The Online Advertising Game
June 26, 2007
Buying advertising space on the Internet is becoming easier, thanks to a bunch of small companies that offer electronic exchanges where advertisers can bid for space on a host of websites all over the world.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:18 AM,
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The Long Tail
June 19, 2007
The topic for our book club this month was The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. It provoked a pretty interesting conversation.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 9:13 AM,
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The Four-Hour Work Week
June 14, 2007
I've been reading The Four-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. It's very engaging - smart and full of good stories and good humor. The book's argument - that you can run a successful business by working only four hours a week - is mind crack for any busy entrepreneur. Ferriss makes the idea seem plausible.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:15 AM,
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Should You Buy a Second Home Before You Retire?
June 13, 2007
"Retirement home sales are growing," The Wall Street Journal reported recently, boosted by purchases by young buyers who are still decades away from retirement. One example: Daniel Markle and Sandra Bauman, who spent 20 percent of their retirement savings to buy a cottage on a lake in upstate New York.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:22 AM,
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Chinese Capitalism ... Book Clubs ... and Dandelions in Detroit
June 7, 2007
- On PBS the other day, I heard an interview with a press correspondent who had just written a book about China's modernization and growing capitalist economy. He said that although there have been many positive changes in the standard of living for many Chinese, he sees "fault lines" in the political system that worried him - though he didn't say what exactly he is worried about.
China is an interesting country with a huge, increasingly capitalist economy and an old-fashioned, bureaucratic, centrally controlled government. Another story on the same PBS program talked about the former minister in charge of food and drug regulations, who has been sentenced to death for taking bribes from Western countries.
- Have you ever thought about joining - or starting - a book club? If so, you would do well to follow the model created by Steve Leveen.
Steve is the founder and CEO of the Levenger company, the well-known vendor of reading and writing "tools," such as desk lamps and memo books and fine pens. I joined his book club about three years ago - and we discovered that we have a lot in common: a love of fancy cars, competitive sports, good books, and writing.
In addition to contributing ideas to AWAI's catalog-copywriting program, Steve has written and published a very good little monograph on reading called The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life.
As a business leader and book lover, Steve has the skills to run good book club meetings. Although I've never asked him how he does it, here is what I've observed:
1. He doesn't try to do too much. We meet only once every other month, and most of our books are less than 400 pages. Keeping the amount of the reading manageable is important when you are dealing with busy businesspeople.
2. In choosing titles, he asks for suggestions but he makes the selections himself. He knows that it would be time-consuming to try to get a group of successful, headstrong people to agree on any one thing.
3. He mixes it up between fiction and non-fiction. Many businesspeople I know pride themselves on reading only non-fiction. I've always thought that was foolish. By mixing it up, Steve's been able to open some minds to fiction - and, in fact, our best discussions are usually provoked by the fiction books.
4. He makes sure everyone has input into the conversation. (Usually, this means keeping me from dominating it.)
- One of the problems Steve faces in running Levenger is that he has to deal with inventory. Because he sells hard goods, his inventory is limited by the cost of warehousing his products. That is changing, he told me. He is looking into the possibility of customizing and manufacturing his products on demand.
On-demand manufacturing will become a reality for all sorts of products - certainly information products, but also hard goods like the leather-bound calendars and notepads Steve sells. By customizing the inside of these items according to the customer's inclinations and binding them in the quality materials Levenger is known for, Steve can offer infinitely more product choices to his customers without using up extra warehouse space.
- Steve told me that he realizes he has been "asleep at the wheel" as far as customer contact is concerned. "One of the things I do well and most enjoy," he said, "is talking to our customers about new products we are developing. I have a knack for explaining why these products are so great - and when I occasionally write little letters to them, we always get a good response."
"You are the founder and CEO of your company," I said. "Who better than you to talk directly to your customers? They want to hear from you, and you want to speak to them. That sounds like as good a combination for communication as you can get."
- "Ninety five percent of the science and engineering Ph.D.s who graduate from American universities are from China, India, and other countries," a friend told me. "And as soon as they are done with their studies, we send them back to where they came from. Even if they wanted to stay here, they couldn't because of our immigration laws. If we were smart, we'd hand each one an American passport along with their diploma."
- A good friend recommended that I see Journey's End, a new play on Broadway. "But you'll have to see it soon," he said, "because it's closing the night of the Tony's. Nobody wants to see great dramas anymore. Everybody wants to see musicals and comedies."
- PBS ran a story called "Stealing History" about the trafficking of protected antiquities and art. The practice can't be stopped by chasing the robbers, the reporter concluded. The way to stop it is by going after the buyers - such as Christie's and Sotheby's.
Nobody stopped to ask why there was a black market in the first place. Nobody stopped to wonder if it made any sense to "protect" art by making it illegal for foreigners, who treasure it, to buy it. It seems to me that if you want art to be preserved, you want it to be in the hands of those who will take the best care of it. The people who will do that will be the people who value it most - and the people who value it most are the people prepared to pay for it.
A free and open and international market is the answer, not ridiculous, chauvinistic rules and regulations. This is the same kind of idiocy that prevents orphans from being adopted by foreigners.
- Florida, the state I live in, made a ton of money from real estate taxes during the real estate boom. Now some legislators are taking the lead in lowering taxes, because property owners are being driven out of the state and into localities where the cost of home ownership isn't so high.
In June, Florida's legislature will meet to slash as much as $30 billion in real estate taxes over the next few years. There will be resistance from municipalities that have enjoyed the benefits of all the extra revenue, but there is a strong push by real estate developers, brokers, and the general public to bring down the taxes. A recent report by Goldman Sachs estimates that homes in Florida are still 40 percent overvalued and likely to fall 10 percent to 15 percent this year.
- It is important to admit that you have committed theft ... that you have committed adultery ... that you have lied ... that you have hated others ... and that you turn from such sin. "However, even more important that this is to discover the fact that your heart itself is dirty and evil." This is the message that Pastor Ock Soo Park preached in a full-page ad in The New York Times.
His church, Good News New York Church, is growing in leaps and bounds, thanks to his bizarrely written advertising campaigns.
The secret of forgiveness of sins and being born again, he says, is to recognize that you are essentially "filthy, dirty, and evil" and that you cannot have redemption until you surrender yourself to his church. "Most people dwell within the frame of their own thoughts," he warns. And that sometimes keeps them from accepting the truth of "the word" when "the word" contradicts rationality or common sense.
Of course, Pastor Ock Soo Park, like most born-again Christians, doesn't believe in rationality or common sense. That, he says, "is a product of a flighty, dirty, and wicked heart." What you need to believe in is the word of the Lord. But not in your own interpretation of God's word, in Park's interpretation. He has been granted the power to know what God wants, and what God wants is for everyone to know how horrible and ugly they truly are. "If you could see into your neighbor's heart like you can your own, you would feel so disgusted that you would not want to see that person again."
- A new law allows the Venezuelan government to shut down media groups for 72 hours if their coverage incites people to engage in violent protests - and President Hugo Chavez closed the country's oldest television station recently because it "lacked respect for the Venezuelan people." RCTV has been openly critical of the president since he has come into power. It was, apparently, the only private station in Venezuela to criticize Chavez after he took office.
- "When I see dandelions, I worry," Sylvia Hollifield, a long-time resident of the West Outer Drive community in Detroit told The Wall Street Journal. Hollifield is talking about the condition of her neighbors' lawns. Several of them have been forced to sell their homes, and several more are having financial trouble because of rising property taxes, insurance costs, and mortgages payments.
Over the past several years, the newspaper reported, seven of the 26 households in Hollifield's neighborhood have taken out sub-prime loans (loans to borrowers who don't qualify for loans from mainstream lenders). But instead of using that money to hang onto their homes, most of them used it to "pay off credit cards, do renovations, and maintain an appearance of middle-class fortitude amid a declining local economy."
"This has stripped us of our whole pride," said April Williams, one of the people facing eviction. "There's going to be no people left in Detroit if they keep doing this to them."
Nowhere in the article was I able to find who "they" are and what, exactly, they are doing. Did Williams mean the press that promoted the borrowing boom, the banks that made the sub-prime loans, or she and the other people who were foolish enough to take them? Which is more undignified: Lending money to people who can't afford to pay you back? Or throwing away any home equity you've created by taking out loans for non-productive expenditures?
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:28 AM,
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The Most Common Criticism of Business Books
June 6, 2007
The other night, I got on Amazon.com to check out a few new business books. The professional reviews are always positive; the reader reviews always mixed.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:18 AM,
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Would You Buy Christian Blue Jeans?
June 5, 2007
CP a born-again, gospel-preaching professional I work with, stops by my office to ask me what I think of his new wife's idea for a business: Christian-themed blue jeans. "She's very excited about the idea," he says. "Can you spend an hour next week meeting with her?"
"Before I do that," I say, "tell me what you guys know about selling jeans."
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posted by M. Masterson @ 8:16 AM,
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