Marketing

Engineers and a birthday gift…

When asked for birthday gift hints, my sister-in-law’s husband said he wanted an MP3 player to replace the outdated Walkman he runs with, and even suggested a specific model that we could all chip in on. That should have made things pretty easy. However, because this is an electronic item, with computers involved, there was […]

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Purging Books and Tchotchkes

Since last October, I have been gradually taking over the formal dining room, turning it into my “work space.” Using the wireless laptop in the dining room seemed innocuous: we don’t entertain much, and the clean horizontal service was beckoning me to put junk on it. After the laptop found a cozy place to park,

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Associates and Adsense

Who is John Galt?(And would he beokay if I resold this book?) I’ve been in the Amazon Associates program for several years. It’s a no-brainer: sign up, and if someone buys books you happen to mention, you get a small credit towards a future purchase. Linking books and other products has always been about showing

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Schedule chicken

What is the game of “Chicken?” In the movies, two hooligans with something to prove settle their differences by racing their cars towards each other. The first one to turn away, averting certain collision, is the “chicken” and loses face among his cohorts. The other player, referred to as the “winner,” gets bragging rights and

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How much is your product, really?

When buying a car, I’ve become accustomed to having to research pricing until smoke billows out of my ears because I hate finding out that the “special deal” I received wasn’t very special. Multi-level pricing has oozed into the retail software industry and is especially rife with companies selling direct. After a couple of (expletive)

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A sales parable

(for maximum humor value, mouse-over the dashed lines.)Long ago, before the mists of the dot com era wafted down upon the masses, I worked at a company that made bananas. I traveled to a customer site with Tim, the company’s top salesman to observe his crafitness. After we met with the Zookeeper and Primate Custodian,

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