A couple months back, Microsoft unloaded 80 to 100 million dollars on commercial advertising for their new “decision engine” Bing. I have to admit, I might have lol’d a little at their campaign. But come on, it was awesome. They must have hired someone with a Mac sense of humor. In case you missed it, here’s some examples:

So what does this have to do with SEO? More »

Lou Holtz’s famous quote that gets thrown around for inspiration daily online is: “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.”

I respectfully disagree.

If 90% of your life is reacting, you’re spending too much time getting acted upon. If you live your life making things happen for you, much less of your life will consist of things happening to you.

So the next time you hear someone quote that lay-down-and-die until you have something to do mentality, you fire back with this:

Life is 50/50. 50% what you cause to happen, and 50% how you react to what’s happening.
Unreasonable Rule #2 – Nathan Cheeley

Tweet This Rule!

Because in a nutshell:

I’d stop talking to my best friend online if he had an agenda.

There, I said it.

I don’t care how carefully you tip-toe around, unless you’re “socializing and making friends” online with a bunch of other internet marketers, no matter how friendly or inviting your money-links are they will (almost) always be highly irrelevant to me when I’m busting someone’s chops online for liking the latest Black Eyed Peas single. More »

Does it ever bother you that Facebook seemingly has a death grip on your pages? I mean sure by default they give you a little text box you can sort of put text or absolute links into, but …. c’mon, right?

Ok so check this out – I created a quick video for Site Source 101 on how to customize your Facebook Fan page to include a HTML widget (note: This is not currently applicable to your profile page).

If you aren’t doing this yet you need to be, especially if your fans are throwing your page around to their friends’ feeds. Think of all your options here. You could: More »

Conventional wisdom tells us not to bite off more than we can chew.

I say, go for it.

Provided, you are better than average at chewing.

Bite off more than you can chew. Then chew like hell.
-Unreasonable Rule #1, Nathan Cheeley

Tweet This Rule!

July 19, 2009 is a date that has already taken on meaning to all Best Buy associates. For them, it is the official launch day for getting paid to tweet to existing and potential customers – the day @TwelpForce goes live, according to Bloomberg.

Twelpforce is Best Buy’s answer to leveraging employee downtime to harness a little social media power with the intent to bring more customers in the doors. One awkwardly positive post praises Best Buy for their innovation in this initiative, though it should be noted that Dell actually pioneered this form of customer service in 2007 well before the Twitterverse explosion and saw a ROI of over $3M (source). But of course, I’m writing this because I’m not so optimistic for the ol’ boys in blue. Especially not after today…
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A fire in Fisher Plaza, Seattle has cause a massive power outage causing leading IP-based payment gateway solution Authorize.Net to go down around approximately 11:15pm PST (last night).

A traffic reporter for KOMO News that operates out of Fisher Plaza tweeted that a fire set off the sprinkler system which fried the generators. (source)

One forum post says firefighters have not yet allowed re-entry to the area, so no emergency backup plans have begun as of 10:26am EST. This is according to an informant who spoke to the UK branch of Authorize.Net. (source)
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I see this every day.

“I have a business and people depending on me but I want to finally commit to being a rockstar and start making music. How can I do this?”

If you’ve asked this question, or something similar, you’re missing the ultimate point of your aspirations.

The most popular is, “I want to go back to school.” But do you really? Is there a real need, or just a want to feel like you’re moving in the right direction? There are two simple questions you need to ask yourself before committing to a life-changing event, no matter how good your intentions are that will unearth the less obvious and more realistic path to success.

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If you have not yet harnessed the power of affiliate marketing with your products, or if you are still scratching your head over why no one is picking up your product on ClickBank, then you’re well-prepared to read this.

As Web 2.0 continues to evolve, so do our chances of meeting people and networking with some real talent. There are a multitude of social sites to apply this strategy to, so just think of this as a “hey, maybe there is life outside the box” kick in the head in an info-product-but-it’s-free-info kind of way. More »

Rich Site Summary

If you’re new to RSS, this post will be life-changing for you.

Do you have a long list of sites you check every day? News sites, weather sites, blogs, sports, etc.? Man, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just go to one place and see the latest updates on all of them?

RSS feeds do just that. Anytime you see that lovely orange box on your favorite site you want to keep tabs on, just click it and go through the subscription process. RSS feeds update with every site update, so you never miss a thing.

RSS feeds are generally pretty ugly looking, so to make the best of them, you can integrate them into most email clients (including My Yahoo and Gmail) and get your updates the same time you’re checking your email for the day! There are also a ton of feed readers out there for use in the form of desktop software, widgets, and integrated browser tools, but if you’re new I’d point you to Bloglines to get started.

Now a quick “for instance” – Take a look at my site’s RSS feed here. You’ll notice my updates are listed in chronological order and on the right you can subscribe with a reader or have my updates delivered by email. Not all RSS’s are as friendly as mine, but hey, I do what I can to help. You’ll also notice in the top-right of my pages I have a box linking you to my RSS and offering the subscription there as well. This is just good practice for anyone offering new updates frequently that wants to encourage readership from its visitors.

Now if all that made sense, RSS should have a new meaning for you – Really Simple Syndication. Enjoy!