October 13th, 2010
It seems like just yesterday that two of my good friends came up with the idea to start a t-shirt search engine called Teenormous. I think it was 2 years ago that the site launched and it has already surpassed $1,000,000 in sales. Quite impressive.
The cool thing about their business model is that it fits pretty much every niche out there that has a variety of products. They did all the hard coding work for their proof of concept (Teenormous) & now that they’ve seen that site succeed, they get to re-use most of their code to build search engines for other niche products. Case in point: EveryCostume.com, a new Halloween …
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September 16th, 2010
Because of a blog post made a long while ago called “Is college necessary?” a lot of people write to me asking a similar but better question “Is college worth it?” Let me answer that question in a nuanced way.
I think education is a virtue. I think it is the swiss army pocket knife of human existence. You learn to use your brain and you can accomplish anything. You can be anything. You can overcome anything (especially disappointment at the hands of others).
Having said that, I think from an economic perspective (since that’s why most people go to college) the value of a college education is going down. Not only is there …
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August 30th, 2010
My friend Dee is building a website called The Best Degrees and one thing he set out to do when he started the site was to establish Points of Difference between the site and all the other run of the mill online college sites out there.
While the site is still waiting on a nice, new design, Dee has shown us one example of how he intends to create a Point of Difference: to make one of the biggest, baddest, most well-researched resources in the niche.
Case in point: A 7000+ word article entitled the Top 25 Online Schools in 2010.
It would have been easy for Dee to have just winged this project and thrown up an article …
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August 25th, 2010
After posting the previous article where I asked “What’s Your Internet Business’ POD?” I realized that post was a little thin and that I had a few more things to say on the topic…
So here are 5 things to consider when trying to establish a POD for your Internet business:
1. Visual Design and Layout
It shouldn’t be your only POD, but you can definitely set yourself apart by presenting a top notch design
2. New Angle On Information
Chances are that you have competitors. Chances also are that there is a standard formula for the navigation structure and content a site in your niche should have. There’s probably a reason for this convention. Don’t throw it out. …
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August 25th, 2010
I’m a big believer that POD is the key to success in today’s world of saturated online niches with an increasingly savvy and mature Internet audience. It’s no longer sufficient to just throw up content and hope your search traffic converts into clicks.
So you might be wondering “what the heck is a POD?” Basically, a POD is a point of difference… something that sets you apart. As a background, here’s a great new article with advice for establishing a POD for your internet business.
The idea behind a POD is to become useful to your audience. A POD not only makes your site more linkworthy (and thus authoritative in Google’s eyes) but it also makes …
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