Scoreboard Media Group, Internet Audience Development

People keep calling, IM’ing, and emailing to see if I’m ever going to post again, so I thought I’d pop smoke for a few minutes.  I somehow let myself…nay, steered myself…into a situation where I’m chin deep in development work, so my free time to come on here and lob SCUDs at people has been minimal. 

With that in mind, here are a few things I’ve been thinking about:

1.  Andy sucks.  And by “sucks”, I mean “kicking my ass in our blogging bet.”  I still have a few late inning rallies planned, but it’s not looking good.  Never have two guys who have no desire to take on any client work expended so much energy in establishing a brandable consulting asset.  Andy and Rich also got a Miss Pac Man machine in their new offices.  Good times!

2.  Is Barry Bonds the most successful offline black hat?  This is kind of a debate within dorky Internet Marketing circles.  While Barry may be getting the most run now, I have to think Karl Rove or somebody at the deepest, darkest levels of global finance has done some Cheating Bastard stuff with much greater payoff than getting a large head, feet 3 sizes bigger than in college, and near universal hatred of everyone outside of the Bay Area.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

3.  Cameron Olthuis is taking a run at The Ten Figure Lifestyle.  He’s one of the good guys and I expect big things out of him.

4.  Someone asked if I was irked by Jason Calacanis’s remark of “these guys are actually pretty smart” as he closed the show I was guest on.  Not really.  We’ll sell my first major audience for a serious multiple over what he sold his first two, so that’s smart enough for me.  He also drives a car that is substantially slower than mine and, frankly, this makes me sad for JC even moreso than his Mahalo woes.  I don’t begrudge anyone who tries to make a living on the Internet and we have to respect the fact that he’s done so at a high level.  It’s damn hard work and he’s played some big games well.  That said, if there was a reality show where we were both given $10,000 and fake identities to go build the most profitable web audience, I go to sleep well knowing I could take that guy.

5.  With all due respect to Danny Sullivan, I don’t get the Sphinn thing.  At all.

6.  Here’s a little anecdotal research for you all to go endeavor upon.  We all know the real estate market is crashing pretty hard and worse days are ahead of it.  As someone who has substantial investment into specific real estate markets’ Internet plays, I’ve had to divert some of my resources.  Well, for the first time my dating life has led me in a good business direction.  All of the golddigging Realtor and mortgage skanks that once plagued my Treo are now heading back to school to get their Masters.  So, congrats to everyone spamming online education.  Should be a good run for you guys, especially as the job market softens and the .edu’s reap some of that bandwidth.

7.  Big domain name month for me.  Probably the first inflection point in my life as a domainer.  I’m selling one geo-name portfolio and I have one domain in the Domain Roundtable auction on the 15th that could go for a big number.  We’ll see where it ends up, but it looks like a little over 600% return in less than a year of accumulation.  That number would have been about 20%-50% bigger if I ever tried to cash flow those suckers.  I heart domaining.  I heart it a lot.

8.  I had gone something like 5 months without checking my Adsense account.  I saw the drips into my account every month, but I used to check my Adsense stats like a day trader on crystal meth.  Adsense Tweaker has to be a definitive level on the SEO Path, but I just could not care less about that income stream anymore.  If anything, it’s just a painful reminder that I should be seeking CPA or CPL offers for those sites. 

9.  Rand taking a run at Aviva Directory was maybe the all-time low at SEOmoz.  Maybe I breezed through it too quickly, but it came across a bit premeditated.  I wouldn’t say some of the SEOmoz client work on the social media side has exactly been squeaky clean either but, again, if I see another competitive webmaster out there trying to execute their model, I’m not going to go into Tattle Mode.  Unless, of course, it’s one of Andy’s sites.  Hell, I’ll start a dozen new Webmaster Central accounts to tattle on somebody of Hagans’ ilk.  Anyways, there were a million other ways for Rand to make that point and, as a veritable ambassador for our community, I guess I would have expected more.

10.  Rae Hoffman is on my IM list now and let’s just say I always knew there might be somebody who dropped more F-bombs than me, but I never expected it to be a woman.  I walk in your fucking shadow, Rae!

11.  I am still hiring for a ton of SEO, SEM, and spamming…err, marketing…positions in both San Francisco and Texas.  This is another request for resumes if you want to come work in some really exciting stuff.

Bonus Round:  Yes, Jessica Alba is single and, yes, for that I’ll always remember the Summer of 2007.  It’s the Summer of Opportunity!*

*And, if all goes well, the Summer of Restraining Order.