Kyle Ritter

We have posted a new interior design article on PDXinteriors.com. In this one, Jamie discusses the basics and importance of  creating a program for your interior design project. This should be helpful to the DIYers who visit that site, as well as remind the seasoned vets of their academic roots. Yeehaw!

I added about 13 bars in Eugene to the Eugene BarFly database. These include:

• Max’s Tavern
• Jo Federigo’s
• Horsehead
• Taylor’s Bar & Grill
• Diablo’s & Downtown Lounge
• Samurai Duck
• The Cooler
• The Old Pad
• Jameson’s
• Jimmy Mac’s
• Mac’s at the Vet’s Club
• John Henry’s
• Black Forest Tavern

So there you are, review at will.

I recently updated my Portland Interior Design site, with a nice new profile about antique decor and furniture, written by the wonderful Emma Juhlin. So that’s sweet.

My lovely friend Carla just posted an article about why relocation buyers should use an EBA for their agent. It makes perfect sense, since you don’t want some double dipping seller’s agent to scam you while you are moving across the country.

She also wrote and additional article about New Home Construction in Portland, and how EBAs are useful.

I just received a few Portland Interior Designer profiles from a contributor today.

That site has been updated with profiles for Jason Ball and Miryam Brewer in articles entitled Interior Design, Portland Style and PDX Style with Miryam Brewer.

So we’ll see how the traffic comes in, and if these articles actualyl help people. Dope.

One thing I have been mulling over lately is micro-payments via SMS. It seems that may be one answer to the old “how do you sell digital content on the web?” quandry.

Currently, the only realistic option you have for purchasing web content is to do a full or trial subscription. But what if you just want to read one article, take a look at one picture? It’s hardly worth the subscription, but well worth a measly $.25-$.49 to have look.

The problem is, you certainly aren’t going to run your credit card for 25 damn cents. What a time consuming hassle that would be. And for the seller, it’s not worth it either. It generally costs 30 cents plus up to 3% of the total transaction amount to process a credit card transaction. No way in hell any content provider is going to sell to the end consumer for a money losing transaction.

What I keep dreaming about is a wireless account that you can add monetary credits to, like turning your phone into a paypal account. And when you want to read a specific article, industry report, or anything else, you simply send an SMS to a predefined number, which in response delivers you a content “unlock” code, you type it into one simple formfield, and download your damn content. The micro amount is deducted from your phone account, and off you go.

This does leave the door open to fraud, as there is very little in the way of verification checks. However, micro-payments kind of nullifies the motive for fraudulent use. A thief will have little interest in stealing a cellphone in order to purchase a 25-99 cent piece of digital content, their interest lies in big ticket items that are easy to resell. Effectively, the risk of fraud to the company processing the SMS transaction is minimized by the very nature of micro-payments.

We’ve seen great success in Micro-Payments for ringtone sales and services such as I-tunes, I’d love to see it go further to include text and visual web based content.

My head hurts thinking about it anymore and I have work to do. Here is some stuff.

Sort of Micro-Payment Providers
Bee Tokens
IndieKarma
Micro Payment Reading
Jakob Nielsen’s 1998 Article (if we knew then…)
BankTech
WikiPedia’s MicroPayment Page

From the Desk of Greg Gaylord, Portland Design and SEO guru

52ltd.com connects Portland’s best creative talent with the right graphic design jobs, right community, the right business. Whether you’re looking to join a hot design firm or prefer the environment of a large corporation, 52 can help make the connection. They do this honestly and proffessionally, doing what’s best for each person and each company.

There are quite a few graphic designers here in Portland, I myself get quite a few requests from them, you know the old “if you hear of any work” sort of thing. So you might want to chiggity check’em. 52ltd.com

Over the years, I have dabbled in promoting adult (translation: porn) websites. They have never been anything more than a minor source of supplementary income, enough to pay my phone bills, web hosting, and maybe take the lady out for a nice dinner or two. I think I have a solid basic grasp of the industry, I know how to sell surfers, but quite frankly, it’s way too much work in comparison to selling mainstream niches. 75% of my income comes from direct products sales on my mainstream sites, 20% from mainstream affiliate programs, and maybe 5% from adult. Of that 75% direct product sales, only half of my orders come through my shopping cart, I get the other half over the phone.

However, I think those of us in the mainstream can learn a thing or two from our Adult brethren. The entire mainstream webmaster community seems to consider the only source of traffic to be search engines, where as the adult industry has a far better grasp on generating traffic via other sources.

One major component is networking with other adult webmasters and building a rock solid reputation. This could be why my adult income is only supplemental: I tend to be an “anti-social webmaster”, I don’t participate much in discussion forums, and I don’t associate with too many other webmasters.

Additionally, adult webmasters seem to have a better grasp of copyright issues regarding stolen content. Unethical webmasters are frequently outed and blacklisted when they have screwed someone over, where as shady characters in the mainstream can set up shop with a new identity and little recourse.

While I spend little time working on my adult sites, I frequently read adult resource sites such as PornResource. A good example of the quality of articles and writers you will find there is Marie, who seems to have a wonderful grasp on both mainstream and adult trends.

The adult webmaster forum NetPond also has a section of their forum dedicated to mainstream webmasters, which shows that both camps have a lot to offer each other.

Nobody really reads this stuff anyway, so it’s safe to soft launch the very incomplete guide to Bars in Eugene, OR, better known as BarFly Eugene! It’s a natural and logical expansion, and a way for us to test the market outside of Portland proper. I’ll need to take another trip down there to continue my drunken spree of bar reviews. Rawk it onward!

BarFly has been getting nailed with people looking for nude photos of Storm Large, who has become quite popular since Going on Rockstar Supernova. So lets see what kind of freaks I get emailing me now, just because they want to see Storm Large Nude.