Archive for 'Marketing'
Getting a Higher Hourly Effective Rate in Mechanical Turk
Posted on 14. Sep, 2009 by koichi.
Chances are, if you run some kind of business you use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to do a variety of things. If you don’t, it’s really time to get started. Mechanical Turk is so cheap to use, and you get so much benefit from it. Testing, opinions, translations, image labeling, etc., are all things you can do for very, very little money. I’m talking two to three cents a job. Thank goodness it’s all voluntary, otherwise it would be the biggest, cheapest, scariest sweat shop in the world. (more…)
Continue Reading
10 Mechanical Turk Jobs You Should Run Right Now
Posted on 14. Sep, 2009 by koichi.
Use Mechanical Turk for your business. USE IT NOW. You can never spend too much money on Mechanical Turk. It’s too cheap to do that. I don’t want to waste your time, because you need to get started. Here are ten jobs you should run right now. (more…)
Continue Reading
What Happened to the Hot Chicks on Twitter?
Posted on 11. Sep, 2009 by koichi.
I’ve noticed an entirely new generation of Twitter spammers… Real Looking (and dressed) People. WHAT?
The age of half-naked twitter spammers is coming to an end. I’m even seeing fewer top-down picture taking Twitter spammers. It’s quite remarkable. I thought Twitter was just doing a better job cracking down, but lately I’ve figured out that that’s not true.
Just like any group of spammers, they are getting smarter. I guess we should just be thankful that there aren’t millions of Nigerian Princes looking to offload their fortunes to my parents on Twitter yet. Who knows, people that are my parents’ generation are starting to join Twitter now. (more…)
Continue Reading
8 Things we can Learn From Homeless Marketing
Posted on 11. Sep, 2009 by koichi.
When you walk by a homeless person on the street, do you ignore them? But, do you ignore all of them? My bet is that some of them pique your interest, and sometimes you give them money. This, my friends, is homeless marketing.
Think about it. Most blog owners are very happy if a mere 1% of visitors click on their ads. Online stores are happy if 1% of people buy products. It doesn’t take much, and if a tweak in the way you market something can get you another 0.2% success rate, you’d be very happy. Yesterday, I stood across the street from a homeless guy with a pretty standard “Any help appreciated” cardboard sign. Approximately 0.7% of people gave him money, but of course, his sign was pretty blah.
After doing some extensive research (and by extensive research, I just mean walking around San Francisco for a month), I’ve come to realize that the homeless use marketing tactics that are very applicable to all kinds of businesses. Believe it or not, there are some pretty bright minds “working” in homeless advertising right now, and I guarantee you some of them have 5% or better conversion rates. I even know of one person in particular that has an avid repeat customer (me!). He does one helluva job.
I’ve been examining their tactics and reverse engineered them for you and your business. Whether you’re the writer of a small blog, or the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, these may be useful for you. (more…)
Continue Reading
Welcome to BoxTofu!
Posted on 05. May, 2009 by koichi.
Hey everyone! Welcome to BoxTofu, a “blog for ridiculous marketing.” To be completely honest, I hate the logo, I hate the website name, and I hate everything about the branding of this site. But do you know what? If I can brand and market this garbage, then you can do the same for anything else. Anything. And i hope to help you do that.
But do you know what I hate more? I hate it when people start writing a blog post for the first time (just like this one) and pretend like people are reading it, because they most definitely are not. I imagine it takes at least ten posts to not look like a quitter before you even start, not to mention Google barely knows this blog exists (or if it does, I’m page number 4,305 no matter what search you stick in there).
So screw it with the intro! I’m going to start writing posts instead, and won’t bother with anything else for a while. If you read this, then enjoy the overly happy / surprised picture on the right. It was cold and my frail blogger’s eyes weren’t used to the outdoors (have you ever watched a puppy meet snow for the first time?).
Anyways, I’ll see you all around soon, and meet you a little bit later, I’m sure. Cheers and thanks for stopping by!
Continue Reading
