Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
It’s funny – when we think of every day software that increases our time management and productivity etc, we’re always thinking of actual applications and utilities. Extensions that limit the time you spend on social networking sites every day. Programs where you can map out everything you do, or schedule your whole day out for you in 15 minute increments.
But there’s really so many other things that can increase productivity, and you never really think about it. One of those is Pandora.
I was introduced to this back in September, and it was’t until this morning that it dawned on me what a time saver it was. No more spending time downloading new music to iTunes, sorting out playlists etc. No more spending 5 minutes in the morning just figuring out what music I wanted, or what playlist to go with etc.
I simply click Pandora, and choose one of my predefined stations and I’m off to go.
Funny all the little timesavers we have like that, which we never really think about. So thanks Pandora – you probably save me a good few hours a year, and it’s worth it.
Duh.
Every month, I aim to launch at least one new website. It’s always a nice progressive feeling when you do that, as you’re opening up yet another potential avenue for earnings.
There was one domain I’ve owned for years related to the F1. Let’s call it F1Domain.com. For about 4 years, I plan on launching an F1 site and never got round to it. With the F1 season starting in March, I decided this was the month to launch it. I got the beta design set up, I hired out the content to a friend who knows F1. Everything was great.
Went to set it up on the weekend….
I don’t own the domain.
I first checked my domains list in Google Drive and it wasn’t there. Headed to Godaddy it wasn’t in my account. Then I went straight to the domain itself and saw content and a website that was clearly not ran by me. Crap – did I let it expire?
Nope – I never even registered it in the first freaking place. Searched my e-mail and no record of it. Checked the domain records and it was first bought in 2012. So I guess I must’ve did a search for it, found it was available, THOUGHT I bought it but apparently didn’t.
Amazing.
Thankfully the .net and .org were available, and it’s an EMD not a brandable domain so not the end of the world. Still that kills me as I’ve got a friend who runs a similar site and I kept telling him I was going to launch F1Domain.com once a month for the past few years. Then of course I go to launch it and I don’t even bloody own it.
What a tool.
Viral Attempt:
Made an attempt to go viral last week, when I produced this article:
Winter Olympics 2014 Hockey Tournament Simulated by NHL 94.
Unfortunately it didn’t work out as good as it should. I was mostly aiming for linkbait. It got about 10,000 unique visitors and about 30 natural backlinks. Of course I was hoping for 10x that! But it’s not all bad. Got the backlinks, got some new followers and even got some depositors out of it!
Plus of course, the learning experience. There was two key things I learned from this, which were:
Less is More: In this case, I put waaaaay too much effort into it. I mean I spent hours editing in all the players, then video taping every game, then recording the highlights and uploading them all. THEN putting them all in pretty little boxscores etc.
People didn’t want that. They just wanted to see the results of the simulation, and maybe a graphic or two. Out of all the visitors, less than 1% actually clicked through every link. Meanwhile, over 85% of them actually clicked on the final bracket and final results. I was afraid to half-ass it, but in the end all I was doing was asking too much of the user. Frustrating too when Reddit brings in over 7000 views and you get just 55 upvotes from it. The potential was clearly there.
Gambling = Bad: I was hoping that the stigma over gambling websites wouldn’t affect this, but sadly I was wrong. I shared this with all the major sports outlets, and I spoke to a couple of prominent writers at 2 separate major sites. The sort of sites where if you got a link or a tweet from, you’d have to stop to do a jig.
Both of them told me that they loved it and they’d love to link to it. One problem: they just weren’t comfortable linking to a website related to gambling. So something to think about if you do something like this. I know if I was doing it again I’d put it on a different website, and then once it goes viral throw some links in to the website I actually want to promote(or even 301 it!).
Oh, and I did learn a third thing:
Don’t Drink On An Empty Stomach: You’d think being 33 years old I’d know this by now. Sigh. From Saturday afternoon till Tuesday night last week, I probably put about 30 hours of my life into this. By the time I was finished it was such a relief that I grabbed myself a strong rum and coke at about 7pm. Then I had another. Then I realized I hadn’t had dinner yet. Then I had another. And another. And then many more.
I ended up getting absolutely obliterated. I wanted 1 or 2 celebratory drinks to congratulate myself, and I ended up just absolutely smashed. Worse – I rarely drink pop, so that 1 litre of coca cola added to the hangover, and I found myself laid up for 2 straight days just absolutely dead.
Smart move.
Anyway – that was pretty much a wasted week but that’s okay – it’ll just spur me on to make this week the most productive week of my life.
Rock on.
This article was written on February 17, 2014 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
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