DISQUS

I stumbled across this post because of a link in a post at Lee Odden's blog from a few weeks ago. Now I know why I couldn't get a hold of Jessica during Blog World Expo :)

Anyway, yeah, I am kind of a fan, you could say hehe. It's a personal passion and has nothing to do with online marketing really. Proof:

http://www.youtube.com/CirqueDuSoleilGuru
http://www.roysac.com/cirque
http://www.roysac.com/blog/labels/Cirque%20Du%2...

Regarding the shows that I saw.. mmhh.. could we rephrase the question and ask which show I have seen more than once, just to keep the list shorter? ;)

There are running now six Cirque shows in Las Vegas, Mystere at the Treasure Island, "O" at the Bellagio, "Zumanity" at the New York, New York, "KA" at the MGM Grand, "The Beatles - Love" at the Mirage and "Criss Angel's Believe" at the Luxur. There will be soon a 7th show at the newly built "CityCenter", which has "Elvis Presley" as the main theme. There are rumors about another show for the Mandalay Bay, but those are just rumors at the moment.

If all that is still now enough, check out "Le Reve" at the Wynn. The show is similar in style and design as Cirque du Soleil shows, which should not surprise anymore once you leaned that the creator is former Cirque Du Soleil Director "Franco Dragone", who directed a large chunk of Cirque shows in the past (including "O" and "Mystere").

Soo.. that should be enough, even for the more frequent visitors to Las Vegas ;) For some sneak peeks of the shows, check out my YouTube channel that I referred to above.

Cheers!
Carsten

I have seen an AOL user a few years ago and it was an experience for me. That user did NOT know the difference between SEARCH BOX and ADDRESS bar.

The address bar was pretty much ignored like the status bar. It changes values when you browse, but it looks often cryptic and technical that you rather don't touch (and "break").

I asked that use to type a specific URL into the ADDRESS bar. The user started typing it into the search box. I said "Please enter it into the address bar and not into the search box"... The response that I got was "What do you mean?".

People click on links and follow them, they click on the back button and use a search box, if present and prominent, especially dial-up users or users with a browser that was customized by the ISP/Cable or DSL provider. The Address bar shows usually some URL, the users homepage at the ISP, which is still in most cases very cryptic to non-tech/inexperienced computer users. The search box is always empty or pre-filled with an inviting text that invites the user to enter something.

However, there is also the type of user that does use it as you describe it, but those are often users on an intermediate level of understanding of the Internet and the web browser.

Cheers!

Hi Adelaide,

"Just do it!” Reading your post has inspired me already my friend. I’m getting closer to presenting my video now."

Good, where is the video? Stop talking and just do it :)

"How you tech-eases keep doing this so well amazes me"

It's a mix of stupidity and the incapability of giving up and admit failure if it is something where we are supposed to be good at... and of course luck .
It's called stubbornness I believe, or simply being a man. ;) aehm I meant being persistent of course. aehm, ja. hehe

Cheers!
Carsten

Hi Adelaide,

thank you for your kind words. Regarding your question how it does distinguish itself from others.

Cumbrowski.com is not my business as in providing the means for my income to make a living. I do not rely on the site to pay my bills. This means that I do not have to do or don't do things that would hurt the site financially. I don't have to pitch something to make a buck or leave out something because it would make sponsors unhappy.

There is of course also a flip side to this. The site is less professional as a site that is the means for somebody to make his living. The depth in coverage of the various subjects heavily depends on my own knowledge and understanding of each subject.

Areas where I am not as much knowledgeable are not as well covered as areas where I have deep knowledge and extensive experience. I try to refer to my site as "my personal branded del.icio.us" and that is how it actually started. I got tired of sending out the same information in emails etc. over and over again. I got almost identical questions again and again and putting stuff on a website allowed me to simply email back a link.

I hope this longer answer is satisfactory for you. ;)

p.s. You have no idea how little time 15 seconds are. Jim seemed to have noticed it too, because he removed the time limitation. I was wondering what elevators are that fast or who would use an elevator just for 1-2 floors to cover to only give you 15 seconds for your message. :)

"Just doing it" is the way to go (in most cases). You almost always progress a step forward by doing something. You do that 10 times and one of that 10 times does it cause you to take a step backwards (or two). You still are 8-9 steps ahead of the guy who thinks 10 times about doing something, but never does, because of fear of the possible step backwards. :)


Cheers!

Also go see Affiliate Marketing Beginners Checklist - Part 1 from January 31, 2008 at ReveNews.com.




Cheers! Carsten

Boy did my grammar suck :) That's what you get, if you trust the Google Toolbar spell checker and don't read your comment before you submit it, because you are in a rush. I leave this example of admitting an error on your site though hehe.

Nice post and I agree with Matt about the point of hosting the conversation, something many companies are too afraid of to do, because of the "brighter spotlight" this will be one result of doing so.

What is often overlooked is the flip side of it.

It shows to your existing and potential customers several crucial things about your company.

1) You admit mistakes rather than blaming others for everything (= try to steal yourself out of any responsibility)

2) You don't fear to make mistakes and take them as an opportunity to enhance on your companies services, products and/or procedures

3) You are open for communication and do not hide behind automated 800 numbers and auto responder emails that prevent anybody with an issue to get a hold of somebody at your company

4) You actively and seriously try to resolve problems and are transparent about it

5) You are honest

NO Sales letter can accomplish this and no referral by a happy customer who admits that he never encountered a problem with your company and hence don't know how you deal with them, if they occur, something that is IMO critical knowledge, if not the most important knowledge about a company you could possibly get. All is peachy if everything is in order. The real tests of any relationship happens if there is a problem that must be resolved or results in a break of that relationship as a consequence.

I just had my own severe problem with a company called Google and are looking forward to see how they are going to deal with it. See my post at Search Engine Journal, which illustrates a vital issue that should be of interest for anybody who has accounts at Google properties.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-accou...

Add the "edit your comment" plug-in to the list next time. It's a god-send hehe.

Links to posts strongly related to the subject of the post should be okay in comments, not just for other readers, but for the writer of the post as well. I have hundreds of blog feeds in my feed reader and still not ALL good and relevant blogs about subjects I care about.

The ones I do have in the reader are impossible to read entirely. You miss stuff and if your subject is recent (a few days old), don't expect Google to show it near the top of the search results yet (with some exception with posts at very strong authority blogs).

De-linking a reference would not make sense, if the post that is referred to is on topic and adds value to the post itself. If it does not provide anything different or new to what you just wrote then it does not make much sense to keep the link to it intact. It would be like a "me too" reply to a forum post. Some blog comments (with and without links) are having not much more quality to it than those kind of replies, which annoys the heck out of me, if it is a post where a lot of people re engaged in a conversation.

I don't mind if those would be suppressed or deleted, even if their was no bad intent by the poster. It will not help the guys who signed up for email notification, but the guys that read the post at a later time. The exceptions are polls or similar posts that ask for this kind of feedback. That's my opinion which is probably not one of the popular ones.

p.s. I like the edit comment feature. Which plug-in is that? English is my second language and I see myself making errors pretty often. It's hard to read and double check in the relatively small text box where you enter your comment (the p.s. was added to my comment using this edit comment feature hehe).

I suggest he checks out some of the session videos from DefCon to get his head straight. Somebody is living in a bubble far far away from reality.

The people who can really exploit it badly that it will hurt the network are the people he will not get regardless how much money he throws at it to "get" them (unless he spends the money on a guerilla army and starts invading some independent nations with them).

The only thing this email did is
a) damages his reputation (for example I think now that he is an idiot. I didn't think that before that email)
b) provoked some guys (in addition to the guys who might abuse or want to abuse the network) who might feel compelled now to show him that he is an idiot and wrong

tsts...

Hehe.. looks like people are having fun. I just don't get what happened (stupid European). They party like on New Year because of ONE home run?

I get the picture of what you are saying in your post though, regardless if I don't understand whats up with those people in the video :)

Cheers!
Carsten

Ed, I hear you and I am also not so naive to believe otherwise, however, I think that the video tries to convince people, that their privacy is protected and that is not the case.

I am not a privacy evangelist, but I don't like deceptions.

Steven, that's exactly what I am saying. And even if you want to narrow things down to identify a specific person, it's not too hard to do either. What are the odds that multiple people with the same Class-C subnet IP range can not be distinguished by looking at the logs?

Almost the same as if the full IP was provided and then of course who the provider of the IP is. If the class-C subnet shows that the user comes from AOL, then the class-c information are as good as the full IP (or not good in this scenario).

Different story when it comes to Class-C subnets that belong to smaller companies with not too many people accessing the internet.

Did you watch the movie? The part where they explain and demonstrate what they do to the data after 18 months to protect the users privacy? They X-out only the D-block of the IP address and keep the Class-C Subnet information intact.

That means that there are only 255 possible IP-Addresses the user could have had and the Class-C Subnet information, which they keep, are enough to know the ISP or Company the user was using.

From the Cookie was also not much removed, except for the preferences. What they remove from the logs is nothing and only good for PR, no more and no less.

I see nothing overly controversial with your post, sorry :). I agree with your statements and also don't make a big fuzz out of the "paid for blog comments" thing. It is very simple.

If the posted comments are just a new form of spam to circumvent spam filters, you as advertiser paying for those comments will not gain business from this type of advertisement, probably the opposite instead. The comments will also have a low chance of remaining active at the blog and will most likely be deleted like any other spam that might gets passed the filters. You will loose reputation and eventually customers and will have a harder time to find new ones.

The low cost of the service makes me assume that it will be outsourced to some low cost country half way around the world (from you or me :) ). At least did you advertising dollars help to support an evolving economy somewhere else and get the bread on the family table for somebody.

If the comments are good and you gain business as a result of it without a loss in reputation or even gain from it, reputation or authority, great, go for it. There is nothing wrong with that.

You see, the problem solves itself very naturally.

p.s. this comment is a "paid comment", because it is business related and any time I spent for it is working time, (which hopefully gets compensated via one way or another = paid. :)

If we want to make it unpaid, lets talk about text art or Cirque Du Soleil hehe.

What is your problem Andy?

Danny mentioned BUMPzee! and a number of other similar services on the Daily SearchCast on 7/12 when Sphinn was launched. It's not like he ignores the existing services completely in is coverage of search marketing news.

He mentions Sphinn (his baby) more frequent; of course he does. He also mentions SMX more often than SES, especially right before a SMX event. He will still cover SES and PubCon etc.

That he does self promotion is completely natural. They over at SEL also have bills to pay.

I never heart him talking bad about BUMPZee or making claims like "Sphinn" is much better than xyz. It would be inappropriate, if he did.

That friends of SEL and Danny are more likely to post about something they do and probably also in a more forgiving and favorable manner is also normal.

David Naylor and Rand etc. are Danny's friends. David for example posted about Sphinn the same day Danny announced it on Daily SearchCast, as he said during the show, without Danny asking him to do so.

Am I missing something?

Danny Sullivan said: "Carsten, why not launch with everything we could think of? Because we had enough to start with, and at some point, you want a real site with real users to give you real feedback. I don't consider it half done at all. I consider it a solid foundation that will grow."

Danny, I believe you misunderstood my comment.

I said that opening BUMPzee! up, to allow the creation of any type of community, is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

A blessing, because it allows to expand into other verticals and a curse because it also deludes stronger communities within BUMPzee! and reduces the growth of them.

It is much harder now to promote BUMPZee to a specific vertical. Go to the homepage of BUMPzee! and tell me about the strong communities within the site. Do you see what I mean? You can't tell?

I don't mind having another platform out there. As I said in my comment at SEOMoz Andy was referring to: "The more the merrier I guess, at least does it provide choice and will cause each platform to develop further to the excitement of us users."

I also said that you will use your position in the industry to promote your new service of course. Scott did so too with BUMPzee! There is nothing wrong with that I would have been surprised if you wouldn't do it.

Not everybody here is agreeing with Andy's assessment. You are not the only one :)

Hi Andy,
Interesting post. BUMPZee! got a lot of attention in the affilaite marketing space and Scotts deep roots in that industry was helping him to get the needed attention to get the project off the ground.

You can compare it to what Danny did in the seo/sem space with Sphinn. Both used their status in their respected industries. Okay, Scott would be more like a Aaron or Rand, but if either of those two would have launched a site like this, the results would have been similar.

To open up BUMPzee to create any type of niche community was a good thing and a bad thing. Opening it up allowed the access to other verticals, but it also added problems of separation and duplications due to over diversification. Have a look at the amount and types of communities that were created at BUMPzee over the past months and you will know what I mean.

Who won?

Horray! That's good news and about time. It took them almost a year. Well, better late than never, right?

My first lens.. or second.. can't remember.
http://www.squidoo.com/Affiliate-Marketing/

Vlad, I added your Aff.Mkt. lens to my lensroll for that lens.

http://www.squidoo.com/Datafeed/

This lens used to outrank me for anything datafeed related. Its still on mt tail ;). I had the datafeed article stub up there for over half a year, before I finished it and moved to my site. It still beats me for "datafeeds" though, but that's not tragic. Two spots on page 1 are better than 1 hehe.

I forgot about this one. I played there with some of those fancy plug ins that allow ratings and stuff. http://www.squidoo.com/Internet_Marketing_Resou...


http://www.squidoo.com/ascii/

My most "successful" lens was this one. Not commercial unfortunately. Made it to the top 25 in the arts category. I removed a lot of content since I have a site just for text art all by myself since last summer. No need to put the cream de la cream on squidoo ;)


http://www.squidoo.com/bbs/
Remind me when they start selling 3 character lens names for a million bucks hehe... kidding.. another non-commercial lens of mine.

I get some traffic from the Datafeed Lens and negligible one from the Affiliate Marketing Lens.

That wraps up my old lens showcase. I let them just sit there and do whatever lenses do. The advertising within the lenses generated, I don't know, $5 ?! revenue over the course of 1 year. Or was it about $3?! ... mmmh.. don't know, never cashed the check. hehe.

Cheers!

My first lens.. or second.. can't remember.
http://www.squidoo.com/Affiliate-Marketing/

Vlad, I added your Aff.Mkt. lens to my lensroll for that lens.

http://www.squidoo.com/Datafeed/

This lens used to outrank me for anything datafeed related. Its still on mt tail ;). I had the datafeed article stub up there for over half a year, before I finished it and moved to my site. It still beats me for "datafeeds" though, but that's not tragic. Two spots on page 1 are better than 1 hehe.

I forgot about this one. I played there with some of those fancy plug ins that allow ratings and stuff. http://www.squidoo.com/Internet_Marketing_Resou...


http://www.squidoo.com/ascii/

My most "successful" lens was this one. Not commercial unfortunately. Made it to the top 25 in the arts category. I removed a lot of content since I have a site just for text art all by myself since last summer. No need to put the cream de la cream on squidoo ;)


http://www.squidoo.com/bbs/
Remind me when they start selling 3 character lens names for a million bucks hehe... kidding.. another non-commercial lens of mine.

I get some traffic from the Datafeed Lens and negligible one from the Affiliate Marketing Lens.

That wraps up my old lens showcase. I let them just sit there and do whatever lenses do. The advertising within the lenses generated, I don't know, $5 ?! revenue over the course of 1 year. Or was it about $3?! ... mmmh.. don't know, never cashed the check. hehe.

Cheers!

They would not have made fun of the movie if they did not like it at least a little bit.

Right Mark? .. and what are you saying to that Mark? ;)

They would not have made fun of the movie if they did not like it at least a little bit.

Right Mark? .. and what are you saying to that Mark? ;)

YOu benefit from the huge amount of inbound links to the main domain. Google still puts a lot of value on the overall trust and rank of the general domain.

If you start a site and a lense, the lens will outrank you for a long time. If your site grows further, you will outrank the lens. Simple as that. But even if you don't, make sure that visitors will find your site through the Lens as well. Win Win.