QuinStreet Paid $35.6 Million for Insurance.com
I love looking at numbers and this one is pretty staggering – 35.6 million dollars for insurance.com – wow! Queue “I wish I registered domain names back in the early 1990’s comments” I met a VP from QuinStreet at Elite Retreat and he had some very interesting things to share about all of his experiences – nothing I can share because of the NDA I signed, but if QuinStreet had an office in Seattle I think it’d be a cool company to work with.
Yahoo Finally Takes Control Of Flicker.com
At one time I emailed the current owner of Flicker.com and asked them to allow me to build out a website for them for a 10% share of revenue (yes that low), but I didn’t get anywhere with my offer sadly. If they were based in the US I would have tried another way to reach them but since they were in China (according to DNS records) I didn’t pursue it for long. In the end it looks like Yahoo finally got a hold of the domain name and I bet the price was probably around the $1MM mark. Bottom line – if you ever start an online company pick a domain name that people can easily spell. The people that build Web 2.0 websites with misspelt words are making a big mistake – always try to acquire the correct spelling even if you do market it with the unusual spelling. I built my first true website GamingVidz.com years ago (like an idiot) and routinely was sending thousands of visitors a month to GamingVids.com instead.
40 billionaires pledge to give away half of wealth
There’s a chance you read this one before as well, but I thought this was worth showing. Instead of passing on all of their wealth to children that didn’t do anything other than be a member of “the lucky sperm club” – as Michael Bloomberg put it – dozens of the world’s billionaires have agreed to donate at least half of their wealth. This is a pledge that each person has taken, and although they are under no contractual obligation to give the money it is something all pledge takers plan to do. Noticeably absent: Sergei Brin and Larry Page (co-founders of Google) and any of the Walton heirs (Walmart) – just another reason to hate Google and Walmart I suppose (kidding of course, except for Walmart).
Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech
This post is well worth the read and highlights just some of the numerous problems in the public school system. Here are my favorite quotes from the article: “School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.” and “I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.” This is why I’m glad I finally figured out that my purpose in college wasn’t to spend all hours of the day studying to get good grades and get a good job. In fact, I never once was asked for my grade point average in an interview and the only thing I wish I could do differently was to spend even less time studying. I played so much Halo 2 in college and I loved it (I got my first D the quarter Halo 2 came out for the Xbox) and in the end Halo 2 is what lead me down the path to the online business I run today not the marketing degree I got for my efforts (see my about page).
The Oatmeal: How to Get 5 Million People to Read Your Website
Quick video from Matthew Inman speaking at a conference here in Seattle. He’s the guy that runs The Oatmeal and makes me laugh every day. My favorite so far is a new one and I’ve linked to it at the bottom of this article – be sure to check it out.
Would you Travel 1,846 Miles for this Man?
This one’s from Annabel Candy and it’s a post about her experience traveling to meet Darren Rowse at the local meetup they had in Australia earlier this month. You can call me an ignorant American but I never knew Australia was so huge. That distance is nearly as far as driving from Seattle, WA to Chicago, IL (to put things into perspective for my fellow ignorant American’s).
5 Ways A Marketer Can Hurt Their Reputation
This is a good one from David Risley. These are all things I was conscious about avoiding during my own product launch of Niche Profit Course last month. (Yes I did have an exit pop but not to a cheaper offer – instead it was just for my free eBook). In either case if you’re considering creating your own product this is a good post to read.
3 Steps To Promote Clickbank Products with Your Blog
This was a guest post from Jonathan Volk and a pretty good one indeed. It lists out 3 potential problems with selling products on Clickbank and then offers solutions. I really should have taken the advice on problem 1: “People buy through their own affiliate link” I didn’t even have an affiliate program set up (technically) but because it was on Clickbank a ton of people purchased through their own affiliate link (almost 20%!)
Finally, there were two great posts on F@*! You Money:
No, You CAN�T retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup
Just pocketed $4MM from your recent internet start up sale? Congrats, but that’s still not enough to live on for the rest of your life according to Tony’s calculations – or is it?
How to retire at 30 on $1 million
Ryan Waggoner has a different point of view and in either case both of these articles were great reads and well worth checking out.
Why working at home is both awesome and horrible (comic)
Last but not least, this is exactly how I feel when I’m sitting in my office all day. When I go out of the house to drive my car it literally doesn’t feel right because I do it so infrequently. There are even times when I’ll go out to eat with my wife on Friday and realize I haven’t left the office all week! If you live in Seattle and want to meet up feel free to drop me a line. I apologize in advance if I show up unshaven, poorly dressed and unable to form sentences during our conversation.
What did you read in August that was particularly useful? Share it in the comments below.
Coming Up:
I have contemplated stopping my income reports because I’m starting to wonder how much benefit they provide and I also wonder about how wise it is to just openly share my income. Do you think they’re worth it? Would you like me to continue? I still believe I can meet my goal of $150k in 2010 although I know it’s still going to be a tough road ahead.
This month I’m going to try a new challenge to write 30 guest posts in 30 days as I really want to continue marketing myself and my blog elsewhere around the interwebs. Want me to guest post on your blog? Contact me here.
This is really great Chris,
Believe me, I missed all the above posts, all! I will be giving some of them a read right away!
Yes this was a great month for articles that I found worth reading.
I liked the post from David Risley. 5 Ways A Marketer Can Hurt Their Reputation… that was a post from deep-down. I have also been following the Niche site duel with Pat Flynn and Tyrone Shum… you should check those out too…
Thanks Chris…
Perhaps I should enter the dual and call it a triual? (not sure on what you’d call a three person sword fight).
You should definitely continue the income reports if nothing else I find them pretty sweet to read! If you don’t fancy revealing actual numbers just do a basic monthly recap or something.
Plus I really want to see if you make your goal!
Thanks for the feedback. I’m still trying to consider if it’s worth doing or not though. I assume some people consider them a primary draw for my blog because they help to prove I actually know what I’m talking about. I’ve done them for over half a year now so hopefully by now everyone sees I actually do make the money I claim that I do.
Chris
I do appreciate the income reports and find them one of the most beneficial reads. However, I complete understand why you would be contemplating posting them. I think I ever would.
Thanks for the input. Yah, perhaps I could do them Darren Rowse style where I show an income split like in a pie graph. Then again, people could just look at what I was doing historically and probably assume that it’s close to the same or unchanged.
I still like using real numbers though when I discuss tactics… we’ll see I guess.
Hi Chris, thank you so much for including me on this list. It’s a real honor. Hehe, I would never call you an ignorant American! I think it’s the 6th largest country in the world:) Meeting Darren was fantastic and I got some great tips from him. Most of all I think just hanging out in the company of other motivated bloggers, whether in real life or virtually on each other’s blogs, really helps keep the focus going.
I’m so happy to have you on my team and be part of yours. It’s good to hang out with you here and I hope we get to meet one day too. In the mean time I’m looking forward to watching our blogs evolve and grow together:)
Hey Annabel, lol no worries I didn’t think you’d call me an ignorant American. 🙂
Yah the main thing for me to meet up with others it to just meet up with other like minded individuals more than anything. 😀
So Yahoo is the new owner of Flicker now.
Yah, my guess is they probably paid at least $1MM for it…
[…] Month in review – Chris generally posts some good stuff in his "what I read" posts. I like to check out the articles he recommends. […]
Chris, Thanks for sharing as always.
I enjoyed Matthew’s video the most.
Also about “Darren Rowse” .. he is one of the top three bloggers I enjoy reading their posts. He is also extremely honest and share great info.
I enjoyed Jonathan Volk’s guest post on John Chow’s blog. He have shared some cool tricks there. I didn’t know that most marketers are buying digital products through clickbank through their own links, that’s real smart.
Cool blog by the way, just finished reading your free ebook, made me think about promoting physical products from amazon.com instead.
Regards,
Jason