Looking for work - from Chris Brogan

I Create Work

" . . . . Today, I deposited two checks, one from Amazon and one from Google. These represent my two lowest paying affiliate sources, and so the checks weren’t for much. They totaled a few hundred dollars short of my mortgage. My affiliate check from Genesis (affiliate link) this month will be quite a different matter. That check will pay 3 to 4 times my mortgage. That means that all my years of hard work of building an audience, building great content, and earning your trust now pays for my family’s home every month, which means that I have a lot more opportunity to say no to work, if it’s a bad fit or if I can’t do it, timing-wise.

"I created that work. I built something. In fact, I created all my last few years of work. I don’t have an employer. . . ." From Chris Brogan - Read More

Web optimization and diminishing marginal returns

Professor Paul Samuelson stated the law of diminishing marginal returns is one of the most famous laws in all of Western economic theory. In simplest terms the law of diminishing returns means that you can throw twice as many resources at a problem, but you should not expect to necessarily get twice the results you want. This is one of the central messages of Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing.

Godin begins that book by observing in recent decades consumer oriented businesses have spent more and increasingly more money on mass-market advertising, but with decreasing effectiveness. In part this is explained by the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns. It's not the only factor in play, but it is an important one.

The idea of diminishing marginal returns is especially important for small business owners to consider when contemplating directing scarce resources toward web site optimization. Of course every small business web site owner wants more business, but the ever present questions are, how much does acquiring one more customer cost, and is it worth it?

Optimization architect

More is not necessarily better.  The idea of optimization does not revolve around the idea of 'more,' per se.  The process of optimization is focused on the right amount of everything necessary to produce a specific result given the existing environmental constraints.  And, since the process of optimization itself has a cost, it is possible to pursue optimization to excess.  It is a question of balance.

In a business web environment optimization pays for itself, by definition. Otherwise, it's not optimal. Major challenges arise from accurately measuring costs and benefits for optimization efforts.  Web traffic is easy to measure, so professional optimizers may be tempted to focus upon increasing web traffic, regardless of whether any business benefit results from the increase.

A local coffee shop has a website.  The site's only business purpose is to promote walk-in business to the shop's physical retail storefront. If effort goes into increasing the number of visitors to the web site, but doing that does not increase the number of visitors to the coffee shop, then the effort is wasted.

It's as simple as that.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is a segment of internet marketing, with the emphasis on the marketing. Search engine marketing frequently is very technical to implement.  The web technicians know the tools and techniques of search optimization, but they may not be well suited to specify the purpose of optimization, design the architecture of optimization, or evaluate the results of optimization.

How, for example, would the coffee shop's web master know if the actual number of shop customers increased, or why?

Business web optimization must be designed and measured by a business intelligence.  The web technicians are for implementation.  The distinction is the same as between an architect and a construction contractor.  The architect specifies the design, and the contractor makes it happen.

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
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