Cameron Olthuis

I am asking you this question, seriously. So feel free to leave your answer in the comments. I’m convinced after dominating the ASP World Tour this year that Kelly Slater is the greatest athlete ever. He won a record breaking 9th World Title this year and just finished winning a record breaking 6th Pipeline Masters. I’m pretty sure he already held the record in both of those as well.

Is he a greater athlete than Tiger Woods? Michael Jordan? Lance Armstrong? I think so. There is no other athlete that has dominated his respective sport the way Kelly has.

My buddy Mat from Dream Systems Media did an awesome little Q&A with me on Social Media. He asked some really great questions, like this one…

What would be your best tips for someone brand new to social media? (how to grow in the communities etc.)

The best tip I can give anyone brand new to social media is to actually use social media. Before you jump in the pool you need to learn how to swim. Take some time to understand how certain social media sites work the way they do. Watch and learn from others marketing campaigns. Get to know how the social media crowd works, how they think, and what interests them. Expect a fair amount of trial and error before you hit a home run.

Check it out.

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’m heading to Las Vegas in the morning for Webmaster World’s Pubcon Conference for the week. I’m speaking on social media on Tuesday morning, my session is about understanding the complex social media playing field. I hope that you can all come see my presentation. For the time ever, I’m actually preparing it in advance. Normally, I procrastinate and end up finishing at 3AM morning of. Needless to say this results in a presentation that isn’t as good as it could be. Not this time, I want to knock this one out of the park.

I’ll be in Vegas all week and I hope to meet everyone of you that will be there. Please come say hi to me, if you mention this post and there’s a bar nearby, rounds are on me. Looking forward to seeing you all there.

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.

Here are a couple of posts I came across over my morning coffe that I found interesting enough to share….

How to get rich - I’m a big fan of Mark Cuban and his blog. This is a great post about not taking shortcuts to get rich (cause there aren’t any) and working hard and being in the right position to take advantages of opportunities that present themselves.

Free vs. Paid - Fred Wilson’s blog is another that any serious Internet entrepreneur should be reading. This particular post is in response to Roger Ehrenberg’s post about his new Investment criteria. Roger no longer thinks highly of the Freemium model and Fred disagrees. Both posts worth reading.

SEOmoz Announces New Tools - I’ve never seen much of a reason to subscribe to SEOmoz’s paid tool service but that may change with the link tool they just announced. I think you could gain incredible insight and value with that tool.

Work Hard, Play Hard - SugarRae has started a series on reasons you fail at making money online. Working soft and playing hard is reason #1. I couldn’t agree more. If you want to be successful online you need to work your ass off. If you do, and play your cards right, then down the road you’ll have plenty of time to work soft or not work at all. I’ll also say that I think keeping balance if your life is important, too much work and no play and your ass will burn out, hence the…. work hard, play hard.

Places to Work from for Free - When you work from home it’s nice to get out and work at a new place for a change of scenery. Otherwise you might just go crazy. This is a nice list of places you can work from for free.

Hope you enjoy!