I read an interesting article this morning about the most common reason why startups fail. It wasn't what I would have guessed...but looking back, I once made the same mistake myself, and it was pretty expensive.

Joanna Glasner wrote:

Researchers found that certain factors "“ such age and gender of founders, location, and previous entrepreneurial...
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Internet marketers can be a compulsive bunch. When profits are down and they're feeling anxious, they're particularly susceptible to an unhealthy addiction. It's called "stat-oholism".

They know they should be working or spending time with their families. But they just can't resist the urge to check their stats. Over and over again.

"How much have...
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Some people may be born to be entrepreneurs, but even they have to be made.

My dad was an entrepreneur. He got his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford, discovered a new way to measure the output of lasers, created a company, and (after many years of struggling, during which we kids thought McDonalds wa...
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This post is about marketing -- not religion -- but the Bible sure put it well.

Something Seth Godin posted today got me thinking:

The naive farmer farms as his parents, grandparents and great grandparents did. She plants, hopes and harvests...

The professional farmer measures. She tests. She understands how systems work and is constantly...
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A common problem with internet marketers is that they jump from trend to trend, gimmick to gimmick, loophole to loophole, always hoping that this time, it'll be their turn to hit the jackpot.

Just like the lottery, it's true that people do win. But the odds are probably about as good, er, bad.

I once...
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I woke up this morning with an image in my mind that I'd seen years ago while living in San Francisco. We were in a drought, and people who used more water than they had the same month of the previous year risked significant penalties.

It was then that I noticed the green driveways.

Homeowners...
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In today's episode of Battle of the Marketing Maxims, we'll pit Henry Ford against the elusive Deep Throat to explore the question: is it smarter to innovate, or should you "follow the money" and stick to markets where people are already spending?

Representing Deep Throat, we have a quote from Marketing Coach Terry Dean:

Step...
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Last March, I posted an article about how to learn internet marketing. One of the keys I covered was that you need to implement what you learn rather than continually studying and never doing:

Once you've studied something that can help your business, implement it before you move on to the next thing. If you've...
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You've seen sales letters advertising "the laziest way ever" to make millions in internet marketing. Today, I'm not going to try to convince you that those sales letters are scams. I'm going to talk about why they'd stink even if they worked.

They'd stink because a lazy life stinks. A hard life is better. Or...
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ABC (the TV network) rolled the dice this morning. And lost.

The space shuttle Endeavour launched for the last time this morning. My wife paused to watch before heading out the door to take the kids to school.

As the countdown neared zero, water poured onto the launch pad, the solid fuel boosters fired up,...
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