AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 10:01 PM ----- BODY:
BabyfaceCards.com Unique Postcards For Holidays & Birth Announcements My friend and office-space buddy, David Potokar, just launched his first e-commerce store for his custom created postcards at BabyfaceCards.com. I helped Dave put the store together because I really believe in the product. His hand-crafted postcards are made from your baby photos. You choose the design, holiday greetings, birth announcements, military postcards, etc... Then he takes your photos and puts them digitally on each postcard, making it look amazingly real and extremely fun and unique. So hop on over to BabyfaceCards.com and see some of Dave's creations. I haven't met one person yet who has seen them in hand that didn't say, "This is so cool" or "How did you do this?" These cards are the real thing. Unique as they come. In a time when most things are built for speed off of an assembly line, Dave is making the effort to produce something that has quality written all over it. Oh yeah, he's offering free shipping too!
-------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 3:40 PM ----- BODY:
Surf the net while surfing waves Ok, now I've seen it all. I'm a web geek pretty much, and even I don't want to be "connected" on a surfboard. Doesn't this seem the complete opposite of a surfer mentality? 'Dude man, I gotta have that...not!' Why stop here? How about a wet suit that looks like a suit and tie? Surfers would love that too. Have a great weekend.
-------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 4:00 PM ----- BODY:
Inflatable Food Spam! Don't you just love spam that is so completely off-target, and well, just silly, with poor grammar to boot? I just got one from a company in the UK no less, that wants me to purchase inflatable food displays. Now that's blatent spam at its finest. The message is as follows:
Dear Mrs & Mmes, first of all, let me introduce our company to you. Our company was established on 1995 and mainly produce all kinds of inflatable advertising and other items. Our mission is simple: · Blimps, balloons, inflatables, replicas, slides, jumping bed and more advertising products that are safe to use and extremely profitable for our customers. · Give our customers exceptional value by offering our products at “Cheap” with “Quality”. · Provide quality Customer Service that exceeds our customer’s expectations before and after the sale. · Develop long-term successful relationships with all of our customers around the GLOBE. We want to be a “Partner in Your Success!” If you have any questions, please call me or e-mail me. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have and provide you with a detailed quote. Don’t forget to ask me about our discounts. Buy in quantity and save BIG! Be sure to log on to our web site at www.skywind.co.uk for our latest product information. Let me know item, type and number of pc/s or your drawing, in this way I can do a best quotation with shipment. Thank you once again for your time and interest in Sky Wind! I look forward to doing business with you in the near future and forward to hearing from you soon. Note: We are manufacturing Easter Inflatables in bulk for this season, please send your interest and I would give you my best offer for the same. Looking forward to your favorable response. Yours faithfully. Business Manager www.skywind.co.uk
-------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 11:32 AM ----- BODY:
Study Shows Blog Readers Defy Stereotypes So all bloggers and blog readers are a bunch of kids huh? Wrong. I knew that, but did you? It's like when I found out that most of the people who play online video games are in their 30's, not in their teens. Another web sterotype dismantled. Look at some of these stats about bloggers and the people who read blogs.
It turns out that 61 percent of blog readers who participated in the survey are over 30 years of age. Almost 30 percent are between the ages of 31 and 40, while over 37 percent span the ages of 41-60. And nearly 40 percent have a household income of $90K and above.
That's an amazing demographic to target if you're an advertiser.
According to the study, 79.1 percent of blog readers questioned are male; 28.9 of these readers fall between the ages of 19 and 30, 30.6 percent between 31 and 40, and 34.4 percent between 41 and 60. Female blog readers skew older. Just under 20 percent are 19-30 years of age, while 47.5 percent are ages 41-60.
Again, more numbers that show the gender gap. Here are the best numbers though. This proves that blog readers like to spend money.
Blog readers are making significant consumer purchases online as well. During the last six months before they were surveyed, 50 percent of respondents spent more than $50 online on books and 23 percent spent $100-$199. They spend on periodicals, too: 36 percent plunked down between $20 and $99 on subscriptions through the Web in that time. In addition, 47 percent of blog readers spent more than $500 online for plane tickets, and 25 percent bought between $100 and $499 worth of consumer electronics online.
All that being said, you should purchase a copy of my strategy guide at www.blogstoriches.com and learn how to capitalize on these numbers.
-------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 4:09 PM ----- BODY:
Have You Been SPIM'd Yet? Imagine this scenario. Your 13-year-old son is IM'ing his friends on the family computer before dinner. You have all of your "Net Nanny" child protection services installed to keep him away from questionable material, so you feel ok letting him browse the Internet and chat with his friends. Then, all of sudden, he gets an AOL IM message from "GirlyQ99", with the message and link, "Come see hard-core sex and stuff dude...click here". Not knowing who the message is from, he clicks it and is directed to a porn site. Operation protect your kids from smut...failed. Not to mention all the shady Viagra, Penis enhancement and debt consolidation SPIM's you'll be getting as well. SPIM is SPAM via IM, hence SPIM. View definition here. According to this article, "Spim will account for around 5 percent of all public IM traffic by the end of 2004. In terms of the actual number of spim messages, that equates to more than 2 million messages this year alone."
-------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 12:30 AM ----- BODY:
InternetRetailer.com - Domain names reach a record 63 million, VeriSign reports
The latest VeriSign Domain Report says there are 63 million registered web-site domain names, one for every 100 people in the world and the highest ever. VeriSign reports that 4.7 million new domain names were registered in the first quarter, also a record. In addition, those names aren't just sitting idle, waiting for someone to buy and activate them, as were many during the Internet investment bubble. Over 72% of today's domain names now lead to an actual web site, up from 55% in December 2002.
I guess this Internet thing is here to stay huh? I personally have close to 70 registered domain names, of which about 40% of them are active websites. The rest of them are just sitting there, waiting for me to bring them to life! My first domain was www.iquit.org, way back in 1999. Over the years I've begun to acquire names that I think I could possibly use in the future, or names that I think are worth some value down the road. We've come a long way from 99' where it was $70 from Netsol for a 2-year registation, to today where I can find registrations as low as $7.95, probably cheaper. I always wonder why people don't buy their names (www.jimkukral.com)? If it's not taken, wouldn't you think you'd want to have your .dotcom name reserved for future use? I was thinking about buying my daughter's .dotcom name to give to her someday to use. Of course, who knows how this whole 'net thing will work by then. I'm guessing we won't be .com'ing it in 20 years.
-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:8:08 AM COMMENT-BODY:Jim - if we won't be .coming in 20 years - what will we doing? -------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 12:25 PM ----- BODY:
The Spec Spot - Video Watch the video above. What do you think? I think it's a bold move to release a spot like this under a major brand like Tide. So therein lies the question. How far is too far nowadays when it comes to promoting your brand in new and creative ways? Even if it's just an online viral thing, can a creative like this hurt your brand? I tend to think that it can both help and hurt you, depending on who sees it. If you ran this spot on prime time television, it would most likely get poor reviews. If you ran it as a gimmick on the Internet as it seems to be, you could see if viral out of control. But...as with all marketing efforts, did it help you sell your product? In Tide's case, I think no. What do you think?
-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:2:18 PM COMMENT-BODY:Hi.

Maury Rosenfeld here, operator of thespecspot.com, where the Tide spot is posted. Just want to mention that P&G had nothing to do with the spot. It is purely a "spec", done by the director, on his own time/dime. I can see why Jim has a negative take on this spot... he's not the only one. However, many folks have been writing positive things too. Plus, I kinda doubt if "Mom" is seeing this spot. More likely, "Joe and Jane College" ( as well as the ad biz community ) are seeing it. They're probably more focused on getting laid than making sure that junior's undies are clean, if (god forbid) he's in a car accident. The spot does show a problem that tide remedies, and ties it to sex (always a good strategy)... but I still won't be surprised if I get a "cease and desist" letter from P&G legal.

Besides, this market segment (young adults) is used to "tuning out" interruptive advertising (tv ads, etc). There aren't many ways to get this market segment to pay attention. -------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 3:03 PM ----- BODY:
So what do you think of my new page header animation? It's a total rip-off of the 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' opening credits animation that I love so much. As Picasso said, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." I'm sure this won't be the last time you see it ripped. In fact, I saw a Wal-Mart commercial the other day that was emulating it. Remember how many times you saw 'The Matrix' still-frame rotate effect when that movie came out? So speaking of 'Queer Eye'... I was watching 'Queer Eye' last night, and low and behold I caught a commercial for Orbitz travel. But it wasn't just any commercial, it was specifically targeted to homosexuals (not that there's anything wrong with that). :0 Talk about niche marketing! Orbitz even went as far as to create a Gay Travel portal of the site at http://www.orbitz.com/gaytravel/. What a great idea, and a powerful example of how you can use the Internet and traditional broadcast marketing methods to target specific niches.
-------- AUTHOR: Jim Kukral DATE: 11:31 PM ----- BODY:
Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - What Your Company Can Learn From Google
"They had hoped to sell Google to Yahoo (YHOO) for $1 million, but Yahoo wasn't willing to pay that much. So they launched the company as a last resort."
Amazing how things can work out eh?
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