Archive for the 'Business' Category

This past week I found a new “pay wiki” site, OneBuckWiki, who’s offering pages for $1 (until 1000 pages are sold, then it goes up to $10).

While this is a new concept for me*, I do see the potential.  But only as long as it is moderated, page owners offer valuable content (more than just ads and a bunch of videos or simple iframe inclusions of existing web pages, as those won’t be taken quite as seriously and will drive people away from the site instead of taking the time to look around), visitors continue to come well after the buzz has died down (and people have moved on to a “clone”) AND people are still willing to buy pages after it goes beyond $1…$10?, $20?, what about $100?.

But for a one time $1 payment I guess there’s not really a whole lot to lose. If you get any site traffic from it, it’s well worth the investment, right (as long as your page rank isn’t penalized for some reason, say if the “powers that be” don’t like the concept)?

Anyway, we went ahead and purchased a few pages to help promote Watershed Studio and Surge Bucket Media. (So far we’ve only had a chance to add content for the weird news page which promotes Squirrel Dish, Utter Oddcast and Utter Oddness.) We’ll see how it goes, and hopefully it’ll turn out to be worth the investment.

* Side note, it does seem somewhat like what you can do with Squidoo (for free),  but you have a whole lot more control over the content (which may or may not be a good thing depending upon the design knowledge of the page owners…that could be a decent business service though, probably under the guise of SEO).

• Small Business Summit 2007
  Tuesday, February 13, 2007
  Crowne Plaza Hotel, New York City
• The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
• Essential Tools Every Blogger Should Have
  Good suggestions in general, but…
  • Most laptops on the market will do (we personally recommend AMD 64 based machines), just stay away from the “crippled” chips out there (if it is a $500 USD laptop, there’s probably a reason for that)
  • Unless you’re doing a lot of design work (coding, graphics, video, audio, etc), two monitors would be overkill
  • Adobe Photoshop is an excellent product, but if you only need to edit photos, GIMP (open source, GPL) should do fine and there are other free or cheaper options out there
  • Of the WYSIWYG editors, Adobe/Macromedia Dreamweaver is at the head of the class, but give Nvu (open source, MPL) a spin first to see if that meets your needs (and budget)
  • Most digital cameras on the market these days will suffice, but the Canon DSLR’s are quite nice if you have that sort of budget and want to carry around a large camera
• Want People to Read Your Blog? Go With a Full Text Feed
• Zune Goes Discount, Contributes to $289 Million Loss for Microsoft
  Does any Microsoft product these days make an initial profit?
• Web Design Contracts: Why Bother
• 25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines
• WordPress Plugins: Bible Verse of the Day, Our Todo List & Share This 1.4

For advertising on the Watershed Studio blog we are moving away from Google AdSense and we are giving AdBrite a whirl. While AdSense does a great job of serving up relevant “pay-per-click” advertising, we feel it would be better to have the option of advertisers intentionally advertising on the site for as little as one day and at a set price.

If you’re interested in advertising on the Watershed Studio blog you have two options at the moment; advertising on the sidebar of the main page or at the bottom of every individual entry. For advertising information click on the “Advertise with Watershed Studio” link located in the advertising sections.

A few days ago I noticed the “K.B. Twister” mascot / logo on a loaf of bread from Kroger. I’m not sure if this is something new or old, but this is the first time this character caught my attention, so my guess is that there’s not much of a marketing strategy for its use.

I’m assuming that K.B. either stands for “Kroger Bread” or “Kroger Brand” or “Kroger Bakery”.

The logo depicts a character (made of dough?) in a baker’s hat, a sports coat, a tie (with the number 7 on it) and sneakers playing a guitar while standing on a sliced piece of bread.

I’m not sure what message they’re trying to convey with it or if it’s a successful venture, but it definitely goes into my file of “unique” marketing ideas.

Sony easily wins the largest business mistake of 2005 with their DRM strategy.

I won’t go into the details (you can find a good run down here), but the bottom line is that in an effort to curb the “ripping” of certain CD’s Sony decided it was a good idea to install malicious spyware on people’s computers without their knowledge. When you take into account that they’re doing this to customers who purchased the CD and that it can be defeated with a piece of Scotch tape, the only thing they’ve accomplished is to alienate their customers.

Way to go Sony! Whoever is on the PR end of this one is in for a fun time. And I can see additional lawsuits beginning to fly. (I’m just waiting for Sony to sue 3M for creating Scotch tape.) And if they think music sales are down now, I can’t image that this will help matters any.

The lesson we should all learn from this is to listen to your customers and not alienate them. If people want to listen to their music on their MP3 player, let them (especially if you have a division that sells MP3 players). Yes, something needs to be done to curb piracy, but spyware and lawsuits are not the answer. And with the society is going towards “open source” and “creative commons” licensing, it may very well come down to finding different revenue streams or going out of business.

Is it just me or is the new AT&T logo a bit too busy? I think it’s the dark blue curved lines “inside” of the logo that push me over the edge. Without them I think the logo would pack a greater punch. But keep in mind that this is coming from a guy who values simplicity in design.

In other related news, read about the AT&T / Cingular branding changes. It sounds like the communication company needs to communicate better in order to save both time & money.

It makes my mouth water for some cold leftover turkey. How about you?

This advertisement for Pampers Kandoo immediately caught my attention. While the colors used make it stand out, what really drew my attention was the frog wiping its rear. I can’t begin to imagine what behind the door conversations took place in regards to that. I personally think it’s funny yet not too edgy for the majority of the population…but I’m sure the people who like to complain about that sort of thing will.

To see the frog in action, be sure to check out the products section of their web site.

This Flash based ad is currently up on the Hallmark web site . The image just “pops” and has that homey feeling…and it makes me want to go find that house and hang out with whoever lives in it. Nice job guys.