Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
Thank the gods, it’s a long weekend.
Is making money out of nothing an act of genius, a scam, or both? Or is it just a lucky fluke?
Consider Alex Tew. He made himself a millionaire with the Million Dollar Homepage — selling the pixels in a 1000 x 1000 grid to advertisers for $1 each. Advertisers loved it, according to _The Cottage Economist_, because of its ability to generate website traffic for a cheap, one time payment.
People who tried to copy the idea failed — because, of course, it wasn’t news any more. No media frenzy meant no traffic spike.
But now Mr Tew is back with a twist: Pixellotto.
This time the pixels cost $2 each. Half of that goes to Tew. But the other half goes into a prize pool. Once all the pixels are sold, that million dollars goes to a random person who clicked on one of the adverts. In theory this should be even more attractive to advertisers because there’s a real incentive to click on those adverts.
But will it work?
So far 15% of the pixels have been sold. But it doesn’t look like the media frenzy is happening. _The Cottage Economist_ reports that while Pixellotto did hit the top 1000 sites on the Internet, currently it’s down to number 32,193 — more than ten thousand spots lower than the now-inert Million Dollar Homepage.
Thanks, as always, to Gaping Void for the insight.
Today I received a letter talking about upgrading to “the latest version” of the MYOB AccountEdge accounting software — but nowhere did it mention a version number. So I looked on the website under AccountEdge — but once again, nowhere could I find a mention of version numbers.
Since the version number of software is a key piece of data, why is is missing from all the promotional material?
Leaving out the version number was either deliberate or a mistake — logically there’s no other option. If it was a mistake, that’s just incompetence. If it was deliberate, the intention can only be to confuse or mislead — either encouraging people to call and get the hard-sell, or to spend money on upgrades they don’t need — and that’s despicable.
Which is it?
[As an aside, roughly 18 months ago an MYOB salesperson called, trying to convince me to purchase MYOB extended cover. He was extremely aggressive, to the point where I eventually said, “This is now the third time I’m telling you that I’ve already made my decision not to purchase extended cover, I am now angry.” I have become less and less impressed with MYOB over time.]
OK, this isn’t exactly cutting-edge business analysis, but stay with me. Employment website Seek makes a net profit after tax of $23.9M off revenue of $70M. That’s a markup above costs of nearly 52%.
So I figure they could drop their prices by a good 20% and still be making plenty more profit that the average quite-successful business, yeah? Hell, a computer shop only makes 6% to 8% when they sell you a laptop.
No wonder their share price is at a record high.
On Friday night I ran into three local restaurateurs chatting in the street — proprietors respectively of Sydney’s best Lebanese restaurant Fifi‘s, Greek meze specialists Kafenes and The Razor’s Edge.
While I’ve eaten at Fifi’s several times and can vouch for their wonderfulness, which is why I stopped to chat too. I haven’t tried the others — but they both have excellent reputations.
The guy from The Razor’s Edge left to set up for dinner. And then the guy from Fifi’s mentioned that his kitchen hands were late and he had to go too. Maria from Kafene’s reaction: “Do you need a hand?”
Restaurants across the road from each other are meant to be arch enemies, aren’t they? Or are they? This cooperative approach to business was inspiring.