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.
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.
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)
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!
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!
I came across a pretty cool idea on Advertising for Peanuts. They plugged a blog called Donate Your Coke Rewards. The idea behind it is that anyone can e-mail the codes they get in their Coke bottle caps to Stu Thompson, the person behind this website. He then combines all the points he receives, cashes them in for a Coke prize, and donates it to a needy child at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
If you were to try to do the same just with your own points, you’d develop a serious addiction to caffeine with all the Coke you’d have to drink. But with hundreds or thousands of people sending in a couple of codes every now and then, it can add up pretty quickly. Most of the time we just toss the cap out if it doesn’t win an instant prize, so simply typing the code into an e-mail in benefit of the hospital sounds like a pretty damn good idea to me.
This idea could be huge if a simple website was created that allowed you to enter a code for all of the latest promotions from the big junk food companies. It has a good story to help get some media attention and could really generate tons of gifts for numerous hospitals and charities.
I don’t see Stu’s contact information on his blog, but if you were to post a comment on any of his entries I’m sure he’d get back to you. If anyone would like to expand on the idea post a comment here and I can try to get in touch with Stu myself.
During the airing of an episode of the Iron Chef, a YouTuber was keen enough to TiVo the show. What he caught was a very sneaky play by McDonald’s. Many call it a miscue of an ad by the Food Network. Nah, this wasn’t a mistake. This was some good ‘ol subliminal advertising. Sneaky? Yes. Effective? Of course not.
If the corporate identity and tagline of McDonald’s trigger Pavlov’s salivation, your taste buds are dead and you need to get out more.
Check out this clip of Paula Abdul completely schnocked doing a Seattle Fox New interview. It’s actually painful to watch as she obliterates her already obnoxious public image.
Back in 1997 an article written by Mary Schmich was published in the Chicago Tribune. It was an instant cult classic. Two years later, a musical version of this essay was recorded by Baz Lhurmann.
You may have stumbled across this video/song, literally, as I have seen it a few times on Stumble Upon’s video site and thought you guys might enjoy it.
The essay itself is quite powerful, but set to a music track accompanied by video, many consider it brilliant.
