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Darren was interested to find out how I read his book titled “Problogger Book“. I have been taking my time to read his book.  It was a really fun process of understanding problogging after learning and blogging professionally for almost a year myself.  Well, I used to blog about my thoughts in the past which I realize it was attracting some interesting traffic which I didn’t know.  My idea of blogging today, makes me really focus on my contents now.

These are the places I read Problogger Book.

While I am working, I read problogger book on my working desk.  Trying to find out how it applies on my blog.

Before I sleep, I lie down on my bed, continue reading problogger book, trying to tweak my blog and improve on my review works.

While Carl is trying to chase after me for my reviews, I tried to take a quick break. I still dream about problogger book… Sorry, the monitor is too bright hence I off it.

Meatball Sundae is a unique marketing book, written by Seth Godin. I am going to write a review of my experience reading through this book. I was reading this book for the last two weeks whenever I am free. It has given me a lot of new ideas about marketing which many companies out there have been lacking of. This book is written with a lot of examples of companies doing their businesses in various ways which are out of synchronization in his opinion. After reading this book, I am totally convinced of his knowledge and have ordered another three Seth Godin books from Amazon. My first book was The Dip which gives me great insights about excelling in my field. You can find out about this book Meatball Sundae from amazon.

Is your marketing out of sync? This is the question which actually summarizes the whole book. In this book, he discusses about the new marketing and the old marketing. Just imagine when you actually invite somebody to your company for an internet marketing presentation, and he presents to you about blogging and Web 2.0 social media infrastructure which are waiting for your company to dive in. And this person is saying in a way that you should try this and the rest of your competition/structural/profit issues will be disappeared…

Over the last ten years, the Internet and the radical changes in media have provided the marketers with the toolkit to capture attention with seemingly little effort, planning or cash. In fact, the Internet has been seen as a child’s play for many seasoned marketers out there. This child’s play has grown up together with the Generation Y adults (aged between 9 and 31 years old) and it has the kind of exposure that the baby boomers (aged 32 and above) have always wanted. Those baby boomers have always been blocked by the old gatekeepers which became an entry barrier to get their exposure. The gatekeepers such as knowing the right person to tell the whole world, and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to television and newspaper advertisements to gain that exposure and also on keeping their inventory. Back in those days, it has been taken for granted if they spent millions of dollars on a certain product which failed eventually, it will simply fold up and forget about it. And if that money was your last straw, you are probably bankrupt by then…

In Seth Godin’s latest book here, he discusses many issues around this marketing synchronization. In fact, it is a wake-up call for many organizations out there to understand the meaning of Internet and to embrace them in the fashion which was not so acceptable currently. Well, in fact, I feel that it is really not easy for these organizations to embrace such changes because of the comfort zone which they have established for so many years. This move involves a lot of employees. And if they have made a wrong move, it may become deadly to the financial situation and the reputation of the company.

Meatball Sundae was a good investment on my part when I was wondering about what is so good about Seth Godin’s marketing knowledge. My only exposure to his existence is with his famous blog which gives some really interesting insights about various ideas. I also enjoyed his marketing presentations in YouTube. This book has determined my interest to pursue more knowledge from him. Previously, I already know he is a great marketing guru. But I just can’t get myself to indulge in his books when I was browsing through in a bookshop. I simply can’t understand his way of presenting the knowledge in a book, but I really love watching his videos on YouTube. He wrote his books differently from other authors. It don’t seem to be really straightfoward, and you have to understand by his quoting of examples.

Meatball Sundae has a squidoo page which is started by Seth Godin himself. This squidoo page actually introduces excerpts of the book. This squidoo page must not be left out if you are a fan of Seth Godin, or you have read his book just like me. It’s like a follow-up of your new knowledge that he has imparted you.

Find out more about Seth Godin’s book about Meatball Sundae here.

It is always the case of internet marketing that it is personal. It voices down to the individual persons who are working for any companies. Corporate branding is only for functional usage. It’s the staff inside that makes everything personal. It’s no longer about CEO representing the company to make comments. In the internet world, everybody is equal.

A very good example is with Google. They have individual representatives talking about various products. I don’t see the CEO or the founders doing all the work. Whoever is in charge of working in that field, he will be the representative. And he don’t have to make public presentation. A blog will do the trick.

However, it is not a very acceptable move in many multi-national companies. Big companies have a lot of people working inside to make any major marketing decision such as this. They have not been exposed in the Internet world as much. We can’t blame them after all since the real birth of the Internet should be only 5 years old. 10 years ago, websites were still portrayed like a very important corporate branding in many big companies’ eyes. Building a web portal is the next natural move of every company. If everybody wants to be a one-stop portal, how many stops we have to visit?

The old marketing way of spending lots of money in advertising is the natural move for all big companies since they have a budget to spend on. The new marketing way is somehow too “cheap” for them to spend on although they didn’t realize that internet is more for individuals than for the mass. Individual advertising is only for people who only get to see the website when they type in the url themselves, or when they click it. Mass advertising is build with the intention to interrupt you to see what they have to offer.

And by the way, making spelling mistakes is an acceptable thing to do. If you were to do it in a corporate, you would probably be making a “grave” mistake. That’s because individual writing their point of views are just being themselves naturally. Though they might be representing their organization, they are in one way or another representing themselves as individual point of view. And whatever point of view they have, shall not be represented as the companies’ point of view. They are just employees working there whom everyone of us would just want to know how they are doing.

It is not easy for a huge organization to make such a drastic move since it involves a lot of parties. Hence, it can only be done one step at a time at a very comfortable zone. Big organization tends to have a very stable flow of income and expenses. Hence, any drastic move is definitely a losing situation for them. However, they would still want to improve their situations in the Internet world so that they wouldn’t lack behind. That’s why we have to make calculated moves every time which everybody is comfortable with. Not easy, but worth the challenge to change.

Everybody has been talking about search engine optimization. I have not really heard about website optimization myself. In fact, we have all been doing it unknowingly by focusing on building our landing pages. In my opinion, working on website optimization is the main priority. In fact, when you have done a good website optimization, you should have done some search engine optimization in your website as well.

In fact, I was quite confused over the terms between search engine optimization and website optimization. Website Optimization was first heard only from Google Analytics Team about website optimization. Google is now so focused about website optimization that they have started a new blog called Website Optimizer. Actually, I am glad to see Google’s direction about website optimization. They have become the world’s leading internet giant that they have a good say in how a website is supposed to be like. It may sometimes be the life and death of a website according to Google search engine. When you have optimized your site properly for the search engine, you would probably get a very good amount of visitors who might be interested in you. However, the bounce rate of the website can be daunting if you are too focused on search-engine optimization. The search engine don’t see the same point of view from the visitors…

Ever since the dominance of Google, every page of your website now really matters. When a person is searching for a certain keyword, he might be led to a certain page inside your website. And it is really up to your landing page’s conversion rate to bring a potential visitor down the sales funnel. We have all been so obsessed with the idea of search engine optimization back in the past. It’s time we should talk more about landing pages from the Google’s point of view. Google might not be the best mentor in this area, but it still matters to them very much since they are providing an exit from Google to your website and they really want to bring in the best for their traffic. It is the win-win situation if we all can focus on improving ourselves in this internet industry.

Internet industry is not as matured as 50 years after all. In fact, I don’t think blogging was famous and increasing tremendously in as early as 10 years ago. But it grows very quickly because the consumers now have a better way to voice out their opinions. Hence, there is no absolute direction that anybody can really study and make it work for them immediately. Well, in fact, a website is as good as a business which is so flexible and unpredictable. What works for you, might not do the same for another person. However, we can always have successful case studies to learn from the older generations of internet marketers. In fact, it’s not easy for the older generations (which is actually only 2 years old…) to catch up with the new generations today. Things are moving so fast, we have to keep up with the trend of Web 2.0 and the upcoming Web 3.0. Sales letter may not be as effective as a blog which speaks for itself frequently and to sell a book as part of its sales funnel. Visitors may no longer take the words of a sales letter for its internal testimonials as we can see live reviews from blogs and forums. And with the upcoming twitter, facebook and many social networking websites, we have to keep on improving our products and services, as well as our websites…

Website optimization is not just about beautiful websites. It has to do with the kind of contents that you have which attract people to keep on reading. Useful contents are the main priority and they can come in different types of media such as just words, videos, audios and even in documents and ebooks.

Many web design companies have been ignoring about website optimization and focused on just the website which satisfy their customers. I must admit that they are doing great in their graphics. They are just working on making their advertisers happy, without caring about the readers. If I were to ask the advertisers to request for the traffic report, these website owners are going to be in trouble…

However it is, I think I have a new topic to learn now as an Internet reviewer. I think the Internet has really got a lot of interesting things to learn and to make them profitable.

Amazon is really over-deliver what they have promised me. I was expecting my problogger book to be delivered in June 2008. Never did I expect it to arrive last night when I open up my letter box. It feels good having a book like this to read. I told Chris Garrett (one of the authors) that I would take a photo of me holding this book. Here it is. :)  I just came back home, saw this book, immediately took out my N95 and took a photo of myself holding this book.

A Quick Review About This Book
Problogger Book is about teaching you to start your own blog to make yourself a comfortable living with a six-figure income. This book is authored by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. Darren has made his mark as a professional blogger in the Internet world, giving blog tips to help people make money blogging. Chris is more towards teaching people about blogging as well as internet marketing advices. First of all, I wonder how these two great guys got together from where they live in. If I am not wrong, Darren is in Australia while Chris is in UK. It is a great mix of both great guys getting together, coming up with this book.

I am going to enjoy this book slowly. And to find out how I can apply all these things in my own blog. Probably to write a full review out of it as well.