Disqus - Latest Comments for Andrew Johnson

Re: Second Bite Takes a Bite Out of Affiliates

Andrew Johnson — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:28:47 -0000

Sure, its a problem for affiliates -- but its a bigger problem for the merchants. May be I am living behind some curtain here, but I am watching my numbers on a daily basis.

If conversions for a certain merchant/offer suddenly drop 25% and my profit margins evaporate, guess what, tommorow that merchant isn't going to see any more traffic from me. Chances are I'm not going to be the only one that does this.

Merchants are the ones screwing themselves when they do things that kill conversion rates. Its the merchants that have large overhead expenses and employees. Sure, I'd like that extra $300 a day, but if it dissappears I can just shurg it off and start a new project. I don't know about you guys, but I've *never* lost any sleep over this stuff.

Re: Lazy Linkage - Issue One

Andrew Johnson — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:33:51 -0000

Thanks for the plug, I was not expecting any backlinks from that post!

Re: Finding a Virtual Assistant

Andrew Johnson — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:47:23 -0000

Great tips. I've been using forums and communities to recruit talent for a few years now. Its astoundingly easy to find experts in nearly any niche or market, and often at a modest cost. It might not be that way forever now that the "secret" seems to be out.

Re: AuctionAds a Waste of Time

Andrew Johnson — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:52:32 -0000

How much time did you run the ads? eBay's cookie lasts around 30 days and many commissions won't be paid out until an auction ends. This tends to result in compounding earnings.

Additionally, forums appear to suck for performance. With one of my forums typically make 90% of the Adsense earnings from CPM based buys. Sometimes that amounts to an advertiser paying over $1 a click in a niche that might average under 3 cents.

I'm not running AuctionAds right now simply because I am focused on other projects, but I would definately give it some time and rotate it and display alongside AuctionAds units.

Re: 2006/09/27/myspace-worth-20-billion/

Andrew Johnson — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:49:24 -0000

Myspace is really valuable to mainstream brand advertisers. Myspace is borderline worthless for all the niche ad buyers that pump billions in to Google.

Myspace is high risk because on the internet things happen fast. No one cares or visits the popular websites of 1999 (ok, may be Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon.) But Myspace is a trend. They got where they were by riding Friendster's wave and eclipsing it. Someone is going to ride Myspace's wave and eclipse it too. The question is not if but rather when.

As for using the valuation of a hot stock to price a company? Thats just silly.

Re: 2006/12/28/2007-predictions-response/

Andrew Johnson — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:03:32 -0000

YouTube on TV -- its not quite seamless, but if you have a Nintendo Wii you can already do this. Quite entertaining for lazy couch potatoes!

Re: 2007/01/27/myspace-google/

Andrew Johnson — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 20:54:10 -0000

After I made that post I found another post by Michael Grey, aka Greywolf, -- http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-adwords-...

The post was written the 21st, and he complained about spending $2-$3 a day on worthless Myspace traffic. At the lowest end thats $730 a year -- enough to matter.

I think we are going to be hearing more about this.

Re: 2007/04/06/weblo/

Andrew Johnson — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 04:27:39 -0000

Trademark policies? You bet. There are a lot of amateur Web 2.0 companies that are just ignoring it completely because they are just that -- amateurs. How many *spaces are there? I've seen many posts of sites right here on Mashable which wouldn't stand up to a single C&D letter.

Back on to the topic of this post, I saw the Business 2.0 article too. Whenever I see that someone dropped $20k or so on a questionable site I get very curious.

I would not be suprised if a sham transaction was involved where a friend or associate of the site owner paid the money, and then was paid right back. Not hard to do, some even think this has gone on in the domain name industry. One offshore bank account or corporation and you can prove nothing.

Re: 2007/04/28/bebo-twitter/

Andrew Johnson — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:28:56 -0000

Hmm, they should have filed a business process patent!

Re: 2007/04/30/evite-socializr/

Andrew Johnson — Tue, 01 May 2007 02:45:56 -0000

What did evite copyright, white snowflakes over a blue background?

Re: How to Do The Impossible: Create a Paperless Life, Never Check Voicemail Again, Never Return Another Phone Call…

Andrew Johnson — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:08:29 -0000

I have a Vonage VoIP phone which I use for all things non-personal. Voicemail goes to one of my e-mail inbox's. Last month I did not check it once. It turned out all the messages left were completely unimportant!

Re: Leno Book Spoof, Tim vs. Donny Deutsch, and First Live Q&A with Tim

Andrew Johnson — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:19:15 -0000

Awesome, I saw the Leno spoof, I think he needs to get you on the show!

Re: New Research and a Dirty Truth: Read This Before Chasing the Dollar

Andrew Johnson — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:16:00 -0000

One of the big antagonists is choosing to increase your fixed expenses in accordance to your latest rise in income. That turns what should have been an asset (dollars) into a liability (monthly payments.)

Once that happens the individual feels even more of a slave locked in to their job. When you have long term liabilities you can't take a few months off or search for a more enjoyable career.

Re: Test Driving the Unreleased Audi R8, the Supercar Even Women Fantasize About (Plus: A Favor)

Andrew Johnson — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:29:07 -0000

You've done a great job on the blog, I really enjoy reading a wide variety of posts on everything from bodybuilding to driving the R8.

One idea may be to interview/feature people who have successfully applied The Four Hour Work Week to their own lives. Guest posts for this would be cool, if they were closely on topic.

Re: Learn to Eat Chocolate with the Real Willie Wonka

Andrew Johnson — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:02:10 -0000

Quite a contrast to some Valentine's Day chocolate recently discovered in NYC shops (complete with live worms): http://wcbstv.com/consumer/rotten.valentines.ch...

Re: Finding the Perfect Office Chair: Aeron vs. Swiss Ball vs. the FBI’s Pick…

Andrew Johnson — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:54:58 -0000

Anyways, 6 hours isn't enough to make much of a judgement.

Something very important I figured out this year was that having the wrong chair may play a very big role in carpel tunnel.

I had an old ergonomic chair at my home office. I had various problems over the past few years, ended up spending several thousand dollars just trying all kinds of keyboards (including the iconic datahand.) After spending several months away from home, my problems vanished.

During this time I was using either a normal keyboard or laptop keyboard -- and sitting in an Aeron chair. The last time I had used a normal keyboard I had reached the point I thought I would have to stop using computers completely.

So yeah, office chair matters big time. More than just your back will thank you.

Re: Did Google turn down the revenue knob?

Andrew Johnson — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:36:36 -0000

I am suprised fewer people picked up on this -- its the Google quality score in action.

Google doesn't need to display more ads because they are forcing the remaining guys to pay more!

Re: Cumulative Advantage Explains Web 2.0, MySpace, The A-List, TechCrunch, Digg, And So Much More

Andrew Johnson — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:19:16 -0000

So may be Wikipedia works so well because any random person can edit any article (not quite so much any more) they want?

Re: You Can’t PPC Seasons

Andrew Johnson — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:39:52 -0000

This is a good example of why companies buy affiliate advertising -- because they don't understand this stuff themselves.

If companies don't want affiliates bidding on keywords then they need to provide an exact list saying you must add the following as negative keywords. Simple, no need to waste our time.

Re: The Perfect Affiliate Network

Andrew Johnson — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:39:04 -0000

The 24 hour a day thing I agree with. Referring URLâ€™s, and qualified PPC experts, not so much. The less data that your affiliate company has about your traffic, the better. Your affiliate manager may not steal your keywords personally, but you bet they are going to tell their other affiliates!

Who is the middle man, the affiliate network or the affiliate? If you don't have proprietary data and tools then you are. The future of the middle man is not looking so bright right now (take a peak at Google's Conversion Optimizer if you have access to it in your Adwords account.)

Re: 3G Operators Seeking Killer Apps

Andrew Johnson — Sat, 19 May 2007 21:16:12 -0000

It has to be video. How about a YouTube 3G?