College Football:

Amazing weekend for college football. 7 top 25 match ups, and the beginnings of conference play for lots of folks. It's also the UCF/USF game. USF had to return half of their 5,000 ticket allotment last week. For a "BCS" team that's simply incredible. UCF is 70 miles down the road. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. Their first ever bowl game in Charlotte only drew a couple thousand USF fans. Attendance tomorrow is looking like 45-50k at the Citrus bowl though, so, it shouldn't matter all that much. Good times regardless! Go knights.

Emurse:

We did an Emurse ad on Fark classifieds the other week. I'm sure many of ya'll have heard how effective they're supposed to be, as had we. It's also a great way to get negative feedback. I know that sounds crazy, but negative feedback is truly the best kind. The community over there is overly cynical towards just about everything, and our product was no different. Evidently, Mike Propst used a "template" for the web design and none of us know anything about usability ;). But alas, these are users that are "thankful that Fark has avoided the web2.0 craze". It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to create a new account so that I could respond. Gotta love the irony, but to each their own. The take away from that is there may be a brewing backlash to the design trends as of late.. I certainly wouldn't doubt it -- buzzwords and trends all have a life span. Thankfully, Mike's amazing at what he does and our site is now completely skinnable in about 25 minutes.

Anyway..

Here's the traffic details from that $100 ad - about 386 clicks, which means a rock bottom ~0.25 cents a click. The thing is, it's not clicks we're after, it's actual conversions (signups). For comparison, Google will bring in let's say, 25% of that 386 for the same overall price on our keywords, but the kicker is we'll convert anywhere from 30-60% depending on the day of the week. Fark? A ~3% conversion rate ;) In the end, we'll get 3-4 times the number of new users via targeted advertising on Google than on Fark. It won't show up that way on a AWStats or Sitemeter graph.. but.. Yeah.

We'll keep exploring various sites and methods (on a strict budget) to see if we can find hidden gems.. but man.. Google is just straight up effective (then again, I remember the days when a 3% conversion rate would have been overwhelming positive.. and for some sites, it still might be.. I guess.)

Links:

• Alcohol use boosts income
• Giving usability methods the critical eye
• Are your employers leaving? The Unintended Consequences of Shining Up that (virtual) Resume
• Lessons Learned From a Job That Sucked