Life of an Internet Entrepreneur

Many of us who run businesses, especially small businesses, send gifts to our key clients each year during the holiday season.  The reason we all do this is because it is expected of us, but the real reason behind it is to improve relationships and even use this yearly event as a marketing tool.

So how do you stand out from the crowd and make your gift translate into the best return?

Make It Last

Often when I have used the Copy & Paste function I was stuck with frustration – I wanted to replace text somewhere, but didn’t want to lose the content I was replacing, or I wanted to copy more than one piece of information and be able to paste it elsewhere. 

 A practical example of this is imagine you have a username and password that someone emails you.  They are both long and filled with all types of characters (basically impossible for you to remember just by looking at it). 

In case you hadn’t noticed, bottled water has become quite a big business in the last 10 years. The larger an industry gets, the more time and effort gets put into packaging and marketing. Let us take a look at how the packaging and marketing can affect consumer decision.

As with any industry, it is always entertaining to start with a few facts.

Quick Bottled Water Facts:

• $11 Billion US Market
• Average American consumed 28.3 gallons of water last year
• 2nd most consumed beverage in the US (after soft drinks)

Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin has often said he would like to purchase XM Satellite Radio, the only other major player.  Today he may very well have gotten his wish.

Sirius would buy XM for $4.6 billion in stock, which gives current XM stock owners about a 20 percent boost on their shares.  The new company would have 14 million subscribers.

Under the deal, Mel Karmazin, the more charismatic of the two companies’ CEOs, would be the CEO of the new company, while XM Chairman Gary Parsons would retain his position in the new company.

The folks over at FaxZero don’t think you should have to pay to send faxes, and offer free (ad supported) faxes from your computer in a one-page form.  Faxes can be sent to any U.S. phone number (Puerto Rico included).  FaxZero has sent over 100,000 faxes so far.

File Types

You can type in text to fax or you can attach a PDF file, Microsoft Word (.DOC) file, or Excel Spreadsheet (.XLS).

Limitations

The free version of FaxZero has a two fax per day limitation.  You can also pay $1.99 per fax that doesn’t have any ads on the cover page if you wish.

Roto-Rooter, the largest plumbing service in the U.S., has opened up a sweepstakes to win a “Pimped Out John”.  This toilet, given to one lucky winner, will have all of the necessary (and quite a few unnecessary) tools for today’s man in this “war zone”.  According to Roto-Rooter, the average person spends 11,862 hours in the bathroom in a lifetime.  Needless to say, it would be a much more pleasant time if there were something to do.

 “The bathroom is the perfect place for your very own throne.  It shouldn’t always be regarded as the room of last resort,” contends Steven Pollyea, Roto-Rooter vice president of marketing. 

As one of the beta testers of Yahoo Beta, I’ve had the luxury of test driving new features  before the general mail users got to.  I was wondering when Yahoo Mail Beta would finally catch up to Google’s GMail in email features.  One of the best features in GMail is the ability to chat with contacts right from your inbox and keep a record of all conversations.

Yahoo Mail will be launching an integration of their Yahoo Messenger with the Yahoo Mail today.  Account owners will be able to now instant message right from their inbox and save all messages.

The head of Cartoon Network, Jim Samples, has just sent an internal memo stating that he is resigning effective immediately.  The cause of his exit is the aftermath of the marketing stunt for the network show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, which ended up shutting down half of Boston’s highways, bridges, and public landmarks.

Samples has been at Cartoon Network for 13 years and hoped that by leaving the embarrassing situation will be put behind.

Related Posts:

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Ad Companies Billed $2 Million By Boston

Bad Branding in Boston

While it sometimes seems the whole world has rushed out to buy iPods, including President Bush, I will wait quite a while (and maybe forever) before buying one.  Why, you ask?  What could possess me to turn my back on this fashion statement, this technology revolution, this “iPod Oblivion” as a New York Senator recently called it?

5. Everyone and their mother has one.

With iPods being sold at a rate of upwards of 40 million players per year (and growing!), pretty soon there won’t be anyone out there who doesn’t own one. You aren’t “cool” for using one, since by definition not everyone can be cool, but everyone has an iPod. The price of used iPods will keep dropping due to this, and you will be able to buy a used one for much cheaper.

YouTube has announced the winner of their “SuperVote” Super Bowl ad competition.  The winner was the Doritos “Live The Flavor” ad, which was created by amateurs at a production cost of just $12 (in contrast to the $2.5 million by Doritos to run the spot).

Here is the winning ad:

The ad has over 400,000 views already on YouTube, and it was just selected.

I personally didn’t think it was the best one, but it was fairly entertaining.  One thing I did like about the ad is that they figured out a way to show three qualities of Doritos (Spicy, Cheesy, Bold) in a memorable way.  I also have my complete review of the 2007 Super Bowl ads over at:
http://www.pinnycohen.com/2007/02/05/ad-reviews/super-bowl-ad-review-2007/