They are very educational, and I had a good chuckle while reading some of the sample reviews.

• Marketing: It’s All Around Us
• Marketing: It’s All Around Us – Product Reviews

Go read them!

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!

I’m not sure if they actually pay attention to the poker results, or if they have the same hands-off approach they do with porn, but the post is definitely worth a read regardless.

Best Web Analytics 2.0 Tools: Quantitative, Qualitative, Life Saving!

It is a great list of web analytics tools, and you also get an explanation of how to make sense of all the data the tools are puking up and ultimately make more money.

Before you diving into Avinash’s blog post, I want to give you a short explanation of the difference between qualitative and quantitative analysis, otherwise it may be a bit confusing.

Quantitative: Measuring things with numbers fx. the number of visitors.

Qualitative: Things can’t measure with numbers fx. asking your visitors why they choose your site in the search results.

The post is long, so go make a cup of tea and a piece of paper to scribble down notes on before you get started. Read the post on Avinash’s blog.

Front page > SEO Footer > Buy Iphone 4G

It is a wonderful example of what happens, when the people, who put the organizations website together, are suddenly told to add a “SEO footer” where the marketing people can add “keyword pages” to get “free traffic from Google”.

Moral of the story: Tell the people working for you the reason why they are doing the work.

How Übersuggest Works

When you enter a keyword in Übersuggest and put a check mark in the “expand” box the computer magic run off and do 25 searches for you – 1 for each letter of the alphabet:

1. keyword a…
2. keyword b…
3. keyword c…
4. and so on

Must… have… more… results!

When you are using Übersuggest, it is easy to forget that there are often more than 10 results for “keyword a…”.

“Poker” is an example of a keyword that has more than 10 results for “a…”: See what it looks like.

When doing a search for “poker a” it turns out that there are an additional 27 results that didn’t get displayed when doing our first search: Have a look-see!

Google suggest API (nerdiness!)

I’m not sure if this is officially supported, but it as far as I can tell it works flawlessly:

http://google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar&q=poker

If you know whether or not there are any official documentation available, please let me know.

Yahoo Suggest API

I haven’t tried this yet, but I do have a little experience using Yahoo’s API for other things, and am pretty confident that you won’t have any trouble figuring out how to use Yahoo’s suggest API:

http://developer.yahoo.com/search/web/V1/relatedSuggestion.html

I thought that I would share the list of articles, so you can feast your eyes on them too!

Make Your Language Richer with Google Search: Tricks and Tools – Blueglass
I have been meaning to read up on how to use the lesser known operators for Google search to do competetive research for a while, and it looks like this article is going to hand things to me on a silver platter – Besides, I kind of dig the authors last name.

7 Tips for an Authentic Productive Writing Process – Copyblogger
When skimming the article I noticed that the sentence “write the way you talk” were hightlighted. I think that is a really good piece of advice, and it is one of the things from William Zinsser: On Writing Well that really struck a nerve with me.

Be Respectful – Manger Tools
The people from Manager Tools always have give good advice, and it is in a form that is easy to use in your business. I suspect that the blog post is going to be a nice follow up to this one Learning to Be a Gambling Affiliate.

My Rocky Relationship with SEO Is Over – Finch Sells
Finch usually has useful things to say.

For Ways Mind Maps Make You More Creative – Lateral Action
This article involves mind maps and learning styles, both of them being things I have spend a fair amount of time thinking about lately.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant – Smart Passive Income
I suspect that this may be a big sales pitch. One of the bullets is “Do you prefer a female or male VA?”, and I just have to know if they have something useful to say about that, or if it is just there to make people (like me) wonder if there is something about how the opposite sex that they don’t know.

• Very serious about poker
• Flush with money to spend

I would love to know what these people are doing on my websites, so I can attract more of them.

Screenshot showing the advanced segment in use on one of my sites.

Identifying the Ballers

Since Google Analytics record the screen resolution of every visitor, it is easy enough to create a filter that let you see what these people are doing on your site.

If you don’t want to mess with it yourself, you can use the advanced segment I have created. All you have to do is to log into your Google Analytics account and then click on the link below.

YES! I want to see the ballers

How to making those pesky freelancers deliver their work on time

For some time, I have been having problems with freelance writers delivering work a couple of days after the deadline we agreed on. Getting a couple of articles delivered late usually isn’t a “big problem” for me, however, missing deadlines is!

Even the best of us eventually end up missing a deadline or two, and to prevent it from happening too often, it is important to handle it properly – Something I haven’t been doing in the past.

What You Can Do Right Now!

I love the people, who work with me, and don’t enjoy giving them negative feedback. As a result, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make it less unpleasant for them, which I hope will also make them more likely to actually change their behaviour and be on time with their deliverables.

I think the best way to deliver negative feedback is to make it as short as possible, and focus on the cause and effect. I use this neat little formula, which I learned about from Manager Tools.

When you do X, this is what happens.

Examples

Below are a couple of examples of basic feedback I would give someone, who missed the deadline we set.

When you send me x later than we agreed on, it is difficult for me to get my own work done on time.

When you send me x later than we agreed on, I get concerned that you may not be able to handle the job.

When a deadline pass, and I don’t hear from you, I get worried that something may have happened to you, just like I would be concerned if you didn’t show up for work one day.

It is important to tailor the message to the person you are talking to. Something that really hits a nerve with one person, can leave someone else wondering why the heck you are telling them something like that.

If I’m talking to someone that is very focused on getting things done and don’t worry if he may hurts someone’s feelings in the process, I wouldn’t tell him that “I’m worried that something may have happened to him” when he turns in work late. He probably doesn’t think that way, and may wonder why the heck I’m worrying about his well being.

If I on the other hand told him that “I’m concerned that he isn’t able to handle the job” it would strike a never with him, since I’m implying that he isn’t capable of doing his job.

Edit: I forgot to mention that it is important to give people positive feedback when they do deliver on time – Carrots work better than sticks.

Status Reports

If you don’t like chasing people down after they have missed a deadline, you can simply ask for a status report

I’m looking forward to getting the [insert number] articles about [insert subject] on [insert date], so I can do [something]. How are they coming along?

The purpose of the email above is to make it clear to people that you care about the work they are doing, and that you are counting on them to get them to meet the deadline. By letting them know what you are going to do with the articles, you are also making the work more meaningful to the writer, so it isn’t just “something they do to make money”.

I think that if you always ask for an update a couple of days before the deadline, people will start expecting you to do it, and make sure that they get started early on your job, since they know you are going to be asking them about it.

Trick: To make it easy for you to send out all the reminders, just create a reminder in Google Calendar each time you assign ajob. You can even set it up to send a reminder to your email address if you don’t check your calendar every day.