So, in my continuing attempts to sell some of my domain names, I've tried three new (and completely unsuccessful) approaches:
1. Giving away domain names in return for someone giving me the one true sales solution. (Two people did give interesting replies -- essentially suggesting that I manually try to sell the domains to end users.) However, neither expert was interested in the domains I was giving away. (Thanks Andy, though, for your kind words.)
2. I tried selling Bridal-Fairs.com on DigitalPoint's Buy/Sell/Trade forum. No nibbles, even at the bargain basement price of $8.
3. I approached Rick Latona about selling WoodFurnaces.net and WoodBoilers.net. He politely declined -- though whether it was because he didn't like the names, or because he thought my price was too high, I'm not sure.
Which leaves me, perhaps, slightly wiser and slightly disappointed. Next up: contacting end users.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Monday, September 08, 2008
Giving Away 5 Commercial Generic .COM Names
During the year and a half that I have been experimenting with domaining, I have developed a portfolio of about 400 names. The best names in my portfolio are quite good, and pay for themselves and a good portion of the rest of the portfolio. The worst of those names have expired (or are expiring). The remainder (which make up the bulk of my portfolio) is made up of what I consider to be 2nd-tier names. These are largely ".com" domain names, made up of 2 commercial keywords, and separated by a dash.
Monetization options for these 2nd-tier domains are limited:
The following 5 names are representative of the quality of the bulk of my portfolio.
I will give these names away to 5 people that tell me useful things I don't already know about selling domains. This decision will be purely subjective -- but I'm serious about giving these away to people that provide truly useful information. (You need to supply a GoDaddy account that I can push these names to -- one name per person.)
This might include:
It's important to me that you have actually had experience with the person, service or company that you submit. (Simply sending me a list of all the domain mailing lists would not be terribly helpful, for example.)
Thank you for taking the time to read this far. You're welcome to leave tips in the comments (please leave contact info) or email them to me at madbury at gmail daught kom. (Spell that phonetically, of course.)
Monetization options for these 2nd-tier domains are limited:
- I can park them -- although only a handful pay their own registration fees
- I can develop them myself (see, for example, Sport-Trucks.com), which is time and money-intensive;
- I can outsource their development to a company like AEIOU.com (see this post);
- I can sell them
The following 5 names are representative of the quality of the bulk of my portfolio.
- ARTIFICIAL-TREE.COM
- DRAFTING-SUPPLY.COM
- SHAPED-SKI.COM
- SILVER-BULLION.COM
- TOILETRY-BAG.COM
I will give these names away to 5 people that tell me useful things I don't already know about selling domains. This decision will be purely subjective -- but I'm serious about giving these away to people that provide truly useful information. (You need to supply a GoDaddy account that I can push these names to -- one name per person.)
This might include:
- Contact information for a good domain mailing list that promotes these sorts of names
- Contact information of a person or company that buys these sorts of names in bulk, for a substantial multiple of the reg fee
- Contact information for services (or qualified individuals) that will find and approach end user buyers in return for a percentage of the sales price
- Other techniques that you've found to be genuinely useful
It's important to me that you have actually had experience with the person, service or company that you submit. (Simply sending me a list of all the domain mailing lists would not be terribly helpful, for example.)
Thank you for taking the time to read this far. You're welcome to leave tips in the comments (please leave contact info) or email them to me at madbury at gmail daught kom. (Spell that phonetically, of course.)
Quick Review of AEIOU.com
Rick Latona launched AEIOU.com a month or so ago, to provide a way for domainers to build natural search engine traffic to their 2nd-tier domains. (ie Domains that are built on strong commercial keywords, but that don't get substantial type-in traffic.)
As the vast majority of my domains fall into this category, I thought I'd give the service a spin. I plunked down $500 to have AEIOU build two websites for me, on cross-country-skis.com and ski-hats.com.
About 2 weeks later, the domains were active, and after about a month, cross-country-skis.com is now the top result on search.msn.com for the term "cross country skis". (It has bounced in and out of this position once or twice, so who knows how stable that position is at this point.)
At current traffic levels it would take about 6 years to pay off development costs, but given this initial success it may be worthwhile to build out more content so that the site ranks better over time.
So, if you have strong commercial 2-3 word domains with dashes that aren't monetizing well on type-in traffic, you might want to give AEIOU a try and see what happens.
As the vast majority of my domains fall into this category, I thought I'd give the service a spin. I plunked down $500 to have AEIOU build two websites for me, on cross-country-skis.com and ski-hats.com.
About 2 weeks later, the domains were active, and after about a month, cross-country-skis.com is now the top result on search.msn.com for the term "cross country skis". (It has bounced in and out of this position once or twice, so who knows how stable that position is at this point.)
At current traffic levels it would take about 6 years to pay off development costs, but given this initial success it may be worthwhile to build out more content so that the site ranks better over time.
So, if you have strong commercial 2-3 word domains with dashes that aren't monetizing well on type-in traffic, you might want to give AEIOU a try and see what happens.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Amazingly Bad Customer Service From GoDaddy Handled a Dispute
I have been in something of a running customer service dispute with GoDaddy.com since June. I have a small (400 domains), middling-quality domain portfolio that I manage with GoDaddy. Apart from registering the domains with GoDaddy, I also used their CashParking service to place ads on most of those domains. I had a couple of minor complaints with their CashParking service:
So, at the end of the day, I was quite happy to continue working with GoDaddy.
However, all this came to a screeching halt in late June. I received an email from the CashParking team saying that my parking account had been irrevocably suspended. Sure enough, all of my parked domains were offline with a message saying that the site was unavailable. I called the CashParking team to find out what happened, and they said that they could not give me details -- but that pay-per-click traffic had been sent to one or more of my domains in violation of the terms of service, and therefore they were cancelling my CashParking account.
I found this frustrating, but I understood why they cancelled my account. First, for the record, I did not send pay-per-click ads to any of my parked domains. Nor did I encourage, suggest, allow, barter, trade or in any other way influence the placement of those ads. Nor am I aware of who did it. And if I could think of any more disclaimers, I would add them. I simply had nothing to do with whatever happened.
GoDaddy had a right to cancel my account, and I understand that they can't take my word that I had nothing to do with it. After all, someone (apparently) sent those ads -- and whoever sent that traffic apparently sent it without any financial incentive -- after all, they wouldn't make any money off of the traffic! Since GoDaddy displays Google ads, and Google doesn't allow arbitrage, GoDaddy had a responsibility to suspend my account.
Here's what makes me angry, though. GoDaddy removed all of my stats for the year that I hosted CashParking with them, and won't give them back! Because I did not keep regular backups (my mistake) I don't have a record of which domains get the most traffic, and what the eCPM is for all the domains. I can't calculate stats on how the length of a domain affects the amount of type-in traffic that it gets. I can't look at seasonality in traffic. I've sent emails, spoken with customer service reps, and even left a voice mail for a Cash Parking supervisor. (The voice mail has not been returned, the better part of a week later.) No dice.
To add insult to injury, GoDaddy just started showing parked ads on those domains again! Let me say that again -- they won't give me a revenue share for the ads, but they're now willing to show ads again as long as they can keep all the revenue!
One other cute little "feature" of the CashParking team canceling my account. They stop showing ads, but they don't stop the $9 / month billing!
GoDaddy -- I must say I am very disappointed in how you've handled this.
- they charge about $9 a month to place ads on the site;
- they charge an additional $10 a month to mail me a check (the checks were each less than $100, so this represented a large percentage of revenue);
So, at the end of the day, I was quite happy to continue working with GoDaddy.
However, all this came to a screeching halt in late June. I received an email from the CashParking team saying that my parking account had been irrevocably suspended. Sure enough, all of my parked domains were offline with a message saying that the site was unavailable. I called the CashParking team to find out what happened, and they said that they could not give me details -- but that pay-per-click traffic had been sent to one or more of my domains in violation of the terms of service, and therefore they were cancelling my CashParking account.
I found this frustrating, but I understood why they cancelled my account. First, for the record, I did not send pay-per-click ads to any of my parked domains. Nor did I encourage, suggest, allow, barter, trade or in any other way influence the placement of those ads. Nor am I aware of who did it. And if I could think of any more disclaimers, I would add them. I simply had nothing to do with whatever happened.
GoDaddy had a right to cancel my account, and I understand that they can't take my word that I had nothing to do with it. After all, someone (apparently) sent those ads -- and whoever sent that traffic apparently sent it without any financial incentive -- after all, they wouldn't make any money off of the traffic! Since GoDaddy displays Google ads, and Google doesn't allow arbitrage, GoDaddy had a responsibility to suspend my account.
Here's what makes me angry, though. GoDaddy removed all of my stats for the year that I hosted CashParking with them, and won't give them back! Because I did not keep regular backups (my mistake) I don't have a record of which domains get the most traffic, and what the eCPM is for all the domains. I can't calculate stats on how the length of a domain affects the amount of type-in traffic that it gets. I can't look at seasonality in traffic. I've sent emails, spoken with customer service reps, and even left a voice mail for a Cash Parking supervisor. (The voice mail has not been returned, the better part of a week later.) No dice.
To add insult to injury, GoDaddy just started showing parked ads on those domains again! Let me say that again -- they won't give me a revenue share for the ads, but they're now willing to show ads again as long as they can keep all the revenue!
One other cute little "feature" of the CashParking team canceling my account. They stop showing ads, but they don't stop the $9 / month billing!
GoDaddy -- I must say I am very disappointed in how you've handled this.
Monday, April 28, 2008
How to Choose Colors for Web Design
One of the real (unfilled) market niches in web design is a designer that knows how design affects conversion -- ecommerce conversion, lead gen conversion, home page bounce, etc. When I hire someone to design a website, I'd love it if they were aware of the following sorts of considerations, and had well-grounded opinions on how to use design to address them:
Anyway, end of rant. But here's a useful article that talks about some of the implicit meanings of color.
- How different colors encourage or discourage people from buying, or even from sticking around for a second click.
- How images (of people, of products, of pets) affect whether people will buy, register for my site, click on a link.
- How design affects download time for webpages, and how download time affects people's willingness to stay on a site.
- How a/b or multi-factorial testing works, and why that matters for a designer.
- How to balance the SEO value of actual text, vs the "it looks pretty" value of images of text.
Anyway, end of rant. But here's a useful article that talks about some of the implicit meanings of color.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Develop many "thin sites" or one deep site?
Just thought I'd give some link love to Andy Sweet, who's wrestling with some interesting issues related to simultaneously developing an entire portfolio of domain names.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Free as in Beer
I've been meaning to talk about my friend Jonathan's new startup DealLocker.com, which is sort of Delicious meets coupons. Let's say that you're about to register a domain name at GoDaddy, but you can't remember that coupon code that saves you 10%? Go to DealLocker.com and search for "godaddy". Better yet, they have a little javascript bookmarklet that you can install in your bookmarks toolbar, which will tell you if there are any deals available on the website that you're surfing.
It's social, because you can store your own coupons there, record whether or not a deal code worked for you, etc. I've been saving $5 - $10 a month with it for the last few months, so I think it's worth your time to take a look.
And, finally getting back to the title of this post, Jonathan just posted a great deal for free Guinness in Boston on Oct. 11, 12 and 13 in Boston.
It's social, because you can store your own coupons there, record whether or not a deal code worked for you, etc. I've been saving $5 - $10 a month with it for the last few months, so I think it's worth your time to take a look.
And, finally getting back to the title of this post, Jonathan just posted a great deal for free Guinness in Boston on Oct. 11, 12 and 13 in Boston.
Friday, March 30, 2007
If only Ask.com's traffic was as good as their support...
I must say, I'm impressed with Ask.com's support folks. I bought 183 clicks from ask on a very competitive keyword. And the average user that came from their network of sites viewed exactly 1.0 pages. Not 1.06 pages, not 1.3 pages, 1.0 pages. During the same time period, the rest of the traffic that came to the site averaged more than 3 pageviews per user.
If you know anything about buying traffic from second tier sources, you know what this means: click fraud. (Someone set up a site, displayed my ads on their site, and then had a bot click on the ad. They got paid, Ask got paid, I lost money.)
Now, this is not a post about the evils of click fraud. As John Battelle would say, it's simply a tax, and if you want to play this game you pay the tax.
But Ask did the right thing when I complained. They researched it, they blocked traffic from that site, they refunded my money and they called me to explain the situation.
The most interesting lesson learned? If you want your ads to appear on Ask.com for competitive terms, buy AdWords ads. Ask backfills their own search results with AdWords. Think about that for a second.
If you know anything about buying traffic from second tier sources, you know what this means: click fraud. (Someone set up a site, displayed my ads on their site, and then had a bot click on the ad. They got paid, Ask got paid, I lost money.)
Now, this is not a post about the evils of click fraud. As John Battelle would say, it's simply a tax, and if you want to play this game you pay the tax.
But Ask did the right thing when I complained. They researched it, they blocked traffic from that site, they refunded my money and they called me to explain the situation.
The most interesting lesson learned? If you want your ads to appear on Ask.com for competitive terms, buy AdWords ads. Ask backfills their own search results with AdWords. Think about that for a second.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
This is no longer the Talkr Blog
So, it's official. If you want to latest news on Talkr, you'll need to go to the new official Talkr blog: http://blog.talkr.com.
I have completed Talkr's sale to LiveOnTheNet.com. You can read the press release here. That's a smart bunch of folks over there, and I think they're going to do great things with Talkr and with the other tools that they're working on.
If you're still reading, here's the sort of stuff that I'll be posting on this blog: experiments in search engine optimization, link-building, and improving monetization. If you have a sneaking hunch that the world already has enough blogs on these topics, you may be right. Here are a handful of blogs that I read religiously:
Still reading? Really?
Okay, then I suppose I should tell you what I do. I build content websites that have old-fashioned, useful content on them. Then I drive traffic to them. And then I monetize that traffic. Doing that successfully is all about testing -- A/B testing, multivariate testing, back-of-the-envelope "does it feel like this works" testing. So if you continue to subscribe to this feed, that's what you'll find. Lots of analytics, lots of testing. If that gets your motor running, stay tuned. If not, point your browser to blog.talkr.com.
I have completed Talkr's sale to LiveOnTheNet.com. You can read the press release here. That's a smart bunch of folks over there, and I think they're going to do great things with Talkr and with the other tools that they're working on.
If you're still reading, here's the sort of stuff that I'll be posting on this blog: experiments in search engine optimization, link-building, and improving monetization. If you have a sneaking hunch that the world already has enough blogs on these topics, you may be right. Here are a handful of blogs that I read religiously:
Still reading? Really?
Okay, then I suppose I should tell you what I do. I build content websites that have old-fashioned, useful content on them. Then I drive traffic to them. And then I monetize that traffic. Doing that successfully is all about testing -- A/B testing, multivariate testing, back-of-the-envelope "does it feel like this works" testing. So if you continue to subscribe to this feed, that's what you'll find. Lots of analytics, lots of testing. If that gets your motor running, stay tuned. If not, point your browser to blog.talkr.com.
Friday, January 19, 2007
An Update on Talkr's Sale
I've had a number of interesting phone calls in the last few days. If you are planning to wait until the last minute to place a bid on Talkr (in hopes of avoiding a bidding war) I would encourage you to call me instead: (603) 397-3935.
Professor Larry Press blogs that Talkr's sale "illustrates the attraction and risk" of web 2.0 startups.
Professor Larry Press blogs that Talkr's sale "illustrates the attraction and risk" of web 2.0 startups.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Bloggers that have mentioned Talkr's Sale
For those of you "avidly" following Talkr's sale, I thought I'd point to some of the bloggers that have written so far.
Read / Write Web (a long-time user of Talkr) provides the most in-depth post and suggests that Talkr may not be the last Web 2.0 company on the market. Emergency Trap wonders whether Talkr is giving up too soon. 21Talks hopes Talkr will find a buyer. Tycoon's Row provides an alliterative title and describes Talkr as "outstanding". One by One Media suggests that someone with deep pockets ought to roll up Talkr and several other Web 2.0 companies for a later buyout.
Of course, these are just quick summaries -- several of the posts (and comments) offer measured doses of criticism as well.
I'll continue to summarize posts over the next few days.
Read / Write Web (a long-time user of Talkr) provides the most in-depth post and suggests that Talkr may not be the last Web 2.0 company on the market. Emergency Trap wonders whether Talkr is giving up too soon. 21Talks hopes Talkr will find a buyer. Tycoon's Row provides an alliterative title and describes Talkr as "outstanding". One by One Media suggests that someone with deep pockets ought to roll up Talkr and several other Web 2.0 companies for a later buyout.
Of course, these are just quick summaries -- several of the posts (and comments) offer measured doses of criticism as well.
I'll continue to summarize posts over the next few days.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Talkr is up for sale
This has been a tough decision, and perhaps one that has been long in coming. But, Talkr is now for sale.
I began work on Talkr in March of 2005, and after nearly two years of banging on this idea, I have decided to try to find it a permanent corporate home. I strongly believe that Talkr will thrive as methods of monetizing podcasts become simpler and more robust. Bloggers will provide content and distribution and Talkr will provide increasingly sophisticated text to speech, and ad integration.
However, the companies that monetize podcasts effectively today have full-time ad sales forces. And, although I have immense respect for the people that spend hour after hour on the phone selling ads, it isn't a skill that matches my skillset.
In the meantime, the bloggers that use Talkr deserve better support than I can offer them. They deserve new features, better voices and they deserve to be paid for their time. Since I haven't been able to successfully monetize Talkr, I can't offer that to them.
Thank you to the countless bloggers that have offered support and encouragement. Your excitement and support have kept me going for almost two years. Talkr is still checking feeds and creating audio, so you don't need to make any changes to your site. I'll give you an update next week about this new phase in Talkr's life.
I began work on Talkr in March of 2005, and after nearly two years of banging on this idea, I have decided to try to find it a permanent corporate home. I strongly believe that Talkr will thrive as methods of monetizing podcasts become simpler and more robust. Bloggers will provide content and distribution and Talkr will provide increasingly sophisticated text to speech, and ad integration.
However, the companies that monetize podcasts effectively today have full-time ad sales forces. And, although I have immense respect for the people that spend hour after hour on the phone selling ads, it isn't a skill that matches my skillset.
In the meantime, the bloggers that use Talkr deserve better support than I can offer them. They deserve new features, better voices and they deserve to be paid for their time. Since I haven't been able to successfully monetize Talkr, I can't offer that to them.
Thank you to the countless bloggers that have offered support and encouragement. Your excitement and support have kept me going for almost two years. Talkr is still checking feeds and creating audio, so you don't need to make any changes to your site. I'll give you an update next week about this new phase in Talkr's life.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Google's AdWords for Audio comes one step closer
Mark Ramsey at Hear 2.0 has an interesting post on Google's new "Ad Creation Marketplace". Google is accepting applications from "audio ad specialists" to create a searchable directory of professionals "to help AdWords advertisers to create radio advertisements".
Although AdWords for Audio has the potential to dramatically mature podcast monetization, there are difficult issues to address: How would ads be targetted? By channel, like existing RSS ad networks Feedburner and Pheedo? Or contextually using speech-to-text conversion? How would the ads be sold? CPM? Cost per acquisition in conjunction with pay-per-call?
Here's where I'd place my bets: AdWords for Audio will release without support for podcasts. Google's timeline is already rumored to have slipped a couple of months. Why deal with the headache of supporting podcasts when the money in the offline radio market is orders of magnitude larger than the money in podcasting? Support for podcasting will come -- but it will be months down the road. My guess is that Google won't offer ads in offline podcasts -- instead, they'll make a Flash mp3 player available, so that podcasters can monetize listeners that consume their podcast in-browser. The mp3 player will include a text or image ad related to the audio ads, so that listeners can immediately take action on the ad that they hear. Ads will be targetted contextually against the website on which the audio is embedded -- not against the audio itself. This allows Google to play to all their strength -- deep analytics, existing click-fraud protection, the existing pay-per-click pricing model and the existing AdSense contextualization technology.
So is AdWords for Audio good for podcasters? Absolutely. Is it a short-term fix for podcast monetization? I wouldn't balance my checkbook on it.
Although AdWords for Audio has the potential to dramatically mature podcast monetization, there are difficult issues to address: How would ads be targetted? By channel, like existing RSS ad networks Feedburner and Pheedo? Or contextually using speech-to-text conversion? How would the ads be sold? CPM? Cost per acquisition in conjunction with pay-per-call?
Here's where I'd place my bets: AdWords for Audio will release without support for podcasts. Google's timeline is already rumored to have slipped a couple of months. Why deal with the headache of supporting podcasts when the money in the offline radio market is orders of magnitude larger than the money in podcasting? Support for podcasting will come -- but it will be months down the road. My guess is that Google won't offer ads in offline podcasts -- instead, they'll make a Flash mp3 player available, so that podcasters can monetize listeners that consume their podcast in-browser. The mp3 player will include a text or image ad related to the audio ads, so that listeners can immediately take action on the ad that they hear. Ads will be targetted contextually against the website on which the audio is embedded -- not against the audio itself. This allows Google to play to all their strength -- deep analytics, existing click-fraud protection, the existing pay-per-click pricing model and the existing AdSense contextualization technology.
So is AdWords for Audio good for podcasters? Absolutely. Is it a short-term fix for podcast monetization? I wouldn't balance my checkbook on it.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Slight interruption in Talkr's Service
You may notice a slight interruption in Talkr's service today. We need to tweak the text-to-speech server, so you won't be able to create new audio files for a few hours. Apologies for the inconvenience.
And, we're back. Everything should be back up and running. Please let me know if you run into any issues.
And, we're back. Everything should be back up and running. Please let me know if you run into any issues.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Make it easier for people to find your Talkr Feed
Talkr's latest release makes it easier for people searching for podcasts to find your Talkr feed. If Talkr creates a podcast from your feed, log into your account and describe the topic of your feed, assign categories that explain the basic subject matter that your blog covers and specify keywords related to your feed.
(If Talkr doesn't create a podcast from your feed yet, what are you waiting for? Create a free podcast now!)
Why is this a big deal? By providing this information to Talkr, we'll make it easier for people to find your feed and for advertisers to advertise in your feed. Once you provide customized information, we'll generate an iTunes-friendly version of your podcast. What's more, advertisers looking to advertise in a particular category can see which categories your feed belongs in! And that means more listeners and more revenue.
Speaking of advertising, we've added a new option in your Talkr control panel to give you more control over how advertising is used in your podcast and feeds. Log in to your account and click on the "Make Money" tab.
We've released a number of bug fixes and back-end improvements which should create a better user experience:
(If Talkr doesn't create a podcast from your feed yet, what are you waiting for? Create a free podcast now!)
Why is this a big deal? By providing this information to Talkr, we'll make it easier for people to find your feed and for advertisers to advertise in your feed. Once you provide customized information, we'll generate an iTunes-friendly version of your podcast. What's more, advertisers looking to advertise in a particular category can see which categories your feed belongs in! And that means more listeners and more revenue.
Speaking of advertising, we've added a new option in your Talkr control panel to give you more control over how advertising is used in your podcast and feeds. Log in to your account and click on the "Make Money" tab.
We've released a number of bug fixes and back-end improvements which should create a better user experience:
- We have had some complaints from bloggers that our crawler wasn't consistently pulling their feed. We've released a new version of the crawler that resolves these issues.
- We've also fixed a handful of bugs in the code that allows your readers to listen to your blog within their web browser.
- Finally, we've made some look and feel changes which should simplify site navigation.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
A couple of Interviews about Talkr
If you want to hear the latest on Talkr (and my brilliant, eloquent and prescient explanations of where podcasting is headed) you might enjoy these two podcast interviews:
1. Internet Marketing Voodoo
2. Eric Mattson's Marketing Monger
I always enjoy these sorts of interviews, although I sometimes think my mouth outruns my brain....
1. Internet Marketing Voodoo
2. Eric Mattson's Marketing Monger
I always enjoy these sorts of interviews, although I sometimes think my mouth outruns my brain....
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Talkr now support Atom feeds
Talkr now supports both Atom and RSS feed formats. This means that folks that use Blogger or other blogging tools that only provide Atom feeds can use Talkr without needing to use an intermediate service such as FeedBurner to convert their Atom feeds into RSS.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Talkr launches reporting functionality
We're providing a limited release of our reporting functionality today. This allows partners to check how many times their audio has been downloaded from the "Listen to this post" links on their blogs. You can view the number of downloads by date as well as by story. Multiple downloads of the same story from the same IP address are reported as a single download.
We have not yet integrated statistics on the number of downloads by podcatching clients.
To access your statistics sign in to your Talkr Partners account and choose the "Reports" tab.
We have not yet integrated statistics on the number of downloads by podcatching clients.
To access your statistics sign in to your Talkr Partners account and choose the "Reports" tab.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Quick update
Just a quick note -- we've been working on improving Talkr's stability, and have begun to add a few new features. As we mentioned previously, Talkr had some problems with downtime in October and November. Since then, we've spent a good deal of time figuring out what caused the downtime, and we've added scripts to address those problems. We have also added an automatic site monitor, and negotiated the system administration services of Todd Finney, aka Boy Genius. With the exception of a bit of flaky code on January 17th, we've had a very nice month, thank you very much.
We've also started coding a set of feature improvements: first up is a long-overdue tool to allow bloggers to force a refresh of the audio that Talkr has created from their blogs. Just login to your free Talkr Partners account, and click on "Refresh this feed". Much more to come.
We've also started coding a set of feature improvements: first up is a long-overdue tool to allow bloggers to force a refresh of the audio that Talkr has created from their blogs. Just login to your free Talkr Partners account, and click on "Refresh this feed". Much more to come.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Talkr hires its first investor...
I'm proud to announce that Talkr has added its first employee. Or, perhaps that's more accurately phrased as: Talkr has acquired its first investor. Dave Liloia has agreed to come on board as Talkr's Director of Network Development. His job will be to work with the bloggers that use Talkr's services to improve the existing feature set and bring in new ideas.
Since Talkr is a small, unfunded company, Dave has agreed to work part-time for Talkr in exchange for equity. That's a good deal for Talkr, because Dave is fantastic (he's the guy that came up with the tagline "Letting blogs speak for themselves") ; and hopefully, it will end up being a good deal for Dave as well. (It also fails to break the bank, which hiring Dave with cash most certainly would.)
Speaking of hiring, Talkr still needs more help. In particular, we need some Perl geeks that are interested in working on cutting edge problems. (I may have an announcement to make in this area in the near future, but I'd be happy to make two or three announcements.) If you like what Talkr does; if you're comfortable working with the LAMP stack; and if you'd like to help make Talkr better, please send me an email at cbrooks@talkr.com. Please include a couple of specific ideas for how to improve Talkr, and give me a sense of your Perl chops.
Since Talkr is a small, unfunded company, Dave has agreed to work part-time for Talkr in exchange for equity. That's a good deal for Talkr, because Dave is fantastic (he's the guy that came up with the tagline "Letting blogs speak for themselves") ; and hopefully, it will end up being a good deal for Dave as well. (It also fails to break the bank, which hiring Dave with cash most certainly would.)
Speaking of hiring, Talkr still needs more help. In particular, we need some Perl geeks that are interested in working on cutting edge problems. (I may have an announcement to make in this area in the near future, but I'd be happy to make two or three announcements.) If you like what Talkr does; if you're comfortable working with the LAMP stack; and if you'd like to help make Talkr better, please send me an email at cbrooks@talkr.com. Please include a couple of specific ideas for how to improve Talkr, and give me a sense of your Perl chops.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)