Last week I hit 30,000 emails in my gmail inbox.

I’m adding messages and attachments faster than Google is increasing the storage limit — I’m up to 43% of capacity, compared to 31% in August of 2010.  Eventually I’ll have to do some cleanup.

Is email volume accelerating?

Nerd stuff.

-Nick

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Dear Firefox,

I’m sorry it’s come to this, but it’s over.  We’ve been together for 7 years, through the good times and the bad.  It’s been real, but it’s time to move on.

It’s not me.  It’s you.

We really had something special, but you’re smothering me.  Left open for more than an hour, you become a serious resource hog.  I tried to get help, with the Memory Fox plug-in, but even it couldn’t stop your insatiable appetite for RAM.

Yes, I’ve started seeing someone else.  I believe you’ve met; her name is Chrome.  I know, I know, I’m worried about Google’s plans for world domination too, but Chrome is just so much faster.  I resisted her advances for years!

I hope you’re able to get some help on your eating disorder.  Seriously, it’s not healthy.

Maybe we can stay friends?

Yours,

Nick

-Nick

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Did you create a Google+ account?  Have you logged in since?

I just logged in the other day.  It seems like only a few people are posting anything, and half of them are Google employees.

-Nick

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I received a letter this week from the Internet Corporation Listing Service, or ICLS.net.  The letter is a solicitation for “Annual Website Search Engine Listing,” and it asks for $65 to be mailed to 303 Park Avenue S #1073 in New York.

Please don’t sent any money to these people.

For $65, your ICLS subscription includes:

• Domain name submission to 25 “established” search engines.
• Quarterly search engine position and ranking reports for 8 keyword/phrase listings from 25 “major” search engines.

These services have about zero value.  “Submitting” your site to search engines stopped being necessary over 10 years ago.  Nowadays, search engines actively spider the web looking for new sites and content.  How can you tell if your site is already indexed?  Just search the domain name in the search engine, and see if your site comes up.  Easy.

Even though it is completely unnecessary, if you insist on submitting your site, there are several companies that will do this for free so you can at least save your $65.

Keyword ranking reports are good to see, so you can track changes over time and measure the success or failure of your SEO efforts, but again, there is no reason to pay ICLS for this service.  There are many other options that probably provide better information for free.

The other problem is that even if the site-submission and keyword reports had value, there are not 25 “major” search engines.  There are only 3 major search engines — Google, Bing, and Yahoo, which together account for 94% of all US search traffic.  (And Microsoft’s Bing now controls Yahoo’s search results.)  As a rule, if no one’s heard of them or uses them, they can’t be considered “major.”

Here’s a red flag taken from the sidebar navigation on the ICLS.net website:

Yeah, if it wasn’t obvious enough already, the links to AOL, Lycos, AllTheWeb, HotBot, and AltaVista should be a dead giveaway this company is not worth your time or money.

To their credit, ICLS does make it very clear their letter is a solicitation.  They put in bold type, “You are under no obligation to make any payments.”  Now you’ve done your homework and know better than to fall victim to the Internet Corporation Listing Service.

And Now For The Business Nerds

The ICLS.net letter was sent Presorted Standard mail.  How much might this company make?

• A bulk mailing permit costs $190 per year, and each letter costs about $0.27.
• That means in order to breakeven, ICLS needs more than 1 customer in 240 to mail in their $65 payment.  That would be a response rate of 0.4%.
• A response rate of 1-2% for unsolicited direct mail is considered “good.”
• Let’s say they get a response rate of 0.6%.  I can’t imagine they get 1%, given their terrible reputation in the search engine listings (ironic for a “search engine” company, no?) and the semi-web-savvy customers they are mailing to.  (I would argue domain owners are probably smarter about this stuff than your average citizen.)
• And let’s say they mail out 250,000 of these a year.  The letter says this “offer is provided to millions of websites”, but I own several domains and it’s the first I’ve heard from them.
• 250,000 x .006 = 1500 customers.
• 1500 customers x $65 subscription fee = $97,500 in revenue.
• 250,000 x $0.27 postage = $67,500 in mailing expense.
• $97,500 – $67,500 = $30,000 in gross profit.
• Now rent at 303 Park Avenue South in New York can’t be cheap.  Even for a small space, it’s probably at least $2000 a month.
• That only leaves ICLS.net with $6000 to pay for envelope stuffing and the overhead associated with running their keyword ranking reports every quarter.
• However, the beauty of the subscription model is hopefully (for them) customers stick around year after year, without the big mailing expense for subsequent renewals.
• Still, I have a hard time seeing how this is a big money-maker.  But it must be profitable if they’re still sending out solicitations.  Maybe their letters convert better than I’ve estimated or they’ve got a better mailing rate.  Or maybe they send out more than 250,000 letters a year.  Definitely an interesting business model, although a dying and scammy one.

-Nick

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I occasionally check my Gmail spam folder to see if anything got mis-filed as spam.  And this morning I was surprised to see an email from Google AdWords in there.  I checked it out and it was legit.

Funny how two departments at the same company can be not on the same page and even in conflict with each other.

-Nick

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Next time some one asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, but could easily find out, you should refer them to the best website ever:

www.lmgtfy.com

It’s like Ask Jeeves, only more useful (although slightly less polite).  Pretty simple interface and very helpful.  Curious why more people haven’t caught on to this.

-Nick

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It’s really interesting to look through the Google Analytics data for this site.  My favorite feature is the Traffic Sources > Google (organic).  It lists all the keywords people entered into Google and found my site.

The Top 10 for 2010:

1. how does restaurant.com work — As of this writing, I rank first for this query!  Which says to me Restaurant.com is doing a crappy job explaining to potential customers how it works.  Sadly, no one has bought any of their gift certificates through my site.
2. marriage tax penalty — I used to rank higher, but I’m still on the first page.  I’ll probably get booted soon as more current articles on the subject get published.
3. strategic default california — I wonder how many of my underwater neighbors I’ve encouraged to walk away from their debts.
4. funny usernames — See, they’re not all serious.
5. jack bauer one liners — Lots of 24 fans out there.  Another #1 rank!
6. samuel adams — It’s all Google image traffic.  Apparently lots of people need pics of Sam Adams.
7. nick loper — Yeah.
8. xm radio scam — Based on the volume of inquiries, XM is doing a fine job of pissing off current and former customers.
9. cashless society pros and cons — Some professor must have assigned a paper on this.
10. mlb beat the streak — One of my personal faves.

And some of the more entertaining ones:

• best fake band names
• biggest bubblegum bubble in the world
• standforchristmas.com
• googleplex gift shop
• people that have died because of kim bauer
• giant otter pops
• new harry the husky
• no such thing as baby carrots
• swimming pumpkins
• dick’s drive in t-shirt
• jack bauer is gay
• nacho fountain
• pronunciation of chowder
• simpsons leftorium
• storesonline scam
• how to stop strategic foreclosure — (um, start paying your mortgage again!)
• we didn’t start the fire lesson plan
• a shih tzu is my homeboy shirt
• ancient demons
• fish stories in the bible
• hiking hangover
• i’m addicted to chewing gum
• impossible mario level
• lesbian wedding invitation
• trash the dress
• a field trip to the landfill san francisco
• adsense strikes again
• against marathon commercialization
• amazon pays taxes where they have wharehouses
• ancient nicks
• arabic sneeze
• are yellow lights dangerous
• art of strategic foreclosure
• bakersfield is the carrot capital of the u.s.
• bellingham real estate bubble
• best buy refuses to mention christmas
• best foods mayonnaise jar hard to open
• built ford tough training
• business slang
• cal noughton jr.
• california fell into ocean
• car tag is jesus 1?
• christian response to strategic default
• combat infantry badge “”what the fuck have you done with your life”"
• cool names for a fake country
• cooler shoes
• dealership scratch off scam
• demons in the black death
• destiny’s child fake
• diabetic shoes in paducah, ky
• dine in only meaning
• do actuaries work in jetblue
• don’t be fooled by the crocs i got
• don’t want this jesus fish
• draw with mr. sketch markers online
• drilling for oil in ashburn, ga
• endless puppy love
• expectant mothers education
• flying giant hairball
• focus on the family nick
• football mascot interview
• franklin templeton free gift cow
• frog fully rely on god license plate frame
• funny beer jesus fish car plaque
• geo metro owners
• girl scout cookie conspiracy
• googleplex hq artwork sea creature
• grammar cooler
• grandpa simpson on history
• griffey memories
• gum addiction meetings
• gum improves brain
• history sneezing
• how come someone can be attracted by a restaurant
• how do they select jury duty in dayton ohio
• how does what the dog saw relate to relate to economics
• how expensive is myrrh
• how long are peddlers license good for in nc
• how long for an otter pop to freeze
• how many calories in wyler’s authentic italian ice
• how the baby carrot grew
• how to move fish in a car
• how to scam xm radio
• how to win on bidray
• i thought married people saved money on taxes
• ice police in norcal
• incredible picture lab
• interesing nicks
• is “”strategic default”" immoral christian
• is crunch proof headphones commercial real
• is frozone from the incredibles based on shani davis
• is jack bauer gay
• is mlb beat the streak real
• is shoesrus.net legit
• is storesonline legit
• jesus fish car game
• jorge washington
• lame nicks
• landfill texas giraffe
• lobsters niche
• math nerd blog
• mochi the shih tzu
• most common swear words
• most otterpops eaten in a minute
• naked bay to breakers
• partial zero humor
• physics of the stop sign
• poll “”why do you hate the ducks”"
• stereotype of mercedes drivers
• what happens at teatro zinzanni?
• what is el seis de mayo
• worst license plate holder
• اللعنة جيل كامل يضخ الوقود يخدم طاولات

Good stuff.

-Nick

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When Gmail was first introduced in 2004, Google offered an unprecedented 1 GB of storage but announced their intent to display ads alongside user’s emails based on the content of their messages.  Even though the system would be completely automated and computer-driven, this caused some privacy concerns over a third-party “reading” private email correspondences.  In the end, it didn’t stop people from signing up, and Gmail quickly became a huge provider of web-based email.

Gmail’s rise inspired this analysis from The Oatmeal:

But lately I’ve been trying to pay attention to the ads Gmail shows me.  In one sense, the ads represent what the best and brightest think might be relevant to me.  And what I found was that their contextual advertising model still has a long way to go.

This “Seguro de Auto” ad was what first caught my attention.  I had probably just emailed our florist in Cabo, writing in Spanish.  So one Spanish email out of 20,000 messages means I must be in the market for car insurance.  Interesting.  And unless my gringo translations were really bad, I thought I was writing about flores, not autos. Check that, one of the messages did mention picking up the flowers with a rental car.  Ok ok.

In the Wrong Tax Bracket category:

In their defense, they didn’t think I could afford my own private jet, so they only pitched the fractional ownership plan.

Haha, I can’t figure out what paperwork I need to file with California, so maybe I should just go offshore.

That’s a good return, but the fact they have to advertise it makes it seem a little shady.

Getting warmer.  Now if fractional jet ownership is still out of my price range, maybe I can afford to rent one at these low, low hourly rates.

In the Pretty Random category:

A fully automatic trash can, just what everyone needs.  Was it an electronic invoice from the garbage service that triggered this one?

Should I know what SpyFu is?  I didn’t click to find out if it’s worth $69 a month.

What?

Is this intended for school administrators?

In the Facebook Stalker category:

Is this worth paying money for?  It’s probably just your “friends” right?

In the Wrong Gender category:

I do get a lot of fashion / shoe-related ads though, as a result of 30+ shoe stores emailing me their specials every week.

In the Wrong Occupation category:

Really not sure what I wrote about to get this one.

In the Wedding Planning category:

Ooh Isla Pasion sounds so exotic, pero they were a little late.

In the Post-Wedding Planning category:

Not quite ready for that yet, but the free diaper bag is a nice touch.

In the Wrong Age category:

Sorry, not AARP-eligible just yet.

In the Marketing Marketing category:

I can speak from experience, cold calling can work, but door hangers don’t.

These penny auction sites are so hot right now!

In the Is That Even Possible? category:

Really, learn French in 10 days.  For $9.95.  Right.

In the Scammy Internet Biz category:

If I were to hire a “Life Coach” I would hope they had more than just 16 hours of training and a $997 “certification.”

In the Time for a Career Change category:

Yes, it’s been a rough year, but certainly not rough enough to pack up and go to hair and nail school in St. Louis.

In the You’ve Got Me Pegged category:

Not that I’m looking for investors, but an ad aimed at small business owners is appropriate.

Sounds pretty sweet.

Yes! Definitely clicked on this one and bookmarked the coupon.

Sounds cool, I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m in Chicago.

Awesome, I’m ready!

Pay attention to your Gmail ads.  You might find a similarly surprising compilation of who Google thinks you are.  But I think these are a good example of the present-day limits of contextual advertising.  As time goes on, I expect the algorithms will get better, and the ads will become more precisely targeted.

And maybe by that time I’ll be ready for that private jet.

-Nick

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This falls squarely on the love side of my love-hate relationship with Google.  To create a new Ad Group in AdWords, it takes one click.  In their second-rate competitor Microsoft adCenter, the same action takes 9 clicks.

How to Create an Ad Group in Google AdWords:

1. Name your ad group, create your text ad, type in your keywords, enter your bid, and click “Save.”

How to Create an Ad Group in Microsoft adCenter:

1. Name your Ad Group and click Next to get to the next page
2. Click the button to create an ad
3. Click to save your ad
4. Click Next to get to the next page
5. Type in your keywords and click to add them to the keyword list
6. Click Next to get to the next page
7. Type in your bid and click “apply”
8. Click Next to get to the next page
9. Click “Finish” to save your Ad Group

Both systems collect the exact same information, Google just does it 900% more efficiently.  Come on Microsoft!

-Nick

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Last Friday I wrote (mostly positive things) about MyRegistry.com.  On Monday morning I got a LinkedIn invitation from the president of the company, and a request for a phone meeting to discuss areas of improvement.

I agreed, and we had a quick conversation yesterday, and I offered my feedback both as a customer and an affiliate marketer.  There was never any pressure to remove the negative comments (I felt kind of bad… I’d actually softened the negative part of the title of the post last week but forgot to hit “save” in WordPress), although she did think our registry was just created as a sample.  I had to tell her, no the wedding’s in a month and yes we’re serious about those Husky jerseys!

I surprised to get any response at all — I certainly wasn’t looking for one — and even more so for it to happen so quickly.  Beyond that, MyRegistry had already implemented a “keep me logged in” feature in direct response to one of my points.  Very impressive!

But I’m not exactly The New York Times, so how did they find my blog post?

The tool they used Google Alerts.  It’s super-simple to set-up, and you can get daily email alerts whenever someone mentions your name / company name / brand name / topic of interest online.  Since this post also mentions MyRegistry.com, they’ll probably read it too. Hi again!  And I’m guessing Dana from DepositaGift.com, who commented on the original post, also discovered it through a Google Alert and will likely be reading this as well.

But getting the email alerts is only half the battle.  The hard part is reacting and engaging in a conversation with the people talking about your company.  It’s not easy, especially when any Joe Schmoe can set-up their own blog in a few minutes and flame the crap out of whoever they want.  But an honest person-to-person connection can go a long way.

-Nick

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