A Dog’s Life

Successful marketers test. Unsuccessful marketers don’t.

This bit of wisdom come from StomperNet, the guys I’m learning e-commerce from. They’re teaching us to test everything. Test our ads, test our landing pages, just friggin test everything.

It reminds me of a learning experience I had in ceramics. The final assignment of the year was to make a teapot. Teapots are always a major assignment in any ceramics program because they’re complicated. The body, the lid, the spout and the handle are all separate pieces that have to come together and “work” as a whole.

So my teacher and guru, Mr. Gains, pulls me aside and says, “Your assignment is a little different. You need to make 20 of each part, assemble at least 1o finished teapots and turn in the best one.”

Make ten and turn in the best one.

That’s what we’re doing when we test. We try different ads, difference landing pages, different copy and the results of the tests (click throughs) tells us which ones are best. So the make ten and turn in the best one strategy is one that has served me well in my life and here it comes again.

Richard Random Thoughts

I’ve been looking around for music widgets because I’d like to stream audio from my desktop to my blog but I haven’t found anything yet to do that. What would be perfect is if my webcam software had audio capability but I guess I’ll have to keep looking for that.

In the mean time, I found last.fm which streams music from their site to mine. You pick an artist and they play that artist and similar stuff. I hope to pick a new artist every day. You can turn it off if the music bugs you. I have a feeling that I’ll be listening to last.fm more than playing music from my own library.

Richard Net Life

Google is taking over the world and I’m ok with that. Their stuff is usually free, always works well and is intelligently designed. In case you haven’t done it yet, set up an iGoogle page. This lets you see a custom page whenever you go to Google (something I do many times a day) and I have mine set up with the local weather forecast, news headlines, my gmail, and other useful and fun stuff. I used to have my browser home page set to The Astronomy Picture of the Day, but now I have it set to Google and I have the APOTD as one of the items on my Google page.

Some day, I suspect that you’ll be able to drag desktop icons onto your iGoogle page and then the line between “browser page” and “desktop” will disappear, something that Microsoft will fight tooth and nail, one can be sure.

Anyway, in my migration to living in the Google universe, I’ve decided to stop using all my other “instant messaging” applications and go with Google Talk. It offers both text chat and voice and video chat in one neat package so if you want to chat me in any form, get Google Talk and let’s have at it! You can look me up with my gmail address: happydog44 at gmail dot com. I’m spelling it out like that to avoid spam bots that scour web pages looking for email addresses.

Richard Net Life

I added a widget to show my twitter “tweets” – It’s on the right sidebar. Twitter is yet another way to broadcast words on the internet.

There is a lot of talk about “Web 2.0″ which is really just the idea that interactivity and communication among people is really the focus of the net. I think it’s kind of a silly idea because the internet has always been about communication, it’s just taking new forms as time goes on, which is what you would expect.

Websites like this one used to be static. Now they’re dynamic and people who visit can leave comments. That’s “Web 2.0″ in action. Twitter is another flavor of that. You post your thoughts and you can read the posts from other people. You can track friends and easily see all their posts. You’re broadcasting text messages to the internet and anyone who wants to can pick them up.

One of the things that makes it unique is the ease of use. I use Twitterbar which is a Firefox extension that allows me to post tweets directly from the address bar in my browser.

I’m thinking that later today, I might switch to a Twitter widget that shows the tweets of the people I’m following as well as my own tweets since following is just as much a part of twitter as posting is.

Richard Net Life

This site, in all it’s iterations, has always been a platform for me to explore new technologies and so it continues. I changed the webcam setup and added a Skype button and Google Talk button so now you can chat with me or call me from this page. The chat opens in a new tab or window depending on your browser setup. If you right click the link and open it in a new window, you can resize that window and be here and there at the same time.. so to speak.

I think video is where the internet is headed and so I’ll be adding video blogs and other sorts of video as time allows. I can see that the day isn’t far off when getting to websites will be the same as changing channels on a television. The total integration of television, internet and telephone isn’t far away.

Lots of people are already “lifecasting” and many are using .tv domain names to do it. If you’d like a sample of that, check out Justin TV.

Stay tuned for more fun!

Richard Net Life

This is one of my favorite songs. I have eight versions of it and I’m always looking for more. Right now I have versions by: Jimmy Cliff (of course), Bruce Springsteen, Joe Cocker, John Lennon, Linda Ronstadt, Oleta Adams, UB40 and Elvis Costello.

Richard Random Thoughts

I decided to add an audio plugin so that from time to time I can share some music. It’s the multimedia thang, doncha know.

I heard this song on the jukebox at the bar I go to and liked it.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Richard Random Thoughts

One of the teachers in my life that was very influential was Mr. Gaines. He was my ceramics teacher and was a Master Craftsman who took me as his apprentice and taught me the ways of clay. He was an accomplished artist and also taught drawing and painting as well as ceramics, in which he held an MFA.

One day we were talking about all the different skills that go into making a ceramics piece. You have to know which type of clay will be best for what you want to do. You have to make the piece. You have to decorate the piece. You have to glaze the piece. You have to fire the piece. Each of those parts of the process require their own set of skills and not all potters are equally good at all of them. Some potters are excellent at throwing, but their decorating sucks. Some are excellent glaze formulators but their throwing is weak. And so it goes.

He likened it to being a professional tennis player as tennis was his favorite hobby outside of ceramics. “To be a great tennis player, you have to have a total game. You can’t just have a great serve or a great forehand and be weak at the rest of the game. You have to be great at all of it and ceramics is the same way. If you want to be a great potter, you need to be great at every aspect of the process and if you’re weak in any area, that is the area to work hardest at until you bring it up to the same level of achievement as the areas in which you are strongest. No one is automatically good at all of it, but what separates the greats from the also-rans is that the greats recognize this and don’t bullshit themselves that it doesn’t matter if they are a little weak in one area.”

You were right, Mr. Gains. To be great, you need to have a total game and the difference between the greats and the also-rans is the amount of bullshit we feed ourselves.

Richard Random Thoughts

After a week of intense work and learning, I’ve finally finished basic construction of my first affiliate marketing site sterlingsilverboxes.com and I’m very happy about it! I’m sure as time goes on I will be adding more content and I’ll probably redesign as I learn more, but any journey must start with a first step and I feel like I have completed my first step. The empire begins!

Richard Net Life

Knowledge is a funny thing. We’re surrounded by it all the time. It’s always being thrown at us. But if you’re not ready for it, it’s meaningless. I don’t mean that in a cosmic way.

It’s like calculus. In order to understand calculus, you need to understand algebra. In order to understand algebra, you need to understand arithmetic. So if you’re working on arithmetic, you’re not ready for the knowledge of calculus. Or maybe you just would rather know more about collecting ceramic cats than about calculus. Knowledge is everywhere and when you’re ready for it and go looking for it, you find it.

A wise man once told me that the biggest problem with life is that you always get what you want. I didn’t understand that at first, but now I do.

Richard Random Thoughts