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This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

I read about this Biodiesel deal this morning, and immediately thought of the Great American Streetcar Scandal in which “General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum [formed the] National City Lines (NCL) holding company, which acquired most streetcar systems throughout the United States, dismantled them, and replaced them with buses in the early 20th Century”.

I’d like to think this won’t happen again, but with Bush in the White House, I wouldn’t be surprised if AgriFuel Co. is a front for Exxon Mobile & friends. I can’t seem to find anything about this company, other than the fact that they buy up other Biodiesel companies (they bought another yesterday, too). And Metalico is buying AgriFuel, which makes me wonder why AgriFuel is doing any acquisitions now. However, Metalico is publicly traded (MEA), so at least the SEC is watching over them.

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 9:38 am and is filed under Business, Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

This is my inspiration for a couple of projects I’m working on now. There are 2 ways to do things:

1. Build really complicated systems that do it all for you
2. Build a simple system that’s scalable and uses cheap computing power or cheap human labor

The really complicated systems are nice once they’re done, but they’re not very scalable. But if you build a simple system, it can easily be adapted for other tasks and other projects.

So now I have 3 different parts of projects, and it’s being held by people all over the world. As for another project, I have a complicated system handling the work, but if the source of the data changes, then the system breaks. Humans are smart and can handle change - computer programs can’t.

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

I set-up a mini-site this morning, added CrazyEgg to it, set-up a campaign in AdWords and forgot about it.  Took me about 20-30 minutes.
In the 6 hours or so that it’s been running, I spent $2.15 and made $3.75 (74% ROI, $0.26 per hour, 24/7/365, or $2,336 in 1 year).  About 50% of the people who click on my ad go to the next page, and about 50% of those people convert for me, so I have a 25% conversion rate.

I like CPA Arbitrage much better than CPC - ROI is higher, and so are the profits. I think on Monday I’ll put up a page that does my “trick” to see how the click-through’s improve.  Then do some A/B testing.

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Saying No - Oh, common Steve - you knew I’d blog about this article.

It’s only a few lines of code, right? Wrong. It’s never just a few lines of code.

I’ve shocked many clients lately by saying “no” to them, because I just don’t have the time.  I think Steve was most surprised when I refused to bid on a project for him.

Poland, Steve:    if you can get me that quote this morning, that’d be ****
donebydidd:     I have to see if it’s something I want to do or not
donebydidd:     nah, I’m gonna pass
Poland, Steve:    it’s small.. i’m hoping you can do it; it’s the last thing i’ll ever ask you to take money for
Poland, Steve:   
Poland, Steve:    seriously?
Poland, Steve:    it’s a few hours, right?

Laura, too, is learning how to say, “no”, but just not as much as I am.  In the spirit of saying “no”, I’m not going to ask for comments on this post - I’m not even allowing them.  Find another post to comment on

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Business, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

OK, so the first arbitrage test didn’t go too well.  Sure, I made $26.04, but considering how much time I put into it, I lost money.

So now I’m trying something else… driving traffic to “offers” for free gift cards, etc.  These numbers look more promising:

• Abercrombie offer: spent $2.04, revenue $6.00 (194% ROI)
• Sidekick offer: spent $2.62, revenue $3.60 (37% ROI)

Not only is the ROI better than I was getting with my AdSense arbitrage (27% overall), the profits are much more.  I’m learning “creative” ways to get people to do things, like click on links & enter their zip code or email address.

I’m also learning about “good” traffic.  I just have to figure out how to use AdWords to get more traffic to my sites, but cheaply (using the long-tail).

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.