If you follow my blog you know that I am a huge believer in the power of customer reviews as part of the sales funnel/ decision-making-process. When it comes to experience purchases like a hotel or a restaurant, a customer review is the most influential information available in my opinion.
“Housekeeping!! …You want me come fruff pirrow?
So, it should come as no surprise that I relied heavily on customer reviews during a recent hotel search for an upcoming Disneyworld trip with the family.
Comfortable bed – CHECK. Hourly shuttles to Disneyworld – CHECK. Nickelodeon themed rooms were a big hit with the kiddos – CHECK. Impeccable housekeeping other than the terd – CHE…wait, what the??
I think it is safe to say, we will not be staying at this hotel.
If only I had a drinking buddy who knew a guy who knew a guy that runs an OEM in China …I could be a $$Millionaire by next month.
What is the product that I need mass produced? I am still working on a catchy product name, but for now it is called the “The Overly Dramatic Moviestyle NOOOOO! Button” and it is the physical version of this hilarious website I came across today thanks to a great Twitter post I saw.
Tell me you would not have like 10 opportunities per day to press that button if it were sitting on your desk. You just listened to it and laughed out loud I am guessing.
Before you punch holes and laugh at my daydreamy invention idea that I concocted for the purposes of this blog post — let me remind you haters that Staples has sold over $7.5 Million dollars worth of crappy “Easy Buttons” staples to the same suckers that I will love my “NOOO” button.
…also I am committed to taking measures early on to make sure I can avoid the same mistakes that the ShamWOW guy did once I make my fortune.
Nothing but up from here for me. Nothin but UP.
My son (5 yrs) continues to amaze me with his technological mastery. A few months ago he surprised me with his iPhone skills which is what inspired the first “My Son Is a Genius” post.
Yesterday I found out that his tech genius extends to TVs as well and that it has some negative side effects. He managed to navigate through the series of clicks and “nexts” to successfully purchase an On Demand movie that he wanted called “Aliens in the Attic”.
This could be a problem.
I am having flashforward style nightmares of a massive Verizon bill surprises, or worse …a WAY premature reason to have “the talk” with my little genius (“Alien Nymphos in the Attic” is a much different movie).
…maybe I need to get my son to setup the child security settings on our DVR.
PayPal recently opened up its platform to 3rd party developers. Honestly I am surprised that they had not done this much earlier, and was a little shocked to see this news that seeking innovation from outside their walls was a new thing.
Nevertheless, they have opened things up and to kick this off they have launched a small campaign to get the ideas flowing. Obviously they are hoping to create awareness in general, but also create some heightened interest from their primary target audience (primary target = ideally the 3rd party developers that are sitting on badass monetary innovation ideas).
They have developed a Microsite called ChangeHowWePay.com that honestly is nothing more than a landing page with the announcement, a twitter feed, and a request to start sending ideas via a twitter #hashtag. They also created a commercial/ video that dwells on showing various future-states of monetary transaction. Cheesy music track, but the content in the video is really good. Cool thumbprint verification in there, but I was surprised to NOT see some use of a mobile phone as a method of user ID to complete a transaction.
Looking forward to what ideas emerge. I have never had any issues using PayPal and think it is a great service.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am cheating on my blog with a little side fling with Ploked.com. It is only around 1 article per week …but it is a nice readership, and I have enjoyed it thus far.
I discovered a really great new startup called Alice.com, and was so impressed with them that I decided to do a thorough review of their site & service. I get pretty geeky about any sort of online startup that really seems to have it all figured out …great business model, amazingly intuitive interface, excellent user flow from start to finish, etc. In addition, as part of my MBA studies I must have reviewed the case studies for all the failed past attempts at doing online grocery services about 20 times.
In the end, I turned it into a two-part review that and published the two articles for Ploked.com. I will not try and reGURG the review here — instead I will provide you with links to go read the reviews of Alice.com on Ploked. Please check it out & comment to let me know if you agree with my review and assessments.
Hope you like.
…and here I thought the only thing the word “FREE” would get you is skepticism and a high probability of getting labeled SPAM.
We have an outdoor playscape/ swingset in our house back in Dallas, and before our tenants move in (long story – unable to sell our house when we moved to VA, resorted to becoming a landlord) I wanted to get rid of it to reduce my risk. It is still a very nice playscape, but the thought of disassembling it and reassembling it at our new home was not appealing to me at all.
So, in an effort to get out of manual labor I posted an ad on Craigslist offering the playscape for FREE to anyone who wanted to disassemble it and haul it away. I figured I would be lucky to get a few nibbles, but clearly I was underestimating the power of FREE …and the reach of Craigslist for that matter. I posted this thing at 11pm EST and this is what my inbox looks like this morning.
HOLY CRAP! And that is only a screenshot of what can be seen above the fold. My inbox scrolls on like that for quite some time to the tune of approximately 200 email inquiries about my FREE approach to avoiding manual labor. The results of accidental learning experience are as follows:
- The whole “FREE” thing really works. If you want to get rid of something fast, yell it as loud as you can.
- Craigslist is a very powerful commerce center
- I may have undervalued my outdoor playscape (…I should have charged like $50 or something)
- Not everyone is as averse to manual labor as I am and will do it to get something for FREE
Now I just have to wade through all those inquiries to pick a winner.
