Category Archives: Whatever

Old = Expensive. Especially cars.

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So this morning I was driving my 1978 Merc Coupe to the office, when my fuel cage suddenly dropped to 0, and I ended up pushing the car to the side of the road. Ok, no big deal, I have a 5l jerrycan for situations just like this. Unfortunately, I forgot to fill it up after I took out the petrol for the lawnmower last week!

Ah well, got a lift to the nearest petrol station, got my jerrycan filled up, and drove to the petrol station again to fill up the car. While I was there, I figured it’d be a good idea to pump up the tires, and top up the engine oil. So I spend $120 on petrol, $50 on engine oil, and a fiver for a can of red bull (yes, terrible idea for breakfast, I know!)

After pouring the engine oil in, I went ahead and tried to close the bonnet, when I heard a SNAP! somewhere – crap. So now, my bonnet somehow leans to the right hand side, and wont close properly anymore. Had to drive it to the nearest garage going 30k/h on a 70k road, because all I had was a shoestring to hold the bonnet down! Figured I might as well let them do a service on the car, seeing it hasn’t had one in a few years now.

I have the feeling I’d better bring in an extra credit card when I go pick it up…

When Dot Com Is Dot Apple

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With the news that businesses will now have the opportunity to snap up brand-specific Internet domains through ICANN’s latest gTLD program, no more will domain squatters have a strangle hold on the dot com. That is, if companies have the cash to fork over 200 grand for their brand. Let’s face it, owning Bob dot bob could be a game changer, but the cost may be prohibitive.

The ICANN gTLD “dot brands” are the most recent convention being talked about on the World Wide Web, the move gives some companies the chance to use an internet domain that is specific to their brand name, meaning companies such as Pepsi or Nike will no longer be limited to using a .com or .org domains. Instead, they will be able to host their online operations on .pepsi or .nike domains, and etc. And, experts say that the gTLD brands offer a number of advantages, such as a better (branded) experience for customers, as well as obvious SEO benefits.

Stomping on the competition

Who's looking out for the little guy? - Courtesy © laurent hamels - Fotolia.com

ICANN has announced that there will be a three months grace period, during which businesses will have first option to register domains specific to their brand name, from January until April next year. A $5000 deposit is made, then when the dozens of pages of documentation are done, and the red tape crosses – Bobsrealty dot property can own a very powerful brand. Dot Branding, as industry insiders term it, will probably be changed forever.

However, there has been criticism from some quarters about the scheme, particularly regarding the costs of registering a gTLD. With application fees in excess of $185,000, plus additional fees likely to follow, the dot brands have been lambasted by some as nothing more than a money making scheme for ICANN, who have priced small businesses out of the equation. For the medium sized business, an article on Search Engine Journal suggests a solution however.

SEO and SEM expert Ann Smarty, reported on the latest ICANN initiative, and in so doing mentioned a couple of companies on the leading edge of Dot Branding. One, VAYTON Brand Capital, offers an interesting service for new DotBrands. In short, a way around the excessive costs thanks to special intellectual property rights legislation in Luxumbourg. According to Vayton, companies can essentially take tax incentives for their Luxembourg registered brands, and use these to “auto-finance” their new domains. For those who do not know, Luxembourg offers some of the strongest protection laws for intellectual property assets in the world, not to mention tax savings of up to 80 percent for businesses operating from there.

Companies like Vayton, Dot Brand Solutions, Brand Shelter, and many others have loads of information about these new domains. For those whose companies rake in enough to “save” $200,000 in tax write-offs in Luxembourg, it might be a good idea to contact VAYTON. As for the rest of us? At least we won’t have to worry about domain squatters, but then me operating out of Bob dot microsoft probably won’t happen – EVER.

I leave you with video from ICANN which explains a bit more about these new gTLDs.

Be aware of angry customers

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One of my WordPress plugin projects, StreamWP, has recently launched a new version, and I notified all existing customers via the streamwp aweber list.

Not only did we re-write the plugin from scratch, we also updated the site, the payment system, the download system, and the support system. One big overhaul, in order to increase customer satisfaction.

We use UserVoice as our ticket support system, and absolutely love it. Response times are much faster, we don’t lose any tickets, and we’re building a dynamic knowledge base, every time we awnser a question.

Anyway, I’m getting side tracked here. The point of this post was to demonstrate, that no matter how hard you try, there’s always gonna be people that are impossible to please. And they even feel the need to try and ruin your business, by writing up bad blog posts about your product. – (mirror)

This particular customer opened a few tickets, asking for a download link of the new 1.5 version, to which she would be entitled if she had bought the full plugin prior to this update.

So ten days ago, I sent her this as a reply to her ticket, with download link #1 (screenshot)
Then, 9 days ago, once again, I reply to her second request, with download link #2 (screenshot)

I get no reply, but three days later, she decides to throw around the SCAMMER word on our suggestions board. I removed the comment there, and didn’t get a screenshot of it unfortunately. I sent her an email following that, asking wheter she did or did not receive her new links yet. No response. So I figured, I’d add her to gtalk and ask her there. No response.

Then today, she triumphantly leaves spam on the suggestions board again. This time with a link to her bad review about not only StreamWP, but also a completely different plugin we created which she’s bought previously.

Angry, angry woman!

Anyway, with this blog post, I hope she receives a pingback, reads this and figures out that we really did try and get in touch with her, on numerous occasions.

Third Tribe Marketing Review – Worth It?

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ThirdTribeMarketing is a collaboration of some of the bigger names in the IM world.

Darren Rowse
Brian Clark
Chris Brogan

*Aaron Wall gets mentioned on the About page, but I’m having a hard time finding him anywhere on the site and forum.

I stuck around for three months, hoping and expecting to find some good stuff – instead I just wasted $141.

Having a quick poke around, it seems the forum has or had 3472 subscribed members (that’s the last number I tried adding to the URL – /members/forums/member.php?u=3472 -, which doesn’t return an error “Invalid User specified.”

Here’s a quick guesstimate of what the owners/founders of 3rdtribe have made in the last six and a half months since people signed up at the end of February 2010.

3472 members * $47 = $163184. And that’s if they all just paid for one month. I’m pretty sure you can multiply this number at least 3 or 4 times (6 months – people canceling/subscribing ratio % blahdiblah…) to get the total income unglued media has made from this community so far.

I guesstimate +- $500.000

Not bad for a simple forum eh?

Ah, but is it worth it?

In my opinion? No. The seminars are nothing new, pretty much all that is being said is available on one forum/blog or the other. The amount of seminars is poor. There are no dates listed on the seminars page, but I’m guessing there’s roughly one or two 60 minute sessions per month.

The WOW factor which drags people over the line to subscribe for $47 is definitely the possibility to rub shoulders with the IM celebs in the forums. Nothing more.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I guess it all depends on what side of the field you’re playing. If you have the name, the credibility, and the following, why not make more money? But if you really think the 3rd tribe crew cares about educating you in the ways of IM, wake up. They hunt for profit and the weapon of choice is ignorance.

Your recipe for success; You take a handful of IM celebs, throw in a dash of “unique” content, create an “exclusive” club, and a whole bunch of gullible newbies/wanabees. Let it stew for a few months and profit.