Cameron Olthuis

Thanks to Mike for pointing me to BlinkList, a fairly new social bookmarking engine similar to Del.icio.us which I gave a short tutorial on the other day.

I first heard of BlinkList a couple months ago from a TechCrunch review. I took a quick glance and decided I was happy with Del.icio.us and that was that.

Mike, I have to say you have amazing timing. Shortly after you commented on the tutorial Del.icio.us experienced a power failure, the next day they had even more problems which caused some serious down time. During this time I had the opportunity to really get familiar with BlinkList when I might have not otherwise done so.

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Ok, so you’ve spent a lot of effort building a web site and even more effort getting people to come to your site. Now what? Because none of this matters if you can’t actually get these people to use your product.

You only get one chance with a potential user you so you better make it count. If they don’t immediately have interest in your brand and what you’re selling then you’ve lost your chance. It’s like fishing, once the fish nibbles on your bait you have to set the hook before you catch it. If you wait to long the fish will move on.

In a recent post, Most Home Pages Really Do Suck, I mentioned that the first thing your homepage must tell me is; “who you are, what your site does, and how I use it.” This is like the nibble, and the set is actually keeping them around after you’ve told them what you’re about.

So once you get a potential user to “nibble on your bait” how do you set the hook? You need to effectively sell the potential user on your service, because if you don’t your competition will. You always need to be one step ahead of your competition, don’t play catch up.

Here’s 5 6 things that will help you keep visitors coming back again and again.

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I’ve finally got some new pictures of the girls up. Everyone in the family keeps asking me when I’m going to update the pictures so here they are…

Adalyn’s Album

Celia’s Album

I’m trying out Flickr with these pictures instead of putting them directly on the web site. I think I like it better when they’re just here on the site. Flickr’s a little more cluttered.

I’d love to hear what you guys prefer, since the pictures are for you. The positive thing about Flickr is Amy can use it so the pictures will probably be updated more often.

Somehow today I came across Rent A Drunk.

THINK HOW MANY TIMES YOU’VE SEEN A GUY PASSED OUT AT A PARTY - AND HOW MANY PICTURES ARE TAKEN OF THAT GUY PASSED OUT AT THE PARTY - NOW THINK OF YOUR MERCHANDISE ON THAT GUY FOREVER DOING STUPID DRUNKEN THINGS THAT PEOPLE WILL TAKE PICTURES OF AND KEEP POSTING OVER AND OVER ONLINE…

THE R.A.D AGENTS ARE AVAILABLE TO HAND OUT BROCHURES ON THE SHOW FLOOR - ATTEND AVN AND HAND OUT MERCHANDISE TO SURFERS AND TO ATTEND ANY OF THE INDUSTRY EVENTS THAT A LOT OF WEBMASTERS WILL BE ATTENDING WHERE MOST COVERAGE WILL BE ATTAINED

This has got to be one of the most creative yet dumbest ideas of the year. It’s very creative in that no one else would ever come up with something like this, yet it’s dumb because no company wants their brand associated with a bunch of belligerent, obnoxious drunks. Ok so maybe there’s a few companies that this could actually work for, but not many.

Nothing better then having a couple drunks crash your party, and paying them to do so. Hell, I could think of dozen people off the top of my head that would to this for nothing more then the free beer.

This gives new meaning to “do what you love for a living.” Nice try!

I hate getting writers block, it’s so frustrating when you have some free time to sit down and write and you’re just stuck. Before you know it the kids either need attention or it’s so late that if you don’t go to sleep now you won’t survive the day tomorrow. Time is money and writers block is like a tax.

Well I just discovered a good way to prevent writers block. It might be common sense to you but it’s rocket science to me and it’s really helped

In the past I’ve found that I was wasting a lot of time trying to write catchy titles for my blog entries. I was not only wasting a lot of time but I was also creating a block that would prevent me from completing the entries. By the time I ‘d come up with the good titles I’d forget all the good ideas I had just a few minutes ago. Then I’d spend the next hour staring at the screen trying to finish. Sometimes I’d get frustrated and just end up deleting what could have been a good blog entry.

Tonight it hit me, when I get an idea for a blog entry just go ahead and start writing the entry, forget the title. I can always worry about writing the title later, in fact they usually end up better that way. Use my creativity for the writing and then pull a title from the entry, simple isn’t it.

If this helps you pass it on.