Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Halloween Links

It's that time of year when all the ghosts start coming out of the attics.

I just updated the Salt Lake Halloween and Denver Halloween pages. I was surprised to find that many of the haunted houses are already up and running. The Halloween season seems to start earlier and earlier each year.

I suspect that the Internet is part of the cause of the trend. There is generally a lag between when you make a website and it appears in the search engine. So, if you want your web site to show up on search engines, you need to have it up and running several months before Halloween and you need to aggressively seek links to the site in September.

Shipping is the big problem for online costume shops. Online costume sales peak ten days before the holiday. To get those sales, your advertising has to be in full swing at the beginning of October.

The result is that what was once a single day event has prolonged into a long Halloween season.

Anyway, I cleaned up my Halloween links. After doing so, I checked the sites link report. The report shows that I've deleted 10,000 broken links to date. The report says I current display about 24,000 links and have deleted 10,000 of the links. About 30% of the sites I've added to the directory through the years have gone dark. That's sad.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Pubcon Anyone?

I was just looking at the web site for pubcon (This is a social media conference taking place in Las Vegas in October.)

The event looks like it will be a hoot. So, I need to figure out how to justify going to the event.

Well, I just happen to have a super fun social media business model in my back pocket. The business model is for a social networking sport.

It is a casual sport designed specifically for people who love social networking and media. People would meet periodically, like once a week (or once a month) play a fun game and meet new people while building web traffic for their business or blog.

Okay, the sport is called Juggleball. It works as follows: Everyone in the game is assigned a pair of numbered balls. If you get the number 1234, then you have the balls 1234 and -1234. People meet at a location then play a fun game that involves tossing the balls about and running. (The game lends itself to people of all activity levels.).

At the end of the game people leave with a different set of balls.

Each game will have a host. The host will record the balls at the beginning and end of each game. So, you might enter the game with balls 1234 and -1234 and end the game with two different balls: perhaps 765 and -456.

If the game catches on, the balls will start making an interesting social network map.

Needless to say, the first people who play the game will get in at a founding level. After we get a couple hundred players involved, I will form the International Juggleball Association. The people who get in at a ground level will be playing a founding role in the organization.

Participation in the game costs very little. I would have to make enough money to pay for a hotel in Las Vegas (I like the Days Inn), the balls and for the gas to drive to Las Vegas. I need to make about $300. If I could find 10 people interested in joining a social networking game at the ground level, I would want to charge about $30 to play the game.

Anyway, if you are going to Pubcon and would like to have a founding role in a new social networking game, or if you ever wanted to own your own professional sports team, please contact me. Give me your name and phone number.

PS: I really love the badlands of Utah. If you want to visit the National Parks of Southern Utah (camp in the desert) in the days before Pubcon, I would be happy to meet you at any number of locations in Utah.

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Domains for Sale HeberCity.biz and LinksAlive.com

I am taking a final stab at auctioning off HeberCity.biz on eBay. I moved the contents of the site to wasatch.utahcolor.com.

I also decided to like LinksAlive.com on Bido.com. If this domain sells, I will move the contents to a different domain.