Offer".  I was first exposed to it on Mark Joyner's site Simpleology.  You're promised (and should be given) a great free info product that really excites you.  Upon your first login, you're offered - one time only - an upsell of incredible value.  The offer will never be valid again, you only get one chance at this.  Buy it now, or forever suffer the consequences.  I listened in on a call with Merlin & Harris about this very topic.

Interesting, I thought.  It's worth a try - hell - I'll try anything once.

So I converted one of my ebooks from pdf format into html and put it in a password protected folder.  Now, instead of paying $29.95 for the book, I was giving it away for FREE.  That's right folks, you get this ebook that hundreds of people have paid $29.95 for absolutely free.  All you need to do is give me your name and email.

This particular ebook is out of season, and doesn't sell very well right now anyway.  I'm launching an e-store in about a month that should make a nice splash in the same industry, so getting email addresses (for the site launch) is more important than selling a few ebooks anyway.

Once the person gives me their name and email, I take them to the one time offer page.  Here's the sales pitch:  Buy this ebook that you're about to read for FREE for $9.90, which is 66% off the original price that everyone else has purchased it for.  If you don't purchase the ebook at this special price NOW, you'll never be able to get it for this price again.  If you want the book in the future, you'll have to pay the full $29.95 for it.

Pretty weak sales pitch, if you ask me, but in all fairness the pdf version allows you to print it out, and perhaps reads a little easier than the html version.

So, what are the results?  The first round of ballots are in.  I track every visitor that comes to every one of my sites, so I have pretty good stats reporting.  The number of visitors to the new offer are still low, so don't put too much stock in this.

Sales Letter Version	Splash	Scroll Down	Scroll Down %	First Chapter or Signup	First Chapter or Signup %	Sale	Sale %
12	461	234	50.76%	42	9.11%	4	0.87%
11	3459	1547	44.72%	342	9.89%	13	0.38%

Here are the columns in the above table explained:
Sales Letter Version: This was the 11th and 12th time I'd modified the sales letter in greedy attempts at grabbing more money from people.  This is sorta my test bed for new ideas...  Version 11 is the traditional long sales letter to buy the ebook.  Version 12 is the free ebook in html format, with one time offer to buy it in pdf format.
Splash: How many people landed on the front page, the sales letter page?
Scroll Down: How many people actually read the sales letter?  I have a javascript file that tracks the mouse.  If it gets down past a certain point of the sales letter, I submit a form in an iframe that tells the database this person scrolled down.  Pretty cool, huh?
Scroll Down %: What percentage of the splash viewers scrolled down and read the sales letter?
First Chapter or Signup: This is the only confusing part of the numbers.  Before I converted the book into html, I had a few images of the first chapter of the book for people to read.  Total rip-off of the amazon book "preview" service.  Now, I'm using the same columns to show me how many people actually gave me their name and email to view the html version of the ebook.
Sale: Number of people that actually purchased the book.
Sale %: Percentage of people that bought the book.

This book is in a highly competitive, but niche market.  There is a lot of free information available on the Internet.  It's quality information, though, compiled by a real guru in the field, so it's sellable.  It's in the off-season right now, so the conversion numbers suck - I don't want any comments about my general crappy conversion rates!  Focus on the change between pre and post one-time-offer conversion rates.

As you can see, although still low, the one time offer has more than doubled the sales conversion.  Yes, people are actually buying something that they're one click away from getting for free.  ha!

Goodbye big hosting costs!

Amazon just came out with S3 - Simple Storage Service.  This just gives me goose bumps all over...

 

I'm just high on Amazon as a whole right now... I plan to post more at length about all the cool things they're doing right now.

 

S3 is a hosted hard drive space - the same storage space that they use for all of their own sites.  It's accessible only through REST or SOAP (for downloads you can call a file through http).  It costs a paltry, miniscule, (ridiculous) $.15/gig/month and $.20/gig of transfer.  Amazing!  Just think of all the video, audio, and images you could put on your site.

 

The days of paying big costs to web hosts for disk space and bandwidth are over.  I almost feel sorry for the dedicated server salespeople of the world...  I do work for a site that figures they could save around $120,000/year of co-location and server costs if they used this.

 

Who are the potential customers?

1. Porn.  Talk about lots of bandwidth...


2. Video/audio.  I wonder how much You Tube pays for their disk space and transfer?


3. Image hosting - same sentiment as above, but for flickr.


4. Outsourced hard drive space - cool idea check out Box.net and X Drive


5. The fifth big customer?  Hopefully, me!  Just don't know what I'm going to put there yet...

Check it out here

LAPD star

A Star for Hollywood Police Officers

It's a dull, dreary day in LA. But, there's some good stuff going on. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is putting in a star for the Hollywood police officers killed in the line of duty. It's going in on the island at the intersection of Hollywood Blvd. and La Brea Ave. Right next to the Elvis and Beatles (and Chamber of Commerce) stars - this is probably the most prestigious spot a new star could be located.

I just heard a three gun salute outside my office window. I doubt they were firing real rounds!

How to promote an upcoming site

Somewhere out there is someone that's looking for the functionality that you just built. Someone is desperately seeking exactly the technology that you just put live on the Internet. After all, it's a good idea! And that's why you built it in the first place!

But, now that it's up, or getting close to being up, you're wondering where you're going to get traffic for it??? I mean, you know your fans are out there, but how do you get them here?

Here are some ideas.

Put up a promotional site as soon as you can. Have a screenshot, and some enticing text or a small story to tell. Include a text box where someone can get an email notification when they can access your site.

Start a blog. Tell people about your service, but also post some helpful information that will be of interest to people using your up-coming service. Continue posting to it – make it fresh and up-to-date so people know that the lights are on.

Contact some people that are important in the blogging community your site is going to be part of. The leaders of the pack. The big names. Stroke their ego, give them something, make them feel warm and fuzzy because they're the ones that will cause the massive flood of traffic your way. They need to feel good enough about you to write about you. You don't need to choose someone with an Alexa ranking under 10,000, you just need to choose the right person. Give them access to your site, give them a free subscription, give them a bottle of wine – just get on their good side!

Once this person (people) has written something about your site, you'll start to get a little trickle of traffic (or a lot, if it's the right person). If you've done your job properly on your site, people will start to put their email in to be notified of the launch. Their curiosity will be triggered. They'll write about you on their own blogs, and the cycle will continue.

If you don't have enough traffic from this cycle, keep going after the bloggers – they all want to be the person to discover the next big thing. Once a couple of high profile bloggers writes about something, it trickles through the blog ranks, down into traditional media.

A few weeks before you roll out, put some more info about your product online. Get some screenshots or tours up. Explain more about why you're doing it. Share some stories about how this will help them solve a problem. Let a select few people start using the app if it's usable. Always push the email signup – one simple text box saying "Let me know when I can use this!" You want to have as many emails as you can by the time you go live.

When you launch the site, send out the emails. Get some testimonials from the beta testers. Get on as many blogs as you can. Put out a press release. Keep your home page updated: how many people signed up? How many successes can you count?

Set up a forum where people using the site can ask questions and quickly receive answers. People that are researching the product will see this and get an idea of how well you respond to your customer.

All sites should, if possible, offer free access. Offer a low-end free subscription and a high-end paid subscription. Get people in the door – let them tinker with the site and see if it's for them. If they need it bad enough to upgrade, they will.

I've recently read some excellent material that goes over this exact topic and much more. I can highly recommend the Getting Real ebook by 37Signals. It is both inspirational to the small Internet business start-up, and every section makes perfect sense.

You should also check out the recent speech by Seth Godin given at the Googleplex. He goes over a couple of the above topics (and much more) and agrees on the power of using bloggers to market your web site.

Good luck and happy coding!

TG

Internet Profits - zero risk

Here's an excellent example of some people that used creativity to find a way to make plenty of money on the Internet.  This isn't "ferrari in yellow" kind of money, but it is "quit your job and live it up while working only a few hours a day" kind of money.

A risk-free recipe for success on eBay

Niche market, good sales channel, a lot of trial and error and most of all, a little creativity.

TG

More Academy Awards Pics

Me and the fam went down to Hollywood and Highland today to take a few more pics of the festivities. They've really gone all out this year! Very glamorous. Plus, I found the secret star bar - then I got tackled by security and thrown in the alley and beaten to a pulp. If it wasn't for my wife and 6 year old daughter, I might not have made it through... luckily, I got a few pics before my brutal assault...



How do you really know when you're in Hollywood? Plus, how do you really know when the oscars are about here? Well, the huge Academy Awards sign, in front of the huge Hollywood sign are good clues...

Hollywood and Highland is always a good place for an Elvis spotting, but Kiss and Tinkerbell aren't everyday appearances!

They build this big bridge over the street for all the cameras to sit on. There must be a very good view of the red carpet from up there.

Pics of the entrance to the red carpet. The movie stars get out of their limos (or their Prius) and walk into this tent before they start down the red carpet.

Various pics of the red carpet, from a nice vantage point in the Hollywood and Highland complex.

This is the entrance to the Kodak Theatre.

Here's a little extra leftover red carpet. I'm not really sure why I took this picture, and my daughter told me to leave it out of the post, but I'm sick - can't help myself.


This is the picture I took just before I was viciously tackled and beaten within a breath of my life. I'm barely able to type right now due to the pain, and I might need a little drink myself......

Hollywood prepares for the Oscars

Hollywood Blvd is shut down. The major equipment is out. They're preparing the red carpet for the Hollywood royalty.

For people that live here the lead-up to this event is pretty much a pain in the ass. The traffic around Hollywood is never as bad as it is during the Oscars.

They've really only just begin to break out the heavy equipment. You can see from this picture that they bring in a lot of equipment for this event. Lots of trucks moving in and out all day long.

Here they're hanging some sort of speakers or camera equipment above the Kodak Theatre entrance. I'm not sure what it could do there... but they must know what they're doing! They always have these wide-angle type shots of the beautiful people strolling down the red carpet, so that's probably what it is. It's hard to see in this picture, but they also put up a clear plastic roof in that area, in case it rains. I can only assume that they'll be prepared to cover the entire red carpet with the clear plastic if the weather turns bad.

This is where the stars stroll down the red carpet - right down the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. They get dropped off on the corner of Highland Ave and Hollywood Blvd, go through a big white tent, and take a stroll down the red carpet, and enter the Kodak Theatre for the award ceremony.

It's my understanding, from people that know these things, that once inside the Kodak Theatre, the stars do not actually sit up front and watch very much of the show. The place to be - the real ticket to the Oscars - is at the bar! They actually have fillers sit in the stars seats when they're not there. They escort the stars to their seats next to the stage right before their award is announced, so they can get up and accept the award and head back to the bar!

Here's a basic layout of the whole deal from Google Earth. A "secret" star bar couldn't really exist if I revealed to everyone where it was, so that arrow is for show only. Actually, I don't even know if there is a secret star bar... but I like to envision myself perched atop a secret bar stool having a couple of drinks and a couple of laughs with Keira Knightly and George Clooney.

I might try to get a few more pics right before the event when the red carpet is laid out. I'm also going to try to get a couple of pics of the circus surrounding the event while it's happening - there are police, fire trucks, swat teams, and bomb squads lined up down Hollywood Blvd. They don't show that part on TV!

TG