marketing

Other people’s broken monetary models

One can hope and work toward not having a broken financial model. We’ve seen many. WordPress (where this blog is hosted) never informed me that the custom domain for which I pay them a pittance as an “upgrade” needed renewal… until they turned it off.

Thanks WordPress! Way to annoy my readers (few though they may be), me (your customer), and fail to collect your rightful due for almost six months. Simply lovely all the way ’round.

Secrets of book publishing (and life!) Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known

Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known: Following up on these overviews of the book industry, I thought I’d share some lessons I learned from publishing Bit Literacy. I originally tried to go through mainstream publishers but eventually self-published it, because of what I learned in the process. I wish I had known everything below before I wrote my book. [I find similarities everywhere here… finding work or a job, finding gigs as a musician, working with local retail outlets, etc., etc. When it comes to people doing stuff, no one is interested in you but you. And if someone is interested (read, seemingly willing to help you), it is a sure sign that they see some way you can make them money, or help them, or generally for them to get something out of whatever they intend to do (see Frank Zappa). I don’t mean to sound so cynical, there’s a lot of cases where this isn’t true, and in fact I see nothing wrong with it. Understanding people’s motives means dealing honestly and openly. Pretending, misleading, or outright lying is far worse. Be up front about what you’re going to get and it’ll work out.]
Source: Good Experience Blog

Welcome Alltop!

Alltop (a Guy Kawasaki venture) has decided that Turnings is worthy of listing. I’m not sure how this happened, but it’s about time.

Alltop, confirmation that I kick ass

I’m in the life section. And BTW, that should be “Further confirmation”…

The long slide to gone

The long slide to gone: We spend a lot of time talking about the ends and the means, but it’s also worth considering whether the journey is worth the reward. If you have to compromise what you do just to keep doing it, what’s the point? [Sometimes the point is just surviving for a while, but I think Seth’s point is larger one, and a good one. We have so little time. Make it all count.]
Source: Seth’s Blog

Mojo: Fruit Nut Dipped and Crunch

The Great Mojo bar Taste Test continues…

In our last episode our intrepid hero had delivered Mojo bars to fellow cyclists of taste, breeding, and class. Or maybe not. Hard for me to say. Anyway, they’re busy crunching their way through the bars and will be posting about them shortly. More were delivered Sunday, and the final batch are going out this week.

As for me, I’ve been enjoying the fruit/nut combos. There are two different bars, one of the new “dipped” flavors and and one of the original recipe. On comment I should make which is familiar to all who eat food in the outdoors during the winter. Be careful to warm the product as best you can (inside pocket, close to something warm etc.) because almost any food that doesn’t freeze solid still turns into a rock. Some flavors are better than others… but still. You gots to be careful or, well… you may lose a tooth.

That said, I’ve always loved dried fruit and nuts, so these flavors should kinda be a natural for me. Unfortunately, I find them a bit sweet and since the part of the Clif Mojo thing that I dig is that they are salty… at least saltier, this is not a good thing. I disclaim that I cook with very little salt, and eat almost no processed sugar and very few sugary sweets, candy bars, and the like. These bars are about as close as I come. No big philosophical thing here, simply what I need to do to stay healthy. YMMV. Anyway, I find dried fruit very sweet, and so these Mojo flavors are especially sweet tasting to me. I wish they were saltier. I do. But they’re not. Sigh.

So while I like them, they fall into the “everything” else category of sweetish tasting power bars. Fine for what they are, but missing the essence of Mojoness for me.

We’re getting our Mojo on…

The first of the Clif Mojo bars have been delivered for the Great Mojo bar Taste Test. More deliveries soon! Testers, start your buds.

The instant hit in my household was the new dipped peanut butter and jelly flavor Mojo bar. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that peanut butter and jelly is one of the great flavor combinations of all time. In fact, one could argue that it should be elevated to an essential nutrient combination that absolutely no one should live without. I here so nominate it as such. Sadly, I live for long periods of time without enjoying the essence of life that is PB&J because in sandwich form it packs an awful lot of stuff (calories, grams of this and that) into a fairly dense package. Not a good general choice for me. So once in a great while, as a treat, an indulgence, a gustatory extremism of the highest caliber, a lark even, I break out this extremely important flavor combination and have at it.

Now, however, courtesy of the new dipped Mojo bar, this flavor combo is far more available to me. I can budget for it far more simply. I can eat half a bar, and still get a huge thrill. It’s nirvana in a small package.

Wow, you’re thinking, the Great Mojo bar Taste Test is over! Nah. I said it was a hit. Not the winner. Possibly not even my favorite, never mind the favorite of the other participants. So more Mojo coming soon…

The Great Mojo bar Taste Test!

So a while back I mentioned that I came across new flavors of Mojo bar, one of my favorite treats, and couldn’t believe that there was no information on the web, and no adverts that I had seen about the new flavors. C’mon! In this day and age?

So I’m now organizing The Great Mojo bar Taste Test. They’ve sent me a box of each flavor including the new ones, and I’m in the midst of distributing the stuff to my friends who blog and ride and eat energy bars, with a request that they in turn write about their likes and dislikes, comments, notes, what-have-you. Ya know, blog stuff.

If you think you should be included in the Great Mojo bar Taste Test feel free to write me daniel at circumtech dot com and we’ll discuss it.

More as I think of it!

The last interaction

The last interaction: Forever, my only memory of the job is going to be the mess. Forever, the only thing I’ll talk about is the mess. The last interaction, in my experience, is responsible for virtually all of the word of mouth you’re going to get, positive or negative. [Yet it doesn’t color my impression of how an interaction went. Interesting that it so greatly influences what we talk about.]
Source: Seth’s Blog

How much for digital?

How much for digital?: It’s important to charge something, because the act of paying fundamentally changes the dynamics of the relationship. The question is this: at the start, is your goal to maximize profit or to build a platform that scales? The fact is that the market is too small right now for the price to matter. What matters is whether you can build an audience that is in the habit of paying you, an audience that wants to hear from you, an audience that you can build a business on.

At fifty cents a rental, all desire for piracy goes out the window, replaced by convenience, ease of use and a clear conscience. More important, entire new services show up, habits are built and the studios end up with a direct relationship with consumers who want to hear from them. If they don’t get greedy at the start. [I think Seth nailed this one.]
Source: Seth’s Blog