SomethingStore.com - A Creative Idea I Wish I Thought Of!
You know me. I’m always up to some kind of wacky, fun, creative idea. That’s why I’m impressed with a new site/product I found today called SomethingStore.com. SomethingStore is a fun new website that operates quite simply: We will send you something, selected randomly among many things from our inventory for $10 (free shipping) and you will find out what your something is when you receive it. So, what will yours be? This is awesome. I ordered “something”... Read More »
Blogrush Proves A Brilliant Marketing Effort Will Always Win
This whole Blogrush situation just fascinates me, and I’m sorry to keep blogging about it, but I LOVE good marketing and buzz, and John Reese and Blogrush deliver. Case in point, what we’re seeing now is the sliding scale of backlash coming back about the product. Particularly, we’re seeing the guys who have had traffic exchanges for years come out of the woodwork saying stuff like “I did it already, and you just copied it, etc…” Check... Read More »
How-To Videos Plus Online Subscriptions Make A Recipe For Success
CNNmoney.com writes a piece called ‘How to Score with How-to Video‘, Niche players are resuscitating the subscription model to make money off homemade instructional websites. (Business 2.0 Magazine) — When Evan Margolin launched SalsaBootCamp to sell instructional video clips online, everyone he knew told him it was a crazy idea. Why would people offer up their credit cards to him - a dance teacher known only to his students in San Francisco - when they... Read More »
Creativity Is The Most Important Key To Online Marketing Success
We’ve gotten to the point that most online videos (including mine) are sucking. Well, not sucking, but they’re boring. Let’s face it, this Internet video thing is growing up fast. It’s time for more creativity. The best part is, you can be creative without big bucks. Check out this cool video on RSS. Click To Play There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don’t. This video is for the... Read More »
Sometimes Simply Taking Chances Is Your Best Marketing Effort
Case in point, look at how the media picks up on simple stories like this. SOUTHBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Ryan Fitzgerald is unemployed, lives with his father and has a little bit of time on his hands. So, he decided to offer his ear, to anyone who wants to call. After posting a video with his cell phone number on YouTube on Friday, the 20-year-old told The Boston Globe he has received more than 5,000 calls and text messages. Fitzgerald said he wanted to “be there,”... Read More »
Free Online Marketing Consultations Every Friday
Are you struggling with how to successfully manage or create an online business? Does your business need more sales, leads and publicity? Do you simply need someone to talk to who can tell you what you need to do to be successful online? I’ve decided that every Friday (for a limited time) is now renamed Jim Kukral’s FREE Friday. I will personally get on the phone, or meet you in person (Cleveland, OH) to discuss your problems or opportunities that you face online,... Read More »
Win Jim Kukral’s Domain Name Contest: NicheROI.com
Take my domain names, please. I own about 150 or so domain names, most of which I don’t or ever will use. But I keep buying them as I “hope” to one day make them a good home. So why not give them away to someone with a good idea who can use them? Here’s the deal. Every once in a while I’m going to give away one of my domain names to one of my readers who can come up with the best business model or website idea for that domain name. No, you don’t... Read More »
Thinking Creatively & Taking Chances Is A Marketing Strategy That Works
Back in 1994 I had a job interview with an advertising agency in Akron, Ohio. During the interview I noticed the President’s office wall covered in yellow post-it notes. And I mean a ton of them, all over the place, like wallpaper. “That’s how I get work done and remember stuff,” he said. I thought it was pretty cool, and it gave me an idea. After I left the interview, I went to the store and bought some packs of post-it notes, and a big paper sheet... Read More »
Zac Johnson Has The Skillz To Be The Next John Chow
One of my favorite guys in “the biz” is Zac Johnson of Moneyreign fame. Well, it looks like Zac finally got himself a blog. Take a peek at www.zacjohnson.com. MoneyReign, Inc., one of fastest growing entertainment and marketing networks on the Internet currently serving over 3 million impressions each month. In addition to on-site and email marketing, the Company is focusing on delivering fun and compelling ecard and humor related content to viewers all around... Read More »
Is Your Shopping Cart & Ecommerce Site The Best It Can Be?
MarketingSherpa’s 2007 Ecommerce Study was published today and distributed via email with a pdf download. There are, of course, some pretty interesting results included in the report. I’ve detailed a few of my favorites that will hopefully help you out. Click here to buy the full report. If you’re in the business of affiliate marketing, as either an affiliate or merchant, this benchmark guide should be of particular interest to you. Shopping Cart Abandonment... Read More »
How To Change Your YouTube Video Thumbnail Image?
Graywolf teased us a bit in his video entry here, and below about a technique that can set your YouTube thumbnail image. Here’s his video. So, does it work? I tested it out, after trying the math in my head. I’m probably wrong, but we’ll see. It worked! See the black video overlay with the message? This post from Crunchnotes, and the comments, are postulating that it is the center/middle of the video. That’s what I did above. However, YouTube... Read More »
Online Marketing Videos Every Aspiring Super Marketer Needs To Watch
Mack at the Viral Garden had a great post about how he found some amazing marketing videos by some famous marketers over at Google Video. I started searching through Google Video and found plenty of gems by speakers such as Seth Godin, Joe Jaffe, Jackie Huba, and Robert Scoble. For the other 99.9% of you that have broadband (ie, real internet), enjoy. Do yourself a favor, take a few hours out of your day or weekend, and give these guys a chance to make you smarter. In particular,... Read More »
BigBrownBox.com Project Goes Live - Over $13k Value In The Box In Less Than An Hour
The Big Brown Box project just went live. Check it out, in less than an hour of it going live, the big brown box has over $13,200 worth of stuff in it. Including a $1700 Dell XPS gaming laptop. Want to put something in the big brown box? It’s easy, find out more here. Here are the first four items in the big brown box. Item #4: $10,000 Web Traffic Package From Jon At Wickedfire Forums! Item #3: $500 Podcast Design Consultation from David Lawrence Item #2: $1000 Professional... Read More »
The Big Brown Box Logo Revealed
We’re almost done with BigBrownBox.com. Just wrapping up some final touches on content and rules. Here’s our logo. Will you be ready for the Big Brown Box? What’s in the Big Brown Box? Stay tuned. Read More →
JimKukral.com Was Hacked!
By me. :) Please excuse the horrible link bait-ish headline, but I wanted to get your attention for a special announcement I need to tell you about. You can view the announcement at JimKukral.com. Read More →
Online Video Lighting Tips To Help You Produce High-Quality Online Videos
If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve been harping on online video for quite some time now. Well, I’ve actually done more than just talk about it, I’ve taken the plunge off the high dive and worked very hard to create video content over the past month or so. I’m here to tell you one thing. If you’re going to do video production, you gotta get the lighting right. Case in point, here are two examples of videos of me talking on a white... Read More »
Want More Blog Traffic? Give Your Expertise Away
You’re an expert at something, right? Or maybe you know a heckuva lot about the topic of your blog, right? At least I hope so. Give your knowledge away. Here’s a perfect example. The Copyblogger had a simple request for his readers yesterday. His headline is written: ‘Let’s Remix a Few More of Your Headlines’. Last fall, I invited readers to submit posts they had written, and I chose several and rewrote the titles. Quite a few people seemed... Read More »
Online Marketing Idea: Keep The Conversations Alive On Non-Blog Content
What if you have a blog, and a website? I know, it sounds so archaic, believe me, I know. But even blogging geeks like me still sometimes have “non-blog” pages as part of their blogs, or, have pages that were created years and years ago before the blog ate the main part of the site. The problem with those old pages is that they aren’t interactive without comments, right? It’s foolish to not attempt to keep the conversation alive, even on old non-blog... Read More »
Want To Monetize Your Blog? Start Thinking About “Fun”
Recently I launched a little thing called Kukral’s Top Bananas. Anyone can buy the top banana spot for $10.00, and upload a graphic and get a link. I can hear you now saying, “Jim, are you nuts? What is this top banana stuff?”. Look, it’s all about having some fun and testing new ideas and finding new and creative ways to monetize blogs and get publicity and all that cool stuff. But mostly, it’s just about having some fun. If it was about money,... Read More »
The Big Brown Box Project Is Coming
Awesome Dave and I have been secretly plotting out our next project, one that we hope will top the Awesome Million. It’s called BigBrownBox.com, and it’s almost ready to go live. We have one problem. We can’t find a box. We’re looking for a box about the size of dishwasher. So I went to Sears and asked for a box, but they said they immediately cut the boxes down, so no luck, and I’m not buying a dishwasher just to get the box. Then I went to... Read More »
