Category — Marketing

Are you a programmer with lots of creative entrepreneurial ideas but scared to leave the man? Well, check out Dan Grigsby’s talk from RubyFringe at InfoQ: Dan Grigsby on Programmer/Entrepreneurs and Creative Hacking and Marketing.

He talks about how tools today let you do more software development faster. He talks about how this enables trying out tons of things for free and seeing what sticks. He talks about marketing Tai Chi, breaking into the “walled garden” and other creative marketing hacks. Go check it out and get your ventures rolling!

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Be sure to check this awesome book he mentioned in the talk!

Eric Schlosser

Our Rating:

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
America’s black market is much larger than we realize, and it affects us all deeply, whether or not we smoke pot, rent a risque video, or pay our kids’ nannies in cash. In Reefer Madness the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation turns his exacting eye on the underbelly of the American marketplace and its far-reaching influence on our society. Exposing three American mainstays - pot, porn, and illegal immigrants - Eric Schlosser shows how the black market has burgeoned over the past several decades. He also draws compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new techonology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, and how big business learns - and profits - from the underground. Reefer Madness is a powerful investigation that illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.

View More about Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

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I was working with some folks and someone reminded us of Beeker on the Muppets and we decided to check YouTube for some Beeker videos. I love this one where they’re trying to solve a business problem that doesn’t exist.

Good stuff. I then recalled Ali G’s “Ice Cream Glove”. I love his market research and his “Zen” diagram.

Just remember that he put a “C” on all his stuff so you can’t nick it.

May all of your business ideas prove to be useful and ultimately profitable!

David Heinemier Hannson of 37Signals and creator of the web framework Ruby on Rails, gave a great talk at Paul Graham’s Startup School this weekend. In the same way that he and his 37Signals comrades defy conventional wisdom on developing technology, he presents his unconventional ideas on business (at least unconventional compared to the VC-ish and We-Want-To-Get-Bought-Out-By-Google crowd that probably attended Startup School).

Some highlights:

• Comparing over-fearing terrorism to over-hoping to be the next billion+ dollar Facebook or MySpace
• Targeting the “Fortune 5,000,000″
• Charge REAL MONEY for your product/service! *GASP*
• You don’t have to be the best Italian restaurant, there’s room for LOTS of excellent ones in the world
• You don’t always have to have a super original or creative idea … Zappos.com created a great business selling shoes online for godsakes! They just do it great with extraordinary customer service.

Anyway, watch the video, it’s well worth your time (and check out the always interesting comments on this over at the Signal vs. Noise blog when you’re done):

Blogtrepreneur has a really useful, no-BS list of resources for entrepreneurs. They cover communications/VoIP, data backup, invoicing, financial management/accounting, time/project management, contact management, hiring resources, online reputation, accepting payments, shopping carts, fund-finding and CPC revenue.

The list is very clean and readable and does not seem to pushing any products. Nice.

Check it out: 101 Useful Resources for Online Entrepreneurs

Jay Conrad Levinson

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
When Guerrilla Marketing was first published in 1983, Jay Levinson revolutionized marketing strategies for the small-business owner with his take-no-prisoners approach to finding clients. Based on hundreds of solid ideas that really work, Levinsons philosophy has given birth to a new way of learning about market share and how to gain it. In this completely revised and expanded fourth edition, Levinson offers a new arsenal of weaponry for small-business success in the next century. Filled with strategies for marketing on the Internet (explaining when and precisely how to use it), tips for putting other new technologies to work, programs for targeting prospects and cultivating repeat and referral business, and management lessons in the age of telecommuting and freelance employees, this book will be the entrepreneurs marketing bible in the twenty-first century.

View More about Guerrilla Marketing, 4th edition: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your SmallBusiness