You Are Here:

With all the focus lately falling on social networks and social media, it feels a bit like email is getting a rough deal. Make no mistake, email is still alive, well and very important as a communication, branding and sales tool. So with this in mind I jotted down a couple of thoughts about email.

These are all based on previous experience and not in any order

From Address
Make sure that this is something that the recipient can identify. Having your company name in the from address will make it easier for your recipients to know that it's you.

Subject Line
Subject lines are tricky. Too salesy, and you'll get stuck in the spam box. Too plain, and you won't get any one to open it. You'll need to test a couple of different stories so that you can decide which one you want to use.

Here's one way to do it:
Come up with a couple of different subject lines. Send these to a small percentage of your list and check the response. So, for example, if you have 1000 memberes on your mailing list, send subject line A to about 100 members and Subject Line B to about 100 members. Give this a day or so and then see which subject line worked best. Now you can use the winning subject line and send this out to the balance of your subscribers.

Header Image
Pictures a great way to communicate in a very quick easy way. The trick is not to get too carried away. Here are a couple of tips to consider when designing your header image.

Wider is badder.
Try not to make your images too wide or your readers will need to scroll in order to see all the information. It might also cause their email clients to wig out.

See the lighter side of life
Try and keep your header images as small as possible (in terms of k size). Heavier images take longer to load and this will probably irritate your readers (especially in a country like SA where bandwidth is still an issue).

Call to action
You'll need to choose what it is that you want your email to say. What's the one thing that you want your email to say? Try not to cram too much info in to the header image.

Body Copy
This is the really important part of your email, the meat of the matter if you will. There's always a temptation to add too much to a newsletter. If you add too much content, it just becomes boring. I've always considered a newsletter as a entry point. It's there to direct traffic to your website or your blog or your sales offer. Whatever the case, try not to cram too much in to the body of your newsletter or quite frankly you'll bore your readers. Instead, have a summary or shortened version of your article with a link where readers can go to read more.

As with your header image, try and stick to your Call to Action and not add too many different incentives to click. Too many CTA's and your mail becomes confusing.

A tip that I've found to work is to have clearly outlined sections. Use different sizes or colours or even header graphics to split out your content in a way that makes it easy for your readers to pick out what it is they want to read.

Signature
The signature is a very underrated part of an email. In addition to containing your details, don't forget to add your website link. It's also a great place to add a P.S. I've found that a little something in the PS field always tests well and gets pretty good click through rates.

Footer
This is the section of your mail where you need to include your unsubscribe information so that if you do piss anyone off, they can leave your club. With anyone and everyone having a social media profile of some sort, this is a great place to add links to your social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or any other network.

Data bothers me. It always has. There's so much of it lying all over the place - in spreadsheets, emails, smses and on random bits of paper. I know a lot of very smart people who are very good at organizing, storing and using data. But I reckon the coolest ones are the ones running the video store around the corner from my mom's place.


You see, I have a thing about video store cards. And the thing is that I keep losing them. I refuse to keep unnecessary cards in my wallet and as diligent as I am, I can never remember where I last put the video store card. Which is why my mom's video store (for lack of a better name) is so cool.

They've implemented a biometric finger print scanner to replace video store cards. So whenever you rent a video, you go and give them the finger and up pops your account letting you know what the last porno was that you rented and just how many fines you have outstanding. It's all very Star Trek, which makes it even more fitting to be found at a video store but is a very smart and efficient way to profile their customers and associate you with your data.

It also makes sense. Biometrics scanners these days start from just a few hundred rand, which means that the store will save on designing and printing cards for new members and replacing the inevitable lost cards for existing customers. It also saves time since the staff don't need to waste time looking up accounts or searching for id numbers.

Some folks do however some safety concerns about the 'new' technology worrying that there personal information is at risk or that they are that much closer to being a victim of identity theft. Personally, I think having your mail stolen is a much higher risk.

The scanners that businesses such the humble video shop make use of might look very CSI, but they're a lot more low tech. Firstly, they're not connected to the internet (in most instances) and secondly they record on average 5-7 regions on your finger print. If memory serves, the police require a 16 point match (though I could be wrong here).

More and more businesses are using biometrics fro access control and in the US, schools have started to issue kids lunch using their fingerprints to prevent lost lunch money or lunch cards. The trend is clearly showing that this is a technology that is gaining traction.

The question I have is simple - are you freaked out by fingerprint scanners or do you accept that its' something we'll all have to deal with in the future?

A question that I get asked quite a lot is "How do I get more traffic to my blog?" Now, I'm not social media expert/rock star/ ninja/monkey but I reckon that I've learned a thing or two over the last while and since I'm mostly a nice guy, I'll share. Something that really pisses me off are """experts""" dishing out posts with titles like "10 Ways Guaranteed to Get You More Traffic." I figure that the only guarantee of traffic is by taking out a stop street in the city centre. With everything else you're just sorta hoping it works. With this in mind, I've decided to title this segment as follows:

Six Things You Should Probably Do That Might Eventually Get Your Blog A Little Traffic

I think it's pretty catchy ;)


1. Create Good Quality Content (You've gotta have the good sh*t)


There's a saying that goes "Content is King" and I happen to agree 100% with this old platitude. The thing is, so do lots of people. For every person who bitches about the fact that the internet is populated with useless junk there are 5 more creating great, readable and valuable content. It used to be true that if you created good content, you would get traffic because the good stuff was few and far between. With self publication now easier than ever there are more people creating more content about more topics. This means that while the adage still holds true, it is no longer the be all and end all of your blogging strategy. Creating good content is now the bare minimum requirement for getting a bit of traffic to your blog. If you don't think you're posting the good stuff, you should probably stop here and go think about ways to do just that.

Seth Godin, who is probably the smartest bald person I know of, has a great list of things you can do to get more traffic to your blog, many of which have to do with the type of content you're putting out. You should read it.

2. Make Sure Your Audience Can Find Your Content (Don't Hide Your Stash Homie)
When I started blogging one of the things I struggled with the most was trying to figure out how to get Google to find me. Wearing brightly coloured clothing didn't work. Neither did typing the title of my blog post 500 times in the alt text. Instead, what I found was that if I invested a little time to find out the basics about SEO and blog layout, slowly the Big G started sending some love my way. Search Engine Optimization ,or SEO, was at one time also held to be the be all and end all of blog traffic strategies (like Content is King) , but it too now has a lower emphasis value and should be part of your strategy, not the whole thing.
And here's the real thing about SEO - the basics are just common sense. Take some time to understand it and you can adapt your writing style to get the most out of it. If you're looking for somewhere to learn the ropes, try the Quirk eMarketing Text Book. It's easy to read, was written by a funny red head and it's free. What more do you need?

3. But first, pick an audience (Whisky drinkers stick together)
Picture the scene - a guy walks in to a bar and starts talking to absolutely everyone in the room. He's talking to everyone about the same thing, but only a few of the people are listening. The rest are wondering whether or not the pool cue will shatter if it meets up with his head. If you want to successfully and consistently get the attention of an audience you need to decide what you're going to write about. Most of the time, being niche is better and easier to do. You know what you're talking about and the type of person you're (probably) talking to. Now, I'm not saying that you should be boring or only write about West Indian cactus plants, but try not to be too sporadic. If I'm used to finding a certain type of content on a blog, I keep going back there with the expectation that I'll find more of the same. The beer guys stick with the beer guys and the whisky guys all hang out together. Make sense?

4. Consistency is crucial (Keep On Keepin' On)
This is the one that I have the most trouble with. In order to maintain a semi decent readership, you need to be constantly creating good stuff. If someone finds something good and clean and fresh every time they visit you, chances are they'll keep coming back to look for more. Good content, look most good things, is addictive. If it's the same old stale content, they'll probably just move on to someone else who IS consistently writing good content. My buddy Dave introduced me to the concept of the attention economy and the 5 second rule - in today's time, the new scarce resource is not money, but rather attention and on average you have about 5 seconds (or less) to grab that attention once someone lands on your blog. But, like I said - if you're style is stale, you can kiss that reader good bye. Keep it fresh, homie.

5. Find a like minded community and attract readers from there (Sneak in to the club and take someone home).
Building a community is hard work. It takes time, patience and skill. And if you're still asking the traffic question, chances are that like me you're not ready to build your own community yet. Instead, it's easier to find and become active in an existing community where your audience hangs out. Think about it - you find club where the members are already in to what you're writing about, so it will be easier to get the readers there than from some other random group of people. Don't sell weed to crack heads, it just won't work. Once you're more comfortable with your skills, the first prize is of course to build your on community that will sustain itself and introduce new readers to your content on your behalf. For a great example of a self made and sustained community, check out Imod.

6. Offer something of value (try before you buy)
We've all seen the magazine's packed with free stuff on the cover.. In fact, we've all bought the magazine's packed with free stuff. The reason we do is because people like to get free stuff. So if you're writing about music, go find some musicians and break twist their arms in to letting you offer your readers a free sample of their music. Your valuable item could also be your intellectual property - create white papers and offer them as downloads from your blog. Design some cool wallpapers and make them available in your gallery, create some wicked WordPress or Blogger themes. The thing is, creativity is a renewable resource, so you're not giving something finite away. You can create more wallpapers and write more white papers. Only next time there will be more people to talk to ;)

One thing to remember is that your opinion and expertise are both valuable commodities. If you make it available, peeps will become dependent on it and will keep coming back to get high on your supply. So, if you're not an expert on something yet, you'd better start working on that. The more you put out, the more you get back.

Now like I said, I'm not promising that these steps will bring you lots of traffic or any at all. What I do now is this - if you're not doing the basic you don't have a snow ball's chance of getting any traffic at all, so you may as well start somewhere.

Till next time, keep on blogging.

Lester

Since I'm a fan of the both of the above, I can't think of a better ad ;) There's even beer in there.

While I was putting together a presentation that I had done and was wondering what the difference would be if I uploaded the presentation to Slideshare.net or published it as a PDF.

After a bit of digging, it looks like the reader benefits of using slideshare in terms of ease of understanding and ability to process the information quickly does means that you as the content publisher will lose out on some potential SEO benefits that using a PDF offers you.

While Slideshare does offer certain SEO benefits, PDF outweighs it, so i guess that a test is in order. I've put together pretty much the same document in PDF format and will also be loading it to slideshare. Then I'll wait and see what happens :)

You can read the PDF doc here

Tips for Optimizing With Slideshare

• Use your keyword in the title: The title of your slideshow will become the title tag of the page. Since there is not much room for text on the page, optimizing the title is of critical importance.
• Use keywords in the summary: You are allotted small amount of room to write a summary – write a pithy, informative summary that is optimized for visitors and search engines.
• Use tags: I’m not sure how much of a role tags play in SEO, but they will certainly help other Slideshare users find your content when searching for slideshows on various topics.

(Social SEO)

P.S - If there are any erros contained in the pdf or the presentation, drop me a comment and I'll ammend it. I'll drop a link for your trouble ;)

StereoType Records is inviting Cape Town bloggers to attend their next gig (this Sunday night) at Barmooda in Observatory. The idea behind this is that bloggers are the new media and that they should be present at events shaping their city and their areas of interest. The event is called The Chad Session and is hosted on the first Sunday of every month at Barmooda in Lower Main Road, Observatory. Cover charge for the event is usually R25, but bloggers are being offered a free pass this month. All they need to do is email their name, blog url and mobile number to vip@stereotyperecords.co.za and they're on the list. On the bill this month is Claire Phillips, the 2007 SAMA award winner for Best Soul/Rnb album as well as Chad Saaiman, Byron Clarke, Lloyd Jansen, Liberation High, Christopher Jo and Gio. All music performed on the night is00% original and more often than not is written by the artists themselves.

I hope to see you there supporting our local music industry!

Lester

My brain hurts.A lot. A few months back, I started StereoType Records with some like minded friends. We had a good concept, great music and a sound business plan. We would all contribute to the music, Lee would run the business side, Ebrahim would run the studio, Chad would run operations and I would tap into my marketing genius to come up with unique, innovative and astounding ideas. Easy, right? Maybe not so much...

For the last few weeks we've been planning our label media launch, all learning valuable lessons about business, PR and event organization along the way. One of my responsibilities is to put together the media pack that the press will receive on arrival at the event. Said gift pack would contain the relevant biographies, data and music that the journos could consume on their own time. This one task has come to consume, agitate and infuriate me endlessly over these past weeks. It started with the obvious - scanning trade magazine and gift catalogues for 'the usuals' to see if there was anything that I might find useful. No luck there. After staring at the 100th keyring and the 50th mousepad, I still have no ideas. At one point this afternoon I really was tempted to say 'screw it' and just get some super shiny keyrings, chuck them in the pack and let that be that. But I know that I would never let myself live it down.

My Friday afternoon deadline is looming and racing ever closer and I now dread having to report back to the team that I have diddly squat for them. You see, the problem with everything out there is that it's been done so many times before. I have more business card holders that I know what to do with and enough pens to write War and Peace in at least three differetnt languages.

What I need is something relevant to our business (music production and distribution), has some 'legs' and will be featured or at least seen long after the event and most importantly, isn't down right boring.

I read somewhere that simplicity is 'subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful'. And try as I might, I cannot seem to perform that arduously simple task.

Maybe the answer will come to me in a dream. It just might, so maybe I should get some sleep.

I love templates. They make life simple, easy and interchangeable. As a result I spend quite a bit of time scouring the net for new web and blog templates (on sites like woothemes) for me to use and also to use in my freelance work (web design).

I recently cottoned on to www.rockettheme.com and was blown away by their joomla templates and most of all their kick ass modules. When I visited earlier today I was pleasantly surprised to see SA's very own CODA featured on the RocketTheme demo site for their newest template.

For anyone who hasn't yet checked out RocketTheme, keep it that way - i'd like to keep this amazing site a secret for as long as possible.

Question

Does anyone know of any other kick ass template sites?

Lester Hein

Cnet announced this morning that Californian car manufacturer Tesla would start rolling out their Roadster electric car for sale to the public. I use the terms 'sale' and 'public' rather loosely in this context as one needs to consider that the cost of the all electric sports car is upwards of $100 000 and there is a waiting list that has been stretching for months already. The nippy little 2 seater does 0-100 km/h in under 4 seconds and has an electronically limited top speed of 2014 km/h. With a range of roughly 300km, the Tesla Roadster should be fine for most people to run around in for a day and then plug in for a charge at night.Charging the electronic sportscar takes about 3.5 hours.

I'm sure that we'll be seeing a bad ass action movie featuring a Tesla Roadster in the not too distant future.

After seeing a post about the new BMW 3 series on CarBlog last week I went snooping about to see if I could find anything else on the new bimmer's release. The boys over at CarBlog managed to get hold of this scanned pic from the new BMW E90 3 Series brochure: After a bit of digging I've found some actual photos of the new 2008 (or is that 2009) BMW 3 Series facelift. The new 3-series seems to be more of an evolution than a revolution, with many of the same lines from the last model still remaining.

As I didn't really car for the last iteration of the 3 Series, this one continues to 'not do it for me.' The design as a whole seems rigid and a little staid, and very noticeably, it looks as though someone has taken a hot iron to the car's bonnet. Maybe the magic of the design is lost on my uneducated eyes, or maybe it's just crap. What do you think?

BMW E90 3 Series Images after the jump

I need some help. In a big way, and fast. First a bit of background. I'm a partner in a new record label that's just been started in Cape Town, StereoType Records. We have some great artists that we're busy recording at the moment and the music that's coming out of studio is of the highest quality (Chad Saaiman, one of our artists is getting lots of radio play for his new single Moving On.) I accept and understand that mobile is the future, not only in our country, but globally and as such would like to make our artists music available to download to a cellphone. So, I did the first logical thing and started googling about to see how it all works. Not much there unfortunately. I remembered seeing iTouch selling some music available as a download, so I decided to look them up and call. I picked up the phone, dialed the number on the website and I was put through to the Content Department, which made sense. And then nothing. Three messages later still nothing. I finally managed to speak to someone in the content department who said that they would see what they could do for me and get back to me via email. Then nothing. Called them back, and finally managed to wrangle out that they need me to send them a copy of the song I would like to sell and they would then consider whether or not it's worthy of selling on their service. I also got a rough breakdown of how the service works:

• User pays R5 for a mobile download.
• The cellular network (in his example it was vodacom) takes 50% of that. Cheers R2.50
• iTouch takes a (mythical) percentage for marketing the song
• iTouch takes 75% of the 'royalties' (I'm not sure what exactly that means)
• The record label gets 25%. This is then to be split between the producer, singer, songwriter, etc.

So, if I were to sell my tracks online for R5, I'm looking at getting about R1.25 per download (his figures). Not too bad considering that iTouch are doing the (supposed) marketing for me through their respective channels. 'Cool' said I, send me the documentation outlining the specs of the service. 'Great' said he. Then nothing. As things stand it's almost two weeks down the line and all that's happened is that MTN's made a fortune off me calling iTouch trying to convince them that they should let me make them some money and send me the damn details so that I can go ahead and start selling music. So, after that long winded story, I have a question: Are there any clever people out there who know how I can go about setting up a mobile content delivery system so that I don't have to use a service such as iTouch. Or even better, does anyone know of another service besides the all seeing i that I can contact? In all likelihood, if I get a reply to this post sometime in the next week, take three months to build the mobile download service and another for marketing the music, I might have my first single on sale before iTouch even send me the technical specs. Then nothing.

Is it 2008 or 2009?

I'm not sure. As i said previously, there's a new version of the BMW 7 Series out. Now, is this a 2008 model (since it was announced in 2008) or a 2009 model, since it will be available here in 2009? I'm confused.


Anyway, BMW unveiled their new limo in Moscow yesterday by using a 12 metre high hourglass. Yes, you read that correctly - a massive hourglass. The 7 Series BMW was placed in the top of the hour glass and then covered in thousands of little balls. As the balls moved through the neck of the hourglass, so the car was slowly revealed. A little cheesy, but very cool. Incidentally, the hourglass is the largest in the world, so if that old grandfather clock of yours is acting up, well - here's your answer.

Some pics and a vid from the event after the jump, including an interview with Chris Bangle, header designer at BMW and the creative eye behind the BMW GINA concept car.

I'm busy playing around with some ideas for my business cards for StereoType Records, so here they are.

Front:

















Back:

















Hmmm....still very iffy about it, so it will probably change a dozen times before morning.

I've got great friggin news. It's kinda cool but might look kinda lame all at the same time. Most of my friends know that I read at what can safely be called a mind numbing rate. It's the OCD you see, it forces me to want to know absolutely everything, ever. So I read to try and fill my noggin with useful and useless information in any way shape or form to help me wow women and win pointless arguments. Anyway, back to the good news - I finally have a friggin book budget at work. Yes -you heard right, my company is buying me books.

Now this might not seem like such a big deal to the rest of you, but to put things in perspective, this is my equivalent of a crack addict finding out that the government will know be dishing out the good stuff at soup kitchens. Fan-friggin-tastic.

Some famous (and therefore probably dead) guy said that reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. Sounds like pretty good metaphor, and I've been getting my fair share of exercise in over the last few weeks, but with work filling as my dealer, I now need to choose my next hit, which is where you come in.

There are some pretty sharp mense floating around on the net, and I figure that at least one or two of you got that way by reading uber cool books, so now I'd like your opinion on which books to get next.

Here's what I'm currently reading:

• The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
• Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• The Tomorrow People - Martin Raymond
• Your Brain on Music - Daniel Levitin

So, when I'm done with these (prolly in the next week or two) I'm going to need some more brain fodder. Since most of what I will be doing at work in the near future will revolve around social networks and communities, I'd like to read books that will help me understand crowd behaviour and community interaction. But please - nothing that even looks like a textbook.

To this end, I've decided that I should probably get my mits on Wikinomics, which was recommened to me by Adii. Now - what else should I be reading? Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Dave? Charl? Eric? Colin? Vince? You guys seem to be the peeps in the know about this sort of thing, please drop me a comment and sprinkle some wisdom on the page.

Ciao for now,

Lester

Take a looooong hard look at the pic. If anything looks out of place, then it's time to pack your bags and go home. Very cool - but it makes my head hurt a little. Looks like it's time for me to go home

Lester

You know that feeling you get when you think you've done something, you're positive you remembered, only to find out later that you didn't even come close to doing what you were supposed to? Well, that's exactly how I felt this morning. I really thought that I'd posted up pictures of the BMW GINA concept car a few weeks back when BMW owned my OCD crazed soul. Yes, I posted pics of the BMW M8 and BMW's uber cool Infrared Video (on the 7 series), but it turns out I completely forgot to post the Gina. Bad Lester. Oh well, rather late than never eh?.

So without much further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Gina (Geometry, Function, N = infinite, Adaptations), the sexy Bavarian model with the dress that's got everyone talking. Gina challenges the assumptions that are made about the way that cars are made, specifically the shell or skin of the car. Gina uses fabric to build the shell of car. The fabric is stretched over the frame of the car to astounding visual effect as you can see from the pictures below





Ok, I'll stop yapping and let you watch the BMW Gina Video.

Prepare to be amazed

Update: I've added the official BMW Gina video, as distributed by BMW before the car's internet debut






Lester

So I've been a little busy latelty and haven't had that much time to blog in the last week or so. I figured that instead of telling you all about the cool stuff that's kept me busy for the last week, I'd let you discover it for yourself, after all - You Are Here:

1. The Long Tail
The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article^[1] to describe the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix where a large number of unique items are sold in relatively small quantities.

2. www.poptech.com/
A network of remarkable people, extraordinary conferences, powerful ideas and innovative projects that are changing the world

3. Firefox 3 gets 8 million downloads in 24 hours.
That's a pretty big deal

4.The Vatican Bans Filming of "Angels & Demons"
Personally, I think that their dresses are on too tight. Oh well, it's not like Hollywood's never used a set before.

5. Airline pilot speaks his mind
Welcome aboard. Our flying time this afternoon, not counting ground delays and holding patterns, will be two hours and thirty minutes. Before we take off, I would like to apologize on behalf of this and every airline for the hassle you just endured at the security checkpoint....

6. World's Smallest Projector
I like being able to throw stuff on walls and not having to clean up

7. www.Rememberthemilk.com
Uber cool reminder service that keeps me on my toes and plugs into google calendar. Bliss

8. Has video killed the blogging star?
YouTube looks to loosen up it's video rules. What does this mean for bloggers?

It was all Colin's fault, or at least I've decided to make it his fault. During the Nomadic Marketing course our group was asked to outline a brief online marketing strategy for getting our client into the internet limelight. Obviously, blogging formed a part of our strategy and a question that Colin Daniels publisher of The Times Online) put to us was whether we would let our contributing bloggers earn money by blogging about us. Not surprisingly, many of us answered no. It seems to be accepted that bloggers do what they do for the love of it and not for the money. Sure, some bloggers do make money from sponsors or Adsense, but for the average blogger, their corner of the net is not bringing in big bucks. SocialSpark, a new blogger marketing site looks set to change all that...


SocialSpark is a Marketing Network that connects advertisers and bloggers through an online advertising marketplace. Advertisers are able to target blogs based on conversational topics and make cash sponsorship offers to the bloggers who publish them. Bloggers can make money by blogging by either placing display advertisements on their blog or by writing sponsored content. At first glance, the site operates much like an online affiliate program which promotes a specific advertisers brand by encouraging bloggers to do write about products. Once a blogger has written his or her post, this post must first be approved by the SocialSpark team before the blogger gets paid. Bloggers are presented with a host of 'opportunities' that they can apply for. Each opportunity has a list of criteria that the applicant needs to meet first, as well as the amount that the blogger will earn should their application be successful.

The first flag that was raised when I'd grasped the concept of the system was that there would be a major conflict of interests when it came down to the content that bloggers were publishing. SocialSpark has addressed this by insisting that all posts are first approved by them and that bloggers display a Social Spark badge that shows the post in question was specifically drafted for Social Spark and that it was a paid advertisement.



The SS team also insist that bloggers mention their code of contact, which stipulates that SocialSpark is 100% auditable in post disclosure, that they strive for 100% transparency, are in search of 100% real opinions and very importantly for many blogger is that they are 100% search engine friendly.

I've just signed up for the service to give it a test run, and if it looks like I could actually make money blogging then I'll be the brand's biggest evangelist. With clients ranging from Reader's Digest to VO5 already latching on to the concept, it looks like the service is set to take of in the near future.

SocialSpark is currently still in Beta, so I guess a few kinks in the system are to be expected but from what I've seen, the service is well thought out and the platform well designed. Izea, the folks behind the excellent Zookoda blogger mailing service are the brains responsible for developing the paid blogging service, and on those grounds alone I'm tempted to be optimistic about the service (If you're looking for a free mailing service for your blog, then be sure to check out Zookoda asap)


Once I've had some more time to play with the platform, I'll drop another post here letting you know what it's like from a blogger's perspective and later from that of an advertiser. Till then, keep on keeping on.

Lester Hein

Here's VK in all his seminal glory as he Vernon's the Koekemoer out of this Nandos ad. The only thing that I keep wondering, is whether that's really Chuck Norris!




I'm not sure that this makes me want to run out and buy a Nandos Double Thigh burger, but full marks to Nandos for taking the plunge, even if they weren't first to do it.