Happy New Year

Posted by David Whitehouse

Happy New Year everyone!

What 2009 Meant for Me

Well the year is almost up and I was just wondering what I did with all that time… Then I realised, quite a lot actually!

  • I got my arm so that working at a computer in my job is bearable.
  • I beat depression.
  • I became a true expert in SEO – I really have learned a hell of a lot working at Bronco.
  • I published a book and sold just over 60 80 copies.
  • I got engaged to a woman with a heart of gold and looks to match.
  • I read nearly all of Seth Godin’s books and learned a hell of a lot more!
  • I had my first well performing website with over 30,000 uniques in 30 days and built a subscriber base of over 500.
  • I helped my m8 Themba start a new online shop selling HID Lights which I am sure will do well

Plans for 2010

  • Get married
  • Get something fixed: either my knee, neck, jaw or arms!
  • Quit playing computer games online
  • Save up for a deposit on a house

A Review of All Marketers Are Liars

Posted by David Whitehouse

I’ve just finished reading All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin. Well, I say “finished reading” but I should actually say “prematurely abandoned”.

I was reasonably satisfied with Permission Marketing, it had some reasonable advice, if not a bit waffly, but this book just had nothing useful to say.

It was boring, tedious and “just a waste of my ever more valuable time” as Seth would put it.

Can anyone recommend an author that perhaps can give me something more useful than “tell stories”?

Review of Permission Marketing

Posted by David Whitehouse

So I’ve just finished reading Permission Marketing by Seth Godin, after hearing his name mentioned so much over the past few months I decided I best read one of his books. Permission Marketing was really the book that seemed to make him – the first successful one.

I must say I thought the book was interesting, it talked about how most marketeers are interruption marketeers, whereas he was suggested that they should become permission marketeers. It had a few interesting ideas and some practical tips too, but on the whole the book did go on more than it had to in order to get the point across. Here is how I understood it:

If you do an advert and expect to sell to someone just from one advert then you get bad results, if instead you use the advert to begin a relationship with someone then you can teach them over time about your product, getting more and more trust, until one day you have permission to buy things on behalf of your customer. Amazon seems to be the best example he refers to.

In Internet marketing terms that means attracting people to your site, with the sole aim of getting them to subscribe to your email list/blog. Then over time teaching them and building their trust and then eventually selling to them.

It is also a bit of an old read now, this was before Google AdWords became popular and the big player seems to be Yahoo at the time. I would recommend reading it though as the principles still apply.

On the whole I’d give it 7.5/10. If you want to order the book, you can use the link below to take you to Amazon:

Feedburner – the answer to my email marketing dreams!

Posted by David Whitehouse

For those of you who know me, you will know that I’ve had a health problem that has prevented me using the net as much as I like over the years – so you’ll understand. For the rest of you, please bare with me if I regurgitate old stuff/ideas – I’m still playing catchup!

I’ve recently discovered the power of Feedburner after seeing that Seth Godin uses a similar service called FeedBlitz. so I thought, if it’s good enough for Seth, it’s good enough for me :)

Anyways, it’s great, I’ve been harping on at Anthony Shapley all week about it. It’s a great way to “save” all those visitors who visit your blog and then bugger off. Blogs have the worst bounce rate of any other type of website, because people tend to be interested in just one post, so it is important to keep them coming back via a feed subscription or an email subscription. It is probably best in encouraging everyone to sign up to Feedburner at the end of every post – with a call to action (I guess I best put this on my list of things to do now I said that)!

You can see on my sidebar that I have my feed link (as per standard) but I’ve also added receive blog updates by email. Now I much prefer this way of receiving blog posts – mainly because I tried Google Reader once and I hated it, plus I can’t be bothered to keep checking back.

Anyways, if you want to follow my blog via feedburner you can do so by clicking here.