What I read in May

• Chris Guthrie
• Monthly Wrap Up
• May 31st, 2010
• 3 Comments

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Here is what I read in the month of May that I believe you should read as well.

44 Killer Tricks to Hunt Down Any Webmaster
Great list of tips to get in touch with a domain owner in case you’re trying to make an offer. I’ve tried a few on the list but there were several other gems I hadn’t heard of before. Worth the read if you’re beating your head against the wall trying to contact a domain owner.
5 Ways You Can Build Quality Links that Count
I met Nathaniel last month for breakfast when he happened to be visiting Seattle and while I’m usually disappointed by link lists this short list provides plenty of fresh ideas worth checking out. My favorite is number 2.
Behind the Scenes of Colorado’s Affiliate Tax Fight
This gives a unique look at the battle in Colorado over the affiliate tax which prompted Amazon.com to terminate it’s affiliate program in the state. As many of you know by my income reports, if such a tax were to be implemented in Washington I would need to move my business to another state or sell all of my top Amazon Associates earners.
Why I don’t care about my RSS numbers
Jonathan’s article basically says email is better than RSS and I pretty much agree with him. Part of his reasoning was that people don’t check feed readers as often as email or that they subscribe to too many feeds to stay up to date – I don’t think this is the case for everyone (i.e. I only subscribe to about 30 feeds and I check them all every day once in the morning). But no one can dispute that email isn’t checked more often than an RSS feed.
How I increased My Email Open Rate to 20%
I’m still not convinced that using all capital letters is the best way to get people to read your emails (I personally would delete an email like this) but surprisingly his results show it worked better for him (perhaps raw statistics on how many emails were sent etc. can provide more weight?). In either case this got me thinking about my email titles and how I may need to try and update some of them for better open rate.
A Tale of Two Outsourcers
Steve hired a couple outsource workers to test and manage their results and he found people on opposite ends of the spectrum. As many of you know I’m currently in the process of hiring a full time blogger / assistant to help with the things that eat up my time and after reading Steve’s article now I’ve considered hiring multiple different people on a trial basis to find the best person for the job. (I’ll cover my outsourcing exploits in a future blog post and let you know what worked best for me).
Interview: Chris Guthrie
Over on Jonathan Volk’s blog he interviewed Chris Guthrie. From what I can tell, this Chris Guthrie guy is pretty genius and someone I’d like to become friends with. Pretty good interview and if you’re not reading Chris Guthrie’s blog by now you really should.

If you find something I should read please contact me and I may share it here next month.

Upcoming:

As always my income report will be up next where I outline the sources I made money from along with my overall take for the month. If this sounds good to you, subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out.

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