One Fish, Two Fish…
Brickfish! This is a nifty little website that Anne stumbled upon. They describe it better than I can, so here’s their spiel:
- Create content for your favorite brands and bands.
- Win exciting rewards for reviewing, voting and sharing content across the web.
- Earn rewards like the chance to meet your favorite bands, clothes, scholarships and even cold, hard cash.
The best incentive to participate in viral marketing I’ve seen in some time. We’re kicking around a campaign to launch on Brickfish, and it might be ready as early as Monday! Stay tuned for more details next week!
In other news to wrap up the week, I’ve booked my flight to John Wayne Airport in Orange County for the California Associations of Realtor’s Expo next month. I’ll miss the first day of the show, but will be there staffing our booth October 10th and 11th. I figure while I’m down there I’ll see some friends in the area and enjoy a slight change of pace from Nor Cal life. The day before the show I’ll be staffing our online booth at eComXpo from the comforts of my office here in Oakland. So two shows in three days… that should be an interesting week to say the least!
Trade shows seem to be going well, customer acquisition is doing okay but could be better, and the affiliate program is pretty stagnant. We had a two and a half hour metrics meeting this morning, only half of which focused on the affiliate program, which I felt like a moron during. I guess I’ve been more focused on the quantity of affiliates than the quality, so that ends now.
We want to help our affiliates to be better affiliates. We’re also considering some BIG changes to the structure of payments, but I’m not at liberty to announce them yet. We’re going to start looking more at our affiliates individually and see what they’re doing and what is working. Hopefully this helps everyone. Me, because I won’t look like a goober when asked questions and I’ll have the answers, the affiliate, because they’ll be making money, and the other affiliates, because they can learn from the big money makers.
That makes sense, right?
Read MoreThe Body is Willing, But the Mind is Weak
No, I didn’t get the saying wrong. That’s how I feel today. I’ve got a ton of energy physically speaking… got a great night’s sleep last night. But after even a short week of overloading my brain with end of month reporting, more reporting, affiliate network shopping, and more late nights at the office, my brain has decided to stage a sit in.
Actually, before about 11:30am this morning the brain was active too. However after sitting in various conference calls from then until about 2:15pm, my brain revolted from overload. First we heard all about LinkShare and their merchant platform. Then all about Widemile’s optimization services. Then talked to a couple cats at Clickbooth since we haven’t ventured into CPA marketing here at PsPrint yet.
Is it a bad thing that during our conference call I surfed over to MarketingTerms.com and had to look up CPA? I was pretty embarrassed with Anne sitting behind me… although I guess she actually didn’t notice until I mentioned it after the meeting. Oh well.
The last week I’ve been making sure our mailing services don’t break, which is nice for a change. At the end of August the mailing went crazy… it seemed like while I was on vacation everyone and their mother decided to place a mailing order. Which is great… but left me a lot of work to catch up on. We’ve been really focused on the affiliate program and it’s future. Which is great too. We’re looking at new features, better affiliate acquisition, possibly a new network, new creative, new campaigns… heck new everything. It’s an exciting time for me, especially since Anne confirmed that we’ll be attending Affiliate Summit 2008 West in Las Vegas in February. That means between my personal vacation, the National Association of Realtors show in November, and AS West I’ll be heading to Sin City three times in 6 months. Not too shabby for this California girl.
I’m also semi-addicted to del.icio.us now. Last night I imported all my bookmarks from home into it so now I can access them anywhere… and that’s half the point, right? It’s really actually pretty interesting to see how many other people have some of my favorite places bookmarked. I’m also surprised in some cases how few people have some websites bookmarked. For example, the View Askew Productions Message Board has over 10,000 registered members. But only 2 other people on del.icio.us have it bookmarked…one of which I even recognize (and promptly added to my network).
Time for my Friday ritual of trying to see the wood grain of my desk. Wish me luck.
Read MoreHats, Hats, Everywhere!
Have you ever noticed that right before you’re supposed to go on vacation, everything piles up out of nowhere? Things that weren’t even on your radar before are suddenly paramount priority. Last week my lovely manager Anne mentioned that I’ll be taking over e-mail marketing for PsPrint. I assumed this would be happening within the next month. I get into the office today to see an email from her with details for an email to be sent out Wednesday. Good thing I was prepared!
So I’ve been working mostly on that today, ironing out some kinks and playing that good old Waiting Game for the copy and other information. I’ve been chipping away at this ever increasing task list (thank the stars for the Tasks feature in Outlook) and most of the things on the list are due in the next three days before my vacation.
About a week ago, we were invited to post in a blog called PrintSalesPros as a sort of guest author. I wrote a blog post for them about our 100% Recycled Matte paper stock in response to a request for articles about green printing they posted on Twitter. Feel free to check it out HERE. Another contributor also posted an article about green printing entitled Green printing can make a great impression, and it’s a good one too.
So I’ve added another hat to my closet, so to speak. Mailing Services, the Affiliate Program, E-Mail Marketing, Social Media Marketing, trade show assisting, some really general assistance in advertising and promotional deals… I finally feel like I’m in marketing!
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