Cameron Olthuis

Common sense tip that’s always been a great motivator for me to make sure I increase traffic every single day: Hustle every new day until I beat out the metrics from the day before.

Whatever goals you’ve set for yourself, you need to wake up the next morning ready to do the hustle until you beat whatever benchmark you hit yesterday. If your goal is sales; you need to wake up tomorrow and work your ass off until you get at least one more sale than you did today. If you don’t do better than the day before, you’re business is going in the wrong direction. If your goal is traffic, wake up tomorrow with the mindset of getting just one more unique than you did today.

Everyday I wake up ready to beat yesterday’s traffic(or sales, leads, etc), whatever it takes. I like to make it a game and get in the competitive mind frame of beating myself every single day. It keeps it fun too. I like to make sure I do the necessary tasks asap that day. That way it gives me the advantage of having more time to reach my goals that day.

Whether I got 1 more page view that day or 1000- as long as I’m trending up and to the right I’m trending in the right direction.

I got an email yesterday from a reader asking what my strategy is to survive the economic recession. I’ve actually been preparing for it, for awhile now. I pretty much saw this coming at least a year ago and really knew it was coming fast during late spring/early summer. The writing has been all over the wall for awhile now, sorry folks but this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. So what I am doing?

I’m saving every penny I possibly can so that I can invest into as many distressed assets as possible. There are going to be some amazing opportunities to pick up some sweet deals on web companies over the next couple years and I want to be the one picking them up. Quite frankly, there are a lot of websites run by people who don’t have clue, so when I can swoop in, pick those up and rehab them, I will.

I’m spending as little money as possible on myself right now. I stopped buying new surfboards, taking surf trips, buying new clothes, going out as much, I downsized my house, don’t drive a fancy car, etc etc etc. The only thing I want to spend money on right now is distressed websites.

So in a nutshell, that’s it. I’m not only going to survive this recession, but I’m going to come out on top, much better off then I am now. What’s your plan?

Lately, we’ve seen a lot of doom & gloom reports in regards to what will happen with online advertising during the recession we’re already in. We’re even seeing some of the more popular online media companies slash their workforces in anticipation that ad spending on the Internet will drastically decline in the near future. While I certainly think companies will be forced to watch their spending, especially in regards to advertising, it’s my prediction that more money will be coming to the Internet and here is why.

1) Save gas – More and more people will be trying to save money in every way possible. This will include saving gas by making more purchases online instead of driving around town looking for the best deals.

2) Smarter purchasing – As people start to really watch their purchasing decisions they will be comparison shopping online and doing more research on the web before they make purchases. This will also lead to more online purchases as they realize these are where the best deals are.

3) More time – Again, chalk this up under the people saving more money category. As people begin to watch their spending habits, it will mean less time & money spent doing things like going out to eat, going to movies, traveling, etc etc. These will give people more free time at home, which in turn will mean more time spent online.

4) Measureable – Companies that are cutting back on ad spending will only put their money in what they absolutely know provides results. This gives online advertising a big advantage over pretty much every other form of advertising as it’s all trackable down to the click/penny.

While these are general statements, there will certainly be some sectors that spending will drastically decrease online. I think that will be luxury goods, travel, automotive, and some financial sectors.

Although I feel that advertisers will cut back on banner ads and other rich media, I think that more advertisers will be moving to affiliate type CPA stuff and CPC, as well as other Search Marketing efforts. So, that means CPM advertising may slown down but overall I still think the state of Internet Advertising is healthy.

I’m curious, what are your thoughts?

Update: I’m not the only one who thinks advertising online will remain healthy.

All you business and website owners listen up and listen well. Avante Gardens, an Anaheim Florist, is going to school you on building loyal customers, links, and positive buzz all in one shot….

So how many of you remember my story about FTD Sucks and how they screwed me over on Valentine’s Day? If you don’t the click over and read it really quick so you can be up to speed.

So, there is this super bad-ass floral shop up in Anaheim that took notice of my post and decided they’d use my bad experience to their advantage to win over a new customer, me. Shortly after I checked into my hotel for SMX I got a knock on my door. It was a room service dude that had a bouquet of flowers for me. At first I thought maybe I had a secret admirer that wanted some lovin’ or maybe the SMX crew was just going the extra mile for their speakers. Nope, I was wrong. The following note was included in the flowers…

Dear Cameron, After reading your plight with FTD during Valentine’s Day, I just want to put in a plug for local florists. I’m looking forward to your presentation.

Wow! My heart melted. I was in love. I thought this was one of the coolest things ever and couldn’t believe someone remembered and cared about little ol’ me.

I just snapped that pic of me with the flowers. The ladies tell me that’s a super nice bouquet. Huge thank you to Avante, you effin rock and I love you.

Hope you all learned something. This would have been a great opportunity for FTD to step to the plate and make good with me… they didn’t and now they can kiss my badonkadonk. I will never order from that piece of crap company again and have told as many people as possible not to as well. They obviously don’t care about their customers. Now, on the flip-side – you all know a good florist.

There’s a lot of drama going down about some FM advertising campaign from Microsoft called ‘People Ready‘. Basically what happened is a bunch of well known bloggers talked about how their businesses became people ready and Microsoft took those quotes, put them on banner ads, and is now running those ads on those same blogs. Apparently this has upset some folks.

I don’t want to get involved in the ethics behind this as there are already plenty of valid arguments from both sides being made. But while the blogosphere bitches back and forth like a couple of newlyweds, Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank. This campaign has already created more mindshare, discussion and buzz then they ever could of hoped for.

The only real winner here is Microsoft. This is also a huge opportunity for them to take this campaign to the next level. Are they smart enough to figure it out and take the ball and run with it?

Facebook launches Facebook Platform, this changes everything….

Facebook is giving an unprecedented amount of access to developers. The API would allow, for example, a third party to recreate Facebook Photos, the most used photo application on the web. Users could then remove the default Facebook Photos and install the third party version instead.

Applications can serve their own adds and/or conduct transactions with users. Ads can basically be shown anywhere that Microsoft ads are not currently shown.

There will be a special applications area on Facebook where users can browse and add third party apps. But there is also a crucial viral component – when a friend adds an application, it is noted in their news stream on their profile. Clicking on the item brings you to the app, where you can add and/or interact with it yourself.

It’s now very easy to see why Facebook has been turning down large buyout offers saying there is a large disconnect between the value they have on the company versus that of the outside world.

The Facebook Platform will basically be a mini-web in a sense and this will make it the most important portal on the web. What do you think of this news?

Chris, from 97th Floor did some nice research on the Google results for Fortune 100 companies. He found that 29 of these 100 companies have at least one negative result that shows up on the first page of Google when you search the brand name.

That’s a pretty pathetic statistic if you are one of these companies. There’s really no excuse for any of these guys not to have a perfect 10 on their results. Like Chris, I’m surprised more companies aren’t doing something to fix this.

I spoke at OMMA last week on a panel about social media sites affecting search results. One of the points I really tried to get across was that brands need to be doing more reputation management to control their search results. My point was that social media sites have a lot of authority in the SERPs so all that user generated content has a better chance on making it’s way to the top.

I used Comcast for an example because the night before when I googled their name two negative results showed up, both from social media. Coincedently those results are now gone from the first page, maybe someone from Comcast was in the audience.

** BTW – Serph is out of beta so you now you can catch your Google top 10 before it’s a problem.