Columns and Capitals

I tuned into CNN on Monday night expecting to hear of extraordinary efforts to save livelihoods of those victims of Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana. Instead I found Larry King and guests destroying the life of a teenage girl.

Recently news broke that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter is pregnant. I tuned into CNN to find a full panel of guests discussing this news item.

Even presidential opponent Barack Obama deplores news coverage of this claiming that “people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits.”

Having heard so much about journalistic integrity, I found the fact that CNN chose to cover a story about a teenage pregnancy (remember Palin’s daughter is still a minor) surprisingly horrific. I can only imagine the devastation this might bring to a 17 year old girl as she watches news of her pregnancy being reported on national television.

CNN’s self-proclaimed motto is “The most trusted name in news,” but there is nothing trustworthy about reporting news of a teenage pregnancy, regardless of who her parents might be. Shame on CNN for representing a very low and unethical level of journalism.

Today I passed one of those big trailer hauling semis, and I started to wonder about what it might be carrying. Bread that I might buy at the grocery store? My next couch? Fertilizer for the farm down the road?

Then I started to think about how incredibly not aerodynamic the trailer is. Anyone who has participated in a pine wood derby knows that a big block on wheels isn’t the best way to go. If you’ve felt the wind come off the end or sides of one of these trucks as it drives by, then you have felt the energy that is lost because of the inefficient design of the big box trailer.

I suppose they are made that way because that is the most inexpensive way to make a trailer. But with diesel prices near $5 per gallon, maybe it’s time to re-think that.

If big-rig trucks were more aerodynamic, then they would get better gas mileage. If they get better gas mileage, then that reduces the cost of delivery for the products they are delivering. This, in turn, can keep consumer prices slightly lower. Lower prices helps the economy.

So much of our economy depends on the distribution of goods, that maybe it is time to think uniquely about making our means of distribution more affordable.

(Image source)

eBay, the online auction marketplace, facilitates somewhere in the range of $50 Billion in gross sales a year. Thats $50,000,000,000 worth of commerce that takes place because of eBay.

Recently, eBay has been making some changes, including changing its rates, eliminating seller feedback, and other various changes. Many sellers, including the power sellers, are not happy with all the changes, nor are they happy with some of the bugs they’ve been seeing because of the changes. There has even been talk of a boycott of eBay and all sort of embattlement accusations between eBay and its sellers.

Which leads me to the question: if not eBay, then what? Who is directly competing with eBay as far as providing an online market place? Craig’s List and Amazon.com both provide marketplaces, but neither of them provide a sufficient online auction system. The closest competitor was Yahoo! Auctions, but that site was taken off-line last year.

Obviously for an auction site to be successful, it would need to have a critical mass of both sellers and buyers, and with eBay around, those sort of sustainable numbers would be hard to achieve. But suppose sellers and buyers decided to leave in droves from eBay to another online auction site. Who is available to take them? Or does eBay have such a monopoly that there is no other alternative. If eBay were to suddenly stop existing, what would happen to that $50B of economy?

I’ve fiddled around a bit with some online ads and I didn’t see a great return on investment (RoI) like I had expected.

Usually, when I create an ad, I put all the thigns positive about the product that I’m trying to sell. The thought was to do whatever it takes to get them to come to the site, because then they will buy.

This scheme may work with a cost per impression (CPI) payment rate for ads, where the advertiser pays for the number of times the ad appears, not how many times the ad is clicked on. Many advertising rates are listed as cost per click (CPC), meaning the advertiser pays for each person who clicks on the ad.

With CPC pricing, it may be advantageous to put something more real, such as cost, as part of the advertisement. This way, the consumer makes a little bit more information about purchasing the product before the click on the ad, and before the advertiser pays for that click.

While displaying price or other details as part of an ad may not increase the traffic to the site, it may increase the overall quality of the customer that does.

This may or may not work with some advertising services, such as Google Adwords. This service (and perhaps others) gives better performing ads better positions on sites. By displaying the price on the ad, this may decrease the click through ratio of the ad, and Google may not display the ad quite so previlently.

I haven’t actually tried any of this, but this is some of my current theory. I hope to try it in the upcoming months, and I’ll try to report back about how it goes.

Mary Peery, Retired Senior Vice President of Hewlett Packard, said this was the most important leadership lesson ever learned:

Stay humble. Humility keeps you open to learning from any one else. No on EVER has all the answers and if they think they do they’re not a good leader. Over time they will most likely fail and certainly do significant damage along the way.

Business Consulting, in simple terms, is an industry of hired problem-solvers. Consultants come in to a problem and give data analysis and provide recommendations.
Continue reading What is Consulting?…