It looks like another year has come and gone.  And, like in past years, here are the top 10 things I learned in 2009 (at least as I see them):

1. Specializing in ‘Local’ internet was one of the smarter career moves I ever made. Who would have thought that the sum of all the small dots would actually add up to such a big picture?  Trust your gut, sometimes it tells you the right thing.
2. The Internet business is much, much different in California than it was in Chicago.  Things here move a bit faster and carry a lot more weight.  Not to mention, the weather here is great.
3. Years later, most people still don’t really ‘get it’ when it comes to SEO.  This surprises me.  But, it does make room for a lot of opportunity.  I have been doing SEO for around 10 years now, and that makes me 2 things: a) a lot grayer than when I started, b) one of suprisingly few people who actually seem to understand what it takes to rank a website in the SERPs.
4. The way things are shifting, if you don’t know feeds by now you are probably doing something horribly wrong.  The Internet is made up of tubes, of course.  It is only now becoming obvious that all of these tubes connect to make money for people who are good at filtering/sorting/combining what comes out of them all.
5. PPC advertising is not dead, not by a longshot.  But, it sure isn’t changing fast enough to keep its market share of SEM.  Turns out that display advertising has a place in the budget of even the smallest of businesses, assuming you know how to do it.  Yahoo seemed to get this when they bought Right Media, Google has been scrambling to catch up with that one— DoubleClick is still not all that effective as a display exchange and OpenX seems doomed to be an ad server.  I have little doubt that Google will succeed in the end, and fear Yahoo won’t be able to fulfill the potential RM has because of politics.  I guess that’ll be for 2010 to see.
6. When is Twitter going to figure out how to monetize effectively?  Seems a bit overdue, don’t you think?
7. Facebook seems to get it.  As a result, Facebook will probably be the biggest IPO of 2010.  Its not a bad ad platform.  Now that the privacy concerns seem to have gone away (think Beacon).
8. Bing has kind of fizzled.  I don’t see enormous growth there, although they do seem to keep tons of pages in the index for a really long time.  That’s appreciated.  Of course, never rule them out.  The Yahoo-Microsoft deal will probably start showing within the next year.  I, for one, am still excited by the possibilities.
9. If it is a good idea, Google’s probably already thought of it.  I like to think that bar codes on small business window’s that could be photographed by cell phones and easily searched on a mobile search site was my idea…. but, let’s face it Google had time to already build it, so they probably thought of it before I did.  I’ve got a few ideas that I’ve got locked in a briefcase hidden under my mattress that I’m sure Google hasn’t thought of yet.  At least, I think they haven’t.
10. Lastly, thanks to an absolutely horrible economy and all the other awful things going on in the world, I once again have been forced to realize how truly fortunate I have been.  Real estate aside, I remain pretty insulated from all the bad things out there for yet another year.  I am blessed with a gorgeous wife, a beautiful daughter and a stinky dog.  I always get to work on things that are exciting and new, I work with scores of brilliant people, and coming to work has never been a chore for me.  How many people can say that?  Not many.

Here’s hoping everyone has a happy and safe New Year, and that 2010 is full of opportunity and joy!

Happy New Year

-Ari

RH Donnelley announced their filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, becoming the latest in a string of print publishers to do so.  

For me, however, this one is a little different as I worked for RHD for several years.  The tone of CEO Dave Swanson’s message was perhaps the most surprising part of this all:

I understand that filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy may cause concern on your part, but I want to

assure you that this action is being taken primarily to restructure our balance sheet, and we

do not anticipate any impact on our business operations. While this difficult economy has

caused us to rethink our capital structure, R.H. Donnelley’s operations remain vibrant and

strong, and through the motions filed with the Bankruptcy Court, we have taken steps to

ensure that there will be no change in support, service or business operations. Simply put, it

will be business as usual at R.H. Donnelley throughout this process.

I have never myself been through bankruptcy, and thankfully have never worked for a company who has while I was employed there.  But, it does strike me as off that the tone of this email seems to spit in the face of the investors/lenders who are going to lose out because of this.  It does seem to say “our company is fine, we just owe a lot of money we can’t afford to pay back” and “we aren’t going to change anything around here, business as usual”.  

RHD, forgive me for my disallegiance, but “business as usual” is one of the things that got you into this mess in the first place.  I think a massive shakeup is in order, at least some corporate restructuring to go along with the debt restructuring.

Just one man’s opinion.

On April 24th, I posted that www.tweetvalue.com had appraised my Twitter profile as being worth a whopping $3. OK, that was sarcastic, I will admit it. Since then, however, I have actually found myself getting more interested in Twitter (maybe because it suddenly seems absolutely everyone in the world is getting more interested in it not just web geeks).

So, I spent about 20 minutes picking some people to follow. If you read this blog (and you actually exist) you probably already follow them to: Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan, The Onion, and the like. Turns out these guys tweet quite a bit. And, as they are interesting figures in my industry, I actually enjoy reading some of what they write.

But, an interesting thing happened. When I started following them, it meant more people found me and decided to follow me, too. Some of them are clearly total BS and probably purely setup for some kind of spyware or phishing scam. But, some are obviously real people. What pressure? I suddenly have a bigger audience on Twitter than I have here (not that either are big).

And, as if to justify the massive effort, tweetvalue has now upped their estimate of my worth to $17. I figure if I keep my ramp rate at this level, my profile will be worth $100 in 30 days. That’s remarkable (some sarcasm, still, sorry). Nevertheless, it is something fun to shoot for— I haven’t had a fun project like this since I obsessed with ranking for ‘Bacon Polenta’ (which I did).

So, here we go– I am even putting the counter on my sidebar so you can see where I stand. If you don’t follow me on Twitter already, now is the time to start. You will get next to nothing in return (aside from the occasional witty comment), but will be helping me on my path to great wealth (last bit of sarcasm, I promise).

Anyone who knows me knows that I am full of ideas (some would probably say that I’m full of something else).  I can’t help it.  I have new business ideas nearly every day.  It is a trait I inherited from my father, a blessing as well as a curse.

So, after literally years of squatting on many of these ideas I’ve decided to take a different approach.  Since I’m clearly never going to build any of these, you can have at them.  Build it, promote it, make a bunch of money from it.  All I ask is that you find me someday and say ‘thanks for making me rich’.  And, if you want to buy me Jaguar I guess that would be okay, too.

Business Idea #1

The Ad Detective.  I actually went so far as registering a URL for this one, at one point years ago.  The idea is simple: a website that finds your ads at all the major sites by querying them based on your representative keywords and showing them to you in an iFrame window.  So simple.  The only hard thing is working out the relationships with the search engines to allow you to run multiple queries and frame the results.  But, I’ve always believed they would go for it because it promotes ad spending.  Addresses the #1 problem for SEM companies. answering the question “where can I see my ad?”.  Gives a tool (you can charge either SEM companies or advertisers, your choice) that promotes transparency in internet advertising (a good thing).  

Business Idea #2

The “Supportal”.  This idea has to be nearly 10 years old.  The idea is a portal that is nothing but support documentation.  Ever look for an article on how to fix your 10 year-old Maytag dishwasher?  It’s hard to find one.  Include user-generated content for tips and tricks specific to your project and there you go… good traffic because you would rank for every long-tail product model number under the sun.

Business Idea #3

The Game.  It gives me aches in my belly to post this on the web, but anyone who knows me also knows I am never going to actually get the time or energy to build this.  So, here you go.  For this, I expect someone is going to eventually owe me a Jaguar.  The game is a series of single web pages.  Each web page is a puzzle.  It can be any kind of puzzle, but must be solveable.  Gamers will design and build the puzzles for egoboo and because they will get name credit.  The solution for each puzzle will be a unique string of letters and numbers.  Search that string on Google, and voila… the next puzzle (indexed because it will be the page title and H1 of the next puzzle.  So, here’s what you’ve got— a game that actively involves the gamer community, a tempting prize at the end (depends on your budget out the door, but I’m thinking something nondescript like the rabbit from Masquerade), and all the free press that you’ll get by being the very first one to build a hugely popular game that uses Google as its sole navigation (can you say cover of Wired, anyone?). 

Before I hit ‘publish’, I just need to write one more thing.  If you are interseted in actually pursuing any of these ideas, I will consider working with you.  These ideas are fairly well baked after years of thinking about every little detail.  Just turns out I am running out of time and energy to do it all myself… so, here’s your chance.  Go wild.  Make millions.  Buy me a car (or, if you really hit the cover of Wired, a house would be nice).

I have heard that people made their entire income from direct linking arbitrage to Amazon using the Associates (affiliate) program.  I will probably always regret not tossing the dice and just trying it.  For those of you who don’t know what this is (was), here is a brief example (from something I myself did in real life):

1) Find a search term that leads to a good assortment of products on Amazon.  The timelier the better, so there won’t be any competition.  The last time I did this (yes, its been a while) was when the movie Borat came out.  It was a huge hit.  I saw it coming because I was a longtime fan of Da Ali G show on HBO.  Hmmmm… that got me to thinking.  A quick search confirmed that Amazon had all of his shows available on DVD.

2) Search Google and see if there is an ad pointing to Amazon.com.  You don’t have to give up if there is, but it might make the clicks more expensive (Google will only show one ad from each root domain, so you’ll be bidding against other direct affiliate marketers doing the same thing to be on top).

3) Setup an Adwords account.  OK, if you are reading this blog and don’t already have your own Adwords account, that’s a little weird.  Its easy, just do it.  Write a spectacular ad (in the little space you have to do so) that will attract attention from lower position banking on the strength of the Amazon brand name that you get to use as your display URL.  Choose appropriate keywords for the products on the landing page you picked (Ali G season 3, etc).

4) Watch what comes in versus what goes out and adjust your bids to maximize profit.  As long as you picked a good product, and wrote a good ad, the traffic will convert at a predictable rate.  

Voila!  That’s it.  Or, at least it was until Amazon pulled the plug.  Now, you’ll have to find a different way to position yourself as a useless middleman for a few cents profit here and there.  

Good thing is there are ways.  There will always be ways.