Adaptation or Extinction – The Price of doing Business in an Increasing Connected World

May 16, 2007 | Comments (2) | Filed under: Online Business

One thing that has been weighing on my mind a lot lately is the idea that so many successful businesses seem to be simply rolling up and dying against the constant move toward a fully connected business world. Every day you hear stories of company A losing money and company B losing even more, but you look at their individual situations and it’s hard not to immediately criticize their efforts. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but in this day and age, not embracing the Internet can literally be the kiss of death for even the biggest of chains.

A perfect example of this is the movie industry. Every move they make seems to dig a deeper and deeper hole and ultimately works to isolate themselves from technology rather than embrace it. Take for example the MPAA’s recent lobbying to force users to obtain authorization for their home theatre systems. This move shows such a disrespect and disregard for everyday consumers, it is amazing to me that it even makes it past the idea stage.

I used to work part-time as a movie reviewer a few years back, but since I stopped, I really haven’t looked back. I’m basically just a really big film fan. When a new movie comes out, I’m one of those people who are there on opening weekend religiously. I see most movies in the theatre, and probably attend more than 50 films a year at my favorite theatre in Toronto, Canada. At current ticket prices, that means in theatre attendance alone, I probably spend more than $500 a year on tickets. So you can easily say that I am a big supporter of the film industry.

Lately though, I have been finding the theatre going experience to be almost not worth the ticket price. I love the big screen, I love the big sound, but the movie industry and the theatre chains are basically squeezing every ounce of life out of the entire experience. Rather than roll with the evolving industry and grow to accommodate it, they take offensive stances that only serve to alienate customers. I think I can safely say that we’re watching the theatre experience die right before our very eyes, and there is no much we can do to save it. The entire industry refuses to adapt and evolve with technology and mark my words, that fact will lead to their eventual downfall.

Let me explain what I mean with an example of a recent film I attended. Last Saturday (May 7, 2007), a friend of mine and I really wanted to see the movie 28 Weeks Later. I was a big fan of the original, and I had high expectations for the sequel. Expecting a huge crowd, we decided to buy our tickets online a few hours before the film started. The ticket buying experience was rather painless, except for the fact that the online buying system looks and operates like it was designed in the early 90′s (when I know for a fact it is < 1 year old). For me I was able to navigate my way through 3 registrations and 5 menus, but you take someone less technical like my parents, and you might as well write them off entirely as possible online customers.

We print our our tickets and then head out to the theatre about an hour before it was scheduled to start. My theatre of choice is one of the hundreds owned and operated by the biggest theatre chain in Canada, Cineplex Entertainment. It’s a huge multiplex with 16 screens and 4 theatres that seat well over 500 viewers. For a big movie like Spider-Man 3, it’s not unusual to see a few thousand people in the building attending films.

Saturday was no exception. Spidey’s still pulling strong numbers and 28 Weeks was picking up the overflow. When we arrive, there is a huge lineup of more than 100 people waiting to get into our theatre. Were they waiting for theatre cleanup? Nope. Were they waiting for friends or family to show up? Negative. They were all waiting because security has recently decided to start frisking and searching all jackets and bags for digital cameras before entering the theatre. This measure is in direct response to the recent huge exaggeration by the MPAA that labeled Canada (a country with less population total than the state of California) as being responsible for over 70% of pirated films. It’s also in response to the US’s suddenly aggressive attempts to force copyright laws down Canadian throats. The facts behind their claims are very flimsy to say the least but this hasn’t stopped Canada’s largest chain from this proverbial “shit in the pants” response.

Now, I’m all for ensuring films aren’t pirated, but prior to these latest “findings” by the MPAA, we were already subjected to multiple ushers patrolling theatres every 10 minutes during films and a total bombardment of anti-piracy messages before every showing. The fact that these already invasive steps have now been increased to include mandatory bag searches and frisking of film goers is just too much to handle, even for an avid film fan. I can’t imagine what affect it has on the people who already only attend a few times a year. Siding with outlandish claims and refusing to stand up for your customers and your own anti-piracy efforts is a sure fire way to make yourself extinct.

Furthermore, add to that the fact that several major publishers such as Warner Brothers and Fox have announced upcoming measures including no Canadian Pre-Screenings and delayed release dates, and you pretty much have the perfect recipe to never visit a theatre again.

Anyway, we survive the frisking and make it inside the theatre, and now the place is so full, that there are barely any seats to be had. We were 40 minutes early for the film but having taken over 20 minutes just to get inside, we are now faced with the choice of sitting in the front row.

The fact that simple user experience changes that should have been made 20 years ago do not yet exist, such as assigned seating in large chain multiplexes, absolutely blows my mind. I recently attended several films in Edinburgh, Scotland and London, England and at each chain you could hand pick your seat at ticket purchase time and know exactly where you were going to sit.

I’m not stupid, and I know exactly why it doesn’t exist here and in the US and that’s because if they did have assigned seating, people might show up with only minutes to spare before a film started. If they do that, then they would completely miss out on the battery of advertising thrown at you prior to every film. By making you basically “fight” for good seating, they guarantee your experience as a consumer is horrible but ensure they rake in the advertising revenue.

Think about it, assigned seating would alleviate all kinds of problems. You wouldn’t have to worry about showing up an hour early for blockbuster films. You wouldn’t have to deal with the amazingly annoying string of people who constantly ask you if the seats beside your are available. You just show up when you want to, and go right to your seat. It couldn’t be any easier. Alas, deciding not to improve the user experience for YEARS is what is going to make people decide to stay home instead.

Look at it from an online online business perspective. The current theatre and film experience is basically like having a website that you haven’t improved on in over 20 years. Not only that, but when you go to the site, you’re hammered with more advertising than content and when you do see content, you aren’t always guaranteed to see if from the best angle. While you’re visiting the site, your hard drive is constantly searched for pirated data, even if you haven’t pirated anything in your life. I guarantee for every single one of us, if we made that site we would crash and burn.

You ABSOLUTELY need to adapt to the changing environment of the world if you want to survive, but big industry just doesn’t get it. With every week that passes, the film industry gets more and more paranoid and refuses to embrace technology, and they only hurt themselves. The same can be said for thousands of the “old guard” industries and one by one they drop or simply become a very weak shadow of their former selves. The world is no longer a place where customers have to simply take what you give them and not complain. With DVD releases only months after theatrical releases, we now have options and as a result, many filmgoers are choosing to stay home. You can only keep going so long and sacrifice the customer experience so much before you lose them forever. I’m as big a movie goer as anyone, and these attacks on my privacy and treating all customers like thieves is enough to make me want to stop going for good.

It makes me very sad to think that one day my own kids may never get to see films on the big screen like I did. You can’t fight the future though, and refusing to adapt is the quickest way to becoming extinct and to be honest, with they way things are right now, becoming extinct would be the best thing for them. :_(

Social Bookmarking Top 20

May 15, 2007 | Comments (3) | Filed under: Social Networking

With such a huge variety of social bookmarking sites out there these days, it’s nice when someone comes along to show us which to target for the most traffic. eBizMBA recently compiled a list of the Top 20 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites for May 2007 and as you might imagine, Digg tops the list.

Rounding out the rest of the Top 5 are Netscape, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon. I’ve personally had some good and bad experiences with all of those sites, but you can definitely count on all of them a good increase in traffic if you’re successful.

So, the next time you have something interesting to promote, you can focus your energy on targeting the bigger networks first, and bubble your way down the list from there.

Pornography – Where the real money is?

May 13, 2007 | Comments (6) | Filed under: Marketing

I came across this video last Wednesday from Digg, and I thought it was an amazing little bit of link bait. It basically goes through a bunch of statistics on the web based porn industry in a very provocative manner . It’s a non-pornographic video, but it might be border line non-work safe…

Anyway, with statistics presented such as:

$2.84 billion in revenue was generated from U.S. porn sites in 2006
$89 per second is spent on porn
260 new porn sites go online everyday

It’s hard to deny the money making potential. I’m not advocating anyone jump into the pornographic website game, I’m certainly not in it myself, but it is truly a profitable avenue for anyone who is up to it. You might just have to make up another job to tell your family what you do

Link Roundup – May 11, 2007

May 11, 2007 | Comments (6) | Filed under: General

It’s that time once again where we take a quick trip around the Bookmark Bliss community and look at what interesting articles people have posted. A lot of these sites I visit daily, but everyone has a different set of bookmarks so what I see may not get read by all of our readers. Here are some interesting and helpful articles you might have missed:

Since this is a list of links and my RSS reader of choice is Google Reader, it seems fitting to start this link roundup off with a list of 10 smart hacks for Google Reader. I especially liked the keyboard shortcuts.
If you’re thinking about monetizing your blog for the first time and want some ideas on how to integrate the advertising seamlessly into your layout, check out how to integrate Google Adsense without using plugins. Even if you are using plugins, this article gives you tons of ideas on how to integrate the ads into your site all by example.
Since I am a definite graphic design rookie, I love sites that give me pointers and tips on how to become better. One site I really like is Bittbox, that offers posts such as 5 cool fonts not to miss and free hi-res splatter Photoshop brushes. Definitely a help for those of us that can use all we can get.
Eli at Blue Hat SEO shows you a tricky way to build 100′s of links to your site per hour by leveraging sites that skim feeds and integrating your own links. Definitely not for everyone, but an excellent post covering the basics of how to get it done.
Many SEO specialists believe that links from .edu and .gov domains garner more respect from search engines when determining correct placement for your site in search results. At Daily Blog Tips, Daniel shows you a quick and easy way to gather .edu and .gov backlink targets using Google.
Over at NorthxEast, Collis demonstrates just how much traffic your site can garner simply by designing a layout that is submitted to CSS site galleries.
Randa from Randa Clay Designs has recently released her first theme for wordpress called Round and Round. It’s an excellent clean, white design with a transparent twist that would be great for anyone starting up a new site.

Well, that’s it for this roundup. Hopefully you’ve found something interesting. If you’ve stopped by for a visit at Bookmark Bliss and like what you see, take a second and join our community or subscribe to our news feed. It’s the best way to let us know you’re out there so I can return the favor

A few issues with Akismet

May 10, 2007 | Comments (5) | Filed under: Blogging

While my love for Akismet remains in tact, lately its been a little bit more of a chore to keep it that way. A few of the regular commenters here have been having their comments flagged as spam, which is really starting to bug me. For a new site like this, having a hassle like that when posting comments can be a deciding factor on whether or not a reader comes back.

Anyway, I wanted to apologize to the people it has happened to thus far (including myself, it flagged me!) and I just want to reassure you that I am keeping an eye out on the flagged comments and manually approving ones that are legitimate. Unfortunately that means your comment might not show up right away, but I’ll definitely make sure it does eventually.

If you notice a problem with you comment not showing up, you can also shoot me a quick message and let me know to watch out for it. I’m usually pretty good at catching them though…

Hopefully this is only a temporary thing…

Increasing Inbound Links: Part 1

May 10, 2007 | Comments (11) | Filed under: Traffic

In last months statistics summary, I mentioned that one of my goals for the month of May was to increase the number of inbound links pointing to my primary domain. In the recent Google Pagerank update, I was a little disappointed by the fact Bookmark Bliss climbed only from a PR 2 to a PR 3. I know that pagerank really doesn’t impact a site that heavily, but it’s still a measure of how many incoming links you have on other sites and to me it feels way too low. Some of the pages here have ranked really well in their own right. Specifically ones that were liked at the social news sites, such as 10 lessons frank miller’s 300 can teach you about successful online business, which has a page rank of 5.

Since this site is very new, these high ranking individual pages don’t actually have any affect on our primary URL (www.bookmarkbliss.com). At the time the pagerank was calculated, they all had a rank of zero, which doesn’t improve our main URL at all. In the next update, which should be in late July or August, our page rank should be much higher simply because we are linked to from these PR5 pages internally. It’s sort of a bubble up effect.

Instead of simply waiting for the pagerank to increase automatically, I also decided to be more proactive in securing linkbacks from high ranking sites. I recently read an interesting post over in the digital point forums entitled how I received +30,000 visitors in one short month. While the author claims a lot of things, that are most likely exaggerated to convince people to pay for his services, he does list a nice progression of sites that if you’re linked from, will definitely improve your pagerank.

For example, in the 1st class social bookmark list, the author suggests building links to your site from high ranking, high traffic sites such as Slashdot, Digg, Furl, Technorati, and Listable. In the 2nd class set, you pretty much find all the other usual suspects such as Reddit, Newsvine, Squidoo, and PopURLs.

The list he provides is great and it’s similar to hundreds of others you can find with slight variation on many different sites. WebBlogHits, for example, has another list highlighting 55 social bookmarking sites to promote your blog. The take home of these type of lists is that it’s better for your site, from a pagerank standpoint, to be linked from 1 high ranking site, then it is to be ranked from many low ranking sites.

So, my first step in increasing my pagerank and more importantly, the number of sites linking to my primary URL, will be to build my own list of sites to target for linkback. Some of these sites are easy to get a linkback from, such as Slashdot or Digg, while others are much more difficult. My goal is to create a nice set of links that can quickly and easily be used to build a solid link base for any site, including this one.

As soon as I’ve had a chance to compile my list, I’ll post it here for others to use and for advice on other sites to add. For anyone of you who have taken similar steps to increase your inbound links, what are some of the sites you’ve had the most success with that others may not think about?

Hopefully, by the end of this month I’ve had a chance to score us a lot of good inbound links and be well on my way to meeting our monthly goal.

Bookmark Bliss: The Massive List of Web Design Resources

May 9, 2007 | Comments (20) | Filed under: Web Design

I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to web design, I can use all the help I can get. In some aspects I’m very confident in my abilities, such as programming features in PHP, working with databases, or implementing layouts in CSS. In other aspects, I definitely need a helping hand such as logo design, graphics, and color coordination.

Unfortunately, not all of us have the luxury of a designer so we simply make the most of what we have at our disposal on any given project. Most of the time, that means it’s just one on one with Google.

As a result, I’ve put together a massive list list of tools I’ve bookmarked that help me with my webdesign and I hope they’ll do the same for you…

Web Design Inspiration

Tools for Testing Layouts on Multiple Platforms

Logo Design Inspiration

Stock Image Resources

Tools for Choosing, Analyzing, and/or Saving Color Palettes

Font Resources

Photoshop Design Tutorials

Applications that Dissect Images into Color Schemes

Favicon Generators

Flash Tools and Snippets

Web Design Firefox Plugins

Web Developer – Provides everything from page size tests to markup structure analysis
Palette Grabber – Grabs the color scheme of a visited page
Aardvark – Source code examination of pages
FireBug – Everything you need to troubleshoot layout and scripting problems
Colorzilla – Integrates a photoshop like eyedropper for obtaining color codes
IETab – Lets you view page layouts rendered in IE from within Firefox
HTML Validator – Helps you ensure your markup is always valid

I’ve already started to put together a followup to this post with the Massive List of Web Development Resources. Look for that in the next few weeks!

Have you found this list useful? If so, show your support by subscribing to our news feed. We’ve posted several other entries in our Bookmark Bliss series that you might find interesting as wellâ€¦

Targeting Events with your Online Business

May 8, 2007 | Comments (3) | Filed under: Online Business

At Bookmark Bliss, one of our goals has always been to help you improve your online business. Whether it be improving the traffic to your site, finding ways to promote yourself, or simply setting up your site and running it from day to day, our goal is to help you succeed while figuring out what it takes to keep doing so ourselves.

Over the last few years, I’ve had the opportunity to experiment a bit with merchandise advertising powered by many tools including Amazon Web Services and the Yahoo Developer Network. There have been 5 sites in total I’ve worked with existing in a wide variety of different niches ranging from online movie information to hardware and technology reviews. One thing they all had in common was that their primary source of income was commission off the referral sale of products tailored to their specific articles.

For example, a movie review of Spider-Man 3 might display advertising for DVD’s of Spider-Man 2 or even copies of the XBox 360 game Spider-Man 3. Each person who actually purchased one of these items generated a percentage based commission which was paid to the site giving the referral. Anywhere from 1-2% all the way to 15-20% depending on the product being advertised and the advertising network displaying the ad.

What I found most interesting about my time working with these sites was the huge opportunities available when it comes to targeting trends and events as a way of generating quick traffic and converting huge sales. Using a well established site who’s articles are quickly indexed by Google and updated frequently affords you an incredible opportunity to be fluid and dynamic and chase many fluctuating keywords and rankings in an attempt to turn a profit.

These keywords may only be profitable at certain times of the year or even for just a short period of time and never again. The key to success is that well established sites have their newest content indexed by Google on a daily basis. So, refocusing your site to something new can literally have your campaign showing in search results within a matter of days.

Again, take for example the event that was last weekend’s release of Spider-Man 3 to theatres. For a dynamic and versatile site, you could have focused your advertising and marketing to capitalize on this one time event and monetized it throughout your site for a quick increase in both traffic and profits. On the movie site, for example, you might highlight your review of the new film and focus your marketing on related DVD’s and Toys. For a site selling ringtones, you might highlight the Spider-Man theme ringtone or even Spider-Man based skins for your phone.

Being smart and focusing your advertising on coming events and reoccurring trends can really increase your profits. You can do even better if your site is also publishing articles that coincide with that event. If it’s February, why not do a series of articles with a Valentine’s Day theme? If it’s May, focus on Spring, blockbuster movies, or even the finale’s of popular television shows. Be creative and design your site in a way that users are comfortable taking recommendations from you.

There are so many events and holidays in a given year, you could easily spend every week highlighting a new event. Doing this is not easy, and there is no formula to success. Every site is different and constantly adapting to trends and events is something you’ll have to work at constantly to stay on top of it and be successful.

Once you figure it out though, you can kiss those Adsense pennies goodbye.

Bookmark Bliss Redesign

May 7, 2007 | Comments (16) | Filed under: Web Design

So I was checking out the site here today, and I decided that it might just be about that time to think about redesigning the site. I know it’s only a few months old so far, but there are a few things about this template I really don’t like, and I think I’m up for designing my own new template.

So, what I was hoping to get some advice from everyone who visits here frequently about some of the things you like and dislike about the current Bookmark Bliss template. Be brutally honest, I can take it. I won’t guarantee every change makes it into the new template, but I’ll definitely do my best to incorporate what I can.

Here are two things that I personally want to change about the site to give you an example of what I’m looking for:

I don’t like the fact that the focus when you visit is not immediately on the latest article. When you first come to the site, you have to bring your eyes past our popular articles box and past the top banner before you even get to the meat of the content. I think the first thing you notice when you come to our site should be the latest article.
I don’t like the way the sidebars are structured currently, I think I would like to put more emphasis on subscriptions and helping readers find related articles, and less on digging through the archives.

Anyway, I’ll slowly work my way through some ideas for a new layout and see if I can accomplish all my goals. What do you guys think is the absolute most important thing that this site could improve on?

5 Ways to Quickly Improve your Traffic

May 7, 2007 | Comments (2) | Filed under: Traffic

Starting off a new site can sometimes feel like a daily fight to bring in traffic. For most sites, there is an initial surge (I mean, you started at zero, how can it not go up?) but once your organic visits settle, you seem to reach a virtual plateau.

No one wants to exist on that plateau.

Inevitably, you reach a point where you simply want more. More money, more subscribers, more e-Friends, more community members, more opportunities, the list goes on and on. Some people reach that point very quickly while others take their time. It doesn’t matter how big you are, at some point you’ll want more…

There is one sure fire way to ensure you have the chance at anything and everything, and that is to CONSTANTLY work on increasing your traffic. This is not a one day procedure either, its a daily task that you have to constantly work on to be successful at.

To help in that regard, here are 5 proven techniques to help increase traffic to your site:

Make Yourself Visible to Search Engines

One of the biggest and costly mistakes a new site can make is to assume search engines will just find them. The Internet consists of billions of web pages on millions of topics and your new site doesn’t stand a chance out there alone with no support. Even if the engines do find you eventually, can you be sure they will figure out how to index all of your content?

In this day and age, you can’t leave anything to chance. Making yourself visible to search engines is a job that seems simple but ends up being somewhat complex and difficult to master. There are several things you can do to make yourself more visible.

Participate in Communities

One of my favorite ways to improve my traffic is to actively participate in the community of readers that visit this site. There are many ways to participate, including adding comments to their posts, frequenting their forums, or simply joining their community via a service such as MyBlogLog. You’d be surprised how quickly you make new friends and regular visitors just by being friendly and stepping outside of your blogging bubble.

There are many visitors here at Bookmark Bliss that didn’t even know this site existed until I stopped by and said hello. Here are several ways you can participate in communities and quickly improve your traffic:

Publish, Promote, and Encourage Your RSS Feeds

Not everyone has the time to manually visit every interesting site on a daily basis. These potential readers, however, may be inclined to instead subscribe to your news feed and stay on top of your traffic through an RSS reader. To grab the attention of these readers and encourage repeat traffic, you need to do your best to make your RSS feed as attractive as possible.

Our goal here last month was to improve our own subscriber base, and the results of that experiment has been phenomenal. Here are some quick ideas on how to make your feed more attractive and increase your subscribers:

Manually Improve your Inbound Links

The saying “build it and they will come” could not be any more incorrect in the context of the World Wide Web. If you build it, you need to work hard all the time to make sure your link is out there for new readers to stumble upon. Manually improving your links is a daily chore, but one that is necessary to ensure maximum exposure.

Here are Bookmark Bliss, we’ve tried out many different ways of improving your inbound links. Here are a few ways you can use to your advantage and help let the world know your new site exists:

Write Good Content (even Linkable)

While this may seem like and obvious and stupid point, the reality is that many sites take this point for granted. If you want people to link to you and visit on a regular basis, you have to give them a reason. Writing good content can put your site instantly on the map and if your articles have that “linkable” quality they’ll spread like wildfire. Write good articles and back up your facts, and you’ll be off and running with crazy traffic before you know it.

If you follow these simple techniques and advice from around the web, you’ll find your traffic increasing by leaps and bounds in no time. If you have other techniques that have worked on your site, drop us a line and let everyone know what worked best in your case. After all, increasing traffic is a daily battle and by working together we can ensure we all succeed in the end.

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