Business Strategy, Personal Development, Marketing
Last year, Amazon made a big deal out of its 20th Anniversary by starting “Amazon Prime” day. The idea was that there would be huge sales and lots of savings and everyone would love Amazon and Amazon Prime. The trouble was that any decent sales sold out so quickly that lots of people never even … Read more
Something keeps bothering me about Twitter losing money. The company claims 330 million active monthly users. If they were overly optimistic, or using a very generous definition of “active,” lets cut that in half to 150 million active users each month. Now, if they could earn just $1 per user, that would be $150 million … Read more
I’ve been working on various types of web development for years now. In that time, I’ve used several text editors, code editors, integrated development environments (IDE), or other software coding tools. Some of them I used by choice after hearing great things, others I was forced to use by clients who “use this tool.” My … Read more
So, I finally broke down and bought a MacBook Pro. I did it for two reasons. First, I had a little netbook a few years ago that I really liked, but the battery wouldn’t charge anymore and they wanted almost $100 for a new one. The only laptop I have left is a giant desktop … Read more
There are a lot of articles out there this week about Amazon raising the minimum purchase for free shipping. This is not a price increase, so much as a price cut for Amazon Prime. Consider that Amazon Prime makes up a lot of Amazon’s revenue these days. It’s similar to the model that Costco uses … Read more
Last month, Tesla’s general council gave an explanation to the FTC about why Tesla sells its cars directly to customers instead of using the traditional car dealership model. Of course, the remarks were carefully researched, vetted, and tested so as to not create any unpleasant blow back. That also made them slightly less truthful than … Read more
Once upon a time, I noticed that many of the products I was buying had a Kelloggs Family Rewards box where I usually see a Box Tops for Education box. I started saving Box Tops when my kids hit grade school, and while I don’t think we’ve ever seen big money, our school does pull … Read more
A 60 Minutes tweet and report suggest that the latest Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, needs to make $1.5 BILLION to be considered a success. That number seems pretty high considering the movie cost just $220 million to make, and even a huge marketing number gets you nowhere near $1.5 Billion. Frankly, one wonders … Read more
So, here is an interesting idea. Uber needs drivers to drive around the customers who book a ride on the Uber app. Traditionally, that means having your own car, and not just any car. The car has to meet Uber’s standards. While these standards have been loosened recently, they do still require a relatively newer … Read more
Once upon a time, several years ago, I registered my first domain with Dreamhost. I can’t remember why, although I probably read something good about them. At the time, I didn’t know that webhosting, and web hosts are some of the most prolific, and profitable, affiliate programs on the internet. In other words, they pay … Read more
So, McDonald’s has decided to serve breakfast all day. There was a time where this probably wouldn’t have worked, but increasing standardization and the expansion of many cook lines makes it more plausible now. The question is, Will it matter? The idea of cutting off breakfast was mandatory back when I worked at McDonald’s (a … Read more
Soylent is a shake mix developed by some tech guys and initially funded via a Kickstarter program. After some difficulties and delays, the company finally seems up and running in a such a way that the formula both works, and can now be ordered without weeks of delay. I went ahead and tried out Soylent … Read more