It’s a new world these days when we think of businesses.  If people didn’t trust corporations & the financial industry 10 years ago, what must they think of them now?  The only way to earn back the trust of the masses is by doing business transparently.

Comedian Louis CK showed us all this week how much that point drives-home with all of us.  On December 9^th, Louis released an online comedy special which he produced, promoted, and without utilizing any distribution channels (RIAA and MPAA).  For the cost of $5.00, you could download his comedy special which has no DRM(Digital rights management) or regional restrictions & comes with the freedom of 100% ownership.

“The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?”

In the age of P2P & Torrent networks, would there even be enough people in the world paying $5.00 to cover production costs?  The result was staggering.  In just 12 days, Louis CK’s special grossed over $1 million dollars.  That’s over 200,000 paid downloads.

Continuing the transparency with his customers, the comedian released the following statement:

“I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden and since we’re all sharing this experience and since it’s really your money, I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with it. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.”

250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.

250k is going back to his staff and the people who work for him on the special and on his show.

280k is going to a few different charities

220k is going to Louis CK

It’s not often that you feel so good about a person making a million dollars in 12 days without despising them just a little bit.  It’s interesting how our perspective changes when people are open & candid with you.

We have heard from many of our clients over the years who have worked with other Search Marketing Agencies. We have heard how they are neither given ownership nor logins to their own accounts, shown key data metrics from the actual interfaces, nor ever presented with auditable billing information.  Why is this not shared? Is there something to hide?

Engine Ready prides itself on our transparency.  We will walk our clients through each search engine and show how each dime is spent, each refund attained, and when the time comes, transfer ownership and  logins for every account we built or managed (if they didn’t have it already).

It’s your money and you have stake in how it is spent.

No tags

Engine Ready and SEOmoz will be hosting an SEO meetup in downtown San Diego on Tuesday night, December 21st.  Come on out to learn about the latest developments in the SEO world, and to see some short presentations.  SEOmoz CEO, Rand Fishkin, and Engine Ready CEO, Jamie Smith, will be there among other professionals to network with.

The event will be held at the San Diego Beer Company, located at Broadway and 6th Ave.  For more information check out the SEOmoz event calendar or Eventbrite. And by the way, if for some reason you need more incentive to come, the first two drinks are complimentary.

*Update:  The event is listed as sold out on Eventbrite, but please register for the wait list as more spots will be opening up.

Engine Ready, Industry Events, search marketing, SEO, SEOmoz

This week on Best Search Strategies, we will cover the Big Five of Facebook advertising. Tune into Webmaster Radio this Wednesday at 2:00 PM (PST) to learn the latest tips.

Need to increase your online exposure?  Look no further than Facebook’s 500 Million users to gain connections, raise brand awareness, acquire leads, and increase sales.  We’ll discuss the important factors to running a successful Facebook campaign.

Listen in as you’ll learn how to:

1. Easily target your market with demographic targeting feature
2. Increase the popularity of your company page
3. Engage your audience with Facebook events
4. Measure the success of your social media campaigns
5. Optimize images and text to improve your conversion rate

No tags

This week BSS tackles a new topic. The display network has become a great format that some PPC advertisers have yet to venture. Join us this Wednesday at WebmasterRadio.com as we cover the advantages of Google’s display network.

Even though Google has continued to add many rich features to the display network (previously known as the content network), most advertisers still treat the display network as the forgotten stepchild and miss out on attracting profitable sales.

Listen in as you’ll learn about:

• How to structure your display campaigns for success
• Which types of display ads tend to bring the most qualified visitors
• How the power of re-targeting will bounce previous visitors back to your site to buy
• How to use Google’s Ad Planner tool to find the best display sites for your ads

No tags