Montien Thai Restaurant Pricing Practices
Last night I ate at Montien, a Thai restaurant in Boston. The food was good, as usual. When we got the check, I noticed one entrée was $2 more than the menu list price (about 10%). I didn’t think much of it. It seemed pretty normal that a printed menu might have fallen out of date. The waitress came by […]
Learning from an Early Flop
The BagPack, sold at HandsFreeGroceries.com, has been on sale for just about a year this month. It’s time to take stock, figuratively speaking, but also literally. I just withdrew BagPack inventory from Amazon’s distribution center. It’s not that I want to stop selling it, it’s just that I need to avoid Amazon’s long-term inventory charge. […]
What’s the difference between business and self-employment? Is what I’m doing a business or a job?
I found myself asking this question this morning. Here’s what I told myself. The key difference must be whether future revenue is directly the result of future labor. If I can earn $100 next week only by working on my business that week, then I’m self-employed. But if I can reasonably expect to get that $100 regardless of how hard I […]
MassLandlords.net Conversion Rates and Statistics
MassLandlords.net is at the point where we have enough traffic to learn something about our site design, in particular, our conversion rates for member sign-ups. Here’s an update that speaks simultaneously to how new I am at this, and also to the kinds of opportunities we have with statistical analysis. The site has a “join” page, which presents visitors with two […]
The Digital Gentrification of Facebook and the Internet
One of my concerns the last month has been a change Facebook made to their algorithm. They’re basically making it impossible to reach fans of business pages without paying to promote posts or get likes. They call it “declining organic reach.” If you decide to pay for likes, the results may surprise you. I wrote in December […]
Angel Investors in Boston
ArtistBomb, Inc. has not pitched in front of any investor or group of angel investors in Boston. We’ve had plenty of practice, and plenty of one-on-one conversations with mentors and gatekeepers. Their questions and comments have surprised me. These folks aren’t what I thought. The Investor Spectrum At the far “conservative” end you have Ben […]
How I’m Spending My Time: Update
Back in September I wrote a short piece about how I was spending my time. Since it’s about six months later I thought I’d update the graph. These are 40 day moving averages. When I think about where my financial future lies, I think it’s mostly ArtistBomb and partly MassLandlords.net. The way I spend my […]
New York Times Advertising Rates and Where to Place Ads
Last summer I picked apart a Sunday edition of the New York Times print newspaper with an eye on learning where people like to place their ads. Which sections carried which types of ads? What does ad specificity predict should be the New York Times advertising rates? I’ve been sitting on the data for lack […]
How to Stay Productive and Get Things Done When Tired
It’s nice to look back on a day and think how productive we’ve been. But all too often our natural ups and downs take us to a point where we’re too tired to get things done. The best advice I was ever given wasn’t about “taking a break,” or “getting some coffee.” But those do […]
Goodbye, My Blackberry
I purchased my Blackberry Storm in the summer of 2008. It had been a sturdy and dependable companion, so it was with some sadness this October that I came to feeding it into a machine. First, let me acquaint you with this miraculous phone: Encryption so strong that not even Middle Eastern governments could crack […]
