TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #033

Bikini-clad Lambo-Girls Weep Onto Their SmartPhones, Move to Get Happy, The Problem with Data, and more.

August 13, 2019

Yo - 

August is a slow month for eCommerce news. All the cool kids are on vacation visiting lots of cool places and doing cool things with their cool families. Kind of makes me sick.

We entrepreneurial types work all the time. VaCa? Not unless I have an internet connection at the bar, bucko! If you’re reading this, you’re probably not on vacation either … just like me. So while all the fancy-pants wanna-bes cash in their frequent-flyer miles for some cheap margaritas on the Jersey Shore, you and I can savor maybe the BEST EMAIL ever!

Here are this week’s top stories.

1.  When you get some sales, do this … MOVE!

One of the so-called “perks” of doing business online is not only that you can work from just about anywhere, you can LIVE just about anywhere. That means that if you are making enough in your eCommerce life to pay the bills but are still living is high-cost-of-living/high-tax places like LA, Seattle, or San Fran … you’re doing it wrong. Think about it. Getting new sales is hard work. If you lower the cost of living AND lower your taxes by moving it’s like giving yourself a raise. For the price of a U-Haul van you can keep more of the profit … or just pay off those student loans faster while sipping a latte, we don’t judge.

Fortunately, there are a few nice places you can go that have lower costs, a good quality of life, AND a good internet connection. 

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They say, “Living well is the best revenge.” A member of our team has his sights set on a beach condo in Puerto Rico … it’s got me dreaming of living on a boat. The point is, aim for happiness my friend.

2.  SEO Keyword Research … a few ideas

We’ve given several private consultations on this EXACT thing. 

Although there are other marketing avenues out there – and some interesting things on the way – proper SEO is still an important part of getting found on the interwebs. But choosing the best keywords to optimize for is always a challenge. If you’ve had one of our eCommerce Strategy Calls or SEO Audits, we showed you some of our top-secret spy-crap to help you out. But SearchEngineJournal did a decent starter article on performing keyword research for eCommerce that might be good to read.

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3.  Exactly How Do You “NOT” LIKE Stuff on Social?

Have you heard about this crap? Instagram is removing the “LIKE” counts from posts. It’s a pilot program that started in Canada and has since moved to a few other countries – but not the US … not yet.

On the plus side, we’ve said for years that the problem with social LIKES is that marketers start to measure success in the number of LIKES that they get. They forget about real success – you know, things like actual sales, profits, and customer satisfaction. Instead, they focus on bizarre abstract notions of vanity engagement metrics … like, number of LIKES. 

If this comes to the US, that sound you’ll hear will be a million millennial social-media pseudo-entrepreneurs weeping uncontrollably onto their smartphones as their Instagram-boyfriends take bikini-clad pics of them in front of rented Lamborghinis to earn rent-money for their parents basement apartments … all because they are deprived a few “LIKES” to prove to themselves that they are worth something … anything… while pretending to work.

Do I sound bitter? Dang.

Anywho … you can 

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4.  It’s like “Press & Seal” for eCommerce from the Post-It Notes Folks

OK guys … I just stumbled upon this and the idea is intriguing. 3M – the makers of Post-It Notes, Command Strips, and Ace Bandages – has come up with a new product. If you ship eCommerce packages using padded envelopes this might be for you. Here’s the deal …. 

You roll out a length of the padded stuff, fold it over your shipment, and press the edges down. BAMMO! Instant, custom-fit shipping thing. Sure, it can be a bit of a pain in the buttocks for customers to open on the other end, but if you can find a way for customers to NOT cut into their shipment with an X-Acto knife when it arrives, this seems like a cool thing. It’s called “Flex&Seal.”

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I really like the idea that folks are working on products like this. Let me know if you try it out and what your results are.

5.  The Problem With Big Data? It’s Sooooo Yesterday’s News!

A lot of folks are afraid that the robots will replace us all. Me? I say no freak’in way. We humans are WAY too unpredictable and downright crazy in the long term. And if you really think about it, all that so-called “Big Data” crap is just a big ‘ol pile of stinky what-happened-yesterday. My data-guy in the office has been preaching about the fallacies of “machine learning” and “AI” for over a year … so, it’s fun to get him all wound up and then watch his face turn red as he spouts of social science crap that I’m really not listening to. It helps him burn off energy before nap time. I let him talk for about thirty minutes, then give him a juice-box and his banky.

Anywho … Mark Irvine is some hot-shot Pay-Per-Click (PPC) guy that I never heard of before. But, supposedly he works at a place called “Wordstream” and people think he’s smart. Turns out, he gave a presentation at an event called SMX-London and he sort of agrees with my data guy that we should focus on the human-to-human aspect of marketing. But don’t tell my data guy … it’s almost nap time.

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Think some IBM Watson hunk of silicon could write an email like this? Think some Terminator-style robot could match me snark-for-snark? I DON'T THINK SO!

So, was this my “best email ever?” Meh … maybe not. These things are WAY better when I have a beer in my hand, which sadly is not the case right now. But stay tuned, because we have some big plans coming up for this newsletter and it’s super-cool.

In the meantime, be super-cool yourself and forward this email to other people who need to know what awesomeness looks like.

Happy Selling,

Zachary