slamboard

My site gets search traffic from a few people everyday who are curious about Walmart Prepaid Visa Cards. I assumed that this was because I was one of the few business bloggers that made a point of commenting on their launch last year. I also assumed that the product was popular. I was surprised to learn that when a firm surveyed 800 lower-income consumers, only 1% of them actually got these cards. These are people that go to Wal*Mart almost 5 times per month.

So, the cards aren’t explosively popular. The issuers are still happy with their bottom line, although there are worries that the government may make additional rules about terms and charges that will restrict the potential for profit. General Electric Co.’s GE Money subsidiary is the issuer of the Walmart card.

Source:Digital Transactions

Hi, thank you for coming here to read my blog. I appreciate every reader. I enjoy your feedback and I like to think that I am writing something that you will enjoy. I do not, at this time (January 15th, 2008), make any money as a direct consequence to your welcomed visit.

If I had Net Audio Ads on my blog, you would hear a 5 second audio advertisement from someone who had bid for placement in the network in much the same way that advertisers bid for Google ads. NetAudioAds™ Pay-Per-Play advertising has been up and running for a while and the HUGE difference with these ads is that a webmaster or blogger gets paid for everyone who visits.

I listened to the sales pitch for the affiliate program. This program is FREE, but they are only accepting signups until February 1st.

I am tempted… and I am going to think long and hard about the concept. I suggest that anyone reading this who has a blog or website check it out as well. If you start a discussion about it, I predict that someone will suggest that the ads will reduce your return readership. I remember a lot of complaining about Adsense ads in the beginning, too. There were lots of webmasters who rode their high horses around for years about it. I think the VAST majority of internet users accept them as a normal and ubiquitous part of the landscape now. Just like with TV and radio ads, some people take notice of them and some people ignore them. It is kind of sad that so many of us bloggers include contextual ads on our sites when they only generate pennies for most of us. I like the idea of being paid when an audio ad is played on my site regardless of whether or not the reader is listening. I am still apprehensive about the possibility of offending my readers. I know that I don’t like it when I accidentally run the cursor across those stupid smileys that scream Oh My GOD, No WAY?!?!?

If you have the same sort of opinions on this, you should go in as far as the long sales letter because there is a link to some actual ad clips there. They are actually pretty easy on the ears. Obviously, I was expecting to hear them, but I think they are carefully designed to be a moderate intrusion.

I went to a diet site that I was thinking about possibly reviewing and I found myself slightly offended by the degree to which the web designer had attempted to make the Google Ads look like content. I don’t want to be accused of hypocrisy, I have ads by Google on this blog. They are placed on the page in a very conventional way. I have seen a discussion in the blogosphere in which someone said that a page looks naked to them without these standard, unobtrusive contextual ads.

Anyway, I don’t put ads inside the body of my blog posts, even though that is an accepted practice. The website that I am criticizing has a landing page in which the title indicates that a list is to follow. The title even has a colon at the end. Immediately below the title are a series of ads. When the content starts below the ads, they are almost identical in size and format to the ads. It seems deceptive and dishonest to me.

Below the jump on this page is a long form sales pitch for the Magnetic Diet, which seems to be a scam.

I found an article that is a year and a half old expressing doubts as to whether YouTube can ever make money. A few points seem almost prophetic, and they were right about how much users would object to any major changes that would have to take place in order to turn the thing into a cash cow. I have to confess that I haven’t been paying close attention to all the little changes on YouTube. I saw a video title that seemed to indicate that a high profile user was upset about some kind of profit motivated change and I can’t figure out what that change was…

Ok, I did a little research “YouTube Becomes MoneyTube: Removes Non-partner Clips” is the gripe. Some people point to actions taken by YouTube as being commercially motivated. I think they decided to remove clips that their ‘Partners’ created before they became partners. I can understand YouTubes motivations and I can understand the users reactions.

Sugar Land, Texas is a nice place to live, according to Forbes and CNN. It is the headquarters for Imperial Sugar. This company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2001. It has since managed to turn itself around partly through smart business decision, downsizing and effective implementation of new technologies. Having a Texas politician in the White House may have been beneficial as well.

Another large sugar company is Flo-Sun, Inc. Its owners, the Fanjul brothers, make huge donations to politicians both Red and Blue. Their reward, in the form of their share of protective tariffs and price floors, equals approximately $65 million annually.

NAFTA may mean that Mexico will be able to step up sugar exports. I can only assume that lobbyists for the US sugar industry have the ear of government and that they are looking for ways to prevent that from happening.

This post is an example of me starting out with an assumption and then not finding any really interesting facts to support it. I find it interesting that the Fanjul brothers belong to two groups of people that are pointed to as being special interest groups that buy politicians. They are owners of a huge agribusiness and they are also Cuban Americans. They get to have two interests served for the price of one. It’s no wonder they are so generous.

I have heard several different success stories relating to online marketing and I have noticed some recurring trends. Often there is an engaging personality who creates something in an online social setting to which other people ascribe a value. At first there may be an informal non-monetized way in which the supply and demand is met within the original social network. And then a voice says “You should have you own website and have an online store!”

This voice might be inside the creator’s head, or it might be a friend or a fan.

I have actually witnessed one instance where the person in question ignored that voice. If you have heard that voice but you are having trepidation, take some time to look at the ecommerce hosting and cheap business web hosting solutions offered by AQHost. They are a design and hosting service with packages ranging from an amazingly affordable starter pack right up to corporate hosting.

All packages include an easy to use control panel. When you get a business level, you do away with a few limitations that are inherent in the starter packages. You get an unlimited number of email accounts. You get an unlimited number of FTP accounts. You even get unlimited MySQL 4 Databases. Money making websites range from eStores that sell homemade jewelry to paid membership sites that sell ideas and insider information. A merchant account with AQHost will mean that you can accept credit card payment from major credit cards. I was not surprised to read that 85% of transactions online involve credit card payment. If you have a business model up and running that does not accept credit cards, you could expect at least a 40% increase in business from just that one change.

I am not a gamer. When I read an explanation about why games cost $60 and will continue to cost $60, I was surprised. I am a parent who has successfully denied my children the basic human rights that are XBoxes, PS3s and Wii’s. I didn’t even realize how much modern games with high definition graphics cost.

$60 is a lot of money.

It is mind boggling to see the dollar amounts that are attached to social media sites. I have expressed my lack of appreciation for Facebook in the past. I have to admit that I am a unique individual who has never been much of a joiner. I am not a target audience. I am not a key demographic. I personally think that Facebook was overvalued in much the same way that YouTube was overvalued and MySpace was overvalued. I am very much a YouTube enthusiast, but I have been noticing a deterioration in content there as of late. Here is a video from Puppet Tom, a soft and conversive version of Tom from MySpace. He was congratulating YouTube on being bought by Google way back when, for about 1/10th of the value that Microsoft just applied to Facebook when it bought a small share for $240 million.

MySpace was bought outright by News Corp. who paid $580 million back in 2005.

I often get distracted by issues that have nothing to do with me personally. This is an example of one such story. I was actually doing a web search to verify the term discard as being applied to library books slated for donation or destruction. This was research in relation to my childhood exposure to novels. My aunt was a librarian and we occasionally got a box of discards from her.

This is an interesting post. I was writing as I did my research and I wrote all of this quoted text before I found an entirely different side to the story…

Earlier this year a librarian at a state run university in California became upset by the school’s plan to destroy 200,000 books to make room for a Starbucks. He created a website with the goal of communicating the situation and his opinion to a wide audience.

I am not surprised that an institution would plan such an action. These are books that have been in boxes for years and nobody has borrowed any of them for ten years. It makes sense to me to use the space that they are taking up for something that the students and staff will enjoy and something that generates revenue for the school and probably some employment for students.

If the assertion that they made no effort to donate the books is true, it is unfortunate. People with stronger views might think that it is shameful.

There is only one detail of the story that I find shameful. The school used a law to censor this librarian. It is against the law to publish the name of the school without permission. They threatened the librarian with criminal proceedings. He took down his website.

Here is a link to the floor descriptions for the library. There is no actual mention of Starbucks.

The librarian’s name is Bruce Emerton and I am not sure if the books still exist.

The source for an alternate viewpoint placed a comment in one of the blogs that has been repeating and amplifying Bruce Emerton’s alarm. The comment came right after a comment from Bruce himself that included his contact information and a link to a petition that is no longer there.

The other viewpoints are at MacManX.com and come from Bruce’s coworkers who dispute what Mr. Emerton says point by point. The most compelling part of their argument is the fact that the university is paying $70,000 per year to store the books in question. They assert that while they are in storage during the library expansion, normal procedures related to discarding books are ongoing.

I have to wonder how many people find this story and form an opinion based on only one side.

If you like making slick, short promotional videos, then Black Turtle Media wants your work!.

If you type ‘So Much Plastic’ in the search box on YouTube, you will see one of the short films that I made. As you can see, my work is not quite as slick and polished as it could be. Animation is supposed to have at least 16 frames per second to fool the eye and I think I was at about 5 for the middle part of this video. I also have trouble getting the sound levels just right on my videos.

The premise of Black Turtle Media is that they allow open submission of amateur promotional video. Many people are very tired of the advertisements that are produced by mainstream advertisers. I myself agree that they often lack imagination. More accurately, if one imaginative ad works, the industry spends about two years replicating the same idea to try and sell everything from beer to pregnancy tests.

If you want to make an iPhone video, go for it and send it to blackturtlemedia.com. They are even running a contest and the best video stands to win $5,000. For the contest, you can choose from these topics…the Apple iPhone, Halo3 or Decision 2008.

The contest is determined by voting from viewers. I watched a couple of videos on BlackTurtleMedia.com this morning. There is a real range as far as quality and creativity. I think a latecomer with a catchy video would have a good chance of walking away with the money.

I am curious as to whether the company and individuals that are being promoted are aware of this promotion. I am sure Apple and the Makers of Halo3 at least know about Black Turtle. I suspect that some of the Presidential candidates are not aware of this grassroots campaigning. Bear in mind that if a candidate does not officially approve of a message, they should not be held responsible for its content. That is, unless there is evidence of unofficial approval.

There was so much enthusiastic promotion of the iPhone in the lead up to its release and some of the videos on blackturtlemedia.com are prime examples of that atmosphere. Now that the products are in hand, user ads are taking a different tone. They are pretty cool gadgets and if I had one, I would use it for more than finding good calamari.