This year I drove out all 2,300 miles from Philadelphia, Pennsylania for the event. I didn’t drive out just for the PSIA Academy, however, it was time for a big life change. After sitting in front of a computer for endless hours everyday, I decided it was time to break free to go LIVE life instead of just watching it pass me by.

Since I was already booked for the 2010 PSIA National Academy, I left my job on February 17th (my birthday), skied the remainder of the season at Elk Mountain in Pensylvania and then hopped in the car for a (my first) cross country drive to Snowbird (and staying in Sandy, Utah at the base of the canyon where Snowbird is located).

It took about four days to drive out and I pulled a couple days of about 800 miles on the road. The first day was Philly to Pittsburgh, then Pitsburgh to LeClaire, Iowa via Indianapolis, then LeClaire Iowa to Cheyenne, Wyoming, then Cheyenne to almost Sandy Utah. The “almost Sandy, Utah” was the result of the tail end of a massive series of storms that dropped upwards of 97 inches of snow on Snowbird and shut down the canyone road and Snowbird resort for 2 days. I got to within about 30 miles of Sandy and the roads and visibility were so bad, I had to pull off the road at the nearest exit.

Unfortunately that exit had no hotel so I had to “sleep” in the car. It was packed so full, the seats could not go back and I couldn’t easily get to the sleeping bag. The only thing to do for comfort was to take the head rest off the drivers seat so I could put some clothes back there and put my head back at least a little bit. I’d crank up the heat in the car, then shut it off after it got hot inside, fall asleep for a few hours, wake up when it got really cold and repeat. It wasn’t the first time I slpet in the car during a massive snowstorm but was the first time I wasn’t in a sleeping bag and could not stretch out at all while spending the night in the car.

After I finally made it to the destination, I skied with “Wild Bill” for a few days at Snowbird. Soon a bunch of people from the King of Prussia Ski Club came out and I skied with them. Some stayed up at the Cliff Lodge at Snowbird, while others stayed down in Sandy at a house they rented for the week which turned out to be just a stones through from where I’m staying.

The ski club people are all gone. The temps have warmed up a lot but there is still plenty of snow. Tomorrow registration for the 2010 PSIA National Academy starts at about 8am. It’s about 2am now and I still have to pack stuff to take up there so wont get there at the crack of dawn but will shoot to be fairly close. Alta will probably be the ski destination of choice for tomorrow and then Snowbird during the entire 2010 PSIA National Academy - the best ski event of the year!

On the web, people look for stuff. They search. People are scavengers, all they do online (in life?) is search. Search isn’t always turning to a search engine to search. It could be reading an article in search of information, it could be talking to a friend searching for critical information to make a decision but in some form or another people are almost always searching actively or passively.

The beauty of the Internet was immediately obvious to me. People tell you exactly or approximately what they are looking for in the form of a keyword search and you can serve it up to them to generate a sale, give them what they want in an honest and efficient manner. You have the opportunity to measure results, change the website to better align with what your customers want and zero in on making more money and helping your customer quickly and easily get what they want from you.

I originally intended my focus to be on Search Enigne Optimization (SEO). Fundamentally SEO is really simple. Instead of structuting a website like a catalog or Microsoft Word with the implicit assumption that the end user (or consumer) is already on your website or in your application, you need to assume that the consumer may enter the website from any page on the website. In order to account for this some redundancy is needed in site navigation so that someone who starts out deep in the site knows exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. The copy, navigation and architecture of the site needs to reflect the way your target consumer thinks and evoke emotions that make them want to continue on through the website to complete a sale, generate a lead or take another action that will help you and your customer achive a common goal.

Despite the inital intended focus on SEO, I ended up focusing more on PPC search which I got pretty good at, maybe even damn good. I threw some PPC traffic at at least 100 different sites. Some got only a few clicks, others got millions. If they could convert the traffic, they kept getting traffic. If they couldn’t convert then the traffic stopped unless working with them was part of a more traditional fee for services arrangement. In that case they often paid to have someone to tell what to do and push out the message they wanted consumers to hear more so than they hired someone to generate sales for them or help them provide what thier consumers were actually looking for. Is it more important to say what you want to say and tell someone what to do, or would you rather make money? The goal of any business is to make more money now and in the future but in many such pay for services arrangements, the goal of making money often seemed to get lost in the shuffle.

When you operate in a fee for services arrangement you often have to do what the client buying the services wants you to do whether or not it makes any sense. If you have a lot of clients you can make a lot of money if the billable hourly rate is high, your costs are low or some combination of the two. Over the long term, this type of business arrangement can be a dangerous one in a fast changing industry like the web. While your clients stand still and direct you to do what they want, it can strip you of growth opportunities and hinder your ability to be on the cutting edge and be able to deliver what the market is ultimately going to need as opposed to what a slow moving organization wants NOW. You know Gretsky’s quote “I always skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.” Maybe it takes a number of concussions before most people think like that and more execs should get out there on the ice.

The web is a much different place now than it was when I got into this industry. It is more crowded, it is full of social media noise, traffic can come from many more places than just search but people are still scavengers.

Up until today, I had never purchased any books or ebooks or anything of the sort on any kind of Internet Marketing wiht the exception of Fredrick Marckini’s Search Engine Optimization book from many years ago.

Today, I decided to purchase the “Blueprint to Profitability” put together by Jeremy Palmer of Quit Your Day Job. I’ve known him for a while, always been a good guy and top performer in CJ. I know paid search, how to sit in meetings, write POVs, many things that work really well and everything that doesn’t. The thing I don’t know is how to make the things that don’t work go from not working to working. By this I mean fixing a paid search campaign or setting one up that will generate staggering results is easy IF the site is setup to convert the traffic. It’s fairly easy to tell if a site will convert traffic but I’ve got little to no skill at actually building a site that will convert traffic. When you are catering to someone else and building what they want instead of what works, what the analytics tell you works, and relentlessly driving in the direction the analytics tell you to go, it is like trying to run a marathon with your feet stuck in cement.

So tonight I finally broke down and paid for someone else’s expertise and bought the Blueprint For Profitability. Not to long ago, I came across a quote that struck me. “You Can’t Do What You Want By Doing Something Else” This should be the first step toward doing what I want and learning the things I want to learn that will power future success and growth to achive anything in the world of Internet Marketing. It’ll be something new, some actual brain food and will likely be an eye opener. As time permits and things progress, I’ll add some updates as to how things are going and share some results. As the title of this post states, “One of the Most Important Things to Know is What You Don’t” I know wht I don’t know and have for a while. It’s time to change that!

After hearing both of them, here’s my suggestion - JewellCare

First lets make some assumptions:

People want “choice” and we need to setup a system that gives them “choice”, even if it means choosing to gamble and not pay into an insurance pool in their younger years when they are healthy and feel invincible.

We need competition among insurance companies and government regulations needs to encourage that competition, not prevent it. Regulation also needs to preserve competition. A complete “free market in health insurance won’t work.

We need to get rid of the pre-existing condition clause that enables insurance companies to deny or discontinue coverage but insurance companies need premiums to pay for pre-existing conditions.

Malpractice lawsuits need to be reigned in to prevent unnecessary testing procedures and ridiculous judgments.

Individuals and small businesses need to be able to buy insurance at group rates.

Consumers need to have a stake in their health care and their insurance coverage. The govt can offer assistance but can’t offer endless handouts.

Consumers need incentives to lead healthy lifestyles to exercise and not smoke at minimum.

People need to be able to keep their existing insurance if they are happy with it.

So what are some elements of the solution?

Encouraging Competition to Bring Down Insurance Premiums

Regulations that currently prevent insurance companies from competing and entering new markets need to be repealed to encourage competition.

Mergers and acquisitions between insurance companies need to be limited in markets with limited competition (how many is the minimum needed to ensure competition - 5? 10?)

A public option or a pool for individuals and small businesses to buy insurance at group rates.

Insuring Unhealthy People and Those with Pre-existing Conditions That Require On-going Expensive Treatment

We need to realize that insurance companies decline insurance and refuse treatments because it makes financial sense to do so for the insurance company because treatment is expensive and can cost far more than the premiums received.

We can “require” that consumers buy health insurance.

We can assume that some people will not follow a law that requires them to buy insurance.

Enforcing and chasing down people who do not buy insurance will add expense to the system.

We don’t want the government to add and another tax that will add bureaucracy and inefficiency.

If someone chooses to “break the law” and not purchase insurance and needs treatment they cannot pay for out of pocket, they will need to pay all the average premium they chose not to pay or 5% of their income for every month they chose not to pay times 2.5.

They will receive initial treatment for an emergency or trauma bust must start paying premiums as well as back premiums and penalties for future treatments or will be treated after everyone who has paid their premiums over the years.

These back premiums cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.

Doctors Need to Focus on Treatment and Not Preventing Lawsuits

Ambulance chasers and personal injury attorneys need to pay all legal costs if the lose a case.

There need to be caps on malpractice settlements such that any settlements are “reasonable”.

Consumers Need Incentives to Live a Healthy Lifestyle

People tend to do things when they have a financial incentive and incentives for healthy lifestyles need to be just that - incentives that reduce premiums for healthy lifestyles, not penalties for unhealthy lifestyles.

Regular exercise has a host of health benefits and should be encouraged. Financial incentives should be provided for regular exercise in the form of reimbursement for actually using gym memberships or other activities that can be easily tracked and verified.

Everyone knows the dangers of smoking. If ya don’t smoke you get a discount equal to the projected % less it will cost to treat your health conditions while you are insured.

There are a host of other things that need to be addressed in the US healthcare system that require education, people taking personal responsibility for their own health, as well as the incentives provided to health care professionals and the communication between doctors and patients.

People need to stop eating junk and healthy food needs to be more readily available.

Patients need to be able to communicate with doctors for more than a 15 minute office visit during which is may very difficult for a patient to express what they are feeling and difficult for the doctor to understand what the issue may be to diagnose or refer to an appropriate specialist.

Medical professionals need to be compensated not by the number of procedures they give or authorize but by the quality of treatment they provide (if that is measurable) or on a straight salary.

Lifestyle changes need to take priority over prescriptions for every single ailment.

Obviously health care reform is a huge issue with many considerations. Even if the government does some through with reforms, your best bet is to take control of your diet, your habits (eating, smoking, drinking, drugs), reduce your stress level, and get out and move your body.

If you’re reading this, what do you think, how can we solve this problem in a way that will provide better care, contain costs, put aside our beliefs of how things should work and instead strucuture them to synch up with human nature and the way they will work when any new plan is offered to real people.

Here are some clips assembled with Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital. Mr. Schiff makes everyone look so clueless. It’s not because Peter is a genius, he’s simply looking at the reality of the market place and applying finance 101. To bad nobody in politics took econ 101.

For a little more from Peter Schiff (1 hour & 16 minutes), check out this video.

Any bottom in the US economy may start to be believable in 2013. At that point, we may start to be through the mortgage problem if the US govt can get out of the way and let the market sort itself out in the name of FREE ENTERPRISE.

In a recent Best Buy job posting, Best Buy put a requirement in it to have a Twitter account with 250 followers. Chances are if you have a Twitter account and 250 followers, you’ve been on Twitter for a while and have something to say that people might be interested in. On the other hand, some percentage of the Twitterverse is just a bunch of bots with fake pictures that scan user messages (Tweets) and follow them in the hope that they’ll be followed back and be able to hawk MLM, weight loss, penis pills, porn or something else. Many times, however, if you get followed right back it is just another bot on the other end.

Companies might do well to see if people are knowledgable in social media but requirements for a set number of followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook seems a bit odd.

Simply by posting nonsense messages on Twitter about weight loss, work at home, MLM and other high spam areas you can build up a worthless profile with lots of bots following you that will fulfill the requirements laid on out the job but be meaningless and absolutely useless.

People who really understand these types of things are the ones companies like BestBuy should be hiring especially if they don’t yet have anyone there who does.

The other question it begs is WHY? Why would it matter how many followers a person has on Twitter? The WHY question needs to be asked a lot more in business these days. It seems like 90% of the stuff most businesses do is unnecessary, unneeded and a big waste of time. Welcome to the Internet!

You can go follow BestBuy on Twitter.

Let’s make some assumptions about Zappos financial performance.

In this Internet Retailer clip on Zappos, Zappos was expecting to generate 800 million in sales in 2007 and aiming for 1 billion in 2010. Midway through 2008, the economy started to crumble and it is likely that Zappos sales ae now somewhere between 800 million and 1 billion annually.

If I had to guess, I’d say Zappos reports sales as the total amount of merchandise ordered from the company before returns. Shoes have a notoriously high rate of returns especially when Zappos offers free shipping and free returns on all orders (not just shoes). For the sake or arguement, let’s say Zappos had 900 million in sales in 2008 and that this is the total amount of merchandise ordered by customers. If we assume a 35% return rate (It’s likely to be somewhere between 30% and 40%), then the amount of merchandise Zappos actually sold and shipped that it’s customers actually kept is likely to be around $585 million dollars. If these assumptions are roughly correct, then the price tag for Amazon is about a P/S (price to sales ratio) of 1.5. It’s anybodys guess what Zappos actual earnings are but I’d guess they are marginally profitable so the P/E for this valuation could be anywhere from zero (or negative) to maybe 21.5 if Zappos had a 7% net profit margin on the estimated $585 million in merchandise sales that were not returned.

While some people may exclaim that the P/S ratio on this deal is less than one, when returns are factored in it doesn’t look anywhere near that low. Zappos sales may very well be declining with the economy and they may be lowering prices as well to move more merchandise. Zappos is privately held so all we can do is speculate on the direction of sales revenue and profit at this point. Zappos did lay off about 8% of staff in December 2008 so we can assume the either anticipated growth slowed or maybe there was a decline in sales.

Zappos Culture and Amazon Culture A Clash?

Zappos has a very unique culture. It’s the human in a sea of automated systems and robots all squeezing every last bit of revenue out of consumers and pushing retail margins down to zero. Amazon seems to be one of those companies determined to put everyone else out of business by automating everything and pushing margins to next to nothing. So what do these two companies have in common? Where is the “synergy”?

As far as culture goes, maybe there isn’t any synergy. In his traditional style of rather open communications with employees and the general public, Tony Hsieh sent out a letter to employees and posted it on the CEO blog detailing the Zappos Amazon deal. It sounds like the two companies will remain pretty separate. Jeff Bezos, the head honcho at Amazon posted a video about the deal here:

So what kind of sense does this deal make?

The two companies will likely be better able to quickly ship merchandise when their warehouse space is combined.

Zappos will benefit from the Amazon technology infrastructure.

Maybe some of the Zappos.com culture will rub off on Amazon.

As an upscale retailer, Zappos.com may have been near break even or close to it as the economy tanks and open to this buyout to avoid having to seek out more investment in a tough economic environment.

Amazon takes a competitor off the table with this move and now has a “luxury” brand under its umbrella without having to build it’s own or cause confusion among its customer base in the marketplace.

Amazon is smart to keep the Zappos.com brand alive and if they can supply the technical infrastrucure and analytics to help streamline any weak points in Zappos, they can help Zappos make more money.

Amazon will also be well positioned with the Amazon discount site and the upscale Zappos brand when the economy returns to at least a moderate growth rate.

With the Zappos acquisition, Amazon also gets 6pm.com so now has three shoe sites (Endless.com developed to compete with Zappos) and of course Zapops.com and 6pm.com now.

Amazon probably found that it was tough to grow Endless.com to compete with Zappos.com and now they dont’ have to.

As the economic downturn continues don’t be surprised to see Amazon snap up more struggling retailers to build its portfolio of online brands across other top consumer retail markets.

This years event will be held September 15 - 17, 2009 at the usual location, the Fess Parker Double Tree hotel right along the beach. CJU is always an awesome time, the weather is always beautiful, the food is amazing (and probably the best of any conference) and the atendees are some of the best and brightest in the industry. If you are into affiliate marketing, register now for CJU 2009 and make your plans now to head out to Santa Barbara in mid September once again!

To evaluate even four agencies takes a lot of time, let alone more than 100! There is no possible way that anyone (or at least the add-on) agencies beyond the original 16 should really have expected to get serious consideration. In a process like this, it is just not practical for a company to go through that many proposals in any kind of detail.

In pitches I’ve been involved in, there are usually at most 5 agencies in the consideration set who may receive serious consideration from a client. From an agency perspective, how woud anyone think it made sense to be one of 100 agencies to pitch Zappos or most any other business for that matter? Granted, times are tough and if the agency has excess capacity, then maybe it makes sense to put some resources toward this pitch, however, pitching Zappos is likely to be unlike pitching most other accounts. Zappos has a unique culture, a unique way of operating and is extremely savvy in the socaial media space. They’ve run a huge affiliate program for years and have built one hell of a brand seemingly without to much outside help.

(Prospective) clients almost always get a great deal during the pitch proces cause they get some many cool new concepts and ideas. That just how the whole pitch process works. If they had sent out an RFP to 100+ agencies and not made that clear to all who received the RFP, then maybe the agencies would have a legitimate gripe about not getting as much attention as they would have liked. It sounds like the agencies all requested to be part of the selection process, to which Zappos agreed and informed the agencies of the tight turnaround time and the stiff competition.

Unless your company is going to spend a year evaluating agencies, there is no way it is worth trying to take the time to view proposals from 100+ agencies and even 16 may be a bit much. If you are an agency, chances are it is not worth your time to throw your hat in the ring when 100 other agencies are pitching for the same business unless it is to get your employees experience in developing pitch materials.

Finally, in ANY pitch in ANY business, the client is usually thinking WIIFM - What’s In In For Me? If that is not clear in the first few pages (or even first page) of a proposal or RFP response then the client will probably not continue through the proposal especially if there are 99 more of them to go through.

By any measure, that is a staggering amount of money and the amount is growing daily. At an annual interest rate of 5%, we are racking up $575,000,000,000 in interest alone. That is 575 BILLION dollars per year in interest. For each person in the US that is about $2,000 per year in interest we will eventually have to pay back.

You’ve probably heard about all the bailouts given to the banks, the automakers and everyone else who was irresponsible and gambled like someone smashed out of their minds at the roulette wheel in Vegas. The banks are broke, the government is broke, some of the states, most notably California is broke and a big chunk of US citizens are broke. Many gambled and got caught up in the housing frenzy and frankly deserve to lose while many other who behaved responsibly have been snared by job loss, personal bankruptcy due to health care costs or other unfortunate situations in life.

The stock market peaked on Monday, October 1, 2007 at 14,087.55. By March 6th, 2009, the DOW bottomed at 6,443.27, a drop of about 54.3%. Since then it has bounced back to 8,816 on July 15, 2009 after a nice pop following record earnings anounce by Goldman Sachs (GS). Not long ago, Goldman was going hat in hand to the US government for a bailout to stave off financial collapse. It seems rather ironic that all of a sudden, Goldman was able to
turn a profit of 3.22 BILLION in the previous quarter. Where did that proft come from?

The markets didn’t really seem to care. “Good news” from Intel added a little fuel to the rally and the DOW ended up 257 points or 3.07%. While the markets are still way down from the October 1, 2007 highs, they are up significantly from the March 6th, 2009 lows.

There doesn’t seem to be any logic to the recent jump in stock prices. The US economy continues to fall apart and lose jobs at an alarming rate. The housing crisis is still not finished by a long shot as liar loans (Option ARMs) and pick your payment (Alt-A) loans continue to reset en masse through early 2012. We’ve go 2 more years of home mortgage resets to go. So we’ll have at least 3 more years of steady or increasing foreclosures. The commercial real estate market will be another troublesome area as well. Maybe sometime in 2013 or 2014 this mess will have worked its way through the economy.

While the media continues to put a positive spin on the economy and various government people claim all is good and the stimulus is starting to take hold, the bottom line is that this country, the financial institutions, the states and many of the peopel are simply broke. If anything was still made in this country, the stimulus package might have a positive effect. Unfortunately not much is made in this country and borring money at the federal level to give people to spend may delay housing losses and bankruptcies, it is only a temporary and (probably empty) fix. We’re simply getting money to spend on products that come from overseas.

So what is a person to do?

Stop wasting money. This could be on toys, clothes, eating out, cable television, iPhone cell plans and other luxuries.

Don’t put any money in the stock market you will need in the next 3-4 years. There is nothing supporting the stock market and the economy is going to get worse, possibly much. Now that the markets are off their lows, the temptation is to chase them up. Bad move! We’ll retest the 2007 lows at some point in the next couple years. If you have a 401K and you may have to draw on that if you lose your job, you may want to watch the markets. If we get back to a 10,000 DOW, you might want to move your 401K funds into a money market or very conservative bond fund to preserve capital in case you will need to make a withdrawl.

Cut your fixed expenses. Cars and houses/apartments are generally the two biggest expenses you have. Can you refinance them or sell them now if you need to before the value drops further?

Start shopping smart! Look for bargains online. Ditch the department stores and find discounters. Go to the warehouse shopping clubs to save money and stock up on necessities. Try grocery stores like ALDI.

Know what government benefits are available to you in different situations.

If you get laid off and have employer health insurance, apply for COBRA. You’ll get it for 65% off for up to 9 months and can maintain the same health insurance plan for 18 months.

If you decide to buy a house and you are a first time homebuyer, take advantage of the 2009 $8,000 homebuyer credit. You’ll need to make less than $75,000 (single) to qualify for it and may get a partial tax credit if you make more than that but it phases out rather quickly.

Keep a positive attitude but anticipate that the economy is going to get worse and develop a plan if you lose your job. Can you get your expenses down to the point where you could live on unemployment? It’s generally around $2,000 per month give or take a little bit. That’s not much to live on but if you cut back to basics and have low car and housing payments, it can be done especially if you are single.

If you think you might get laid off and you’ve been at the job for a while, you might want to stick it out till you do get laid off unless you get a really good offer from another company you think will offer stable long term employment. A severance package from an employer you’ve been at for a long time will be better than somewhere you only spend a few months.

If you are considering a new job, do the math on the real costs (or cost savings) of the new job. Will you have to move? Will your housing costs go up? Will you have to sell a house? Will your commuting costs and time go up or down? Will you have to pay more in local taxes?

Be content with the low rates of return on savings for now. If you want to take a little risk then consider municipal bond funds in with any taxable accounts. You may be able to pull in a 4% tax free yield. It’s not much but its better than most savings of money market accounts.

Stockpile some cash. Six months would be great, but anything you can save will help!

The economy is going to get worse (maybe much) before it gets better so get smart now and get prepared to make it through the current turbulent times. Don’t forget to go out and get some exercise too. It’s a great way to burn off stress and hopefully sleep better at night!