I’ve put a lot of hours into World of Warcraft. Maybe some would say that I’ve put too many hours into World of Warcraft. But I enjoyed that time, so those people are wrong. One thing that is probably right though is that if I had put all of those hours spent playing computer games into making them, it’s possible that I could have had a pretty big computer games company right now. But I don’t have a big computer game company because ...continue

Every few years we’re told that the music industry is finished as some new technology moves faster than the record labels. And every few years we’re told that marketing through email is over as viruses and spam fill inboxes. Email marketing isn’t finished. It just got smart — and you have to be smart to get the most out of it. I still send occasional messages to my lists, and I still get to see the benefits of those mailings. Ea ...continue

There are a lot of different ways to market a product, but they're all trying to do the same thing. From a free listing on Craigslist to a thirty-second slot during the Superbowl, all marketing is trying to build a relationship with its audience. It's trying to create familiarity, trust and a positive feeling towards the company. People want to do business with people they like and marketing is a way of starting and developing that relation ...continue

When Google launched Wave back in 2009, it was met with a mixture of head-scratching and hand-raising. Because it was invitation-only, there was huge demand from people who wanted to try it out. (Invitations were even said to have sold on eBay for $70 each). But people — both those who had tried it out and those who wanted to — wondered what it was for. Google described Wave as a new kind of collaborative work tool, and said it was email i ...continue

To someone who’s never built a website, never tried to run a blog, never done more than leave a comment at the bottom of an article, becoming an online entrepreneur can look a little scary. It continues to look scary right up until they try it. As soon as they see the back-end of Blogger, they realize just how easy it can be to create content and make it available to the world. Then they go to Facebook and Twitter, and tell their friends ...continue

I occasionally recommend products to people. I don’t recommend anything like the number of products I’m asked to recommend, but when I see something that I think is useful, I’m happy to pass it along to others with my endorsement. I don’t expect everyone to buy it though. I don’t even want everyone to buy it. (That’s true of my own products, too!) I don’t want people to spend money on anything that they aren’t going to use a ...continue

If I were to ask for a show of hands on how people have used the Internet in the past seven days, it would reveal some very interesting data. A small percentage of people would say they participated in some form of online entertainment. A greater number would confirm they had interacted on a chat room or message board. Still more would raise their hands when asked if they did any online shopping. But the greatest number of hands would go up ...continue

When people dream about ditching the J.O.B. and working for themselves, they tend to focus on the good things. They see themselves taking time off whenever they want. They imagine themselves commuting from the main bedroom to the spare bedroom. They love the fact that their future is in their own hands. They think too about the downsides: the irregular income, the loss of benefits, the end of chats around the watercooler. But there’s one ...continue

As toddlers, the first word from our mouths is typically not the word our parents hope to hear. In place of the much anticipated "mama" or "dada" often comes the word "no." Why is that? Probably because as parents we spend so much time instructing our little ones in what not to do! So why are we surprised when they regale us with a negative statement when they decide to begin using the English language? Unfortunately, something unusual happens ...continue

I’ve been online since 1995. That feels like a ridiculously long time. I can remember when programs were written in Basic and games came on floppy disks that held less information than the memory card I now put in my camera. But I haven’t been a successful Internet entrepreneur since 1995. The money started to come later. It took me a while to figure out how to create content, to bring in traffic, and to bring that traffic back. And it was ...continue