Amazon Affiliate — A good source of income?

January 31, 2007  |  By Travis  |  Articles   

mit advertising lab

Last week, MIT Advertising Lab shared some stats on their Amazon Associate performance. Their blog features three hand-picked books every few weeks at the top of the site.

Many people use the Amazon Associate program and insert the recommended book widget into their blog sidebar. But you don’t hear much about how they’re converting, most likely because the majority of small sites that feature them don’t convert at all.

MIT is different. By displaying the books like they’re a part of the site and making them stand out, since November 2006, they’ve sold 116 books through their site. Yes, 116 books!

Even though Amazon only pays up to 8.5% of the book’s price, the amount that MIT has converted is still very impressive.

If you currently use Amazon’s affiliate program or have considered it, take a look at AdLab first and think of unique ways you can make relevant books stand out on your site.

Why did Bill Gates geek out on The Daily Show?

January 31, 2007  |  By Eric  |  Entreprenews   

And the answer lies right here… in the unedited footage of The Daily Show.

Bill Gates really is a likeable geek

January 30, 2007  |  By Eric  |  Entreprenews   

Bill Gates is no Steve Jobs when it comes to promoting and public speaking, but he really is more likable. Check out Bill Gates on The Daily Show promoting Windows Vista. And jet packs. And robots.

2007: Year of the movie

January 29, 2007  |  By Travis  |  Articles   

Hollywood

If ever there were a year to have a bit of faith in Hollywood, this could be it. Some of them are flashbacks from our childhood, others sequels, trequels, and quadrequels (?!?). Whatever they are, they’re sure as hell to collectively bring in several billion bucks when all is said and done.

Without further ado, here are 10 of the biggest movies of 2007, in no specific order. (RSS readers, visit YGG to see all the trailers on one page)

Keep reading…

The feed rankings on YGG

January 29, 2007  |  By Travis  |  Entreprenews   

medals

You’ve probably seen the Feeds page on YGG. The goal of that section was to create a ranking system for entrepreneurial blogs and help some lesser known blogs get a bit of publicity and linkage. We integrated an aggregator so you could see a few posts from the top 10 of 20 blogs. To be honest, the aggregator was quite slow and buggy at times.

So I just made the call to scrap the app and make it a simple list ranking YGG’s Top 20 Entrepreneur Blogs based upon Technorati and Alexa’s rankings.

Now, we need more feeds to track. There are tons of entrepreneurs that visit or contribute to YGG. Many of them have their own entrepreneurial blogs, as you most likely do. So send us a link to your blog or post it in the comments. If you don’t have one, send us a link to a blog you enjoy reading.

We update the list each week and would like to track a few more dozen blogs so the competition heats up a bit more. Bring ‘em on!

What’s the American media have against Canadians?

January 27, 2007  |  By Travis  |  Articles   

Times Square

Many people reading this haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing what I’m about to share. Our overseas visitors most likely have, and I sure have. Being Canadian, I’ve always considered myself an arm’s length away from the US. We’re virtually the same in all aspects of business, life, and entertainment.

But for some reason, the American media, specifically online media, has something against Canada. For the past few years as multimedia has grown and video has become standard practice, I’ve come across many big media sites that reject me like a stuck-up supermodel.

I have a few examples of these sites, which when trying to view a video tell me that I can’t see it because its only available in the US. Frustrating? Very. Especially when I have to sit there through a 30 second or 1 minute pre-roll ad only to be hit with an availability message. I’m good enough for you to charge advertisers for, but not show content to? We’re on the same continent damnit!

Keep reading…