I'm The Boss @ netmobs, past CEO of b5media, author of Blog Marketing and a hardcore Canadian
Apr 25 2006
I’m taking tomorrow and Thursday off. These’ll actually be my first days off in over a month. I don’t actually remember the last real “day off” (defined as anything less than 3-4 hours of work) I had. It might have been since February, really. Sad. Pathetic. I need to find more balance.
So, I’m totally unplugging the next 2 days. No cell. No email. No IM. Well, probably some Xbox Live, but besides that NOTHING 
Apr 24 2006
Good times! As per the post by Jeff and Thomas, the sale is official!
Here’s a bit from their communication to the community:
We are pleased to announce that BlogExplosion has been sold to Stephen Sartain and a group of private investors this weekend. We had competitive bids all through last week and finally was decided on Saturday afternoon.
Stephen has bought two sites from us previously with great results and has extensive experience running sites like BlogExplosion. Our final closing price was in the six figures and well beyond our minimum bid of $100,000. We also want to extend a huge thanks to Jeremy Wright for doing an amazing job brokering the sale of BlogExplosion for us.
Yep. My first six figure sale. Thanks to the team that helped out, specifically Ingrid Diaz for the incredible help putting together a kickass buyer’s package PDF in under 24 hours. I’m really, really happy for the team. Of course you always want to see a client get more, more, more, but this is a really good deal with someone the entire team is happy with.
All around, a great little project. I know I said this last time, but I have no plans on making brokering sales a full-time or even regular activity. As with The Blog Herald’s sale, it was mainly helping out folk who weren’t getting the kind of offer they deserved. And, while I’m sure that’s actually the norm, I do have my own little company to run (along with Shai, Duncan and Darren) and will be staying away from much of this kind of stuff for at least the next few months.
Unless someone wants me to give me a million dollars to sell a site
Apr 24 2006
The first in my series of articles for InformIT on “new breeds” of applications is now live. It’s all about the new breed of team apps, and figuring out which ones work best for you. Specifically, the article covers technologies like Central Desktop, Basecamp, CalendarHub, Remember the Milk, etc.
It was an interesting article to write, and hopefully it’ll be helpful to groups (like ours) that are either in different physical locations or who simply want simple tools to solve simple problems.
Apr 14 2006
I’ll admit, I often get some odd comments. Most of them I approve. Some I don’t, because they’re attackful or don’t contribute to the conversation. This one was so classic that while I didn’t approve it, I wanted to save it for posterity’s sake as the single best comment I have ever received. Enjoy!
bloggers r lamers. go get a life. nobody wants to read ur damn daily routine.. screw u jeremy!!! y did u steal my gf away/??? did i rape ur sista???? i didnt touch her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was alvin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apr 12 2006
Ever just have one of those experiences? Forgive the vent, but I’ve just got to. I had to buy 2 tickets online today, one for myself and one for my mother in law. Had to do it via aircanada.com, since they’ve got a seat sale on that they aren’t passing on to their industry partners like Expedia.ca.
Well, it’s now been about 2 hours of trying to spend my money with them. I got my ticket booked, but no luck on the second ticket. Here’s the process I had to go through to get my ticket booked:
1. Input all info
2. Input payment info
3. Click buy
4. Get routed back to payment info screen
5. Call support
6. Have to go into my profile and add my credit card manually
7. Go back through 1-3
8. Get routed back to payment info screen
9. Support gets me to manually enter my CC
10. Presto, it works!
So, I had to enter my credit card 3 times. And even though on step 7 the card I entered (and bought with) was the one I’d entered in step 6 (which was actually a 5 step process, but anyways), it still didn’t work. Craziness. But, I was okay. It was only about 20 minutes. Not ideal, but not stupid. Just vaguely annoying.
Then I had to purchase my mother in law’s ticket. I was prepped, though, so I went through the entire process (replete with error 4613’s) as instructed in about 10 minutes. Except that this time I got past the buy stage, had to enter my Visa Verified info AND THEN get pushed back to the main payment page.
So I call support. And do the whole thing over again. It’s now been 45 minutes trying to purchase this ticket. But no go. They’re going to transfer me to sales. Reason I didn’t call sales in the first place? Because you have to pay a 20-40$ surcharge for calling them when you could have used the website. I ask if, since I TRIED to use the website this fee will be waived. Apparently not.
Now, I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t have written about this until this point. Mistakes happen, no biggie. I mean, I’m annoyed but I understand.
However, so that they can diagnose the problem, the support tech asks for some “basic information”. The basic information. Some of it’s basic. Some of it, like my credit card number, so they can store it in plain text in the support ticket.
It’s at that point that I lost it. She can’t file the ticket without my credit card number.
Now I don’t mind giving companies my CC if I have a reasonable expectation of privacy on it. Y’know, encryption, auditing, that kind of thing. But for Air Canada to need my details on a SUPPORT ticket?
Bleh. Yeah, so maybe some of the AC employees who read Ensight can explain this.
Oh, finally got through to sales. He says they waive the fee when it’s coming from a support call. Cool. Took all of 5 minutes to book it. Nice guy too.
Anyways, I’m not really pissed. I’m just a little… awed that a company like AirCanada would require / allow this to happen. Seems like abuse just waiting to happen to me.
Apr 11 2006
Today was my favorite day of the month. Blogger pay day at b5media! What an incredible amount of fun! It took about 2 hours to get all the emails and reports sent out, and then to send out the PayPal payments. I still need to send cheques, wire transfers and Xoom payments, but PayPal is so fun.
Sure, it’s alarming to see the balance go from 8K to 300$ in just 20 minutes, but it’s such a rush to know that we’re helping so many bloggers find their dreams. We had another blogger quit their full time job this month. So. Much. Fun. I can’t believe I’ll actually one day get paid for doing this
It’ll be even more fun next month, since we signed on a bunch of new advertisers in March/April, and those payments will start hitting bloggers next month.
I love this job!
Apr 10 2006
Well, it looks like my post last week on the mesh forum contained a tidbit of gossip. According to it, b5media will soon announce that we’re going after funding, or so says Blog Network Watch.
Several folk have weighed in on this, including Blog Herald, Paul Montgomery and alarm:clock.
Just to repeat, we haven’t announced anything. So I’m not going to talk about this to any degree in the public space. First, if you do a search of the Ensight archives you’ll find a wealth of info on my thoughts on the VC world. Those stand true today. In short, I look at VC as a partnership between the business and the funding partners (be they VC, angel, corporate or mentor capital – or a mixture of all 4). You share the risk. You share the reward. You look to build something important.
So, yes, in the last few weeks 2 key opportunities have come our way. Opportunities that we’ve decided to open the door to, to see what’ll happen. We’re not going to put the business on hold. We are not going to chat the way we do business day to day. Yes, we’re looking at the funding options available to us (including early stage, obviously) in order to see what makes sense for our bloggers, readers, partners and the future of the industry.
But, that’s all we’ll say. And, even when we do close a round, all we’ll say is who our partners in the endeavour are. We won’t talk about what we’ll use the money for, new tech we’ll be devel0ping or new hires we’re hoping to make.
All of those discussion are internal to b5media and will stay that way. I appreciate that everyone wants to know all the details and that everyone has an opinion. If I was on the outside of this I’m sure I’d have more than a few myself. Opinions are great, feel free to express them. We’ll take every opinion we hear into account because, let’s face it, 20 million heads are better than 4.
But we still won’t play this out in the public arena. In fact, this is likely the last post you’ll see on the matter until we do close a round of funding, if we do. We’d be happy just to keep on keeping on, building a great business with an inspiring team. Have a great week everyone
Apr 05 2006
They’d better start selling Windows. Seriously, cash cow for them. You can now dual-boot into XP thanks to Apple’s recently announced Boot Camp.
Hell, I’d consider buying a Mac, never using the Mac features, and just using it as an XP laptop. The battery life on them is fantastic.
So yeah, sell XP / Vista, Apple. I dare ya
Apr 05 2006
Alright, it looks like I’ll be in Toronto for a chunk of May. Realistically, probably from the 5th or so until about the 20th or so. I’ll be in town for two specific events, Mesh. But I’ll also be there for a venture capital event that isn’t 100% official yet. Lots of time to meet, lots of time to socialize, lots of time to work. Should be a great trip, if you want to hook up 
Apr 05 2006
The schedule for mesh in Toronto next month has been finalized. It’s looking really good. Here are the sessions that are already grabbing my attention, and those that aren’t:
Mark Evans chatting with Om Malik: C’mon, it’s Om! I love hearing Om!
Panel: Are Bloggers Journalists?: I’ve done similar panels about 8 times in the last 2 years. Fascinating question, mainly because of how the answer has evolved over the last 2 years!
Panel: The Future of Newspapers: I’m particularly interested in this, because I believe community-driven media, like blogs and blog networks, are soon going to become a part of the MSM mix.
Keynote: Venture Capital & Web 2.0: b5media is about to announce we’re going after funding. This is a great session, with a fantastically knowledgeable pair of guys.
Panel: Does Web 2.0 Need VC’s?: Again, we’re about to announce our funding run, so this is huge. Plus, I’ve tried to stay actively involved in this conversation from an entrepreneur’s standpoint.
Panel: Corporate Blogs, How and Why: I’m on this panel. I’d damned well better be interested. Plus, Debbie Weil and I really, really don’t see eye to eye on some of this stuff so it could be a good conversation
Workshop: Startup Benefits and Pitfalls: Duh.
Not so interested in? Steve Rubel. I’ve heard him half a dozen times. I’ll be there, to support the community, but I’m not looking forward to a particularly inspiring speech.
I am looking forward to seeing David Carter again, it’s been awhile, to meeting folk like Om, Scott Karp, Tris (again), Tara Hunt, Paul Kedrosky, Jason Fried, Sean Wise and many many others. This is one of those “the conference isn’t long enough, please, somebody, organize some great pre and post-conference events!” type things.
Comments Off