With nearly two decades of experience, research and continued education in Computer Science, Mathematics and Engineering, I have taken away a few axioms.

80% of writing code is thought

We're not just staring at the screen.  We're thinking.  Imagine putting together a jigsaw puzzle completely in your head.  Now imagine you have to paint the full picture, cut each jigsaw piece, then carefully put them all back together.  You haven't even written a line of code yet and you still may have gotten it all wrong.

90% of thought is simplification

Short Hand Guide To Identifying Crappy Code:

• Complexity is a trap.  If I have to make more than a few function calls to get what I want, its too complicated
• If the class is longer than a few function calls and a few properties its too big
• If it requires longer than a few minutes to understand what its doing and how it fits together, It's too abstract
• If one class knows too much about another class, its too coupled
• If any piece of code makes more than a few assumptions about its input, its doing too much
• If the language (api/interface) between two objects is inconsistent, the code is not well thought out
• If there is code that is never used, it is over designed
• If it can be simplified, simplify it.
  

20% of writing code is actually typing code into your editor

This looks like a flurry of activity on the keyboard and ends in a short lived triumph. You're not nearly done yet and you realize that there is a very good chance you'll need to throw this all away should a simpler, more coherent design presents itself (see rules of simplification).

Let Your Customers Deisgn Your Software

Even the best laid plans of mice and men can't forsee the off-the-wall ways your end consumer decides to use your product. 

I am never surprised at the myriads of creative ways consuemers try to tweak, fit and change your product to suit their needs. 

This inevitably leads to a considerable re-thinking of what you built. This doesn't mean you'll need to change anything, but it should very strongly encourage your future product roadmap.

 Make the least amount of assumptions as possible and build the bare bones product.  I call this MVP, or minimum viable product.  Let your early adopters guide what features you add.  This is a fundamental step towards avoiding bloat, bells and whistles, saving time and delivering value to your consumers.  This is also called the maturation of your product.  We typically do this through a limited beta.

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Get Ready To Put In Some Hours On This Antiquated Testing Process

Or Do It The Easy Way

http://instapage.com

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Use Google+ Circles The Right Way

What's a circle anyhow?  Consider a sociological view. 

My childhood friends don't care about IPO's and Tech news, but my business contacts do.  My mother doesn't need to hear about my transgressions from last weekend's epic party.  Likewise, neither does my boss...

Conversely, my business contacts would probably be annoyed at the absurd amount of pictures I post of my dog (My mom loves them).

Circles allow us to 'speak' to the correct audience in the correct way with content and engagement that matches the culture of that group.

These relationships form social circles.  There tends to be some, but little overlap in their members.  

Here is where it gets really neat.  

These social circles are self organizing, self governing and well defined social norms.  They have unique "micro-cultures" defined by the members of the group.  We talk differently, we behave differently, we share interests and values unique to that particular circle.  Millions of years of evolution has created these inherent biological responses to improve survivability by allowing the formation of empathetic communities that work together towards a common goal.

A Brief History Of Web Based Social Organization 

The correct way to create an online social network, is to model it after real life. But we (developers of social networks) didn't get that right away.  We had to go through a sort of learning process. Excluding early forms of online social organization (BBS's, IRC, Chat Rooms, Forums), it went something like this:

MySpace (a failed attempt at social organization), to

Twitter (an introduction to one method of communication useful to social groups but suffering from a high signal to noise ratio), to

Facebook (who only much later understood the social paradigm and 'tacked'  groups onto a mature platform).  

What Happens To Facebook?

Facebook was one huge step forward, but it failed in one fundamental way.  While they had correctly implemented the notion of a social circle via groups, they didn't teach anyone about it.  It was treated like some sort of complicated security feature and most users failed to adopt (or understand the importace of) it.  

The 800lb Gorilla

Google+ took the lessons of hindsight to correct on this paradigm.  Google took 'circles' and made it the core of its platform.  Users are confronted with circles the moment they begin using +. 

There's work to be done... Early adopters of Goolge+, are struggling to understand how to use this modailty and begin to fall back into the habits of old.  

Some use it like Twitter.  Some like Facebook (shove all their contacts into a single group or completely ignore groups).  Some don't take the time to think about their content's (comments, posts, media, etc) audience before posting it.

While we inherently must rely on our underlying trust and judgement how we organize and engage with our circles, what we're ushering in is (hopefully) the adoption of a new way of thinking about the content we put on the web and for whom. 

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The Nexus Tax Threatens To Tank Affiliates and Networks

Governor Brown of California gained enough votes to pass his budget bill.  The catch?  Burried inside his budget is the notorious Nexus Tax.  

The new tax is aimed at major online retailers like Amazon and Overstock.com.  However, the greatest impact is to independent sales agents like affiliate marketers, ebay sellers, and even stay-at-home moms selling arts and crafts from a Wordpress site.  

The additional burden of extra taxation laws, penalties and profit loss due to the Nexus Tax creates a natural barrier to entry for new commers.  Worse, it certainly will wipe out a large segment of marketers and retailers who simply cannot afford to stay in business with the additional overhead.

The Fight

However, in its ever worsening deficit, California has taken a foolish approach to boosting tax revenue in the short term, while forcing businesses to close or move operations out of state.  This domino effect will quickly and summarily offset any perceived economic gain by the adoption of the Nexus Tax.

The tragedy is small businesses and independent proprieters make up the "long tail" in online sales, which represents a several billion dollar market capitalization.

Major retailers had been proactively working against the Nexus Tax from passing in other states by immediately terminating their advertising contracts with affiliates and retailers in those states. Such heavy handed tactics by large coffer wielding companies like Amazon.com effectively stemmed the passing of the tax.

But what can we do as small fish in a big pond? 

The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) is the national trade association representing affiliate marketers. The not-for-profit trade association was founded in 2008 by the leaders of the performance marketing industry.  The PMA gives performance marketers a unified voice to address issues and challenges facing the industry, such as the "nexus tax" proposed in some states.

PMA's primary contact on this issue is:  

Shelly Sullivan

(916) 858-8686

The Panic

I received an email this morning from Pace Latin from OfferVault.com, who also own the first CPA network for the mobile market.  Pace sheds some more light on the issue and how it will affect those of us in the performance marketing arena.  I have shared Pace's email below in its entirety:

Via OfferVault - How the Affiliate Tax will CPA Networks Also. 

There has been a great deal of discussion of all the Affiliate Tax laws being passed in the media. Unfortunately, thanks to a great spin campaign by companies such as Walmart, the discussion has been focused on how these new Nexus Tax laws will affect large companies like Amazon and Overstock. Time and time again these new laws being proposed are called “Amazon Taxes”  for the sole purpose of ignoring the rest of the companies that will be affected when these taxes are passed. The real truth behind the Affiliate Tax debate is that these laws will have a profound and significant affect on almost every company in the industry, from the largest to the smallest – but will have the greatest impact on the small companies.

This is not an “Amazon” tax, or an “Overstock” tax, but instead a “Small Business Tax” that has been labeled incorrectly in order that the general media might ignore the reality of what these taxes will do to small businesses. I’ve actually met a few attorneys who don’t quite understand the real problems with these laws. Let’s quickly look at what most of these tax laws will do, and explain it simply:

The laws specify that if there is any affiliate of any company making revenue for a product in that state, then the company itself has to pay taxes for any transaction in those states.
My explanation is purposely obtuse and vague, because in many cases so are the laws that are being passed. The definition of a transaction or purchase is not very specific and thus is extremely problematic.  This means that anyone engaged in any sort of ecommerce, whether it is sale of a product, promotion of a program, signups to site, in theory could be forced to pay those states taxes.

Thus if you are CPA network promoting a product and you have affiliates in those states, you may be liable for taxes in those states. Why? Because as anyone who is in this industry knows, the definition of who is selling the product, versus what a network is and even what a publisher is, is often difficult to pin down. Sometimes affiliates of CPA Networks are the publisher, sometimes they are just a PPC buyer, and sometimes the network is a publisher of another network. With all the connections, who is to say what establishes the nexus? Don’t expect States that are desperate for money to actually define this for you, but instead send any company that has any affiliates in that state, anyone that reports that their money is made from marketing, tax bills. We are their new “banks.”

Even if we knew the answer definitively to the different questions, many companies, from lead generation firms to dating sites are going to start avoiding CPA networks in those States for that specific reason. They do not want to risk that working with a company in a certain State will somehow cause a nexus and thus require them to file paperwork, file additional taxes. They’d rather make it easy and work with someone else.

Thus, as I started, the victims here are not the Amazons of the world. They are the small businesses. Most CPA networks are just that: Small businesses, with a few employees, working hand in hand with their affiliates to create valuable opportunities for their advertisers. They, along with their affiliates will suffer the most.  These taxes are aimed at our industry, our friends, our community and our businesses. If we continue to allow them continue without standing up, supporting those people who are fighting, it is very possible in a few years we all will wish we did.

Pace Lattin
pace@pacelattin.com

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"It is through perpendicular relationships that we learn to expand the playing field of our minds. Even if it means flipping the board upside down once in a while." - Kevin Mesiab

Unthinking

I have this fun little screen saver on my multitouch surface.  It let's you ripple the water and scare the fish around.  Any time someone new came by and saw it, they would inevitably do the same thing, scare the fish. :)

One day my friend Pete stopped by. Pete's not like most of my friends who are studied academics and accomplished professionals. Pete is a free spirited hippie, guitar playing spiritualist. When he saw the fish swimming he asked, 'Can you draw them in?'

I had never thought about that. In fact, nobody had. Pete was the first to suggest such a ridiculous thing. The pond is a computer program after all.

Ignore Your Detractors

Undaunted by our laughter, Pete walked up to the screen.  He took a deep breath, then softly touched the surface of the water.  He closed his eyes and seemed to be focusing all his energy on somehow drawing in these little digital fish.

We all stopped laughing... Because it worked.

The moment his finger became still, the fish all slowly came to check it out. We were dumbfounded. Pete, as usual, chalked it up to his mystical power of manifestation.  What really happened is that Pete had inadvertently discovered an Easter egg the programmer had created.

IMG_0073.mov Watch on Posterous

What Can We Learn From Pete The Hippie?

The significant lesson is:  

We would never had found that trick. We were all busy chasing the fish around. It wasn't until someone with a completely different view on the world came and asked a very basic, honest question, "I wonder...."

Everyone Is A Teacher

After that day, I learned to always be open and receptive to ideas that are contrary to my own.  Tapping into the diversity of your social circle for feedback is a priceless practice.

---

If you liked this article, please 'like' it on facebook and/or send a tweet about it w/ the buttons below!  Thanks ;).  -Kevin Mesiab

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"A dream coming to life is a furious world wind of highly skilled egos, a little arrogance and a whole lot of temperance." - Kevin Mesiab

He or she: 

1. He must share the dream of the Entrepreneur (sometimes the same person).
2. Must understand and be passionate about his or her industry. 
3. Organize the men and women with the abilities to bring this dream to life.
4. Reward every step towards it.
5. Temper every set back.
6. He remembers that, each of their failures is his. 

Something seems missing here...  

Notice, I have not once mentioned the actual product or service the company will sell in the duties of the CEO.

The CEO's product is not what his or her company sells.  It's the company itself.  

A well formed company and a cohesive team working towards a singular goal is tantamount to herding cats.  The CEO must make sense of this complicated interrelated organization and optimize it to ensure the company can meet the entrepreneurs goals.

An Old Adage

• You can have an A+ product, but a C- team, and you will fail.
• You can have a C- product, but an A+ team and be wildly successful.

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What Ever Happened To A Pen And Some Paper?

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Art Of Wireframe Sketching.

Communication is fundamental to effective team collaboration.  Communication manifests itself in lots of unique ways inside a tech company.  One of the more artistic is the classic "wireframe sketch."  

Business Sense

The goal of a wireframe sketch is to rapidly mock up user interfaces, user work-flows and other visual aspects of your application or website.  These devices can then be used to help describe expectations to your developers, designers and stake holders.  

They are doubly useful in allowing you to detect possible problems and explore radical ideas before expending expensive development capital.  

Resources

1. A useful source of printable templates from SmashingMagazine.com.  
2. Another source of printable templates (and css reset/grid system) from 960 Grid System.
3. An amazing paper wireframe kit from Pwireframing.com.

Share

Let us see some of your creations.  Post a link in the comments of wireframes you or your company have built.

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Thanks to the internet, deep market and behavior analysis has become a mandatory factor in spending your ad budget.  Traditionally, print, TV and billboard advertising has lacked this feedback loop.

Regan National Advertising is attempting to prove the effectiveness of billboard advertising, by running these billboards and then re-surveying residents from these areas.  

Interestingly, only 1.3% of randomly surveyed residents were able to correctly answer the question, "What was the first word spoken on the moon?"  Regan believes that after running these billboards, another random survey will prove a higher percentage of correct answers, while a control city will remain the same.

If a higher percentage of people answer correctly, Regan can leverage its findings to re-ignite the billboard advertising market.

I've seen these billboards all over Salt Lake City lately.  They were brought to my attention by my business partner, Tyson Quick.

Read more about this clever experiment that helps add tangible metrics to an advertising medium with a traditionally fuzzy ROI.

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The Graduates Guide To Writing For Profit.

A definitive guide on how to connect, convert and profit.

Ad Copy is so important, it can literally make or break your business

What Makes Good Copy?

That’s a scary question to answer for most, and rightly so.As business owners, we have to be concerned with the bottom line and the bottom line is, 'does it sell?'

That simple test is the sole measure for what makes “good” copy. 

Who Can Do It? You can, and here's how.

I am in no way a professional copywriter. In fact, I'm not even that good of a writer.  I am however, mostly coherent and able to at least follow basic instruction.

This has proven a sufficient amount of talent to craft ad copy earning millions of dollars in revenue.

Here are four simple rules that have served me well over the years.

1.) Nail The Title Or Quit Now.

Your headline should be so compelling, I absolutely have to at least skim this thing.  You've got 3 seconds to convince me.  This is the single most important part .  

3.) Forget Your Features.

I could care less about your laser guided titanium shaving technology, tell my face will be so smooth women will flock to me.  

Your tooth paste has rainbow crystals?  Tell me I'll have whiter teeth.

Switch your feature list into a benefits list.  Seriously.

4.) The Fabled Hammer Line

As a consumer, for every non entertainment dollar I spend, I expect a return equal to or greater than my dollar.  

Your copy should clearly identify the real ROI I will benefit from.

-Original written April 28, 2008. By: Kevin Mesiab

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Who Killed Social Media Marketing?

Nobody:  "Social Media Marketing is not dead, your strategy is." - Kevin Mesiab

So What Gives?

There's a lot of grumbling from the blog pundits about how Social Media Marketing is dead.  Even the so called "Social Media Mavins" and the "Marketing Gurus" are espousing an end to the 'hay days' of Twitter, Facebook, Social Bookmarking for marketing exposure.

They're Dead Wrong.

The days of massive conversions by spamming tweets, dm's and other nefarious tricks are dead.  But any marketing strategy that relied on this kind of "spray and pray" were dead before they started. 

So Adjust Your Strategy

I recently interviewed Jordan Kasteler from BlueGlass Interactive, Inc for Jounce.com.  Jordan is an expert in delivering high value, high ROI deployments utilizing Social Media Networks, the right way.  

Watch this quick interview and learn how to CPR your failing campaigns back to life.

If you enjoyed this article, do me a favor and share it by clicking tweet, or Share on Facebook.

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The Boot Strap Mantra

You know those funny jokes ( idea + ? = profit! )   I love these.  I realized, however,  answering the "?" in the equation is a legitimate problem for most aspiring entreprenuers. 

After bootstrapping several privately held startups (from concept to profit), here's the definition of "?"

- Make it simple, make it easy, make it work.

The Recipe

Making it simple is a practice in the art of reduction.  Remove superflous buttons, icons, widgets that can be hidden in the menu's for advanced users.  Remove steps the user has to take to begin seeing results from your product. 

Make it easy by making it intuitive.  If you have to write a users manual, you made your User Interface unintuitive.  If you have to follow instructions to use your software or service, try again.  The user interface itself should make obvious, how to interact with it.  Don't ever surprise users, work to nearly eliminate the learning curve.

Make it work by demonstrating nearly immediate, measurable ROI. Make sure it does what it promises.  Make sure it does it well.  If a consumer buys a product and cannot immediately identify its value, it has a good chance of hitting the return counter (or the chargeback for ecommerce). 

I've since added a step to this formula.  A fundamental aspect in improving sales, brand awareness and trust.  Here's how to get it:

You're reputation is as good as the way you treat your worst customer.  The customer is always right, even when they're wrong.  Don't embarass them.  Help them.  Give them tools and resources.  Give them incentives and gifts.  Open up to transparency.

Have any of you put these principles in practice? How did you fare? Post your war stories.

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Frequently we're called upon to contact potential partners.  Here are a few tips I've learned over the years that has proven extremely effective for getting what you want:

1.) Focus on them first

Beak down bariers.  The first paragraph or two should never mention what you need.  People care about themselves and their endeavors.  Talk about things you respect about them or their accomplishmentst.  Be genuine.  Don't fake it.

2.) Keep It Short

Never make the letter or email longer than 5 paragraphs, or 1500 words.  Most people are too busy to read a novel of an email. 

3.) Break paragraphs frequently

Partitioned information is consumed in small chunks.  This ensures your email gets read, even if its skimmed.

4.) What's In It For Them?

End the letter by focusing on how helping you benefits them in some way.  This must be genuine value and presented to them that way.  Do it with humility not expectation.

I have applied these simple techniques to thousands of partner discussions with tremendous success.  Practice these steps with every email you write until it becomes habit.  You will find that your contacts are more open and receptive to your desires.

Your Experience

Got some tricks of your own? Let's here what has worked (or not) for you.

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Your headline is the most important part of your website. Or anything you write for that matter.

With customers deciding whether or not they need what you have in the first three seconds of reading/seeing/hearing your marketing message, what you say first, matters most.

With a directive that important, that demanding, you can’t help but mull over your headlines endlessly wondering if you’d convert more sales with a catchier tag line. Some more enterprising marketers have even run careful split tests to measure the performance of punctuation and font size.

You don’t have to be that pedantic, but you should still pay close attention to the headlines that you write. Especially if that headline is perched atop your landing page or sales letter.

Your sales letter has a pretty hefty responsibility.  It has to grab the visitor by the collar and drag his/her eyes through to your next hook.

It’s got to do all this while still being short, concise and clever.

Lucky for you, though, you already have some very helpful tools at your disposal to help you find the difference between a good headline and a great headline.

Leveraging Google Adwords

Did you know that if you’re running a Google Adwords campaign (or any other PPC advertising program) you already have a perfect list of potential headlines at your disposal?

Think about it, every PPC text advertisement already has all the properties of a good headline.

A PPC ad has to grab a viewers and guide them safely away from a veritable mine field of competing ads, search results and exit links. What’s better is this headline source comes fully equipped with metrics.

Almost all PPC ad network providers track click through statistics. Go through your PPC Ads and narrow them down to the top five with the best click through rates.

Google Website Optimizer

Google has introduced a new feature for Ad Words users called the Website Optimizer. It works by letting you to split your landing page up into segments, like Headline, Intro, Offer, Hook, Call To Action.You can then write multiple variations for each of these sections. After you insert a bit of javascript code, Google will randomize these variations and measure conversion statistics to help you identify which variants are producing the best conversion rates.

Simple sales letter style landing pages are perfect candidates for Google’s Website Optimizer, since they are very basic one page pitch that lend themselves naturally for segmenting and varying.

Split Testing

While the above two techniques represent new and exciting ways to optimize your websites and increase your sales, they’re both simply sophisticated versions of the tried and true, split test.

Split testing is essentially creating two or more versions of the same website and collecting statistics using a stat tracker like Google Analytics or StatCounter.  

Split testing is one of the most important skills in the web marketers resume, so if you’re not already a split testing expert, there’s no better time to start than now.

Originally written in April, 2008. 

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MySQL Workbench is a useful free tool from the folks at MySQL.  On the Mac, I tend to use Sequel Pro.  However, recently, a potential contractor needed to evaluate our database schema.  He used Windows, so I suggested MySQL Workbench.  

To help him get started, I crafted this quick tutorial on how to use the Workbench to create EER Diagrams.

Entity Relationship Diagrams are useful to quickly visualize the overall structure of a database.  It's also useful in identifying defects in your design.  These Diagrams are also useful in presenting an overview of your data model to stake holders like developers and managers.

The Workbench makes the arduous task of EER Mapping a chinch.  I hope you find this tutorial useful as well.  

Please give the video below a moment to load, or click here to view it on ScreenCast.

View on screencast.com »

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There's no doubt that Google Chrome is packed full of some of the coolest features.  These features almost always have a focus on enhancing your browsing experience.  In other words, to help you get the answers you want, now.

Check out one of these subtle features, integrated site search, in the Google Chrome browser:

View on screencast.com »

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In the good 'ol days, when you opened the doors on a new business, one of the first things you'd do is take out a Yellow Pages ad.  If you were really high rolling, you'd do the $1,100/yr quarter page ad.  

Unfortunately, the Yellow Pages are dead.  Seriously.  When was the last time you picked up that dusty old book? 

In today's market, if you want to be found, you have to be in the local search engines, maps and mobile applications.  But this cumbersome, new technology means hours of frustrating new learning curves.  Time that any good business owner worth his salt, frankly, does not have.  

But I think I've got something to help...

For instance, part of the work-flow of managing your local business presence online, is creating a business listing, or claiming an existing one.

This screen shows FocalPoint (a yet unreleased software application for small businesses) after auto-detecting your businesses listing.  In this case, the listing was likely placed by one of this business owner's customers.  Here, FocalPoint is walking you through claiming an existing listing on Yelp, for automatic management.

FocalPoint's advanced design allows for deep integration with a wide variety of API's and external websites.  Yelp! is just one of the many sites that FocalPoint can manage your listing on, including Bing Local, Google Local, Yahoo Local, Superpages and more!

• Instantly update information on all local based search engines.
• Run global campaigns on Google, Bing, Yahoo Local and more, free!
• Receive alerts and progress for each of your profiles.
• Keep tabs on the Reviews being left by your customers.
• And thats just to start...

This game just changed. But you can't even get it yet!  FocalPoint is still in private beta.

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How much would you be willing to pay for these shoes?  $40 bucks?  $50 tops?  

Now, if I tell you these are Prada (they are) and crafted in Italy from premium materials (they are), how much would you pay?  

Here the answer depends on your particular set of values surrounding fashion.  Nothing tangible about the shoes have changed, yet they can instantly command absurdly higher prices from the correct consumer segment.  What has changed is the iconism of the brand and the social inferences it carries.  

Understanding your target audience and their culture is crucial when building and positioning a new brand.  Get it wrong and not only will you fail to thrive, you'll end up offending your market.

This is never more true, than when expanding your marketing efforts outside your native borders.  It's all too tempting for US based advertisers to use the same cues and customs we're familiar with.  

Before you begin your efforts to expand your brand's reach further into our global market, take a moment to perform your due diligence.  Immerse yourself in the traditional and popular cultures, this is what informs their buying habits.  Understand their concerns, values and motivations.

Fail to effectively bridge this gap and you'll find yourself an Engrish.com joke in Bangalore.  

East and Southeast Asian along with Latin American (with Brazil leading the charge) markets are poised for strongest growth in 2010.  The continued strength in the Euro against the US and Canadian Dollars means US products are cheaper.  Expect continued increase sales in some markets from the UK.

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This company (Red Moose Roasting) in Salt Lake City has Oregon Chai! Our favorite!  But that's not all they've got...

They've also got a handle on their social media presence. Placards in their drive through window say, "Follow us," and lists their social network pages.

The tides are turning and I'm going to give it a little nudge. ;)  I'm working on a secret piece of software that will single handedly increase local brick-and-mortar customers by orders of magnitude.   The best part, it will do it for less than the cost of an ad in the Yellow Pages and take half the time.

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