I was recently pointed to Empire Avenue by John Chow and have become thoroughly addicted to it. Empire Avenue is a social networking stock exchange where your value is determined by your social media influence via platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr and personal blogs.
Shares of mine are currently trading at 26.34 and have been appreciating at a rate greater than 10% per day! Check it out and invest in my shares!

I am happy to receive the link, even though they got my name spelled wrong.

My spring break trip to California was absolutely wonderful. On my final day I was able to spend some time with a successful Internet Entrepreneur and have a few new web projects in the works as a result of the trip! I am excited to get them started and am beginning to see the true earning potential of the Internet, and its ability to weather a recessionary economic environment.

Upon reading more about the product, I have to say it is a very clever and obvious idea that is being marketed in a smart way. This is the first I have heard of the product and it appears to be in the early stage of growth as their corporate website does not list any news or PR prior to 2009. Go Girl is a great idea, with a great brand image and I think it could be going places in the very near future.

Most beginning Internet entrepreneurs and hobbyists are looking for cheap web hosting, but it’s not wise to necessarily choose the cheapest host out there because you tend to get what you pay for. Quality is by far a more important factor in deciding who to use for your hosting, and there are many affordable hosts that provide a high standard of service and amenities.

WebhostingGeeks.com has a directory of the ten best webhosts with detailed reviews of their respective services and features offered. Many of the plans in the top ten host category range in price from $5-12 and many offer free Yahoo and Google advertising credits as well.

Web Hosting Geeks also offers top listings based on various other criteria such as Budget Hosting, Blog Hosting, Ecommerce, Reseller and Dedicated.

Once you’ve selected your hosting provider you are encouraged to return to Web Hosting Geeks and submit your own review of the experience you received. All hosting plans that are displayed include at least one free domain name registration and a 30 day money back guarantee.

Cuil is the Gaelic word for both knowledge and hazel, and features prominently in ancient legend. A famous poet fished for many years on the River Boyne hoping to catch the Salmon of Knowledge. When he finally caught it, he gave it to his young apprentice Finn McCuil to prepare, warning him not to eat any. As Finn cooked the salmon he burnt his thumb and instinctively sucked it to ease the pain. And so it was Finn and not the poet who gained all the wisdom of the world. Finn went on to become one of the great heroes of Irish folklore. Any time he needed to know the answer to a question, he sucked his thumb. – source: Cuil.com

Some of the Venture Capital firms backing the Cuil concept include Madrone Capital Partners, Greylock Partners, and Tugboat Ventures.

I think I’ll use Cuil on occasion over the next few weeks and see if it is something I could use in place of Google. But right now, I would say over 95% of my searches are with Google and it serves me very well.

[tags]cuil, google, shaun carter, venture capital, madrone capital partners, greylock partners, tugboat ventures, search engine[/tags]

Google is reporting that the income from YouTube is much lower than its initial estimates used when valuing it’s buyout of the company. Revenue on YouTube will total approximately $200 Million this year, despite the site showing over 100,000,000 videos daily back in 2006! I can only imagine what that number is today.

I really thought that Google would place Adsense text or video ads before or after each video clip, however they have decided that advertisers do not like their ads being attached to content they can’t approve.

But wait, that’s exactly what the Adsense content network does to Adwords publishers. Adsense units are simply displayed on sites based upon keywords pulled from the content of the page, so how is that different from targeting ads on YouTube based upon video keywods and descriptions?

This revelation from Google is quite dissapointing and it seems they have found a way to squander a potential goldmine of profitability simply because they can’t figure it out. I highly doubt that users will just stop using the free video uploading service YouTube provides simply because there will be a short ad displayed either before or after a certain percentage of videos when played back.

[tags]google, youtube, shaun carter, adsense, adwords, advertising, video, text ads, publishers, revenue, income, profit, internet[/tags]

Yahoo is now at the mercy of a proposed deal with Google that will further cannibalize their own business. Obviously the news is good for Google as it will increase their share of the Internet search market, provided the deal will pass regulatory approval. But it is very unusual that a company would seek out a competitor to essentially bid out on the job of providing their core service. It would be like Buy.com becoming an Amazon.com affiliate rather than selling it’s own goods.

[tags]yahoo, jerry yang, shaun carter, microsoft, steve ballmer, bill gates, google, internet, search[/tags]

PayPal, an eBay owned payment processor, will now begin holding some auction payments in escrow for up to 21 days. This will make doing business on eBay for sellers very difficult as it will severely disrupt their cash flow.

I have been selling quite a few items on eBay this year and will be honoring this boycott because these new rules truly hurt sellers, while eBay continues reporting growing profits. I am now looking for a permanent alternative to eBay as I think many online sellers should do until eBay gets its act together.

[tags] ebay, seller, auction, shaun carter, meg whitman, powerseller, boycott, paypal[/tags]

Ebay has long been criticized for taking too much of the final value of a sold auction item, but beginning on February 20, 2008 Ebay will begin raping and pillaging its sellers until they bow to their knees.

Go check out the new fees here.

Notice the extremely steep increase in Ebay’s cut for the first $25 of the auction’s final value? Jumping fees from 5.25% to 8.75% is insulting to every seller using Ebay and will make profitability for Power Sellers very difficult, if not impossible.

Because of the increased Final Value fees, more sellers will be inclined to begin their auctions at much higher prices to ensure their fees get covered, but alas Ebay will benefit from the increased starting price as well because the seller will most likely jump to another fee level.

Add to the mix that Ebay owns the payment processor PayPal and you see that they will also more than likely collect another couple percentage points on the value of the sale in the form of Premium and Business account transaction fees.

For a company who is growing quarterly earnings at 50%, has no debt, and nearly $5 Billion in cash they sure don’t blush at taking even more from the very users that keep them running. I think this planned fee restructuring will backfire horribly and open the market up to competitors who will be in a position to gain market-share from the current leader in internet auctions.

[tags]ebay, online auction, shaun carter, online selling, auction, sellers, buyers, paypal, internet payments[/tags]

But the income part of the equation is the tricky one. I’ve spent hours and hours researching how to properly monetize a proxy and have come up with some interesting findings. Most proxy publishers depend on Adsense all over the homepage of the proxy and that is all the monetization they do. Well I tend to interpret the Google TOS regarding pages having content as excluding a proxy homepage because of a lack of real content so I don’t plan on placing Adsense on any proxy of mine – for now. Instead, I plan to monetize the proxy pages which some publishers report make even more than their homepages. By utilizing a combination of AdBrite banners and Adversal or Canep pop-unders many proxies earn $10-20 per day. The bottom line is that I’m not going to jeopardize my Adsense account with proxies and will find a way to make money anyway.

The site itself is just a PHProxy template with a little modification to accommodate the additional advertising and is very easily duplicated. I will be playing with the script for a few days before beginning to promote the site, although the domain already gets a steady stream of type in and Google traffic because of the excellent SEO value of the domain name. Right now the biggest trouble spot is modding the PHP script to stream YouTube videos – which is kind of important for a proxy with “YouTube” in the domain!

[tags]proxy, youtube, myspace, shaun carter, phproxy, php, adversal, adsense, google, canep, unblock youtube, vps[/tags]