Demanding a dollar amount and judging marketing campaign's effectiveness at this early stage in the game is pointless. If (s)he made, say, $250 up until this point, that could potentially grow to $2,500 in 2 weeks or $25,000 in in 2 months, all as a result of the same campaign.
The SEO from the influx of new links is just kicking in, the public awareness of the products needs to sink in, customer base is still unstable, etc.
Success or failure at this point is just... unknown.
Think: pulling that data into a techmeme.com style aggregator/ranking site for the most popular urls people are linking to. Imagine how dynamic it would be - things that got linked to the most would percolate up to the top. you could watch in near real time as news breaks and gains traction.
I've had a service like this in mind for a while and haven't pulled the trigger because I'm a chronic procrastinator.
That's a cool idea. However, it's still basically an advertising business unless you're charging for access to that site. And all of a sudden you have introduced a big incentive for people to spam/game your service.
I guess what I'm getting at is... some data is valuable, but doesn't, at least to ignorant me, seem to have a market for it.
(Edit: BTW, I'd be happy to be proven wrong... for instance, I have this site where the data might be worth something, and the ads aren't worth much:
There's an important distinction to make between "advertising business" and "data business." Data can be useful for advertising, but can also be useful for tons of other stuff--news, filtering, etc.
My feeling is that when Jobs comes back he is going to 'bring something dramatic with him.' The fanfare surrounding his return would be the perfect opportunity for Apple to release something significant that would ride the publicity wave.
I wouldn't be surprised if you're right, but this may carry the risk that it would reinforce the perception that Apple is all Steve Jobs and they can't innovate without him.
My feeling is that Jobs is never coming back, and shareholders are once again deluding themselves about his health, and that I should short their stock because of it again.
"This is just the SEO community upset at me for saying that "seo is BS" back in 1995!"
I think it's more of a case where they are upset at you for gaming them for knowledge and advice, then beating them at their own game, which, by the way, has resulted in me having a tremendous amount of admiration for you...
You've 'scaled' SEO and kept the product quality. Kudos, J.
Edit: Oh, and it was 2005, not 1995 - since you seem to appreciate people correcting you ;^)
I can'r really comment on the quality of my own handwriting (nerve damage in my right arm from motorcycle accident years ago means limited dexterity in that hand) but observing others, like my daughter, her friends, etc. handwriting - yes, handwriting quality seems to be suffering. As is grammer, sentence structure, and punctuation. ;^)
I fear that like many of the skills we as people used on a daily basis, computers, automation and our 'convenience oriented' lifestyles are causing us to lose those skills like handwriting.
I had that fire for a couple years and it was one of the most exciting and rewarding times of my life. Working on getting it back right now and it's good to have that feeling in my gut again.
Thanks for the brief but highly motivating post, kareemm.
The SEO from the influx of new links is just kicking in, the public awareness of the products needs to sink in, customer base is still unstable, etc.
Success or failure at this point is just... unknown.