Bum Marketing Blog

I’m on a bunch of mailing lists, as you can imagine.  Some of the lists are pretty quiet, some are too noisy, some only promote junk and some only promote pure gold.

My favorite lists, are the quiet ones that only promote gold.  I got this little nugget from one such list:

Information + Overload = Confusion

Confusion = Procrastination

Procrastination = NO MONEY!

It’s a very true formula.  I have been held to it at various times througout my “online marketing career.”  I’ve found that the less that I read, the less overload I have, the more money I make.

I’ll be paring down my list subscriptions, again, here in the next week or so.  I bought Stompernet’s Stomping the Search Engines 2, and got a bunch of bonuses as a result.  Some of the bonuses looked good, some were not as good and were quite frankly junk.

As a result of my little bonus-palooza, I ended up signing up to way too many lists.  As a result of which, I now have too much information and am once again, frozen.  Alas, he point is, that you need to focus on making money, if that’s what you want to do.

Action gets results, thinking about taking action, get you nowhere.  Remember that.

I was an affiliate for AIG up until today.  Today, I received an email from them telling me to “Stop displaying ads for AIG immediately.”  Here’s an excerpt of text from the email:

I’m sure you are aware of what has been going on with AIG in the financial sector. Unfortunately, this is having an effect on our affiliate program and we need to ask you to please pause any advertising you have up for aigdirect.com and 21st.com.
This is NOT permanent, we hope that it will only be for the next 7 days and then we can turn everything back on.

Seems like they should be trying to get as much revenue as possible, but what do I know.  I’m just a caveman…

This week’s tool, comes to you courtesy of a blog friend that I met on Xanga.  It’s an online budget and finance tool, sort of like Quicken or Microsoft Money, but online.

The site is called “Mint.” To me, I see it as in a money mint, but they’ve decided to brand by the tasty spice instead.  But I digress.  Here’s the addres:

http://www.mint.com/

You go to the site, logon and create an account.  The site does the rest.  The site automagically categorizes your spending into various categories, but you also have the option to login and manually re-assign items or add categories etc.  Very much like Quicken and M$ Money.

It’s a quick and convenient way to keep track of your spending and to keep track of your money.

The downsides:

• You have to give them your account login information
• The site regularly polls your bank’s site for updated information

The upsides:

• Automatic updates and categorizing of charges
• Nothing quite beats knowing where your money is going
• Easy to manage multiple accounts from one site
• Finance tools that let you stay on top of your credit rating.

Like with anything that I tell you about, you need to determine on your own if you’re going to use the tool or not.  All I do, is bring it to your attention.  That’s all for now.

Cheers!

Rafael

I spend a lot of time online surfing the net. This week, I’ve got a bonus freebie for you.

I’ve been away at a convention, and a friend of mine turned me on to this site:

stormpulse.com

The site tracks hurricanes and other storms and lets you follow the storm’s pulse as it moves along its path. I think it’s the coolest thing since sliced bread. It has tons of different view options and lots and lots of storm data that you can take in and use.

Check it out, it’s definitely worth the time.

This week, I’m at a conference in San Antonio, TX.  I’m staying at the Grand Hyatt downtown.  Don’t get all excited, it’s all work for me.  Despite that, here’s this week’s free tool.

Sometimes, you want to target a certain geographical location with your PPC ads.  Maybe you just want to know where all those people that come to your website hail from.  There are a couple of tools that you can use to find out where someone is connecting to your site from.

There’s geoIP, which you may or may not be agle to get with your web hosting account.  There’s also a website plugin that let’s you see in your sidebar where people are connecting from, but then, there’s also this:

World IP

Maybe some of those other tools have this too, but what I like about the World IP thing, is that they have an online database with an API that you can access in real time.

What are some uses for this feature?

• You can use it to display local ads for certain geographical regions
• Ad campaign tracking by location
• Is that website really where it says it is?

I’m sure there are other uses.  I just thought I’d bring this one tool up to your attention.  Check out their website for more information.