Sometimes, you have to jump at opportunities even if it means you personally won’t reap the benefits. If you don’t you may never see your vision come to light. This year I lucked into such an opportunity. I had hired a very talented team of SEO’s and developers to build a network of websites for my employer. While we did pretty good at building the traditional sites that my company was familiar with, we were missing our killer app. We had nothing that set us apart from the many, many competitive sites in our industry. The main challenge we faced was that we didn’t have a core community website that we could use to leverage trust and authority from the search engines. This authority site had to be unique, and it couldn’t just be another blog, forum, or directory. Those are all done and dated already. We needed a different type of site. As I’ve faced this exact challenge in the past with many different clients, it’s no surprise I already had an idea for the type of site we’d need that would bring the power and authority to get the rankings we were after. Now was the time to build it, even if it means that I’d be giving my prized idea to my company as intellectual property. But, that’s part of why they hired me, to bring all my ideas that can benefit us directly and put them on the table.

I did some research and discovered it would cost us almost six figures to purchase the licensing and custom development for the type of site that I wanted to build. So I talked it over with my developers and did a quick feasibility analysis. This could be done! I told my team that this was a second priority to any other projects they were assigned. I have some brilliant developers. They were able to conquer all my projects ahead of schedule, beating my most unrealistic expectations for deadlines. They built facebook app after facebook app, all the top priority sites in queue, and a lot of single one-off projects from me and from corporate. I have worked with a lot of great developers in the past, but these two have truly shown me they are two of the best. So with a lot of projects cleared off the board, and an initiative to focus only on projects that would benefit us in SEO, I gave the guys a greenlight to work full-time on the project.

This week we are ready to launch the main project, and it’s supporting sister sites, to the public as beta. I’ll be posting about it soon as an official announcement. Stay tuned!

BTW – As much as I honor my development team in this post, I can’t say enough about the fantastic marketers that I have that make up the rest of my team! They too are brilliant, motivated, and bring a very unique set of skills and talents that contributes to the unique nature of the team. Some of our projects haven’t panned out exactly like planned, but it isn’t because of a lack of trying or lack of talent. The industry we are in is truly a bitch and very competitive. But, with the launch of our new project, I expect some great things from the result of an entire-team marketing effort in a very short amount of time. So, as before, stay tuned!

You see, I’d watch in agony each week as the kids who won would run through Toys-R-Us and make the same mistakes over and over. They’d all do the same thing: with huge eyes, they’d frantic their shopping cart through the store filling it with things like bikes, skateboards, basketballs, huge stuffed animals, radio control cars, and other huge items. I swear one time a kid tried to stick a trampoline in his shopping cart. Watching these kids would frustrate me because they were doing it wrong! They get to keep everything they could squeeze into one cart. If only they had my strategy, they could have gotten all those toys and more. My plan was pretty simple to. If I were on the show, I’d run straight to the baseball cards and fill the cart until it was overflowing. I could then maximize the space in my shopping cart with some of the smallest, yet highest valued items in the store.  I wouldn’t need to run all the many aisles, I could maximize my full 5 minutes in a single spot. After I took home my loot, I’d open all the packs, sort them out, create a few sets, and resell those sets plus the highest valued singles back to my local baseball card dealers (there were many in the 80’s and early 90’s). With the money, I’d return back to Toys-R-Us and get the toys I wanted and still have a lot of money left over.

As my friends know, I’ve always been a entrepreneur geek. Sure I enjoyed making money, but what I enjoyed most was optimizing a little-known process (which could also be thought of as exploiting a loophole or exploiting the system). My career choices are pretty much par for the course from my humble beginnings. As a Search Engine Optimizer and Social Marketer, I look for ways to “optimize” the experience for my clients. I make their website more suitable for success within search engines and social networks. Back 3 to 5 years ago, I was simply exploiting holes in Google’s algorithm. These days I play their game, but still have many opportunities to leverage social networks like Twitter, reddit, StumbleUpon, and Facebook in the process.

I enjoy it. It’s fun to be able to make changes and see how it affects the traffic coming into the site. I’ve been on the tipping point for a few months with one of my sites, and I think we are about to release a product (another website) that will soon push it over the edge and give me the results I’ve been looking for for so long. One downside to this business is that it can be entirely frustrating to not get the results you were hoping for as soon as you want. But when you do achieve success, it is very rewarding. So I’m hoping this little extra “oomph” that my team has been working on for the past 2 months will really jump start something good. We’ll see what happens. But our shopping cart is full and we are more than ready!

I have to agree 100% with Andy Beal’s comments:

He owes his fans, the media, and his sponsors an explanation.Yes, he does!

They invested their time, their money, their emotional commitment to Woods. He sold them a brand and now he’s not living up to it. Just like any other “product” its customers deserve to know why it’s not “working” the way it has for the past decade or more.

Cold? Sure! And Woods can continue to hold onto his privacy if he so chooses–as Bobby Brown would say, that’s his “perogative!” But, at some point he needs to decide what’s more important, Tiger Woods the person, or Tiger Woods the brand.

Because Tiger Woods the brand is in a lot of trouble at this point.

With OTHER huge brands riding the Tiger name: Gatorade, G2, Nike, Buick, Gillette, EA Sports, and more. All of these brands will need to rethink their sponsorships and face-time with Tiger as a spokesperson if Tiger continues to dodge the press.

I sure hope Tiger considers his reputation and decides to be a bit more vocal about the incident.

Scatterbrain random updates to hold you over:

• Summer in Florida was just another Summer In Florida. No storms yet, so it’s been a pretty calm and HOT year.
• I have a few queued posts that I’ve started that I hope to post soon. I also have a few queued up in my head that have yet to be written.
• Lately I’ve been focusing on Facebook marketing. This is a whole new world to me. Not only is it exciting because so much is possible, it is also a very large opportunity if done right. I started in Email. I went to Search. Dabbled in Social. But it’s Facebook that has the potential to be bigger then all the others combined. This is truly a new frontier.
• I’m not running nearly as much as I hoped. Busy being a dad, a husband, a co-worker, an employee, a manager, and a marketer. But I’ve scheduled some time for myself in the immediate future.
• I hope to write more about Facebook advertising. I’ll post what I can. But I’m not a guru. This is a learning experience for me too, so don’t expect anything earth shattering.

Sidenote: One thing is for sure, Sports marketers get it. I see them all over the social grid. They are where the fans are!

As I contemplate whether or not I should write a 2008 wrap-up post, I decided one thing for sure: I’m ready to get rolling with 2009! Just a few days ago I wrote about being resolute. Today I’d like to follow-up with the first step in how to be resolute: be passionate!

Passion drives everything. Period.

With passion comes recognition, respect, and personal growth. Your friends and peers will turn to you as the expert for what you are passionate in. You may even gain a small following, earn some extra income, and possible see that passion explode into a huge career.

Without passion, you might as well report to your 9-to-5 at that cubicle job or department store, pick-up your bi-weekly paycheck, cash it at the check cashing store, and promptly find the nearest bar where someone else will be paid to hear how bad your life sucks. I know a lot of people fit that mold. If you are one of them, BREAK OUT OF IT ALREADY!

How do you break the mold and start being passionate about something in life. Well, for starters: START! You don’t need to be perfect, you don’t need to “wait until I…” or “will start as soon as I…”. No! You can start now!

I took this note to heart as I wrote my first blog post of a project that I’ve waited all too long to, um, start. The title? It’s simply called Get Started. It’s very appropriate here as well, as publishing websites is one of my deepest passions. I love the process of brainstorming and concepting a site, registering the domain, installing my CMS of choice, launching the site, and seeing it become successful. I may lack some detail follow-up work, but I’ve identified that weakness and know how to overcome it. But most importantly, I’m not letting that weakness stop me. I hope to follow my tried and true formulas with IncomeHacks and all my other projects I plan on starting this year.

That post is also relevant because it featured Gary Vaynerchuk. For those who don’t know Gary Vaynerchuk, he’s probably the most passionate person about wine that you will ever see. He’s the host of Wine Library TV. In my post on IH, I talk about how he got started. It was pretty humble. He had a large vision for his internet broadcast when he started it, but I doubt that even he didn’t expect that it would become as wildly popular as it has become. If you watch any of his episodes, you’ll see that his passion for his business shines through in everything he says and does. Passion is the X factor. Wine Library would not have nearly the online presence it has today if it wasn’t for Gary’s passion on the subject.

In fact, what Gary says about passion sums up everything I’m trying to say:

Welcome to 2009. The year of passion.

But if you only had 6 feeds to follow in the IM world, I’d recommend the ones below. You simply *cannot* exist online without Google (unless you are John Chow). So, unless you plan on riding the Cuil wave to your internet millions, I recommend you stop resisting and join the BORG by subscribing to the central nervous system directly.

I have placed these 6 blogs at the top of my netvibes page and I strongly suggest you do the same:

1 – The Official Google Blog (RSS)
How many times have you followed a link from another article to the OGB? Why not just hear everything from the horse’s mouth first? It’s not all business either, they often are finding fun ways to use Google products. For example, during the holidays you could track Santa or build a gingerbread house. Cool!

2 – Inside Adwords (RSS)
Let me ask you this, if you operated a store in a mall and the property owner came and told you a way that you could piggyback off their efforts and improve traffic by 1% or reduce operating costs by 1%, would you jump on that? Any business owner would. So if you are spending your dollars advertising within Google’s mega-opoly, wouldn’t you want to know of any tools or features that can bump your performance in one direction or the other? I sure would. This is why this blog is so close to the top of my list.

3 – Google Website Optimizer Blog (RSS)
Next on my list is another gem that MOST advertisers are simply not taking advantage of, and that’s Google Website Optimizer. Not only is Google’s Website Optimizer one of the simplest and easiest ways to setup split testing for your traffic, it also seamlessly integrates within Adwords and Analytics. Oh, and it’s free. Do it, do it, do it!

4 – Google Analytics Blog (RSS)
A lot of webmasters use Google Analytics because it is simple to integrate. But what a lot of webmasters don’t realize is how much depth Analytics data can go into. The GAB (Google Analytics Blog) is one of the best places for tips and tricks on how to utilize all that data. Plus any updates or new features and they’ll get full coverage here.

5 – Inside AdSense (RSS)
Hundreds of thousands of publishers rely on AdSense revenue to bring home the bacon. Therefore, the Inside AdSense blog is crucial for anyone making money from Google. Not only will you get updates on features and changes to policies, but you’ll also get some great tips on how to use AdSense more effectively. Keep in mind, Google is also trying to help you place ads that convert. By doing so, it keeps the advertisers happy, and it keeps your users happy. It’s a win-win (or as Michael Scott would say, a “win-win-win!”).

6 – AdWords Agency Blog (RSS)
And finally, the Adwords Agency Blog. I listed this one last not because it was the least important but because it fits the least amount of people. However, if you are an agency who has AdWords running for several clients, your situation among Google Advertisers is unique and this content is geared directly at you. This reading is pure gold! Even if you are just an advertiser without an agency, you’ll gain some perspective and a few hints from time by time by reading this blog.

By stopping the ignorance and tuning into the Googleplex University, you will soon be on your way to a Utopian marketer lifestyle. There are several other blogs that Google publishes, and if you wish to study those I’ve created a public page at Netvibes where you can one day earn your Google MBA (we wish, right?).

Yes, I had an epiphany and I’m not ashamed of it. Like the epiphanies before, this gem was so obvious it was stupidly beautiful (or beautifully stupid).

I don’t know if I have the ability to describe the full diorama of the idea, but I’ll try. Lately I’ve been registering domains like a fool. Any niche or meme that I feel like I can one day profit off of, I think “Hey I need 10 domains for that!” and hastily buy them, then just let them sit and park (much to Google’s content). Many many domains sitting unused. No traffic, therefore no revenue. And I’ve been getting more and more niche ideas lately. So my dilemma was: lots of ideas * lots of ideas = almost zero revenue – lots of costs. So basically I’ve been losing a lot of money on parked domains. Yet I still want to play and get more.

So the epiphany I had isn’t new to most people, just me. It’s simply this: you don’t need a damn domain for every niche play you enter! Get a wordpress, tumblr, google pages, blogger, or whatever free site/hosting account, build up your content there, drive some traffic, and THEN when something starts to stick grab a domain and start point links to it from all your free pages. OR, and this is where it comes in handy for me, create that page of content for your new niche on an existing domain that ALREADY has the trust and age going for it. You’ll be able to rank faster and longer. (that’s what she said! hehehe).

Something that gets me everytime I have an idea for a new project is that I always think it will require less time than it actually does. I have close to a hundred projects I’ve started over the past 4 to 5 years. Only a dozen or so of those ever came to a point I’d call completed. I’ve found that working on projects follows the 5-90-5 rule. The first 5% and last 5% are the most difficult pieces to accomplish by far. The middle chunk of time is usually used for non-decision grunt work that really just requires punching in a clock and getting it done.

The middle 90 percent is never my issue. My issue with new projects is always the beginning and ending process. The first 5 percent involves answering the what, the why, the how, and the who. This is the planning of the project. In my opinion, its the fun stuff. All the What-If scenarios get played out and the decisions of how you’re going to go about the project are made. This stage is when I find myself the most excited about a project. However, I have found myself never make it past this stage on many occasions. Either I get too excited about a trivial project and later realize that it wasn’t a worthwhile endeavor, or I discover that I don’t have the resources I want/need to get it done right.

Phase two of the project can be either dead simple or burdensome, depending on how much of the project you carry yourself. For almost all my hobby projects, I take 100% of the load. This can be crushing on my self-esteem on anything that lasts more than a month or two (I find that 3-4 weeks is my ideal project timeline). If I have others involved, whether friends working together on the same project, or resources I’ve outsourced, I find that my “excitement” timeline can last for a couple of months as long as I see progress. If I don’t see progress, then I usually end up shelving the project because something *better* has come along.

Phase three, the final 5%, is killer. This is usually the “alpha” stage. The stage just before you release it as “beta” (because all projects are “beta” during at least their first 90 days, sometimes longer. This is the “Jason Murphy Golden Rule of Product Launches”). Your project is “almost done”. You choose a few people to give a sneak peak to. You ask their opinion, and you take their feedback seriously. Sometimes too seriously. Other times you get involved with plugins, and advertisements, and marketing campaigns. The focus needs to be intense during this final phase, and if you can’t devout the proper time and energy necessary because you’re focusing on other projects, you may just end up launching a dud. All website producers have produced duds at one point or another.

Now the tough part about trying to wrap up a blog post a year after you started it, is you really aren’t sure what direction you originally had planned for it. I know I had a killer conclusion for all this based on examples of some sort, but I’ll just end with this: Quality time is more important than money when planning a new project. Stay focused, follow-through, and you’ll be glad you didn’t move on to a “yet another project”.

(BTW: This is advice mostly for myself, but it’s free advice if you’d like to borrow from it).

As I position my department into becoming the “Purple Cow” of the company, or perhaps being able to launch Purple Cow level of products, I have been keeping my eyes open for companies, services, websites, products and books that are indeed Purple Cows. They are the things that do something spectacular. Things that make me stop and think “Hey, I like this. They are doing something really cool.”

I’ve found several examples, and this is just from one day’s worth of looking.

The first example is a little unusual. If you were looking at the this site, you wouldn’t think much of it. Unless you were an art collector. It’s a lot of flash. They threw all the SEO rules out the window. And I’m sure Jakob Nielsen would have a fit. But it is actually quite remarkable.

What is it? It’s simply an Art Storage company. Really. Art Storage. Seems like boring stuff, doesn’t it? You take art, put it in a crate, and stick it in a warehouse somewhere until the piece is sold to a new owner or ready to be put on display. What makes Minds Eye different? Their site just reeks of passion for the stuff. Not the art, but the passion of preserving and transporting the art. Every piece of Flash added to their site shows how serious these guys are about protecting your rare, one-of-a-kind, investments. In this type of business, that passion translates into a piece-of-mind that items will be taken care of.

With passion comes exemplary service. You always remember when you get exemplary service. It was the waiter who let you order an entree from the dinner menu during lunch hour. Or the airline employee who carted your wives bags across the parking lot while she handled the kids. Maybe it is the Starbucks employee that knows your first name, and has your order ready as soon as they see you pull up. There are countless examples of exemplary service. And all of those examples root from a passion of service.

The second example comes from the real world. I was running errands today and happened into the local Office Depot. The world headquarters of Office Depot are located here in Boca Raton, FL, so I really wonder if this remarkable “Purple Cow” I saw at the store was a test market or not. What was this purple cow in my local Office Depot? Digital price tags! Something seemingly so simple, but executed so well, are perfect examples for this post. I’ve heard about digital price tags in other countries, but this was my first encounter with them in person. These things are brilliant. A small LCD screen, an RFID or other type of wireless chip, and a battery. Every product in the store had them. If a red light was blinking, that meant the tags were on sale. These tags will save countless merchandising and retailing hours, saving staff time to do things like customer service instead. Even more so, it allows Office Depot to respond to market prices instantly. If that means reducing prices to match a competitor, or fluctuating prices to respond to increased cost, Office Depot has the ability to do it immediately. Take this a step further and I wouldn’t be surprised to see these digital price tags adjust based on supply and demand. Imagine an algorithm that automatically adjusts the price of a product based on shelf life. If it’s been sitting there 30 days, it goes down 10%. If it’s been 90 days it goes down 30%. Automatically.

Imagine if toy retailers had these prices during the Nintendo Wii shortage crisis (which is still happening almost 2 years after it launched). Retailers can inflate the prices to meet the high demands. Or to keep demand up, retailers could adjust prices to help keep the scarcity levels in check. These types of market changes are practiced by some huge online retailers, but it’s exciting and truly remarkable to see these possibilities be realized in the offline world. (UPDATE: I found a company that makes these cool price tags here.)

Example number 3 of something remarkable, and I’ll keep this short: a book. I’m reading a book that when I bought it I thought it was going to be a self-help, personal-finance, get-rich-quick type of book. It’s not any of those. It is instead a map of how to live a rich lifestyle, even though you may not be heaping rich. It has been a best seller since it released, and I’ve heard about it time and time again from a lot of friends. So I’m finally reading it, and I must say that it is utterly fantastic! (Pun wasn’t intended, but caught afterwards and I’m keeping it!). It is not a Seth Godin book in case you were wondering. I’ll post a review of the book as soon as I finish it, and I’m eating it up, so you’ll see a review soon.

Ok, so this post was long, and scattered. I apologize. It was mostly for my own record, but you are welcome to take from it what you may. The point being that there are remarkable things everywhere you look. Keeping an eye open for these things, and what makes them different, is really exciting. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Now, I’m gainfully employed in a company that values my experience. However, I realize that I am now on the reverse side of the role that I despised so much. I struggle with letting my team know that I do in fact value their ideas. Part of the difficulty of working in the mid-stages of a growth company is everyone has ideas, but we don’t have resources to execute them all. Different business objectives often see priorities sort out differently than logic would direct, but the truth of the matter is that when ideas are plentiful, the best ones don’t always win. But what makes one idea more “remarkable”, as Seth Godin and his purple cow would say, than another?

One concept that always comes back to me was something a former employer (a couple of jobs ago), who is now a good friend of mine, would always say: “There are no monopolies on new ideas”. This was always a healthy reminder that even though someone had a good idea, it doesn’t mean that anyone else can’t come up with an idea of equal or better value. Another sub-culture that we pushed at that company was that execution was everything. You could write down idea after idea all day long, but if nothing was executed, or if it were executed poorly, then they are worth nothing more than the paper they are written on. Thus, ideas aren’t very remarkable if they don’t have decent execution.

But what about those no-brainer ideas, that once you see you immediately think “Why didn’t I think of that first?!”. Or a worse thought: “I had that idea years ago!”. This has happened to me an uncountable amount of times. I’ve gotten to the point where I just smile and say “good for him/her”. What happened was that someone took that simple idea and executed it. The idea maybe wasn’t the most brilliant of ideas, but the execution of that idea was remarkable.

What happens when you get a remarkable idea with poor execution? Ask the former founders of Gizmondo or Tapwave, or ask Nokia. All made portable gaming systems with remarkable ideas. One had a touch screen, another had built-in GPS, while one had a built-in phone. All those systems are pretty much defunct now (with the exception of Nokia’s N-Gage which transitioned from a hardware platform to a software service). All were great ideas, but the execution of bringing them to market was done poorly.

What happens when you take an idea and give it remarkable execution? Ask Apple and their iPhone. The iPhone wasn’t revolutionary in itself. What was revolutionary was the way that the iPhone was packaged together and marketed. It was Steve Jobs’ execution of the idea that was remarkable.

Another example of remarkable idea vs. remarkable execution would be in the world of search engines, another industry I am close to. You had companies like FAST, ASK, and Gigablast that all had remarkable technologies. Then you had companies like Yahoo who had remarkable execution. The market was wide open and was actually loosing a lot of money for a lot of companies. Until an underdog by the name of Google came around, and a media anti-hero by the name of GoTo.com at about the same time, both of which had remarkable technologies AND remarkable execution. What happened? Google is now the largest internet company in the world, and Overture was acquired by Yahoo and together they hold second place for the title.

The business world is full of stories of remarkable ideas vs. remarkable execution. Currently in my professional career, I’m at a point where I have dozens of remarkable ideas. This paradigm shift I am going through is helping me to realize that once again I am transitioning into a point where I start directing remarkable execution. It’s an exciting place to be. The team I work with on a daily basis is completely capable and have fantastic ideas, we have some fantastic vendors that DO execute remarkably, and the combination of the two is is more than exciting.

Yesterday I was browsing through Techcrunch when I came to this story. Michael Arrington discussed a unique concept about how one website was generating buzz by having advertisers buy things for their readers to get displayed on the site.

The site is PayItToMe.com. Basically the concept is that users submit photos of items they wish for to Pay It To Me and advertisers buy it for them. The photos are displayed in a desired items page. Then Reno, the guy running the site, brokers any deals with advertisers who are interested in paying for a readers item. The advertiser pays the reader directly through PayPal and then sends a screenshot as proof of payment to Reno. Reno then takes the picture, and adds it to the homepage as well as a unique page. He then links the picture to the advertisers site. The advertiser then gets to benefit from all the buzz the site is generating.

I told John about PayItToMe and he gave it a try. He submitted a picture of Heroes Season 1 on DVD and someone bought it! (could have gone for Heroes on HD DVD, John. They you could justify a Xbox 360+HD Drive at Christmas!) I was kind of surprised. I didn’t think it would work, but it did.

So, since it worked for him I decided to give it a try. But instead of submitting an item, I wanted to participate as the advertiser. At the time, the lowest priced item on the desired items page was a 30 pack of Bud Light for $22.99. It sounded like a reasonable request to me, so I contacted Reno and told him I’d like to sponsor that reader. He sent me the paypal info, I paid and sent him the details, then he put my link on the homepage. The traffic wasn’t like a Digg or Reddit front page, but it was still pretty substantial. I got 400 visitors in about 10 hours time (as of midnight last night). I’m still getting traffic from it, but Google Analytics has several hours delay so I won’t know until midnight tonight what my 24 hour turnaround was. Still, I’m pretty satisfied with deal as an advertiser.

Then I decided to submit an item as a reader. I didn’t want it too be too luxurious an item like the iMacs and cameras that some people were requesting, but I did want it to be an item I would enjoy and probably wouldn’t buy otherwise. So I added this picture:

I didn’t expect that I’d actually have anyone buy it anytime soon. I was hoping that traffic and buzz would build for the site and eventually someone would purchase it for me. But, when I checked my email this morning, I was VERY SURPRISED to see that a company had sent me a paypal payment so I could buy Halo 3. WOW!

The company that purchased it for me was Kalendra. A big thanks to them, and to show how grateful I am I’ll be providing a review of Kalendra on this site soon.

At first I was a little sceptical about PayItToMe simply because it was just a guy that had a blogger account and was doing all the transactions via email. Then I remembered a little site called One Red Paperclip who was setup almost exactly the same way. Through email and his blogspot blog, some guy traded up from one red paperclip to a house.

These guys are showing that it’s amazing what you can do when you just start something even though you don’t have the programming or design or HTML skills to get it going. If you have an idea, get it up and get it going. This may be a READY-FIRE-AIM approach, but at least something is happening and it’s no longer just a “yet another idea”.

Way to go guys, let’s see where you can innovate from here!

Does Facebook need a digital currency? Apparently a LOT of people think so. If you haven’t heard of Acebucks, you’re about to. And if you are an active Facebook user, it is only a matter of time until you too have installed and are using the Acebucks application.

What is Acebucks? Simply put it’s an underground currency on Facebook. It allows users to buy and sell digital goods, hold auctions, give gifts, and send digital money to one another. The market for this virtual stuff is HUGE. One only need look at SecondLife, World of Warcraft, or Entropia to see how big virtual economies can become. I remember reading a stat somewhere (sorry it’s almost 1:00 in the morning and I am NOT doing the research to back this claim up) that SecondLife’s economy would be 31st richest economy in the world if it were its own country. Then you hear of people selling virtual land–we’re talking land that is digital, ONES and ZEROS, here–for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It just goes to show what a little bit of too much free time can do.

Whenever a digital currency is combined with an open marketplace, you can expect things to explode. How exactly will this work on Facebook? Time will tell. Will I be able to sell and buy little badges that people can display on their FB page that say “You Rule!” on them? Probably. It will get really interesting though once they start tying into offline goods. I’d love to sell some ebooks through Facebook. Or even buy a few thousand diggs or stumbleupons from Facebook users. BuddyMedia has said that they will start tying in an offline store and selling things like iPods using AceBucks. They also stated that they’ll be releasing an API that other application developers can use AceBucks through.

This is going to pretty interesting. A userbase in the millions like Facebook means there is a lot of opportunity for a lot of people. How much opportunity? Well, the makers of AceBucks just secured a $1.5 million dollar round of financing if that’s any hint. Someone somewhere thinks this is a worthwhile endeavor. I think they’re right.

Acebucks via

Well, Muhammad Saleem answered all my weekend blogging worries with 4 reasons to write on the weekend and 4 posts to do it with.

But weekend blogger abandonment issues aren’t just for bloggers. I’ve found out that trying sell domains, websites, traffic and ads on the weekend is either the worse possible time to attempt such transactions or the absolutely most perfect time to make a deal. Depends on whether you’re buying or selling.

All web productions, sales, development, SEO, blah blah, is stuff I do on the evenings and weekends. I have a FT gig working with an affiliate marketing company. But my “hobby” is creating websites, or at least writing down killer ideas I have for unique websites. My resources of un (c’est moi!) limit my production ability as of late, so my hobby has been reduced to just writing down things I think about.

Naturally if I build up the energy (may require a minor solo pep rally and a dose of C&C Music Factory) to do some link building, I’ll be doing that chore on the weekend as well. Can make it tough to promote a story if your buddy list is all idle due to inactivity.

So, Muhammad, I sympathize with your weekend woes. But even more, I agree that weekend is full of opportunity. Getting on digg, techmeme, or megite (Hi Megite, u hear me now?) is certainly worth the effort. However, I think that finding other bloggers to network with and startup a Lonely Hearts Club Band (like Sgt. Pepper) is even more valuable. I’ll be keeping a closer eye on my feed reader on the weekends and make an extra effort to link to those who are playing along.

Reading Mr. Saleem’s post reconfirms my previous notions that weekend blogging is very worthwhile. In fact, I had three posts over the weekend after a week-long drought. My daily uniques average is up over 300% for Sunday and Monday as compared to the other previous 6 days combined. Sure, you could blame the BlogRush hype machine for that, but I like to think the weekend helped.

Here’s what others are saying about BlogRush after they’ve had a taste:

Blogrush is at once an ingenious idea and a bit of a throwback to “Web 1.0″ affiliate schemes.
- Mashable at Blogrush: Traffic Generator or Pyramid Scheme?

While we’re skeptical, BlogRush might be “worth a try”. Although traffic exchanges are notorious for driving poor traffic, BlogRush’s targeting means you may get more interested readers, not just passers by.
- Mashable again at BlogRush: 8 Reasons to Be Wary…and Optimistic

So why do I like Blog Rush so much?

Well first of all read my disclaimer. John Reese is one of my best friends in this industry and was a guy who was very instrumental to me as a mentor in launching AuctionAds. John has the financial resources and the technical resources to make this thing fly.

Also several months ago when John was designing Blog Rush I came up with the idea of doing a friend roll. I can tell you this is working really well and I have heard nothing but positive comments about it. The only downfall with my friend roll is that I get nothing in return for giving traffic to my friends. Blog Rush is the answer to people who want reciprocal traffic.
- Shoemoney at How To Get 45k Impressions A Day From Blogrush

Not another fanfare of recycled junk, which is often the case online!
- Direct Response Web Media at Congrats To John Reese!

The base idea behind this isn’t new. This is the Web 2.0 version of a Banner Exchange network. The different being, rather than being stuck with 1 banner to display in a network across thousands of sites, instead your headlines and your site name get displayed on like minded sites. It looks to be quite powerful. Like so many others, I’m testing it out to see how much extra traffic it will bring to the site.
- Geeeek on Why aren’t you Blog Rushing?

Traffic Equals Money

Let’s face it, without traffic it’s pretty hard for a blog to make any money. The more traffic you have, the more money you make. Everyone wants more traffic and we’re always looking for more ways to get it. Internet Marketing kingpin, John Reese, has came up a great way to help your blog get more traffic.

BlogRush is a “Cooperative Syndication network” that rewards its users for their contributions to the network. BlogRush was designed to be incredibly viral and to provide its users with tremendous distribution leverage to receive exposure for their blog content that they could never achieve on their own; at least without a massive advertising budget.
- John Chow on Increase Your Blog Traffic With BlogRush

It at least sounds like something worth testing so I have added to MP. While it’s always nice to earn additional traffic, you can trust that if the widget spews nothing but spam, it will be removed faster than you can say “BlogRush”.
- Andy Beal on BlogRush Offers Free Syndicated Blog Traffic

My initial impressions of the system is that it’s worth exploring.

While I’m not a fan of traffic exchange programs – this one is a little different because it attempts to promote your blog on relevant blogs.
- Darren Rowse on Find New Readers for Your Blog – BlogRush First Impression Review

As I’ve been pondering the new BlogRush traffic building service (which I did a first impression review of earlier) over the last few hours I am increasingly thinking that it has potential to help bloggers find new traffic.

The bones are there for it to work – but how can you leverage it to increase your chances of converting for you and squeeze out some extra traffic for your blog.
- Darren Rowse does a second helping at Tips for Using BlogRush to Generate Traffic for Your Blog

But at the very least, having impressions on some high exposure blogs, such as those mentioned above, equals a free branding opportunity. One would normally have to pay hundreds of dollars to get seen on those sites. To me, this benefit alone is worth trying out BlogRush.
- me at What Is A BlogRush?

Some of the reviews seem to be pulling from the energy of the launch campaign. Others appear to have really taken a look at what BlogRush is promising and what it can currently do. The majority, such as myself, have a general attitude of “ok, I’ll try it this once.” John Reese must be known as the pusher, because I’ve never seen this many bloggers “try something” in such swarms before.

And…yeah…I quoted myself. Seemed appropriate with all the self-promotion that will continue to occur in the next few weeks as bloggers try to scoop up the remaining few who haven’t heard of BlogRush.

But not everyone licking the belly of this toad. Some have thrown up red flags that BlogRush might not appear all it seems to be:

Does BlogRush violate the adsense terms of service? I’m not 100% sure, but my opinion is you are on thin ice using any traffic exchange program on a site with adsense. I for sure don’t want to risk my adsense account for some flavor of the day traffic exchange.
- 45n5 at Warning – BlogRush May Violate The Adsense Terms Of Service

I’m really not a fan of blog widgets. There’s a lot of hype about BlogRush at the moment and I am personally a little doubtful that it’ll actually generate traffic that’s worth the real estate on my blog. Why? Because the click through rate may not be fantastic as it will also depend on where the widget is placed on other blogs.
- DoshDosh on BlogRush Review: Using Widgets to Get Traffic to Your Blog

5. These services typically benefit the first members the most. Those that fail to join early lose out. This leads to disenchantment and eventually the lessening of network effects.

6. Too Easily Abused. Refresh your blog 100 times, and you’ve earned 100 credits. This can be fixed partially by BlogRush by only tracking clickthroughs, not exposures, or some kind of IP tracking. There’s no mention on the site as to whether this is already in place.
- Mashable on BlogRush: 8 Reasons to Be Wary…and Optimistic

It’s still to early to tell if BlogRush is a long term strategy or not. In the meantime, you’re best strategy to capitalize on the traffic is to, of course, join BlogRush, and then write a few blog posts about it and hope that bloggers like me link to you because you had a quotable quote. Just don’t ping me, I’m done talking about BR for a few weeks while the waters calm.