Mel.'s "5 Minute Mentor" blog

Sensing Ad Sense?

2006-11-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

I came across some articles on laying your page out effectively for AdSense, and I thought I'd simply link them here without comment. I'm sure everyone already knows these, so this is just for my own edification.

http://smallbusiness.aol.com/grow/marketing/article/_a/make-more-money-from-your-online-ads/20060124190409990001

Tips on Adsense:http://www.ericgiguere.com/about/google-adsense-tips.html

More on crafting a blog page for adsense:http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/AdSense-Tip-6-Carefully-craft-blog-or-forum-pages.html

Look at the "heat maps" here.http://www.wolf-howl.com/22/google-adsense-tips-tricks-and-secrets/

ProBlogger has some tips to share:http://www.problogger.net/archives/2004/09/23/adsense-tips-for-bloggers-1/

Is there a vaccine for that thing?

2006-11-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

It was a fun weekend -- went to my college reunion, which is a chance to share memories (our class was somewhat notorious for the pranks we pulled) and catch up with each other and even do a little networking! And I got mistaken for a biker chick by someone from another graduating class (what makes this funny is that I'm middle aged. No tattoos, and I'm probably the mildest-mannered person you'd ever meet.)

Ended up talking about viral marketing -- like many folks, almost none of my classmates at the reunion knew about it. The one who did know about it actually teaches a course on marketing at a college and once we explained it, we had fun reminiscing about ads that were SO viral that they became part of our culture -- some have even wound up in one of the newest quotations book (heard it on NPR and promptly forgot the details. Arrgh!)

But it's also a term that gets misused in marketing on the net, because the concept has been twisted from its original form to an "everybody can do this!" sort of campaign. When everything is "viral" then the system gets overloaded by novelty and people simply don't bother. You don't pay attention to EVERY new stimulus (every new breeze, every time a bird speaks up, every new interruption into your world) because you couldn't function if you were constantly being distracted like that.

It's really not that easy to do. The Wikipedia article on viral marketing is actually a very good one (and Wikipedia is, actually, viral). It goes over the basics and then brings up some cautionary comments that most of the "marketing articles" just don't hit -- the categories of viral marketing and the barriers to it. At the bottom is a set of links to successful past campaigns.

I will have to say that I'm not at all convinced by the math model, though... I think it's based on a bad assumption and that the speed of transmission and the spread actually happens in a rather different way. But that's math/calculus/etc and I'll save that for a paper in some academic journal.

Meanwhile, I recommend the Wikipedia article. Good stuff -- not trying to sell you anything, and it's free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

It's a joke! Why isn't everybody laughing?

2006-11-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

Oy. I like going to movies but there's so little today that appeals to me. I guess my tastes were forged back in the 1950's (actually, they were) or forged by something that just didn't keep up with the current pace in humor. But I find a lot of today's humor very... un-funny.

Take the tv show, "House." I saw a few episodes that I liked, but Hugh Laurie's character has gotten nastier and nastier with his gibes and now I'm just uncomfortable with the episodes. I won't go into the problems I have with the "medicine" on the show, but let's just say that it's closer to magic than it is to medicine (the "give them a shot and it instantly fixes their disease" is just one of the things I'm talking about.)

I was reminded of this when I came across an article on a new movie, "Flushed Away": http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06307/735212-120.stm In reading the review, I was struck by how many of the concepts are things that I would NOT find very funny (Hugh Jackman being mistaken for Tom Jones? Erm... I may have had a humorectomy, but I don't see anything funny about that concept. I'm missing something here.) And then there's the buzz on "Borat." I saw a clip of it on tv last night, and knew it wsn't going to be anything I'd enjoy.

I suppose this means we'll get a Borat 2 and a Borat 3 sometime in the near future.

On the other hand, Shrek 3 sounds like mah kinda movie! This article is kind of skimpy on details; earlier ones went into a bit more about the princesses (I found the idea of Sleeping Beauty with a narcolepsy problem to be funny... since she goes out to fight the bad guys and turns out to be effective in her own way.)

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,20631768-5006013,00.htm Image here. I love the pseudo "Charlie's Angels" kinda pose:

http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_10257.html And if you're wondering, yes I do have low tastes in movies. I love action-adventure, love humor (some of it) and can't stand chick flicks (not enough car chases and explosions.) I'm a Jackie Chan fan kinda girl!

I like movies, but my sense of humor is stuck in another era. I'll be glad when they go back to making my kinda movies.

A Perfect Presentation of Pareto's Principle

2006-11-05T06:46:00.000-08:00

I'm a geek. Information is food and entertainment to me. I remember odd things and I like to study new ideas and the more technical they are, the better. Which is why an article over at the Ask.com blog just intrigued me, because it showed (without mentioning it) an old mathematical formula that I like: The Pareto rule.

Pareto was an economist who lived in Italy in the early 1900's, who focused some of his work on the great disparity between the rich and the poor. His observation that 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth made its way into economics, because the 80/20 rule (as it's sometimes called) described a lot of situations fairly accurately. So, when an article came out about a web seminar where they were showing how 30% of the searches produced 70% of the ad revenue, I said "Aha! It's my old friend Pareto!"

I suspect that folks who track revenues for ... well, anything... will find that this rule is true. I've noticed it in art and book sales, and I believe it would hold true for things like adsense revenue.

Can you tweak things so you only get the top 20% that are getting the 80% of the income? Well, yes, but usually it comes at the loss of the other revenue. For instance, there's not much of a market for my books on one particular gaming software... but I do get a dozen or sales per year from them. If I phase them out, I have to replace them with something else.

With my art, it's cartoons. Doesn't matter how much I love to do other types of art, it's the cartoons that sell.

Nice article on Pareto and the rule: http://www.legacyusa.net/pareto.html Pareto Rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Article's here: http://blog.ask.com/2005/10/deep_thoughts_a.html

I need to do some reading on motivating myself. I didn't write much today, though I did have the chance to do so.

Foo.

Because a girl can't have too many hobbies...

2006-11-03T05:51:00.000-08:00

Or can she?

I'm one of those folks who can throw themselves into a hobby to the point where it actually starts to make money. Over the years of my life, I've turned several hobbies (like art) into small businesses that provided part of our income. A long streak of successful (and unsatisfying) work (regular job) and school killed my creative energy, but as I approach retirement, I'm starting to build some of these up again.

While I think social security and my pension actually will be there, I worry that it's not going to keep up with medical costs and cost of living. So I'm working on creativity exercises (yay for NaNoWriMo http://www.nanowrimo.org/) and getting organized to gear the art and writing up again. I may go back into the jewelry business, but I really need to take a look at the market first and find out where it is.

Articles about hobby businesses that I want to read and review again include this 3 page article covering a lot of questions that you need to be able to answer about your business:
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/advice/20050208a1.asp

A very good overview of what you should know and what you need to have in place. Lots of nice little stories that add information without being "fluffy." http://www.startupnation.com/pages/articles/AT_Turning-Hobby-Into-Business.asp

And some specific advice for artists and craftspeople:
http://www.nfib.com/object/1584118.html

Article about sisters who turned jewelry hobby into business:
http://www.jsbeads.com/articles/Sisters-turn-jewelry-hobby-into-Web-gold.asp

Release the presses!

2006-11-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

In poking around the Internet, I often come across articles that I find intresting -- the "Oh! I want to remember that" kind of experience. You don't really want to waste a bookmark on it, but you do kind of want to remember it somewhere. This blog is for the articles that I trip across which are just like that.

In answering a question for someone, I came across this article on press release ideas. It's geared more at small businesses and occasions when you might want to issue a press release, so it's more of a "remind you of these triggers" type of article.
http://smallbusiness.aol.com/grow/marketing/article/_a/30-press-release-ideas/20051213183909990019

The second one addressed the "uh... HOW do I write a press release"? angle. After seeing a lot of nonsense articles (mostly of the "let me tease you with info and then you have to pay to get anything out of me! type), it was refreshing to see just a nice guideline:
http://www.lunareclipse.net/pressrelease.htm