Why inexperienced investors do not learn

It’s Yahoo Investor Day, where Yahoo is briefing institutional investors and financial analysts on the company. I’m here for the morning portion, and I’ll be live blogging out of it. You can also watch the live web cast here. Bartz Welcomes Carol Bartz, CEO, on stage. Saying thing they have great opportunity. Lots to fix. Low return. “Today is the journey back to respect. We’re not here to wow you, but we’re here to intrigue you and earn your respect.” What happened? Yahoo was the big shining star, then wasn’t. Wants to talk of “slice” of Yahoo that’s not search or display or clicks or CPM that but “the scale of what Yahoo is. The importance … the real intensity of what Yahoo is.” To define what Yahoo is, they went out to talk to users around the world in 10 countries. “And they were kind of confused and said what’s Yahoo.” Said it was where they go to check in … it’s the … [Read more...] about Live Blogging Yahoo Investor Day 2009

In July, I shared the lessons I have learned selling websites with Quiet Light Brokerage since 2006, but the seller is not the only important part of the equation. Buying an online business can seem scary, but if you go in knowing how to conduct a deal you’ll improve your success rate immeasurably. I learned these lessons by observing literally thousands of smart buyers over the years, some of whom saw returns of over 1000% in their first year alone. The deals are out there, and these 19 lessons will help you get your footing (and your money’s worth) as a potential buyer: 1. Always Trust Your Gut Sometimes a deal just doesn’t feel right, even though you can’t place your finger on why. While analysis of a business is usually enough to determine if you’re making a good investment, sometimes there are intangibles you can feel in your gut. History tells us that this gut feeling is often correct. Learn to identify it and trust it. However, a smart buyer needs … [Read more...] about 19 Things I’ve Learned About Buying Websites

Have you heard of Digital Sky Technologies (DST)? Chances are that until the last few weeks, you’d never registered the name but you now know there is some connection with Facebook? In fact, Digital Sky Technologies is a Russian Moscow-based investment firm which already owned some 1.96% of Facebook, which it bought for some $200m in 2009, and with the most recent $125m investment it now has a 10% stake in the social network. But if I told you it owned ICQ (all of it) and has stakes in Groupon and Zynga — you might be starting to think that we should all learn some more about Digital Sky’s portfolio: Mail.ru — DST wholly owns this having acquired it in 2006. It is the largest free e-mail service of the Russian web. A London IPO is planned for some time in the near future. Mail.ru also offers a search facility and was once one of the largest search destinations in Russia — although it provided the search facilities via the largest Russian search engine … [Read more...] about How Russian And Chinese Investors Are Dominating The Web Outside North America

The question of the day seems to be how low will Yahoo go when the US stockmarket opens later today. Even I,optimistic aboutYahoo’s chances on its own, don’t expect it to rise. But maybe the latest blogspin from Yahoo, along with formal news of a deal with Google, will help slowthe expected drop. More on that below. And by the way, how come no one’s talkingabout how Microsoft’s stock is likely to drop, too? The failure to do a dealpotentially leaves two losers, not one. Ok, so now what? is from Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, posted to the official Yahooblog. He names off a variety of products that Yahoo rolled out in the firstquarter of the year as proof of how innovative and creative Yahoo is. Frankly, I’ve joked a lot on the DailySearchCast how this fairly unprecedented barrage of product launches felt alot like SS Yahoo seeing torpedoes coming in the water and throwing everythingthey have overboard in hopes of blocking them. Some of these product launcheshave … [Read more...] about Google Deal, AOL Purchase, & Pleasing Investors

John Mueller of Google answered a question in a Reddit thread about advice on how an SEO noob, a person who is inexperienced in SEO, learn and get good at SEO. John said you should gain experience with the help of webmaster help forums and communities.John wrote:I know I'm biased, but for learning technical issues, there's not much that beats getting experience. One great way to get experience for cheap is to be active in any of the webmaster help forums / communities (Google has one, but there are others too). After a while, you can spot the common issues quickly: "page isn't indexed" -> "check meta tags, robots.txt, rel-canonical, etc.". Getting practice with other people's sites, even if you never post in the threads, helps you to be secure when a client comes to you with the same issue. When it comes to debugging issues, keep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor in mind -- it's almost always like that :).There is nothing like experience and often when you are new to … [Read more...] about Google’s John Mueller Recommends SEO Noobs Join Help Forums To Gain Experience