Pot Odds In Internet Marketing
Posted by Mitch on Feb 8, 2010
Many of you know how much I love going to play poker. I get a lot of enjoyment out of it because I love the camaraderie that eventually is created by spending just a few hours with a bunch of people you’ve never met before, commiserating with everyone else who’s either won a big hand or gotten beaten in a big hand. We’ve all been there, and we all have stories to share.
One thing I like to believe I’m good at is figuring out what the odds are that my hand is good or not. Of course, having a good hand doesn’t always mean it’s a winning hand, but more often than not it works out just fine. What I’m not good at is figuring out the numbers, as in what the actual percentage is that favors my hand.
I was reading a blog post called Easiest Way To Understand Math In Poker, where the writer, named Mitchell Cogart (knew I liked him for some reason) was giving some formulas for how to calculate it fairly quickly. It’s still somewhat beyond me, mainly because it takes time to do those calculations, and unless I was playing in a tournament, I don’t like taking that kind of time figuring out anything.
However, it’s the other thing he was talking about that starts to get me into the point of this post. There’s something called pot odds that, to poker players, is very important and very intriguing. In essence, it’s figuring out how much the pot is worth to you in odds versus the odds of you having a winning hand. Just to throw out numbers, if you only have a 30% chance of winning a hand, but the dollars in the pot come out to you having a 55% chance of winning the pot, many poker players will take a chance on the money rather than their hand because they perceive the dollars are so high that you can’t afford NOT to play the hand.
I hear this on poker commentary sometimes on TV. The guy will say “there’s so much money in the pot that so-and-so absolutely has to call the hand, even though he’s going to lose.” On TV, you always know what the players hands are, so you know who’s going to win or lose. But the players don’t know that, so you see them taking time, running through all the calculations in their minds, and then they’ll pull the trigger on hands that most of us would say we know better than to play because we have no idea on how to calculate pot odds.
In a way, you can relate that to trying to learn more about internet marketing. There are a lot of products out there that will teach you something about it. Some are very good and some aren’t all that good. However, what most of us believe is that the more expensive something is, the more we should be getting out of it. Truthfully, that may or may not be true. The “pot odds” are in your favor; after all, why would someone put a $500 product out there that wasn’t going to deliver on what’s been promised, right?
Here’s the thing. Just like everything else in life, nothing works for everyone. It’s possible that the $500 product might tell you everything you need to know to make money, or it may not. It may tell you things to do that your morality won’t allow you to do. For instance, if it said that in order to make lots of money you have to kill a lot of puppies, would you do it? If it said that you had to do what’s known as black hat principles, would you do it?
While I was at my mother’s house on Friday, she was watching this network that was advertising a program called Kell On Earth, about this fashion designer who’s very successful. However, she’s a terror; there’s no way I’d ever want to deal with that type of person on a yearly basis, let alone a daily basis. She berates her employees and other people around her, but justifies it by saying she has to do what she has to do to stay at the top. I’m sorry, but if you have to treat people as if they’re inferior to you then I don’t want to be successful. It’s not my style, and I couldn’t live with myself. Yet there are thousands of people who subscribe to that and believe it’s the way to go. Notice how some are successful, but others aren’t? Once again, no one size fits all.
Some folks thought I was being too lenient when I reviewed Six Figure Blogger Blueprint. The thing is, the book wasn’t really for those of you who have been doing this for awhile. It was also free, not a full course on internet marketing. It got me thinking about things, and any book that does that for me works for me. We all judge things differently. We have to know ourselves, and what we might respond to. Like that book to the right side there, 20 Ways To Make
$100 A Day Online. I bought that book, and I think it was perfect for me because I was able to take just one of its principles and turn it into a way to make money. It wasn’t overly expensive, but turned out to be just what I needed. I calculated my odds for finding something I thought I could use, and I turned out to be right.
How do you determine whether something might work well for you or not? Do you even try anymore? I say that at the risk of jumping into Sire’s response, because I know he’s said more than once that he won’t pay for anything anymore, after being burned many times early on. Has that happened to some of you as well? I’d really like to know.
Are You Regular?
Posted by Mitch on Feb 7, 2010
Maybe I’m writing this post because I’m now 50, because I certainly can’t see me writing something like this even when I was 40. We’re about to talk bowel movements, folks; serious stuff here, but if you’re uncomfortable reading about it, move on to something else now. Great Sunday fare, this will be.
Here’s the thing. I’ve had problems going, as in #2, since I was a kid. I don’t really know why, I just did. But I never mentioned it to anyone. I just went about my business whenever my body said “it’s time”, and that was that. Sometimes I’d go daily, but most of the time I went every 3 to 4 days. Talk about being uncomfortable, and dealing with pain.
As I’ve gotten older, I started to find that I couldn’t deal with the pain as well anymore. Man, stuff starts to beat your body up as you get older. Not only that, but sometimes it wasn’t just the pain, it was everything else. Many times it was worse than spending 30 minutes working out on the treadmill. Legs would actually get quivery, if that’s a real word, and I was finding myself having to rest upwards of a half hour before I could get my heart to stop beating heavily. Talk about workouts!
Yeah, there were some other problems as well, but I knew it was time to do something. What many people don’t know is that one of the major places where people have heart attacks is on the toilet; how about that for a stat? Where I live, shoveling snow is number two, but worldwide, number one is sitting on the toilet. I know I’m not the only one who’s ever experienced this issue, obviously. But I finally did something about it.
I went to a proctologist, although it turns out they don’t necessarily like going by that term anymore. Instead, they want to be called colorectal surgeons. Hey, whatever right? Trust me, it was an embarrassing thing for me to do, but I had to decide pain versus embarrassment, and pain won out. No one likes being in pain, and I had to get this issue under control.
I was really worried that I might also have hemorrhoids, and that’s no laughing matter either. I know a few people who’ve had that operation; it’s not a day in the park. Like I needed anyone cutting on me again; I’ve already had both a hernia operation and an operation on my breast to remove a lump. A hemorrhoids operation sounded like no fun at all.
So the guy checks me out and says I “only” have fissures. That’s still painful, but it could be helped. However, it was the other issue I was having that he said was the thing to address. And he recommended something called Miralax. He said it wasn’t necessarily a laxative; in other words, it might not necessarily make you go. What it would do, though, is break down whatever it is that makes things not want to come out when it’s time so that there would be no more pain, and my body could heal.
Just so you know, in my life I’d tried a lot of things. I’d even gone the Metamucil route, thinking that might fix things; nope. But this Miralax thing is something else. It did end up making me go more regular, as long as I remember to take it. It makes things much easier across the board. I get that stuff out of my system, it doesn’t hurt anymore, my body has healed, and man, life is just better.
I’m here to tell you that embarrassing or not, pain and suffering isn’t worth it. To me, this issue is more important than the Viagra thing any day of the year (okay, I don’t have that as an issue, but that’s certainly never been a painful thing for anyone as far as I know). And it affects both men and women. I’m reminded of it a few times here and there when I forget to take it for a few days; call me a moron at those times, but I’m not giving up on it ever again.
By the way, it’s not inexpensive really. It costs around $20 for a 17.9 oz bottle. But it’s worth it, and it certainly lasts longer than a pizza will (and it’ll help you get that pizza back out of you if you’ve asked fro extra cheese, which is how I usually get my pizza).
Look at that; another adult conversation for a Sunday. Any comments?
New Facebook Changes; This Is Better?
Posted by Mitch on Feb 6, 2010
Yesterday evening I signed onto Facebook to notice that there have been changes to the format once again. Please, someone tell me why they keep changing things there that don’t need changing.
The most immediate change I noticed was moving the options for doing things at the top of the site to the right rather than keeping them to the left. Since we here in America read left to right, I can’t say I was happy with that.
Next I noticed that the little image thing we used to see at the bottom left that took us to applications we wanted is now gone. It hasn’t been replaced, which is irritating as well. Now, to get into any applications, you always have to go back to the home page, where you have a menu to the left that I haven’t quite figured out yet how to modify so I can see the apps that I go to the most often.
Also, I tried to tag a couple of photos last night, which used to be a very easy process, and had problems doing that as well. First it wanted me to add a new application, which I turned down. Then when I was finally in the images section, I would select the tag tool, but whenever I clicked on the picture it would leave. Man, stuff just didn’t want to work with me last night.
All in all, I’m drastically not impressed with any of the new changes, and can’t wait until someone figures out how to change things through UserScripts.org, which allows you to change things up on the Firefox browser, which I’ve talked about before. I’m never against change, but one hopes it makes things easier and better, not more convoluted.
What are your thoughts about it? By the way, you’re probably going to see Valentines Day products up until the day before Valentines Day, unless I write about something that has a specific product. I hope no one forgets about it; next Sunday folks!
Google Toolbar Tracks Your Movements
Posted by Mitch on Feb 4, 2010
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Do you have Google Toolbar installed on your browser? I do, and I have to admit that I find it as a convenience in two ways. One, I know I can click on the Google button and it’ll pull up the Google search page. Two, I also use Google Desktop, and the icon for it sits on the toolbar, easy to find.
One thing I’ve rarely done, however, is type my search term into the little box next to the button. I almost never think about it sitting there. What’s funny is that, as I look up there now, I see the search terms I typed into the actual Google window the last time I was there waiting for me, as if I’m going to type them in again. That’s a quick way to search for something; I wonder why I have rarely used it.
Turns out there might have been a good reason not to do it, and I was just lucky. It seems that every time you put a search term into that little window and click the button, you’re sending information to Google telling them what you’re searching for. They in turn use that information to try to target ads specifically to you based on where you live and what you’ve been searching for. They store this information away, waiting for the next time you use it so they can do more calculations, trying to figure you out.
It seems this has been written about often enough, but I’ve always missed it. The last article I saw comes from Mashable, where they found that even if you disable the tracking part of the toolbar it still continues to track your movements.
Of course, you can look at that and gripe, or you can decide to gripe about the issue of Adsense reducing its payments from 75% to 72% to its publishers, of which most of us are. Man, working on getting our money coming or going; how fair is that?
Content Is An Electronic Emperor
Posted by Mitch on Feb 3, 2010
Let me get this out of the way. I don’t like Rupert Murdoch. I don’t like almost anything he stands for. I believe he’s pretty much a greedy man who likes stirring up controversy because he knows it sells. I believe he skews the news, not because he actually believes any of it, but because it makes money. I’m not against anyone making money, ever; I don’t have to like how some people make it, though.
However, if there’s one thing I am is fair when I have to be. And, of all things, Murdoch recently said something that I’ve touted in my own way for years, though my thoughts have been a little more limited on the subject. And that subject is content.
I’ve always said I believe that content is king, and I really believe that. On the blogosphere, that always turns into a debate, and it might even turn into a debate here as well.
Let’s first see what Murdoch has to say. In essence, he loves all this new technology, and all the media companies that he owns. He sees the value in all of them. Bu the also says that not a single one of them means anything without content. His news services mean nothing without content; his TV channels and his movie studios mean nothing without content. People are ready to either pay for the content or use the content to help them make money. In his words,
“The value of content is now clear. Content is not just king. It is the emperor of all things electronic. But this clever technology is merely an empty vessel without any great content. Without content, the ever larger and flatter screens, the tablets, the e-readers and the increasingly sophisticated mobile phones would be lifeless.”
I hate to say this, but it doesn’t get any clearer than that. There are literally more than a hundred million blogs out in the world, and those that have a chance to grow and proliferate all have content. Not all of the content is great, but there’s a lot of it. Notice, he never said the content had to be great in quality, but it does have to be great in quantity. Of course, I’ve always believed if you’re not going into it without hoping to provide great quality, don’t do it at all.
In my guise as an internet marketing consultant for small businesses (as opposed to an affiliate marketer who can’t seem to make more than $100 a month online), I work with them in trying to convince them that having a website is a great thing, but without adding more content, or having active content that keeps people coming over and over, or at least the search engines, that their sites will stagnate, and the best SEO in the world won’t keep them going. Imagine if a movie studio put out the greatest movie in history, then kept showing that same movie over and over. Okay, so I’ve seen Rocky Horror Picture Show about 40 times live; it wasn’t because of the movie, but more because each week the people who came to the show changed up, and you never know what they were going to do. In essence, that was my content changing rather than increasing, but it was still new content nonetheless.
That’s one reason why I write as often as I do. I could probably be doing okay with only 3 posts a week, and when I get busy that might be what I drop to; after all, actually making money is always more important, right? However, I have found that I like writing more, and when my content is higher my visitor rate is higher. That, plus look at all the great stuff I get to link to that I’d never have if I hadn’t written so much in so many places.
So, content is no longer just king; it’s an electronic emperor. And this emperor doesn’t need clothes either.
TweepSearch
Posted by Mitch on Feb 2, 2010
Y’all know I talk about Twitter all the time; I think way too much, although I guess for my output not nearly as much as I think.
Anyway, one of the issues I’ve always had with Twitter is that it’s hard to find people in your own area, or other areas of the country. Sure, you can go to their search function (if you can find it; I’m always forgetting where it is) and type in something you’re interested in, such as “internet marketing” or “chocolate” and you’ll get a number of people who pop up. But they could be almost anywhere.
I decided to put the question out to the Twitterverse, as it likes to be called, and someone came back to me, Amy Walker is her name, with a site called TweepSearch. It’s a new site, still in beta, but what you can do is put in pretty much anything and it will find it for you. For instance, I put in Syracuse, NY, kind of my hometown (the big city to the suburb I actually live in) and almost every person it pulled up lived in the Syracuse area. It did pull up some people who said they were from here but lived elsewhere, but that’s okay as well.
Why did I want to find those people? In mid-January I attended my 3rd tweetup which my buddy Josh wrote about. A tweetup is where local people gather to meet the people they talk to or have followed in some capacity on Twitter. And then you meet other people you didn’t know previously, and if y’all get along you can add them to your Twitter stream as well.
Anyway, I wanted to see if there were people I might know locally that I wanted to hook up with so that I could make sure they knew about the next big tweetup. I did find a couple of people to add locally, which was pretty neat. However, you can use this search for more than cities. You can pretty much put in anything and it will be found. It’s a great way to network and meet new friends; networking is my life sometimes.
The only gripe I had with it is that at times it moves kind of slow. One would expect that if it’s going through everyone who lives in a large city. But in small areas, where you know the number of people on Twitter can’t be all that high, it should move faster. Then again, I did say it was in beta.
I hope you enjoy this little tool; it’s neat.
January Income Report – Changing For 2010
Posted by Mitch on Feb 1, 2010
I want to preface this report by saying that, for now, it’s going to be my last report. I have to admit that the numbers are disappointing to me these days, and they don’t seem worth reporting until they start getting much better. So, after this report, you won’t see this type of thing again until I have my first $500 month. And since I don’t see anything to indicate that could be coming up any time soon, it could be awhile before we get another one of these.
So, without further ado, here’s how things looked this month:
Adsense – $64.75
Infolinks – $22.50
Commission Junction – $20.50
Google Affiliate Network – $.90
Grand Total – $108.65
Once again, most of my money was earned via my medical billing site, but the money has gone down, somewhat being replaced by Infolinks. The CJ sale was another one time fluke, and the GAN sale was someone buying a DVD from Barnes & Noble through one of my links, that’s a pretty low percentage, isn’t it?
Here’s the thing. I’ve been giving more and more thought to income lately. Though I’ve said I don’t expect to make a lot of income from this blog because of its nature, it wouldn’t depress me to make something more than once a millenia. The same goes for my other sites as well. The basic ideas are twofold; one, you work on selling your own product, where you get to retain all proceeds from the sale, or two, you work on selling the products of others and accept your percentage from that.
Those are really the only two ways of making any real money online, though some folks will make big money off Adsense by having multiple websites. Frankly, I don’t see myself as a guy who will ever own more than 10 to 15 websites, period, and that could be pushing it. Hundreds of websites; no way! So, since I don’t see myself as a web mogul in that fashion, trying to earn more money through Adsense seems to be illogical. I’ll be happy with what I’m getting now and try to move onto other things.
For instance, the CJ products. That money above was for one lousy sale; if I could get more of those, life wouldn’t be all that depressing. Some of my advertisers market some fairly technical and pricey stuff. For instance, imaging the commission I would earn if someone decided to buy this HJ Namdar Diamond Ring; I’d be living large for a month. I’d be a happy camper if someone decided to purchase one of these World Imports chandeliers
also; stunning stuff.
But to get people to buy things like that, I really have to push the sale, market it well, and say some pretty good stuff about it. I’d also have to know it, and truthfully, I only know what I like to look at when it comes to jewelry, and my tastes in chandeliers only goes so far since many times I don’t even notice them (though I’d notice that one for sure). At least I’d feel like I’d have to know them if I were going to talk about them on a blog; if I set up product pages, I might not have to know as much.
Kind of like my sales page over there; I don’t have tons of products on it, as most of the deals are via banner links, but I easily could select products to push and, if there’s a code, indicate that there’s a timed sale of some sort. By the way, I’ve never gotten any feedback really on what people think of that type of sales page, the one next to me holding the parrot, which is always changing because the sales end and new sales come up. What do you think of something like that in general?
Anyway, onward and upward, as the saying goes. Let’s see what the financial future holds in store for me.
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