A cartoon created by artist Randy Glasbergen.
If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.
 In The Sphere: Working, Sharing, Shooting…
It’s a little wet outside here in Vancouver, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy this lovely Friday! Here are five posts that I’ve found in the past week that’ll amuse and enlighten.
Hari put up a guest post on Untwisted Vortex, asking if the question if we are overdoing social networking. In this day and age where everyone seems to have a blog, participate in forums, and upload videos on YouTube, we know more about all the other web users out there than we ever did before. From Facebook to MySpace, Orkut to MyBlogLog… are we overdoing it?
Jon Lee has a useful article that helps you determine who’s sharing your shared hosting. Not everyone can afford a dedicated server for their blogs and websites, so most of us are on a shared hosting plan of some kind. It can be a pretty big bummer if you happen to be sharing your server with an unoptimized, resource-heavy site. Now, at least you can know.
Stunt actor and film professional Leo Chiang recently took a trip out to an abandoned Chilliwack prison to partake in some intense firearms training. He shot off some guns and had a heck of time. Although it may sound out of place, he even had a Harry Potter moment at one point.
Jamie Harrop of Daily Web Ideas outlines 7 ways to increase your PageRank. A higher PageRank can open your site (and blog) to a lot of great opportunities — like more lucrative ad networks — as well as the possibility of improving your traffic. And we all know that you need traffic before you can make any money online.
Remember last week when I mentioned the story of Josh from Career Ramblings and how he overcame adversity? How his home business saved his life? Well, this week, Josh follows up with part two to the story. He may not be swimming in money, but he’s a heck of a lot happier now!
Deleted Domains RSS Feed Follow Up
Okay so after testing this for a few weeks it appears that all the domains we were planing on showing in a feed are all being taken. I did not realize that deleted domains were being picked up that quickly.
We have created an RSSÂ feed for pending deleted domains that you can subscribe to.
 This is a list of domains that are expiring today. If you wish to grab them you will need to use a service which grabs domains (pool.com, snapnames)
Why you would want to buy a deleted domain?
Most of these domains are listed in Google, DMOZ, Yahoo and have back links. These domains usually have a small amount of traffic and can be used to drive traffic to your site.
Keys to Success: Target Marketing
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Today I had a chance to meet a local mortgage broker. She is just starting up and was seeking some advice on how to spend her marketing budget. So far she had been spending $100+ on a 1/8th Ad in the local paper. She was not happy with the response of it so far after running for 16 weeks.
Personally I don’t think that the newspaper is the ideal place for a mortgage broker to advertise. I know most people don’t flip through the paper to find a mortgage. When we brainstormed we came up with the various target markets:
- Service First Customer – Someone who does not check to see if they qualify for a mortgage and go out looking for a house first with a Realtor.
- Bank Loyal Customer - Someone who goes immediately to their own bank to see if they do qualify for a mortgage.
- Smart Shopper Customer – Someone who goes out and does research on a mortgage and look for a broker.
- Recurring Order Customer – Someone with a mortgage already who is looking to refinance.
Of these markets most mortgage brokers try to go after the Smart Shopper market. The sad thing is that is a pretty small market to build your business from. There is a large percentage of people in the Service First and Bank Loyal market who are not being marketed to.
My suggestion was to start a marketing plan that would focus on the Service First Customers. Once this type of customer finds a house they will be open to a suggestion from their trusted Realtor on who to use for a mortgage. So who do these Realtors suggest?
After asking a few Realtors they appear to recommend someone they know. My suggestion to the mortgage broker was to start a small affiliate program with the top 10 Realtors in her area. Find out what would make it worth their time to pass her the referrals and then work out an agreement with them.
After our talk her eyes were large like saucers and she was ready to begin building her business.
What would you have suggest to her for marketing?
Marketing 101: What’s In a Name?
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Branding is very important, because it is used to differentiate your company from a direct competitor. When people hear the name of your company, they should immediately know who you are, what you do, and why you’re better than the other guy. This is assuming that you’ve done a good job advertising your business or website, promoting it using creative methods that constantly remind people of who you are. I asked a few of my technologically-inclined associates how they came up the names for their websites and this is what they said. Keep in mind that all three guys run sites that cater to essentially the same niche.
Stephen Fung of FutureLooks said that he and the rest of his team “were pretty much trying to find a cool catchy name that was unique. Since we wanted to look at the future of stuff, why not Futurelooks? It stuck ever since.” Looking to the future makes perfect sense in the world of computer technology, given that the industry is in a constant state of innovation. Years ago, people would have never fathomed why any single person would need more than a megabyte or two of storage. Nowadays, many people have hard drives in their computers that are approaching the terabyte range. With tech, you can’t look at the present, because you’re already going to be out of date.
When I had a brief IM chat with Bob Buskirk of ThinkComputers, he said that “as a kid, I was always thinking of things and when I was coming up with the name, I wanted something that when you heard it, it would define the site. So, I came up with ThinkComputers. [It has] nothing to do with ThinkGeek or anything like that, as so many people think.” The concept of “thinking” infiltrates the entire site, including the logo which features a man with a monitor for a head, hunched over like Rodin’s The Thinker. This route is certainly different than the ones that most other computer-oriented websites have taken.
Dot com mogul John Chow got his start with a website called “Moto’s Project 504″. This site described the first computer that he put together wherein he overclocked a Pentium II 300 to 504MHz, a feat that was unheard of in 1999. After a month, he decided that Project 504 needed its own domain name.
“I made a posted asking readers for recommendation. I think I received a dozen replies. In the end, none of the suggested names appealed to me. Before The TechZone, I own a site call The LoveZone, which served as a home page for members of a chat room. So I thought, “Hmm, LoveZone. TechZone!” And The TechZone was born in April 1999.“
John’s English may not be the best, but he’s got a whole lot of business savvy and ‘net knowledge. The full story can be found on page 52 of his Make Money Online E-Book.
These three guys are running similar (successful) websites, but their branding is distinctly different from one another, taking on wholly different directions. How did you choose your company name? Want to hear the story behind “BlueFur.com”?