I partook in a small but interesting discussion a while ago about how bad local data is out there. Not just bad, but also impossible to clean up.

I’ve been taking the time lately to go back through iBegin and ’scrub’ our data. As it happens, the raw data we purchase is far from perfect (duplicates galore, mis-categorizations, etc). It is essentially a ‘risk’ we take. But that isn’t the end of it - even franchises suffer from big problems when it comes to local data.

Case in point: McDonald’s. You cannot get a more recognizable name. But do note its name - McDonald + ‘ + s. Not McDonalds, not Mc Donalds, not MacDonalds, or the other dozens of varieties.

So while we went through, pass-by-pass (basically you create rules, ‘run’ the rules on the data, tweak the rules, and then re-run) through our data, I wondered what my esteemed competition was upto.

Looks like not much. Checking them out:

• InsiderPages. IP couldn’t even handle the single-quote. It did local McDonald’s, so I guess we give it a pass
• Yelp. I found McDonalds, McDonald’s, McDonalds Restaurant, and other variations. A few of the clickable links had a link to the official website, but most did not.
• Google Maps. A bigger mashup than all the rest combined. No standardized name (Whats a Restrnt), some are categorized, most aren’t. No link to the official website.
• TrueLocal. A few results, various spellings, no link to the official site except for the first link. Interestingly if you click on the first result, it shows you many more McDonald’s listings. Those are accurate, but why aren’t they in the default search results?
• Yahoo Local. Correctly spelled and all results link to the main website. Perfect

Really my point here (amidst the connections in my brain) is that if companies cannot even get the data on the largest franchise in the world right, how are they going to cover data on small businesses?

Its a mind-boggling problem.

Who needs to monetize with ads when you can just sell the entire site!

I remember seeing the site, BeTheBot.com being linked on Digg’s frontpage. I saw it, shook my head, and moved on. An idea implemented many times over many years, it just seemed like another shot against Digg.

And so when I came across the beforementioned link today I let out a hearty laugh. Basically what happened was as follows:

• Domain registered on Feburary 14, 2007 to Kavi Siegel (cvxdes)
• Website and content put up that very same day.
• Domain gets dugg that same day also.
• Three days later, domain/site gets sold for $500

The really interesting thing about this is because of domain tasting (ie you can get a full refund minus 25 cents on any domain within 5 days) our friend Kavi would have been out only 25 cents (plus some of his time).

I’ve decided to jump on this bandwagon - digg this post so I can sell it (just this post) …

I recently purchased a site from the SitePoint Marketplace (incidentally I left them some suggestions that they should *really* implement). Anyway, a day after I bought a site, I had two people separately message me on AIM. Their intent? To sell me a website.

I wanted to smack these people. And it wasn’t that they wanted to scrounge up more potential buyers (neither actually linked to an SP post) … nope, they were trying to get around the fees. I don’t often want to reach through a computer screen and smack someone, but this was one of them.

Another reason not to publicly post IM contacts.

Continuing from my earlier discussion on why startpages are so important.

The problem with the current corp of startpages is they are too damn confusing

I just headed on over to Netvibes and it made my head throb. There are so many potential choices it made my head spin. Modules, feeds, six different searches (’web search’ vs ‘classic web search’), dozens of links, Mini API module … it is completely overwhelming.

Then each module itself has all these inner tabs - four tabs for web search, four for images, four for video search. Wasted space in the form of ‘Netvibes news’

Startpages that cater to parasitic users (eg early-adopters) are doomed to chase feature after feature. By focusing on ‘normal’ users they have the ability to really create a connection with these end users.

I originally bought the domain iBegin.com for a startpage. I had seen some JS examples of modular windows being moved around, and it was extremely thrilling. Problem was I took too long, and before I knew it, Netvibes had arrived on the scene, and I was still getting the machinery moving (really a blessing in disguise - iBegin as local search is where I want to be). To that end, when we had specced out what we wanted, our core goals were the following:

1. Simple. We were not going to mention the word RSS anywhere. We were going to have some fixed RSS feeds, and thats it. There would be a module for search that would default to Google (and then users could edit that if they wanted).
2. Connected. The end goal was to have a static url for every user that they could access. Eg http://www.ibegin.com/ahmedf/ or http://www.ibegin.com/ahmedsmama/
3. Different audience. The hardest part, but we wanted to aim towards people who couldn’t care about fancy and instead wanted stability and usefulness. Eg my mother or my father. I would create them a startpage, ‘lock’ it (so that modules could not be accidentally moved/edited), and then set it as their startpage. Every day they would open up to a startpage that had quick links to where they wanted to go, weather, ability to perform a quick web search, a quick product search, place to scribble notes, access email, and (for my father) news links. I wouldn’t even mention the words module, API, feeds, or anything like that to them. By forcing a static url on them, they could go traveling and still have access to all their links (only having to login to edit notes).

You can even see the design we had formulated (click to enlarge):

The current crop of startpages are simply too damn confusing and complicated. I actually hope 37signals could maybe join the fray and create their own startpage

Every day, I get more and more scared of Google. Not in the sense that they are going to suddenly remove me from their rankings, but by how much they shape the internet experience.

A lot of people still think the Internet Explorer ‘e’ icon is the internet. A wizened reader (like you) knows that is absolutely ridiculous. But scoffing at behavior exhibited by millions is a foolhardy exercise (just ask all the domainers making millions because a ton of people insist on writing out domains).

Using the Internet Explorer example, to many the internet is Google. While IE ’starts’ the web, Google ‘is’ the web. The entire internet experience consists of going to familiar sites (ala cnn.com, espn.com, etc). For many the place where their actual internet experience starts is Google. Very strong brands like CNN and ESPN can stand on their own - others must be found through the internet.

So it is with that thought that start pages have the power to be so painful. Any time someone becomes an active user of a website, they essentially invest (their time) into that site. The more a person uses that site, the less likely they are to leave. One can argue that there are superior alternatives for social bookmarking, but the undisputed king is Delicious. Sure exporting bookmarks is easy, but who wants to go through that burden?

So going back to start pages - when a person starts using a startpage (such as NetVibes), and customizes it, and becomes more comfortable with what it does (and doesn’t do), the inertia created is massive. I could pull a superior homepage (faster loading, easier on the eyes, new features super easy to switch), but the amount of people switching over would be minimal. This trend of course applies to anything software - I still use WS_FTP95 for my FTP needs. It bases everything off of C:\ (the ‘root’ is not the desktop), but hell - it works for me, and I cannot be bothered with the newer FTP programs.

So the ‘winner’ of the startpage race will have a lot of weight to throw around. Lets say tomorrow the race is over, and NetVibes is the winner, with 50 million users. These are users that have set NetVibes as their homepage. 50 million people whose daily ‘introduction’ to the web is this one website. Instead of seeing ESPN, they see Yahoo! Sports. Instead of seeing weather by AccuWeather, they see weather by Weather.com. Just imagine if Yahoo! was the default search instead of Google - the revenue from the resulting searches would be a damn lot. Enough to pay NetVibes to make it worthwhile. After all, blind tests show Google, Yahoo!, and MSN have relatively equal searches - most people wouldn’t even care much.

But (and you know this was coming) … every single startpage sucks. NetVibes, Page Flakes, Protopage, Google’s, Yahoo’s - they all are complete crap. I’ll explain why … tomorrow

Thats right - I said it. When it comes to the web, a woman is a better worker.

This isn’t a debate about how men and women are/aren’t equal (they are unique). This is about how, from my own experience, I find that women employee have the following advantages:

• Lack of fuckwadness. It isn’t by accident that Penny Arcade’s example of an internet fuckwad is a male. In the wonderful world that is cyberspace, egos are easily inflated beyond what they should be. Women in general are far more calm and stable. Women who play MMOs are especially well versed in keeping calm.
• Communication. NLP has taught me that in a conversation, the meaning (context) of what you are saying is comprised of three elements. The least significant (at roughly 7%) is the actual content of what you are saying. Email, IM, messageboards - all of them are heavily dependent on text being written. Women are more adapt at discerning and interpreting right, and also at conveying what they are thinking.
• They are women. This may seem like an odd one, but being a woman online can make things easier. Whats more interesting - a man earning $10,000 a month from AdSense, or a woman? In an area dominated by men, just being a woman gets you attention. Having such an asset is well … an asset to your business

The above are just three reasons I have found women to work very well. I should add a disclaimer that this is only my own experience and opinion, and at the same time, I still employ more men than women. And yes there are women who exhibit none of the above, and there are men who exhibit all three of the above. I’m just telling you what I see.

You can ask the savvy website operator about what would be their biggest nightmare, and the usual replies will be along the lines of: “server crash”,”hack attack”,”Google bans me”,”get sued”, and so forth.

Yet none of the above matter if you are not making a cent.

A great majority of advertising-supported websites (especially ‘web 2.0′ sites) rely on AdSense. If they were to ever construct a P&L statement, the entire revenue segment would consist of AdSense revenue. The entire strategy is to pin a leaderboard + rectangle + one more spot on the site, remove borders, blend into the site, and voila - revenue is had. Some pin their hopes on a ‘premium’ bringing in money, but most over-estimate the number of people that will actually subscribe.

This is somewhere between high dangerous and insane. Having all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

Jason Calacanis was a smart man when it came to his Weblogs Inc network. He immediately knew that to make any real money, he had to build out a sales force. So while he trumpeted the fact that AdSense was making them over $1,000,000 a year he also noted that AdSense was secondary:

AdSense doesn’t reach the level of display advertising ($3-12 CPM) and it never will…

If a sales team (or even person) is still a bit of a stretch, it is prudent for you to look into affiliate sales. You have to consider what CPC is - the advertiser is spending time and money in bidding on a keyword. So the profit per click must be significant enough to warrant the price being paid per click (basically the ROI has to be worth it). In the case of CPA, the time advertiser spends much less time on the sale. So the profit per sale can be less (as the advertiser has less time to expense on each sale). Furthermore, the upsell in CPC is far more difficult than in affiliate sales. Lastly, in any market, there is always more than one advertiser (metaphorically - a basket). If one causes trouble, you can always go to the next.

If the above paragraph is confusing - read it again. And again. CPA margins are higher, ’selling’ on CPA is easier, and you have more than one basket - always a good thing.

We do (and are in the process of doing) what I have said above. I would say more than 50% of our revenue is CPA based. What is fantastic is for the same niche, Google CPC is roughly 15 cents. With CPA, it is roughly 43 cents. And click rates are higher. Our CPA CPM is roughly 4.5x more than Google CPC. In fact, we even have some pure CPA sites (no banner/rectangle/skyscraper/etc ads) that have tremendous CPMs.

AdSense is a good place to start, but it should not be your only (or even primary) source of revenue. To build a strong advertising-based business, one must fully look into assembling a sales team and the CPA model. Not doing so is being negligent to your business.

Since I started blogging, I have been pretty consistent blogging at least once a day. But this weekend is a getaway for me, which means no computer/blogging for me.

Its important to take breaks from this frenzied connected world

I’ve been using StumbleUpon (for advertising) since roughly May/June of 2005. I’m very happy with the quality of traffic coming in, and it is also nice seeing feedback from end users.

At the same time, the system is a bit convoluted. It isn’t easy picking one category out of a hundred (figuratively), and so my monthly spending is likely around $20-$40 (when I am willing to spend much more).

So I was actually glad when about a week ago a Ms. Brooke from StumbleUpon emailed me yesterday. She said that she sees that SU users like our websites (we have a roughly 70-80% approval rating), and that she has extra SU categories to suggest that would be a good fit.

That made me happy. I was willing to give them more money, but I had no desire to go through their crummy interface. So after a bit of email back-and-forth, I basically said I was willing to spend $500 a month on SU advertising and we can go from there.

I didn’t hear anything for a few days, and then I got a nice little generic message from their VP of Marketing. He let me know that Ms. Brooke was no longer with SU, thanks for your business, and continue to use the self-advertising system.

I was absolutely confused. Here was a chance to increase your revenue from a single advertiser from a paltry $150 a year to $6000 a year (or even more, $500/month was just a testing amount). The effort on their part was minimal. And its not like they didn’t read our email correspondence - it was a straight reply from my last email.

Stuff like this just makes my shake my head.

UPDATE 15 minutes later: I had emailed back conveying my confusion. I got a nice little one line reply again telling me to just do it myself.

I keep hearing about how great and fantastic and wonderful Yahoo! Answers is.

I have to ask - has any of the lauding pundits ever tested the site out?

First off, a lot of the ‘questions’ on the site are not even questions - just random musings or inflammatory trolls. A real question? Quite a few aren’t even close to that.

Of the remaining legitimate questions - the answers have nothing to do with the question (or they get it completely wrong). People are absolutely stuck up on getting more points and points and levels and levels. Case in point - Is there going to be a baseball game for the nintendo wii not including wii sports? The two answers are totally off base. The first one is nothing more than a comment. The second one is offbase. It took me literally 10 seconds to find Wii Sports games - and there it is, listed by Konami.

This isn’t the first time. Yahoo! Answers is less Q & A and more ‘Post random thought/question and watch everyone pile on to boost their points’. My favorite question was someone asking how tall the CN Tower was - 11 people answered exactly the same. Nevermind Google has the answer as the description in its first result, I can only imagine what the 10th person who answered was thinking.

I will concede there are some legitimate questions. But by and by, most of the answers are absolutely retarded and contribute zilch to the actual answer. Yahoo! Answers should just be renamed to Yahoo! Messageboards