The great thing about those seasonal websites is that once you get started, you can build on them again each year.  The best part is that you already have a presence, so you’re not starting from scratch with SEO or PageRank.  If you have some ideas for Christmas that you haven’t started yet, get them started this weekend!

For example, last year I built SantaCalled.me.  It’s a website I’m very proud of because of the excellent feedback and testimonials that I’ve received from it.  Essentially, parents schedule a phone call from Santa Claus, and at the right time, they receive the phone call and are given instructions to pass the phone to their children.  After the call, they receive an mp3 recording of the entire call that they can share with friends and family, and save forever.  It’s also a great way to snoop on what your kids actually want for Christmas!

This year, I’m expanding on and improving on the website from last year with a new design, and better features.  I’m very excited to launch it again!  I’ve also started adding on to the idea by building SantaMail.us, which is a website where you can generate a letter from Santa Claus to send to your children, and it’s 100% free.  There are lots of other paid services that do this (and I link to them!) but I’m hoping this is a great service that will be appreciated by a lot of parents, and it will be a great way to refer sales to SantaCalled.me!

What are your Christmas ideas?  It’s a great season to get involved and try to add something new and unique – and make some money!

I’ve found that developing a product is the easiest part of the job.  It is the part of the job that I’ve understood and believed in the most, and therefor it’s the easiest to accomplish.

The biggest surprise I’ve had since starting my own business, was that the most challenging part of my new job would be learning how to become a successful rainmaker.

Rainmakers Need To Create Clouds

I knew that working for myself would be lonely at first, but I figured that would be from a lack of co-workers.  The true loneliness of being an entrepreneur is the image of yourself, with a product you feel massively enthusiastic about, and realizing that at first, nobody is around to hear about it.  Sure, you’ll start out telling friends, family, and business contacts, but at the beginning, it feels as though the world does not know you exist, and your greatest fear is that they may never notice.

In order to gain the eyes and ears of the world, you have to become a rainmaker.  The secret of being a good rainmaker, is to fill the sky with saturated clouds, ready to burst into rain when a lightening bolt of news strikes.

This is the stage I’m in now, and it’s a frustrating process.  I’m sure you know the typical strategies to drive interest and traffic to your product.  Being reviewed by TechCrunch, and other influential niche blogs is very effective, but they can’t be your only strategy.  The best rainmakers have the power to create storms of interest because they have positioned themselves as an expert, or thought leader, in their field.  I believe in some ways, this is what drives the popularity of Twitter, as so many of us strive now to be recognized in our fields, so that we may become more effective rainmakers.

They Sky Is Full Of Clouds, But No Rain

Being an entrepreneur can start to feel hopeless.  Like most entrepreneurs, I have an intense belief in myself and my products.  I know I’ve created something unique, and I’ve started planting seeds in order to build a buzz, but it can feel like the process will take forever.  While I build relationships, blog on topics I’m knowledgeable on, and establish myself within the niche community, I know I’m saturating the sky, I can see the clouds overhead, but it still won’t rain.

I belive this is the time where you have to proove your worth as a rainmaker.  The clouds are in the sky, but you have to continue building layer upon layer of relationships and excitement.  You have to plan for the spark, and for the chain reaction that will create a bolt of lightening, and you have to plan on things not going according to your plan.

Be Patient, And Keep At It

Launching a successful product is as much about the product, as it is about timing.  If you’re doing a good job creating relationships, and building buzz, and the product still isn’t launching, then be patient.  Sometimes you have to work on the environment itself, and to begin to promote your niche as well.  One good example of this, is the way Andy Beal has become such an advocate of Reputation Monitoring.  While his product Trackur is a great product, Andy sees that the market for his product will never be large enough, unless he grows his niche with his own bare hands.  Learn from this, because sometimes the reason rain isn’t falling for you, is because the conditions just aren’t right.

Don’t Lost Your Patience!

When it feels as though the world may never notice your product, there is a temptation to go big, and to start waving your arms in the air for attention.  A review in a big blog, even if you have to pay for it, may seem like your only hope.  While I can’t tell you that this won’t work for you, there is a good chance your traffic will spike, but that there won’t be enough clouds in the sky to create a real rainstorm.  For me, I like to plan for slow, sustained growth that climbs to the right.  Be patient, and your company should eventually grow to be as strong as you know it should.

I’ve written this most as much to inspire you, and to continue to inspire myself.  I’ve become very interested in rainmakers lately, so if you’ve read any good books on the subject, or know anybody who would be willing to be interviewed on the subject, please let me know.

In the future, we will all become micro-affiliates.

We are beginning to openly allow our activities to be tracked and monitored. For now, I am not referring to “big brother” style government monitoring, but activities we allow to be public, such as our interests, where we get our information, where we spend our money, and who we know. This information is obviously very valuable to marketing companies. Currently, advertisers are able to target our activities through contextual advertising, but it should seem obvious that contextual only begins to scratch the surface of effective marketing.

In the future, we will demand that the marketing we see is targeted to us.

If you are working online, you know your time is becoming very valuable. We are already using RSS feeds and subscriptions to filter out the information we need each day, and using social networks to keep up with our friends activities and interests. We use product reviews and comparisons to decide what we should be buying, and read specialized blogs to find out about new products on the market. Current contextual advertisements work like magazine ads, anticipating our interests based on what we are reading, however there is potential for advertisements to be much more cerebral.

Facebook attempted this with Social Ads (even applications took Facebook data into ads outside of Facebook), however they received a massive amount of backlash for showing personal product recommendations from friends without their consent. Most people were upset about this because of their privacy, however I think they should reconsider. Social ads are a great concept, as long as the people they use are being compensated with affiliate commissions.

In the future, we will help companies recommend products

When you connect our personal interests, with what we purchase and how we rate those purchases, you get information that is not only valuable to marketing companies, but valuable to other people. We are all accustomed to looking up product reviews before we purchase a product, but even those are often hard to find and hard to trust. When I purchase a product, it would be invaluable to be able to see reviews from people with similar shopping habits and interests to myself. In addition, it would be even more valuable to be able to connect with that person, and to chat with them about that product before I bought it.

In the future, we will want to help others purchase the products we recommend

The only way that we would want to give this valuable information about ourselves away, is if we are paid to, as affiliates would be. Companies should be more than happy to share revenue in order to market more efficiently. We should be able to earn micro-affiliate commissions through our shopping habits. We should be able to increase those commissions by offering product reviews. We should be able to increase our commissions further by actually making ourselves available to answer questions about products we buy.

The future is soon, so who’s doing this?

The next generation of cell phones will allow us to use GPS, the internet, and RFID to combine real-world activities with online research and tracking. The infrastructure will be there to allow online marketing techniques to follow us out into the real world – when we want it to. A company like Google, who is already a specialist in contextual marketing, could be the company to turn us all into micro-affiliates. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It makes good business sense that one day, they should organize our consumer habit information, and make it accessible to others – for a commission, please.

The online culture has always trended towards the FREE. Low manufacturing and distribution costs for digital goods and services cause the consumer to demand low (or preferably no) prices, and an abundance of low cost (or preferably free) labor through open source software and outsourcing reinforce those low costs. Unfortunately, this has created a business culture which is foreign to practically everyone, where classic business rules seem not to apply.

The FREE model is not being executed correctly.

Most FREE services look at traffic as their eventual monetization strategy. They offer their service for FREE, to make their adoption and conversion rates as high as possible, and plan to monetize their networks by adding advertising and subscription models once they reach critical mass. While this strategy is working well for a company like YouTube, which is now able to monetize their huge traffic with in-video ads, it is a failing strategy for most companies going down this road. It is the culture online right now that fame precedes fortune. Many entrepreneurs dream of having their name behind an instantly recognizable service, and assume that once they have the traffic and users, monetization will come naturally.

It is the culture online right now that fame precedes fortune.

It is a mistake to look at the eventual monetization of YouTube videos, and to ignore Adwords. Google acquired YouTube in 2006, and by allowing Adwords advertisers to publish ads on YouTube videos, Google is able to gain massive secondary revenue beyond the advertising revenue YouTube earns through the placements themselves. These new ad units have created an entirely new channel for Google, and as YouTube videos move from the browser to the mobile phone and television set, this ad channel will draw more advertising dollars through Adwords. Simply placing ads or a subscription model onto your massive traffic network isn’t a great strategy without a secondary revenue model.

How the FREE model should work

If you’re planning to offer your service for FREE, you’d better come up with a secondary way of making money. Your fantastic free service has the ability to grow very fast, and you should have a secondary business ready to use this free traffic for referrals and to monetize it. This model is used very well by mobile phone companies, who give away FREE cell phones, and make money through the service plans. As the company who created a great free service, you can use the attention of your customers to cross-sell them into one of your paid services, to sell B2B services, etc.

How does Twitter make money?

In my opinion, Twitter doesn’t have to make money. Obvious, the company who created Twitter, stands to gain quite a lot as the creators of an iconic service even without monetizing the service itself. It would be a mistake if Obvious were to currently focus all of their attention on how to monetize Twitter directly through advertisements, a business Pro version or subscription model, or through data plans to bring Twitter onto mobile phones. While these are each possibilities, Obvious stands to benefit more by adding new money making services next to Twitter, or by leveraging the infrastructure needed to run Twitter to sell B2B services. There are numerous secondary businesses which Obvious would be at a huge advantage to launch, building on the success of Twitter.

The current state of FREE is killing business development online

Hank Williams, blogger at Why Does Everything Suck? argues today that the FREE model, funded by VC investments, is killing the ability for online business to grow and develop normally. The “grow now, monetize later” strategy allows VC funded companies to give away for free, what a normal small business startup would charge for. Without a secondary model for earning money, these VC funded companies are often unable to monetize their services, and eventually enter the deadpool.

Sarah is still trying to help the children at her school in Nairobi, even from home.  She has set up a request with GiveMeaning.ca to collect just $400 in donations to help aid the school.  In order for GiveMeaning to even start collecting donations, Sarah must collect 100 votes from people indicating that her cause is worthy of our support.

If you are interesting in voting, please go to  http://www.givemeaning.com/proposal/canadianinkenya and vote.  You do not have to donate any money, simply show your support so her cause can be seen by those who will donate.

Hello Friends and Family,

As most of you know, I was recently in Kenya, volunteering at a small school in Nairobi. I had to leave prematurely and have since been dedicated to raising funds to build a kitchen and to wall in the compound, as well as raise awareness of the conflict currently in the country. We had attempted to get charity status in Canada (we already have this status in Kenya) but have run into roadblocks here, given the current state of affairs there. I implore you now to help me in my fight to protect the wellbeing of these children, who are innocent victims in the conflict. You can help by agreeing that this is a worthy cause and by telling all your family and friends the same. We are a global community and together we can incite change.

Thank you,
Sarah

Thanks for your support!

On the affiliate marketing and web start-up side of life, I’ve had a very successful October, with Poker Underworld, Kill The Zombies! and Toronto Maple Leafs Info all having good months, with Santa’s Arcade and my new startup, Keyword Envy ready to launch in November.

I’d love to start attending affiliate conferences to meet other like-minded online marketers who are launching their own startups, and to network and find out the best possible ways for me to promote my products.  It’s also a good way to figure out what everyone else is doing so I can avoid it and try to stay a step ahead!

Zac Johnson is promoting his contest to give a free pass to a lucky ready of his great affiliate marketing blog.  He recently posted some tips for CPC marketing which were very interesting to read.  I’m testing some campaigns using his suggestions right now and while I’m still waiting to break even, I have certainly learned some good techniques that I had not considered.

On a personal level, I had a great time at the yearly Martyn-Bessette Halloween party in Beeton and it was one of the best ever.  I finally had a chance to try out my Burger King alter-ego and everyone really outdid themselves with the costumes this year, especially Wes who not only fell off of his front porch in his 15lb (each) wooden robot shoes, but also fell face first into his front bushes.  I also had a fantastic birthday last week and was able to toast 30+ people with drambuie at midnight which might be a record so far.

Jasmin has recently started a new job, and today I set an exit strategy in motion to leave my daytime job after 6+ years maintaining online bingo networks.  It’s sad to go, but there are so many things I’d like to do online, and so much knowledge I’d like to pass on in the future working as an Interactive Director or similar position that I’ve been finding it hard to stay motivated at work.  I’m looking to find something new, or start going back to school, by Feb 1st.

While going through old files, I found a collection of screenshots I had taken on 9/11 of major news websites. On the anniversary of a day that is starting to seem so far away, I get chills looking through them.

I remember taking these screenshots on that day in disbelief – as newspapers scrambled to keep everyone informed, they were forced to shut their websites down and upload these unformatted stories instead. I managed to get screenshots of statements from the airlines, the White House, and Red Cross as well, but most chilling of all are the screenshots of the World Trade Center webcam broadcasting it’s last image from the observation deck, and one more no longer broadcasting at all.

This is osmotic expression; this is the feeling that something is only worth doing when it is difficult or has a reason. Like love songs that are only written when your heart is broken, and revolutionary thinking that only happens when you are oppressed, the winter is the perfect time for expression because when you look around you, the city is baron.

The cosmic irony in the seasons is that I spend the winter at my most creative, longing for the potential of the warm summer months ahead, and by the time they arrive I am so free from the confines of winter that I cannot see the potential I longed for and normally waste it.

I am looking forward to the winter. There are ideas to develop, new surroundings to inhabit, and friends to enjoy. I hope I start writing again, I feel sick for it.

What I’m really upset about is that around Novemeber 17th 2005 I wrote to CokeMachineGlow.com with interest in writing for them, and never got a reply. My sample reviews included The Ghost is Dancing, and now they’ve review the CD. I’m just saying a reply would have been nice.

And yeah, it makes me feel like they saw my review and did their own – at this point Online Epiphany was the first site to review them, in fact a google search for “The Ghost is Dancing review” brings us up #1. OE has even been quoted in other sites for the review. It just all leaves me feeling bad.

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Akron/Family live. As Jasmin described

“That was the best $12 we ever spent!”
–I couldn’t agree more–

The show began with the local Great Lake Swimmers, who were very enjoyable and had me longing for an empty room, or a long lonesome drive through the night. The songs were touching and well written, and I had the pleasure of meeting Tony Dekker between sets to tell him so. Definate favorites were “Song For The Angels” and “I Saw You In The Wild”.

Akron/Family took the stage unexpectedly. As they set up, the drummer began to tap almost out of boredom. Playfully, the rest of the band started to join in with birdcalls, shreiks, and excitement until they each grabbed their instruments and worked themselves into an animal-like frenzy. Their album is brilliant and spastic, with interludes of pure NOISE in unexpected places, but their live performance is almost childlike, and was really fun to be a part of. As they fumbled from “song” to song, occasionally finding melody and lyrics, the crowd really got into it. This was one of the “dancingest” shows I’ve been to in a long time.

Near the end of thier set, the band ventured into the crowd and settled near the center, directly beside us. They broke into a chant that eventually had the entire crowd joining in and clapping, stamping and singing. Apparently their tour has just begun and I highly recommend them to you!