Cameron Gibbs

I can’t ever seem to get the overture keyword selector tool to work (though it will once in a while) and its driving me crazy.  Its the only tool I’ve come across that actually gives hard numbers on searches for specific keywords.  I never had trouble with the tool when logged into a ysm account but when they upgraded the UI, they got rid of it :(.  I actually got it to work tonight for one query but that was it.

If anyone knows of a keyword volume tool comparable to overture’s, please share.

I think I’ve discovered one of life’s hidden secrets… maybe…

With what life throws at you each day, the idea of coming home from work and unwinding watching tv, surfing the internet, eating, lying down to rest, etc, is very attractive.  It becomes easy to put things you know you need to do off and find excuses not to do them.  Well, t think I’ve re-learned a lesson I’ve tried to teach myself more than once: quit putting things off and just do ‘em!

Allow me to explain… over the last three months, I’ve spent a lot more time at home than I’ve had in a long time.  Because of this, I’ve had time to work on things (honey-do’s, for example) that I’ve been putting off for some time… and some of them are regular chores.  Life seems so much better when you just do things the first opportunity you have to tackle them… and for those regular things (like chores), its easier to go back and do them again and again after they’ve become habits.

It appears that google is in the middle of an update… pagerank’s are going up and down all over the net.

Heidi and I have only one desk in our home office suitable for working at and of course, that’s where our PC lies.  I also have a laptop that I use much more frequently and I regulary sit at the desk to use it.  Anyone that uses a laptop knows that your productivity reduces dramatically when you use the laptop’s keyboard (too cramped) and touch pad (not as effective as a mouse) so whenever I’m at the desk, I unplug the keyboard and mouse from the desktop to plug it into my laptop.  You can imagine how fun that gets.  Introduce usb share switch hub.

So I bought this usb switch hub and I’m loving it.  I plugged my usb keyboard, mouse and printer into the hub and connected it to both the desktop and the laptop.  No more reaching, unplugging, plugging and getting tangled in the process.  Nope… now I just push a button and the controls are mine.  Push the button again, and the controls are back on desktop.

If I wanted to use my desktop’s monitor for both computers, I would’ve got a kvm switch but with our setup, I actually prefer to use my laptop’s monitor.

If you had access to a computer and the internet a couple of years ago, you probably saw the numa numa video.  Well, the other day I was checking out the featured videos on youtube and I noticed that one of the related videos had an image of a guy that reminded me of the numa numa dude.  I clicked on it and sure enough, it was Mr. Numa Numa himself.  A few months ago he and his band (yes, he actually has a band), along with the help of Experience Studios, created a new music video called New Numa (this time, the song is in Russian and it was specifcally created for the video but not played by numa numa dude’s band).

Though the video is hilarious and the song is kind of catchy (but kind of annoying after awhile), it’s not what I’m pointing out in this post.  What’s cool is what one company is doing with the numa numa craze to make a profit.  You’ll notice as you’re watching the new numa video, the numa numa guy is wearing a shirt that says newnuma.com on it and he’s wearing a wireless bluetooth headset (the icombi).  If you go to newnuma.com, you’ll see an advertisement for a new numa video contest.  Wiresaremessy.com, a site that only sells the icombi, is sponsering the contest and giving away big cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place (the winner receives $25k). 

Though it’s quite a gamble, I think its really cool marketing to sponsor a world wide video contest like this and promote/sell a product that fits the demographic like a shoe.  Hopefully, for wiresaremessy.com’s sake, the gamble pays off.

A while back I read about a site that’s able to match up pictures of your ancestors with pics that others have uploaded through face recognition software.  The site has a fun tool that tells you which celeb you look most like.  Heidi and I have had a lot of fun uploading pictures of our boys and other family members to see which celebrity we most resemble.

Though the tool doesn’t really add any value to the site’s products, it’s been incredible linkbait, improving the site’s organic rankings, driving tons of traffic and has certainly increased revenues.

Apperantly, our six-month old boy looks like Oprah.

Omniture recently acquired Instadia, a leading, profitable web analytics provider in Europe.  Since November, Omniture’s stock price has skyrocketed from around $10 a share to $15 and analysts are screaming buy.

Investors: keep an eye on OMTR. Competitors: beware – they’ve got some serious capital and will likely continue to pump out powerful analytical tools.

Heidi and I played monopoly tonight.  It was the first time I’ve played in several years… but I haven’t forgotten how to win. :) 

As you already know, Monopoly is a game of real estate… and the rules of real life real estate apply in the game.  It’s all about location… owning boardwalk and park place (as well as the green property on the same street) and putting hotels on them.  It may cost you quite a bit up front, but in the long run, you’ll rarely lose.

Today I was calling my brothers and sisters to try to convince them to move to utah.  Though I don’t think I’ve convinced any of them it got me thinking why Heidi and I are content with living in utah.  Here’s a few reasons…

• relatively low cost of housing (though house values have increased significantly over the last couple of years)
• low crime rate
• scenery (wasatch front) — I’ve come to love the view of the nearby mountains
• “greatest snow on earth” for you snowboarders and skiers
• good people — like everywhere else, you may run into a bad apple or two but most everyone seems friendly here
• cutting-edge technology — the local government does a good job of promoting/encouraging new technology such as fiber optic cable infrastructure (internet, cable, phone, etc) and both utah and the salt lake counties are full of hi-tech business.
• four seasons — to be honest, I’d rather have sunny weather all year long but since I like to snowboard and I don’t like to drive a long ways to a resort, something has to give.

Well, that’s all I can come up with now… for those of you that live in utah, what to you like/dislike about it?

This tip actually applies to traffic from any channel but its definitely something you can do to improve your return on ad spend and justify your cost-per-conversion for ppc ads.

Before killing a costly adgroup, make sure you’ve offered everything searchers may be looking for when they click on your ad.  For example, try selling different variations of your product… different colors, different lengths, different brands, etc.  If you’re only offering one or two varieties of a product, a searcher will be more likely to go with a competitor that offers a more depth product line.