Disqus - Latest Comments for Brent Hodgson

Re: Logitech G13 Photos

Brent Hodgson — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:49:07 -0000

Very nice piece of machinery there!

...The two problems I have with these are "re-learning" how to move the cursor (coming from a mouse like the G5), and accuracy (in FPS/RTS)

Re: How Are We Going To Make Money?

Brent Hodgson — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:41:22 -0000

I'm a big fan of the micro-sales.

A buddy of mine is working on a web venture with a "premium services" package as the revenue model - with a potential investor buy-out.

The problem with funding using premium services is getting people to buy to begin with.

Re: The Virtuous Life: Frugality

Brent Hodgson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:55:43 -0000

Great post.

Recently here in Australia, employees of several financiers have complained that they are pressured to "sell loans" to people that can't afford to repay them.

Fortunately, savings here are (slightly) higher than in the USA.

Re: This Will Be A Moment In IM History

Brent Hodgson — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:45:17 -0000

Just caught this, Ed you sneaky so-and-so...

The people around the table (clockwise from top left) are: Emily, Marty, Rob, Eugene, Brent, Ben...

But what do they do, and why are they talking?.... ;)

Re: | The Underachiever Life

Brent Hodgson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:17:46 -0000

Loving podcasts and audio books lately. Fantastic way to digest information. Stick them on in the car - much better than FM radio any day ;)

Just finished Ep #4 of IMTW.

Will need to look at "You look nice today" - sounds like my thing. :)

Re: Molly Is Five Today !

Brent Hodgson — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:07:35 -0000

Happy Birthday Molly!

Ed - Awesome depth of field - and great shot of Hannah in the background ;)

Re: How do You Repair a Negative Online Presence?

Brent Hodgson — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:58:04 -0000

Been doing a lot of that lately!

Also found that just by "being there" and responding to forum and blog posts, peoples harsh criticisms subside

Brent

Re: How To Do an Engaging Panel

Brent Hodgson — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:33:54 -0000

I'm a big fan of #4.

This makes running a panel, or even an interview, so easy.

It takes care of #2 too, and if you ARE too scared to ask a particularly juicy question, you can always hide behind the "this question is from John Smith of Timbuktu" phrasing.

Brent

Re: 2008/06/18/twitter-ebook/

Brent Hodgson — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:48:44 -0000

Great post Rizzn - but I wouldn't be too worried.

You're right when you say that it's not going to be profitable for the people who Twitter the wrong way.

On Twitter, we "choose" what we want to listen to.

Unlike the AOL+usenet scenario, there's no real capacity for "spam" (unsolicited commercial communication) in Twitter.

That means it needs to be "pull" marketing/communication - people who successfully market on Twitter will be successful because they use Twitter in a way that people *want* to listen to.

They *attract* followers.

If someone doesn't communicate/market effectively (i.e. - there's no value in what they say, or it's all pump-and-dump, churn-and-burn marketing) then they lose their crowd, no-one will be listening on Twitter, and as a result no-one will care.

So what if a handful of jerks who don't "get it" constantly pitch their products on Twitter... Nobody's going to be listening...

(Having said all that, look at "woot" - it's the exception that proves the rule, with 9,300+ followers and nothing but shameless self-promotion.)

If you want to know how internet marketers will use Twitter, it's 2 ways...

1) Networking;
2) Communicating with their "crowds", and;
3) To keep up-to-date with the latest in their industry..

It's how all those "scummy ebook jerks" are using it so far... those sly bastards! ;)

Brent

http://www.twitter.com/brenthodgson

Re: 2008/11/23/wordpressdirect/

Brent Hodgson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:07:35 -0000

I agree - the sky isn't falling, the world isn't ending, and [gasp] WordPress Direct DOES actually deliver genuine value.

@Doug aka Nullvariable - Michelle isn't selling the software.

If you said this was a case of a sales pitch backfiring, I'd agree 100%.

Everyone wants the easy, lazy solution - and WordPressDirect spun their pitch to give it to them. And now, it doesn't matter what they do, the Mashable crowd is going to think WordPressDirect is spam software.

For newbies who are setting up their first web-site, for experts doing a lot of niche or affiliate marketing, and 6 or 7 other types of people in-between - nothing is easier to set up a blog.

Re: AutoPosting Content - If you're going to splog, you'll get slapped. The idea is that you use it to find good quality content (that you manually vet), schedule content to be posted, and use it to supplement content that you write yourself.

But if people don't vet the content, and just use it to auto-upload junk, Google-et-al's algorithms WILL spot this, WILL slap them, and WILL stop them getting any benefit from their content.

You get what you give.

If you deliver value, you get value.

Re: 2008/11/23/wordpressdirect/

Brent Hodgson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:33:01 -0000

@Dean - Google has teams of guys working on spam footprint analysis, so if it gets out of hand, that will be the end. (It's happened with countless services previously)

As for the genuine contributors - in most cases, it's just spreading their work further (i.e. YouTube videos, reprintable articles, etc)

Re: 5 reasons why PPC is not for lazy unoptimised websites

Brent Hodgson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:03:41 -0000

Genuinely good article.

John Reese used to say something that has always stuck in the back of my mind. To paraphrase; "If you can't pay for traffic, you don't have a business"

The trademark issue is great news for you guys - it's a great way to target customers at the "buy point".

Brent

Re: Bring Traffic To Your Blog

Brent Hodgson — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:06:17 -0000

I personally like Blog Carnivals too.

Re: Over The Edge 2

Brent Hodgson — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:54:14 -0000

Great to finally meet you @ OTE2.

Also glad that what happens in Orlando stays in Orlando, and that nobody has posted any *particularly* incriminating photos. ;)

To anyone who's not a part of the Immediate Edge already, click on one of the links above and at least have a look.

It's impossible to explain how incredibly smart the Immediate Edge guys are until you've read some of the amazing stuff they do (and get away with!!) online.

Brent

Re: Are You Convinced Yet?

Brent Hodgson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:21:53 -0000

Great article!

In Australia, the federal opposition leader has latched onto Twitter already...

And Facebook... And blogging... etc etc etc...

He even has a squeeze page on the front of his web-site!

http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/

Biggest risk with Twitter is its own financial viability. I wonder how long they can keep giving it all away for free. Seems a bit Dot-Com-Bubbly to me.

Brent

Re: YouTube Sponsored Video How To

Brent Hodgson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:46:39 -0000

Nice review, Michelle!

I was wondering where they were displayed :)

(So far I haven't seen an example here in Oz)

Brent

Re: Easy Customer Feedback

Brent Hodgson — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:37:45 -0000

Michelle, are you going through my del.icio.us bookmarks again? ;)

http://delicious.com/brenthodgson

Last week we spent some time looking into this.

It's easily the best social feedback system online right now.

The only problem is it's hosted :( We wanted more flexibility.

Brent

Re: Copy Not a Cure-All

Brent Hodgson — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:40:54 -0000

Really interesting stuff Ryan.

I often have a similar, yet opposite problem.

We do a lot of traffic-gen work (on top of copywriting) - and many clients think more visitors is the solution to all their woes (if they make one sale with a hundred people visiting their web-site, they can make two sales if two hundred people visit).

In any niche, there's a limit to how many targeted leads you can get - and sooner or later improving conversion rates is the most profitable action you can take for a client.

Joseph - you raise a good point - some of it we bring upon ourselves in our own marketing ;)

Brent