Mediaboss Marketing

Regular readers of John Chow dot Com know about the plethora of resources and tips on this site. I have been a fan of Johns since the beginning and I am happy to say I have gotten to know him on a personal level the past two years as well. While John is known as the blogger who makes money online by telling people how he makes money online, I am known as the blogger who makes money online by eating hot dogs online. Another big fan of Johns is Kirk Taylor, in fact, Kirk and I met through John. We were both Gold Pass recipients in Johns Affiliate Summit contest for ASW 2011. We have kept an open channel of online correspondence over the past two years and this year, at Affiliate Summit West 2012, we solidified our friendship and became business partners.

Both Kirk and I have entrepreneurial backgrounds, albeit in different industries, but we share the passion of the pursuit. We both like creating things out of nothing to create a business. After Affiliate Summit, Kirk started a website called The Shark Tank Blog. He noticed that posts about the Shark Tank TV show were getting a lot of page views and commentary on his personal site, so he spun it into a site based solely on the show. The site grew at a rapid pace due to the shows growing popularity and Kirks relentless SEO work in the WordPress platform. Before long, he realized he needed some help to keep the site moving forward, so he reached out to me.

Now both Kirk and I have similar skill sets. We can both build a WordPress site, SEO it up and create content, but within those skill sets are different levels of skill. Kirk is a whiz at SEO and I am a prolific writer. We realized that these are complementary skills for creating a high traffic website, so we decided to team up and go into business together with The Shark Tank Blog being our first joint venture. The site has blown up. We have upgraded our server capacity twice in a month due to the traffic spikes on show nights. We are ranking above the fold for many keywords- sometimes even higher than the ABC site about the show.

Teaming up with another blogger with complementary skills is a good formula for success, particularly if you need to build a site out quickly. Some people will outsource portions of building out a site, but we didnt need to because we have all the skills needed to be successful between the two of us. My typical day working on the Shark Tank Blog has me writing two to four posts a day, interviewing people who have appeared on the show, soliciting advertising sales, and assisting Kirk with SEO duties. Kirk spends his day mired in Meta descriptions and code while writing the occasional post and double checking the SEO on my posts prior to publication. There is a synergy here that is working.

Other bloggers can learn from this. I know how hard it is to do everything for a website; it is an overwhelming task at times (especially when you consider I run about a dozen sites). Often times, the lack of time can lead to undone tasks which can ultimately cost you in traffic, readership, and MONEY. Once a sites income justifies outsourcing, then you can take some burden off yourself, but up until that point, its comforting to know you have back-up.

I also know about leveraging traditional media as a means for boosting traffic. As the lines between traditional media (i.e. TV, Newspapers) blur in the online world, it has become more common for traditional media to reach out to expert bloggers for material and partnerships. While we dont have a partnership with ABC, we do, in a sense, partner with the entrepreneurs who appear on the show. We give them a platform to speak to fans and a channel to get their marketing message out. What more targeted place to get a marketing message to people who are fans of Shark Tank than a fan blog- especially a fan blog that ranks high for the keywords the entrepreneurs are trying to rank for?

I am a firm believer in spending as little as possible to get a website going, so having a like minded business partner is a fantastic way to grow a business. Through working together the past two months, Kirk and I have come up with other online projects we are embarking on. The success of our initial project together insures we will be able to hire people to assist with the build out of new sites.

So if you are struggling with putting it all together while building your online empire, you may want to consider teaming up with another blogger with complementary skills. You never know where you will find new team members either; it could even be in the comments section of JohnChow.com!

Rob Merlino is the Hotdogman and Kirk Taylor is The Serial Entrepreneur. They have started a business together creating niche sites and building websites for small businesses. They met on John Chow dot Com!

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How To Team Up for Blogging Success

Newspaper publishers in Missouri could have to pay more to buy paper, ink and other supplies under a measure endorsed Wednesday by a House panel.

On a 7-5 vote, the House Tax Reform Committee backed a proposal to eliminate sales tax exemptions on newspaper equipment in order to help fund state medical subsidies for people who are blind. The measure now goes to the full House.

The result is that newspaper companies would have to pay sales tax both on the supplies used to produce their paper and on the retail sale of the paper a double hit not applied to most manufacturers.

The House is debating a budget this week that would eliminate a $30 million program that provides medical care to about 2,800 blind people and instead set aside $6 million for a slimmed-down aid program. Some House members want to use the money saved from those program cuts to reduce cuts to the states public colleges and universities.

A financial estimate included with the newspaper legislation approved Wednesday projects that bill could generate up to $4.2 million of additional money for state aid to the blind.

House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey, who sponsored the measure, said newspapers should give up their tax exemptions because some editorial boards have called on lawmakers to eliminate tax breaks as a way of balancing the budget.

The fact that they receive this corporate welfare while advocating for the end of it for others is a bit hypocritical, said Silvey, R-Kansas City.

Silvey also said he does not think eliminating the tax exemptions would interfere with a newspapers right to press freedom.

To say your medium is so unique that it needs a tax subsidy or its infringement on First Amendment rights, I think is just illogical, he said. Its not their right to have a sustainable business model.

To calculate how much tax revenue the legislation could generate for aid to the blind, legislative analysts estimated the total annual revenue of the newspaper industry and estimated how much of the revenue is spent on newspaper supplies. The fiscal estimate projects that revenue for newspapers sold in the state totals between about $120 million $208 million each year. The estimate cites an annual report filed by the New York Times Co. for 2011 that said costs for raw materials and other costs are equal to 17 percent to 50 percent of the newspapers revenue.

Read more:
House panel backs end to newspaper tax breaks

Mar 21 2012

More than 300 staff at the BBC avoid paying income tax, an MP has revealed.

Tory MP David Mowat, who represents Warrington South, said he discovered 320 "non-talent based" employees earning more than 50,000 avoided income tax.

Mr Mowat said it was "not acceptable", adding it was the BBC's Newsnight programme which had sparked the row about senior civil servants avoiding tax when it revealed head of the Student Loans Company Ed Lester had been paid via a company.

He told the Commons: "Tax avoidance matters are at the heart of this thing about us all being in this together.

"I sent a Freedom of Information request to the BBC to ask them how many employees they had who were not having tax deducted at source.

"The answer is that they have 320 non-talent based (staff), so this is administration employees, earning more than 50,000 a year but (for whom) PAYE and National Insurance is not deducted at source.

"I would ask my own frontbench, who are conducting a review across the whole of Government in terms of making sure this isn't happening but which explicitly excludes the BBC, to reconsider that."

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UK & World News: 300 BBC staff 'avoid income tax'

More than 300 staff at the BBC avoid paying income tax, an MP has revealed.

Tory MP David Mowat, who represents Warrington South, said he discovered 320 "non-talent based" employees earning more than 50,000 avoided income tax.

Mr Mowat said it was "not acceptable", adding it was the BBC's Newsnight programme which had sparked the row about senior civil servants avoiding tax when it revealed head of the Student Loans Company Ed Lester had been paid via a company.

He told the Commons: "Tax avoidance matters are at the heart of this thing about us all being in this together.

"I sent a Freedom of Information request to the BBC to ask them how many employees they had who were not having tax deducted at source.

"The answer is that they have 320 non-talent based (staff), so this is administration employees, earning more than 50,000 a year but (for whom) PAYE and National Insurance is not deducted at source.

"I would ask my own frontbench, who are conducting a review across the whole of Government in terms of making sure this isn't happening but which explicitly excludes the BBC, to reconsider that."

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300 BBC staff 'avoid income tax'

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Newspaper publishers in Missouri could have to pay more to buy paper, ink and other supplies under a measure endorsed Wednesday by a House panel.

On a 7-5 vote, the House Tax Reform Committee backed a proposal to eliminate sales tax exemptions on newspaper equipment in order to help fund state medical subsidies for people who are blind. The measure now goes to the full House.

The House is debating a budget this week that would eliminate a $30 million program that provides medical care to about 2,800 blind people and instead set aside $6 million for a slimmed-down aid program. Some House members want to use the money saved from those program cuts to reduce cuts to the state's public colleges and universities.

A financial estimate included with the legislation approved Wednesday projects that bill could generate up to $4.2 million of additional money for state aid to the blind.

House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey, who sponsored the measure, said newspapers should give up their tax exemptions because some editorial boards have called on lawmakers to eliminate tax breaks as a way of balancing the budget.

"The fact that they receive this corporate welfare while advocating for the end of it for others is a bit hypocritical," said Silvey, R-Kansas City.

Silvey also said he does not think eliminating the tax exemptions would interfere with a newspaper's right to press freedom.

"To say your medium is so unique that it needs a tax subsidy or it's infringement on First Amendment rights, I think is just illogical," he said. "It's not their right to have a sustainable business model."

To calculate how much tax revenue the legislation could generate for aid to the blind, legislative analysts estimated the total annual revenue of the newspaper industry and estimated how much of the revenue is spent on newspaper supplies. The fiscal estimate projects that revenue for newspapers sold in the state totals between about $120 million $208 million each year. The estimate cites an annual report filed by the New York Times Co. for 2011 that said costs for "raw materials" and "other costs" are equal to 17 percent to 50 percent of the newspaper's revenue.

Missouri lawmakers codified the sales tax exemption for newspaper supplies in 1998, two years after the state Supreme Court ruled that computers used for newspaper pagination could not be taxed because pagination is part of the manufacturing a newspaper.

Read more:
Mo. House panel backs end to newspaper tax breaks