Figure this out and you’ll be rich. The pitch would have written itself. “Netflix for Clothes” founders Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Carter Fleiss might have written on their pitchdeck, and investors would have known exactly what they were talking about. It would have worked too. When Rent The Runway finished its funding Round D at…
Social media has changed everything. When the Web first took off, it wasn’t clear how anyone could make money by putting words on a Web page. Then Google brought out AdSense, competitors rushed in with their own programs and people who produced good content, paid attention to their ads and worked hard and patiently at…
When you hear a KaChing in a store, it can only mean one thing. The store’s made money. Someone’s bought something. They’ve given money to the store’s owner and they’ve walked away with a product they’re going to enjoy. But before that KaChing, there were a number of smaller rings. You won’t have heard them…
Branding is more than just getting your logo right and coming up with a catchy slogan for your company. While these things are obviously very important, branding can also include things like the outward appearance of you or your employees, and how you comport yourself in all the various details of business dealings. The following…
Creating a successful Internet business is all about bringing in users and turning them into cash. The more of those users you can convert, the more money you’ll make. Your clickthrough rate – the percentage of users who click on an ad – is a measure of your ability to convert your users. A good…
I offer a lot of different products. Some of those products I create myself. Others have been created by people I know. All of them, I firmly believe, can bring real benefits to the people who use them. If I wasn’t 100 percent convinced that someone who is prepared to use the ideas contained in…
Since I’ve been online, I’ve seen some amazing changes take place on the Web. Perhaps the biggest though is how easy it’s all become. Building a website used to be a chore that took months of planning, preparation and coding. By the time you’d finished putting it all together, the programming language was out of…
Everywhere I go, people ask me how they can make money online. Every time I show up at a conference, I am swamped with people interested in owning their own Internet business. My Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts receive contact from people on a regular basis. Emails, tweets and submitted forms are always asking what…
Last week the FTC dropped a bomb on the marketing world. They released new guidelines for the use of testimonials and endorsements in marketing. I immediately contacted my attorney, Kevin Houchin, to get his take on the latest guidelines. With Kevin’s permission, I am republishing the entire text of his interpretation. It is essential that…
Big changes don’t usually happen overnight. There are usually a few quiet moves first — little tweaks and adjustments that no one really notices. And then suddenly, one more little change makes a huge difference, pushes it over the tipping point and forces everyone to pay attention.