August 26, 2008

A million bank customer details sold on eBay

by Brian Turner

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting!The BBC reports that an IT worker who bought a PC for £35 on eBay, found the harddrive contained around a million customer records plus transactions from the Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest:
Bank customer data ’sold on […]



Pricing strategies to increase sales

by Brian Turner

Hat tip to SEOblackhat for recently highlighting a great post on SmallBizTrends about pricing: 8 Pricing Strategies you can Implement Right Now.
Some of the pricing strategies are priceless, but the first of the 8 tips especially stands out:

1. The Nine and Zero Effect. People associate the number nine with value and zero with quality. Look […]



Indian Spammers blame Brits

by Brian Turner

In one of the most contentious posts I’ve ever read, someone actually argues that Indian SEO spam should be blamed on British companies:

as an SEO we need to depend mainly on US, UK, and Australian markets.
The equation is simple – these things exist because there is a need in the market, and you have your […]



Why Yahoo should be franchised

by Brian Turner

Techcrunch published a story by Serkan Toto yesterday highlighting how Yahoo! Japan is worth almost as much as Yahoo! itself, with market caps of $22 billion and $27 billion respectively.
While YHOO shares have fallen slowly over the past couple of years, Serkan makes a big point of how having a dynamic company run by a […]



August 23, 2008

Seth Godin confused about click marketing

by Brian Turner

Seth Godin has created a backlash among search marketers for advocating what many see as clickfraud.
Seth suggested that surfers could “tip” websites they liked by clicking on ads - for which the website would be paid for - as a means of thanks.
As many have rightly pointed out, at best this is clickfraud - and […]



August 18, 2008

vbulletin updates: 3.7.2 Patch Level 2, vb 3.7.3, vb 3.8 and vb4.0

by Brian Turner

Mass email from vbulletin received tonight which announces a new patch (3.7.2 Patch Level 2) for the current build.
In addition, vb 3.7.3 will be released on August 26th.
The patch doesn’t require a complete reinstall, thankfully - just download the patch and upload to your vbulletin forum install, and it should be reasonably simple.
Meanwhile, public plans […]



August 16, 2008

Cheap SEO: you get what you pay for

by Brian Turner

I’ve railed before on the pitfalls of cheap SEO, trying to underline the point that the phrase “you get what you pay for” is true to business, but especially SEO.
Well, here’s a sad thread from the DigitalPoint forums - starts out with an attractive offer for services, that sounds reasonably cheap but comprehensive.
Unfortunately, it […]



Dell’s new business laptops for Digital Nomads

by Brian Turner

Dell are pushing a new line of laptops aimed at business users who need to be mobile most of the time: Digital nomad drives laptop sales.
According to the BBC coverage, these laptops comes with a standard 10 hour battery life, which can be extended to 19 hours if required.
Additionally, they come equipped with fingerprint […]



August 14, 2008

The importance of praise for good work

by Brian Turner

I have a very good team under me, and often find myself taking it for granted that they know how valued they are.
When I realise this happening, I make a point of thanking them for their great work on an individual basis.
Sometimes I find it hard to say - it takes extra effort to communicate […]



Giant London cheesegrater gets shelved

by Brian Turner

London has seen plans for the city’s largest building - the Leadenhall Tower, aka “the cheesegrater” - shelved for the time being because of the credit crunch:
BBC: Slump delays ‘Cheesegrater’ plans

The firm blamed weak demand for office space and rising construction costs.
British Land said the building would be completed in 2012 when letting prospects should […]



City of Birmingham confuses UK with US

by Brian Turner

From the BBC: Chiefs admit Brum skyline mix-up

Birmingham City Council has admitted sending out leaflets which showed its US namesake’s skyline instead.
About 720,000 pamphlets praising Brummies for their recycling were sent around the city at a cost of £15,000.
But instead of showing landmarks such as the Rotunda and the new Selfridges building, it […]



Strong dollar good for Adsense

by Brian Turner

The BBC reports that the pound has plummetted to a 2 year low against the dollar - which is good news for those earning from US advertising programs, not least through Adsense earnings.
Two weeks ago, the GBP was 1.99 to the USD - now it stands at 1.86.
This means that two weeks ago $1,000 was […]



August 8, 2008

Reducing revenues to reduce risk

by Brian Turner

One of the commonest risks in a service business is known as the 80:20 rule - where 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients.
The risk comes from the danger of any of that 20% cancelling their service, resulting in a significant drop in revenues.
This in itself is bad enough, but if your […]