Stop Junk Mail

I hate junk mail. I’m sure you do too.

And so does the environment, according to the daily green:

A report by the group ForestEthics estimates that destroying forests to make paper for junk mail releases as much greenhouse gas pollution as 9 million cars.

Another way to look at it: Junk mail produces as much pollution as seven U.S. states combined, or as much as heating 13 million homes each winter.

Holy crap!

Fortunately, there are solutions:

Do Not Mail
Operated by the non-profit organization Forest Ethics, this is an online petition to stop junk mail.
DMA’s Mail Preference Service
Just like email subscription preferences, this is the Direct Marketing Association’s snail mail preferences. For a one-time $1 fee, they’ll reduce most of your most junk mail.
GreenDimes
Created by the socially-conscious Tonic Generation, this for-profit business will remove you from junk mail lists for a one-time fee of $20, or $36 for an extra bundle that includes two CFL light bulbs, a re-usable shopping bag, a t-shirt, and a children’s book. Or you can opt for a do-it-yourself guide that they’ll send you – plus a $1 payment. Not bad!

If you hate junk mail as much as I do, maybe one of these solutions can help. Good luck!

The Click-through Rate of Google’s Search Results Page

This is an oldie but a goodie. SEO specialists know this already. You should too, if your internet business depends on traffic from Google at all.

Back in August 2006, AOL (TWX) released the search records of 500k users collected over a three month period. The data was removed as quickly as it was published, due to privacy concerns. It is still available on various mirrors on the internet, however (nothing is ever completely erased from the internet).

Then Richard Hearne of Red Cardinal took the data and figured out the average click-through rate of each position on Google’s search results page:

SEO specialists and internet marketers can then use this data, cross-reference it with the Google’s Keyword Tool, and figure out potentially how much traffic they can receive per keyword if they’re able to achieve a high search engine rank.

How reliable is this data? Pretty reliable, since the selection size is so large. There may be some bias (they were all AOL users), but I’m guessing it’s fairly accurate. Ed Dale believes it’s pretty spot on.

A couple of months later, several researchers from Cornell University did an eye-tracking analysis of Google’s search results page. They came up with slightly higher click-through percentages, as Oleg Ishenko of SEO Researcher shows with the following heat map:

The Cornell study is less reliable, however. Their sample set was only 26 undergraduate students who performed 397 Google queries in a usability lab.

In either case, these results show a strong click-through rate for the first result (no duh). The rates taper down until the last result, which enjoys a slight uptick. It should also be noted that this data only shows rates for organic search results and not PPC/sponsored listings.

Cool stuff though. I love free data.

The First Rule of Marketing

The first rule of marketing: you do not talk about marketing… Oh wait, wrong club.

The first rule of marketing: you are not your customer.

It sounds obvious when you hear it. But violating it is as easy as jaywalking down a Manhattan street. You may do it sometimes without even thinking about it.

This past week, I’ve heard two colleagues argue endlessly about one of their product offerings – a series of content articles. They disagreed with the topics in a third colleague’s articles. “Low brow”, “poorly targeted”, and “aimed at the wrong people” were criticisms they lobbied.

That’s fine and all. But the third colleague’s articles were the most popular offering they had. Their customers clearly loved these topics.

“These are the wrong customers,” continued the first two. “The ones we want don’t want content like this.”

Cursory market research into the current customers indicated that… well… these are the customers they’re targeting. They fall squarely within their target demographic.

“Well, we don’t want those particular customers. They are the wrong people for us!”

Huh. Since when did a business not want it’s current customers? It’s hard enough to get customers, but once you have some, who in their right mind wouldn’t want them anymore?

“Well, okay, then our customers just don’t know what they want. They don’t want these topics. They don’t need these articles.”

Ah. Since when do marketers know what their customers want better than the customers do? Remember the first rule of marketing: you are not your customer. You don’t know exactly what they want.

How is such an impasse solved? By market research, talking to your customers, and getting to know them well. Marketing shouldn’t be driven by your own opinions. It should be driven by objective research.

Use surveys, interviews, comment forms, something – anything – to get actual customer feedback. You may be surprised by what you hear. And you may learn something about your true customers too.

How to Publish a Popular Non-Fiction Book

Kathy Bates in the movie Misery So you want to write a book, huh?

A few friends of mine are interested in writing non-fiction books. I myself am also an aspiring author and would love to pen something when I retire, though I haven’t decided if I want to do fiction, non-fiction, or both.

In the meantime, to help all of us along, I threw together this guide for aspiring non-fiction writers.

  1. Write one chapter

    Start out by writing one chapter. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the first chapter—any chapter will do. This will be a representation of what your book could be. It doesn’t even have to be perfect—editors will help you polish your book later. Doing this will also jump start you into action.

    If it helps, write an outline for your entire book too. For non-fiction books especially, this tends to help. Your outline can lay out all the chapters, sections, sub-sections, whatever. It can also help you structure your research and any interviewing you may want to do.

    One formula I’ve seen work in contemporary books like Tipping Point, Blink, Freakonomics, Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, Wisdom of Crowds, Fooled By Randomness, The World Is Flat, etc, is:

    • Start the chapter with an anecdote. The personal, “human” angle draws people in.
    • Go into the guts of the theory, the whats, hows, whys, etc.
    • Back up the guts with any data & research studies/reports you’ve found.

    You can pick up a book like Blink and read the first chapter to get a feel for how it’s structured. That will give you a good idea of how to organize a chapter. It’s a contemporary formula that seems to work for the mainstream audience right now.

    If you find yourself in a flow and want to write more than one chapter, go for it.

  2. Find an agent

    This part is kind of tedious. You’ll need to look through a combination of books & websites. On the web, there is WritersNet.

    Bookwise, there is Writer’s Market and Literary Marketplace, both of which you can flip through in a bookstore. The Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents is also a good guide on selecting the right agent.

    Basically, you want an agent who does books similar to yours. Try to avoid agents that charge you a fee if possible, unless that agent seems to really kick ass. Make a list of 15-20 agents.

  3. Write a query letter

    Next, you’ll need to write a short letter to each agent. This letter serves as a hook to catch them and reel them in. Just make sure you avoid cliches and ending your sentences with prepositions. You can find some good outlines for query letters online.

  4. Send out query letters

    Send out your query letters to all 15-20 agents you’ve found. Some agents will request specific items, like sample chapters or a synopsis/outline/proposal/etc. Tailor your submission to each agent with the items requested.

    If one asks for a sample chapter, just send him/her one, even if you’ve written more. What you want to do is to give the agent a representation of what your book could be. Agents don’t care to read your entire manuscript right now. They’ll have editors to do that later.

  5. Wait then follow-up

    Remember, you only need 1 agent to say Yes to you. Expect many rejections. That’s just part of the biz. As you wait, go forward and write more chapters.

    Give yourself a month, then follow up with each agent politely. If they still don’t respond, then assume they’ve passed on your book. After two months, if you’ve still gotten no acceptances, start at step #2 again and find another 20 agents.

    I’ve read stories about how some writers plaster their walls with rejection letters. Even popular authors could warm themselves all winter with a fireplace and these letters. So don’t lose heart. The name of the game here is tenacity and perseverance. You’ve come too far to quit now!

    There are lots of good online guides that describe the proces of finding an agent. About.com has a good one—just ignore the part where this guide says you need a finished manuscript; that’s not true anymore.

  6. Work with your literary agent

    Once you’ve secured an agent, he/she will walk you through the rest of the book publication process, like finding a publisher, getting an advance, and getting editors to help with your writing. Be respectful of your agent, but remember that they’re working for you, not the other way around. They make money if you make money; you’re their boss.

If it sounds daunting, it is and it isn’t. I have a few friends who are published. They described the hardest part as doing all the writing and research. And it’ll be worth it once you’re on Oprah! (Make sure you jump onto her couch too.)

Good luck! Don’t forget to thank me in your credits!

CNBC’s 2008 Portfolio Challenge: My Results

I didn’t win. Which is no big surprise. But I didn’t even know I didn’t win until I happened to check my Spam folder and see a bunch of emails from the CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge.

Oops. Imagine if I had actually won. I might have missed the email!

Let’s see how poorly I did. I’m almost embarrassed to publish these. Gulp.

Portfolio 1: Entertainment

Symbol % Gain
MVL -2.43%
DWA 1.72%
ERTS -15.15%
ATVID 13.33%
Total -2.52%

Portfolio 2: Energy

Symbol % Gain
VQ -8.82%
PXP -16.09%
BRY -20.55%
BP -15.34%
Total -60.81%

Portfolio 3: Discount Shopping

Symbol % Gain
NDN -32.60%
DLTR 0.14%
FDO 1.63%
ROST 1.17%
Total -29.65%

Portfolio 4: Technology

Symbol % Gain
CLWR -26.04%
GIGM -29.31%
COMS -27.84%
YHOO -20.35%
Total -103.54%

Portfolio 5: First Week’s Top Market Movers

Symbol % Gain
VQ -8.82%
APKT -54.25%
PSS -3.98%
ICOG -4.85%
Total -71.90%

Oh my. My my my. That’s a lot of red. That’s just… abysmal. I didn’t do so badly last year, but sure as hell stunk like a rotting goose egg locked in a stuffy car during the summer this year, didn’t I? This is why I’m in Silicon Valley and not Wall Street.

Goodbye Scrabulous

I’m sad. The makers of Scrabulous have decided to disable their game for all North American users. Sniff.

This is the result of a struggle with Hasbro (HAS) and a suit filed against the Brothers Agarwalla—Scrabulous’ founders—for violating copyright law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Facebook Scrabulous vs Hasbro Scrabble

Fans of Scrabulous are now in an uproar. Don Reisinger of Masable says this move makes Hasbro look stupid. The official SCRABBLE® Facebook app is littered with comments like, “Boo, hiss. Way to alienate your corporation!” and “I’m going to extend my boycott to all Hasbro toys, etc.” And a campaign has been started on The Point, calling for Hasbro to work with Scrabulous instead of shutting it down (though there only 6 members as of this post).

This has led to a great deal of negative PR, especially in the blogosphere. At a quick glance, I see a “RIP Scrabulous“, a “No, I Do Not Want to Play Scrabble“, and a “F U, Hasbro. F U.”

On the other side of the equation are people defending Hasbro’s actions. Or at least raising the issue of copyright infringement as a business benefit: is it “worthwhile to go after pirates, thieves, and copyright-infringers, or… simply let them be and consider it free advertising”, writes Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb.

And… I don’t see that many other bloggers supporting Hasbro in my Technorati search. Oh well.

Let’s Make a Deal

All of this drama makes you wonder why Hasbro didn’t just offer to buy Scrabulous, right? Well, apparently they did. While Hasbro and Electronic Arts (ERTS) collaborated to build the new SCRABBLE® app, RealNetworks (RNWK)—another company given the rights to create online Hasbro games—has been working with Scrabulous to “bring the official Scrabble game to Facebook users”, writes Heather Timmons of the NY Times. (Funny, I thought that’s what Hasbro and EA just did.) Furthermore, according to Peter Kafka of Silicon Valley Insider, an offer has been put out to & rejected by the Scrabulific Duo:

The hold up? Money. A source familiar with the negotiations say Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla want too much.

What’s the gap? The brothers say they’re generating $25,000 a month, or $300,000 a year in revenue. A 10x-20x multiple on that would make Scrabulous worth $3-$6 million, but for argument’s sake let’s say they’ll have a hockey stick growth curve, and that their game project could be worth more than $10 million.

Sound fair? Maybe. But our source says the brothers want a “multiple of several times that” $10 million, and the four corporations they’re negotiating with think that’s ridiculous.

If that’s true, then that’s perhaps a bit optimistically presumptuous of the Brothers Agarwalla. $10M is a tidy sum for what is technically a copyright infringement.

Feeding Your Scrabble-Lust

In the meantime, to satisfy your Scrabble fix, you’ll need to add the new SCRABBLE® Facebook app (or the SCRABBLE beta Facebook app; I’m not quite sure which one is the official official one). Unfortunately—oops—the app isn’t working. Instead, you’re slapped with a big fat “We’ll be back up shortly. We’re working on some tech problems and Scrabble will be ready to play as soon as possible!” message. This isn’t their fault though. Alex Pham of the Los Angeles Times reports that this is the result of a hacker attack. (Perhaps from some die-hard Scrabulous fans?)

A No-Win Scenario

All of this amounts to a major catch-22 for Hasbro. Fighting against Scrabulous means loads of negative PR and possible damage to their business. Aligning with Scrabulous means setting a potentially damaging precedent to their business. (Yossarian lives!)

The Discussion Boards of both SCRABBLE apps are full of rants and more rants. And just how many pro-Scrabulous Facebook groups are there? Over 500, with Save Scrabulous clocking in at over 47 thousand members so far (including me). Wow.

The Scrabble board game may have enjoyed a surge in popularity due to Scrabulous, though it’s impossible to confirm this since Hasbro isn’t releasing their sales figures. I wonder if those sales will drop with this negative fallout.

However, I totally understand Hasbro’s actions against Scrabulous. If they supported Scrabulous, they may unleash a disastrous tidal wave. Say Hasbro purchased Scrabulous for $10M, this web business formula could have emerged:

  1. Build an online version of a popular offline game
  2. Gain spectacular popularity
  3. ?
  4. Sell out for millions
  5. Profit

And if you didn’t gain spectacular popularity, the offline game’s parent company would probably just ignore you, like Hasbro has of dozens of Scrabble knock-offs already on the web. Lots of upside for very little downside! Dollars galore!

Either way, Hasbro is sure in a pickle. In that context, I can see why they’d opt to shut down Scrabulous. Months from now, as the public backlash dies down, Facebook users may begin adding the new SCRABBLE apps to quench their Scrabble thirst, and perhaps forget about this whole ordeal. It’s possible. Take jetBlue, for example. Back in February 2007, a severe ice storm took down over a thousand of their flights, leading to a major PR black-eye. Since then, they’ve rebounded from that episode. And if that’s not a great example, take Martha Stewart and the ImClone scandal in 2004. Despite being jailed, she’s back and arguably as strong as ever.

Hasbro could have handled the situation a little smoother though. But I doubt they had a web-savvy/social-media-savvy team of PR specialists on board (and if they did, WTF?). I would have recommended that they reach out to the community in some way. Maybe to solicit suggestions, maybe to implore an understanding. Even if people argued against them, just having a genuine public voice can sometimes earn a lot of empathy. At the very least, it could have softened the blow. This could have also come from Electronic Arts and RealNetworks, the makers of the online SCRABBLE apps.

Personally, I’m bummed as hell that Scrabulous is gone. I had quite a few games going there. I wish a compromise could have been reached, though I wouldn’t have the foggiest how that would have looked.

R.I.P., Scrabulous.

Google Knol and Search Engine Woes

Will Google’s Knol start taking over Google’s search results? Who knols?

Ha! Sorry, I was dying to make that joke. Moving on now…

Just a week after it’s launch, Google’s Knol is beginning to stir up some controversy. First, Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive noticed that a Knol article was already ranking high on Google for the search phrase “how to backpack“. As of this post, the article is ranking #1 on Google. (Incidentally, the author, Ryan Moulton, is a Google employee.)

“Really?” exclaimed Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. “I mean, how many links could this page have gotten already?” Then Aaron Wall of SEO Book tried a test: he created a Knol that replicated content he’s published elsewhere—an article on SEO basics. Just compare the two (original and duplicate) and you’ll see they’re a word-for-word copy.

Say you tried to search for that exact article (using an exact sentence from it). What would you expect would happen? You’d probably get the original article—since it’s older and thus more likely the original—and perhaps the Knol article somewhere below it if Google has started ranking its Knol articles, right? That’s what Wall expected too. What happened instead was the Knol article ranked higher than the original. Of this, Wall says (emphasis his):

Some may call this the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm, but one might equally decide to call it the copyright work deserves to be stolen algorithm. Google knows the content is duplicate (as proven by the notification they put on their page), and yet they prefer to rank their own house content over the originally published source.

Whoa boy, time to copy some of my old content and slap it into Knol! But… aw rats, the “create a Knol” function seems to be down right now. Perhaps there are too many other people trying to do the same thing?

Quite a few others feel similarly to Wall. Dare Obasanjo of 25hoursaday.com also tried his own test similar to Sullivan’s, and concluded that (emphasis his):

Google is clearly favoring Knol content over content from older, more highly linked sites on the Web. I won’t bother with the question of whether Google is doing this on purpose or whether this is some innocent mistake. The important question is “What are they going to do about it now that we’ve found out?”

This observation kind of runs counter to what Google told Sullivan earlier:

Google assured me that the authority of Google’s domain wouldn’t give Knol any additional trust. Knol pages will be scored based on the links and PageRank pointing to individual pages.

Huh, really? Doesn’t quite seem that way, does it?

Mahalo.com’s Jason Calacanis isn’t very happy either. He blasted Google in his latest email:

Now, Google says they will do no evil and since I’ve worked with their team across three companies I tend to believe them. However, with the launch of Google Knol I feel like they are not being totally up front with us–their partners. It feels like they’ve stabbed us in the back to be honest. I’m not the only one who feels this way–even if I’m the only one stupid enough to say it.

If Google is going to be in the content business and compete for the top ranking in the operating system they control why not be honest about it? Why not have David Eun say, “listen, we’re experimenting with content and we want you to be involved in it. Put your content in Knol!”

Frankly, it’s insulting to say you’re not in the content business and then launch Knol and compete with content companies for their authors, users, and placement in the rankings that you control.

For the record, dishonesty falls under evil in my book.

Tell us how you really feel, Calacanis. Heh.

Business-wise, this is pretty smart. They’re adding more instances where users could interact with their properties. More instances means more pageviews, more ad space to sell, and more control. And in their eyes, if Knol’s content really is of higher quality than, say, Wikipedia’s content, then it deserves to rank higher.

Also, just to compare—Yahoo’s search engine already does this. A search for Dark Knight yields a search results module from Yahoo! Movies at the top, above the official movie site from Warner Bros. and IMDb. No one’s cried foul on Yahoo for this.

But then again, Yahoo! Movies has editorial content from Yahoo, whereas Knol has user generated content (that is rated and possibly written collaboratively). Plus—to Calacanis’ point—Yahoo makes no mistake that it’s a media company, whereas Google has always stated that it’s not

Controversy indeed. I wonder what’s going to come of all this. Whatever it’ll be, I agree with Internet Entrepreneur Joe Duck: “I expect knol to be a huge topic at the upcoming search conference – SES San Jose.” It sure will be.

Google Knol and SEO

I’m going to try an experiment. Google launched a new service called knol this past Wednesday. It’s been billed as the Wikipedia/Squidoo/HubPages alternative, though perhaps more akin to the latter two because of it’s monetization offerings to entry authors, via a Google AdSense revenue-sharing model.

Seeing this made me wonder: could knol be used for search engine optimization purposes?

I know, I know. It’s not the most altruistic thought. But I’ll bet others are thinking the same thing too. So with that in mind, I whipped up an entry on “Michael Lee“. To be fair and still offer hopefully useful community content (though, erm, I guess that’s debatable), I linked to a bunch of other Michael/Mike Lee’s as well.

That’s not too smart, SEO-wise, since I just gave link love to my “competitors” (and by competitors, I mean others who rank high for the name Mike Lee on a search engine). But then I also filled out my knol profile, which seemed to create another entry for “Mike Lee“. Both entries seem to have equal weight in a knol search, even though I thought one was just a profile page. Hmmm.

So will this give me any link love?

My guess is: probably not. I really doubt anyone’s going to be searching knol for the name “Mike Lee”. And since Google isn’t surfacing any of this content onto their search results (yet), I doubt many people are going to see it.

But will it help my search engine ranking to have a link from the google.com domain? Perhaps? I’m not sure. I’ll revisit this little experiment to see if it’s had any impact in a week or so. Stay tuned!