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Category: Bill Sweetman

Observed: Wal-Mart Now Stocks Websites

Published August 31, 2005

Last week I popped into SAM’S CLUB Canada to see what they had in the way of bulk cat litter (don’t ask). For those of you who may not be familiar with SAM’S CLUB, it’s Wal-Mart‘s version of warehouse retailer Costco. The cat litter reconnaissance mission was a bust, however I did notice something intriguing as I headed for the exit. There, by the Customer Service desk, was a three-panel brochure with the headline “SAM’S CLUB Announces… Business Web Sites.”

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Observed: URLs Gone Wild

Published August 23, 2005

I still kick myself for not following through on an idea for a book I had during the early days of the Dotcom boom. I had been on a business trip to San Francisco – arguably the epicentre of the Internet ‘gold rush’ – and while I was there I started to notice all the unusual places that URLs were plastered.
Sure, people were promoting ‘MyGoofyBusinessIdea.com’ on billboards and posters, but creative (or maybe desperate) marketers were also putting their URLs on other, uh, interesting things. Had I been more on the ball at the time, I would have started documenting this phenomenon with my camera.
Even without photographic evidence, I still thought it would be beneficial, even inspirational, to share with One Degree readers some of the more memorable places I’ve seen URLs advertised over the years.

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Recommended: How NOT to Turn a Hot Prospect Into a Customer

Published August 17, 2005

Every once in a while I am lucky enough to receive a marketing email of such pure ineptitude that I am awestruck. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, an email lands in my inbox that proves to me that there are still corners of the world where the work we do as Internet marketers hasn’t penetrated.
About a month ago, I signed up for a free trial account of a Website server monitoring service from Alertra. I wanted to perform an independent test of the uptime percentage of a Website I owned because a number of customers had mentioned that the Website sometimes appeared to be unavailable.
For 29 days I enjoyed the free use of Alertra’s Website server monitoring service. I’d be notified the moment the Website in question was not available, and I was relieved to discover that my weekly server uptime was in the quite decent 97%+ range. In fact, I was so impressed by the Alertra service that I was seriously considering signing up for a paid account once my free trial had come to an end.
And then I received this email:

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