little Venice & Carnaval

I thought I could share with you one of my prefered spots in London: little venice. I went there last sunday, and brought some photos back for this blog.

Very quiet atmosphere, the perfect place to enjoy a delicious brunch while overlooking the canal, and pondering on how lucky these people are to have inherited these big houses (who can afford them nowaday!!).

And if you really want to live at little venice, well there is still the possibility to buy a charming boat such as this one :

We then headed up to the carnaval, and left calm for tempest. Carnaval is fun for ... 1/2 hour. And then you are trapped in the crowd, and wherever you go, you have the same crowd, compact, screaming! The music is just unbearable after a while, but you can not just take the door and grab some fresh air : there is no exit -



So, you have to enjoy, you are forced to enjoy, until eventually you can find your way out ...

Retrospectively, it was not that bad, and it is amazing to see the diversity of shameless burger king generation who doesn't mind dancing in bikini in front of a 1 Million people crowd. amazing.

Google Auto Bidder

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Click Here to see an example

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I have developed a small application (php) to manage adwords bids for me. Here is how it works :

1) You need file_db.class.php : Google provides files in csv format - this class gives you access to these files, and allows you to manipulate the data.
2) You need to generate a specific report from Google :
Keyword Maximum CPC Impressions CTR Cost Avg Position Conversions Total Value Avg Value
(Just go in custom reports, and select the fieldsabove - set it up to be sent everyday to you (You just have to save it then on your server, in the specific directory).

Note : Google told me that we should soon have direct ftp access for reports available to anyone (not only agencies).
3) You need to ask google to send you a report ** on all the campaigns setup in your account (service avaialble only for premium accounts).

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All you need to do then is to create a class which will suggest bids for you, and then replace the existing bids with the suggested one in the report ** sent by google.

An example of algorithm (roi = [Net commission + Net Adsense / Cost], cpc=bid for the specific keyword, cost = cost of the specific keyword, rank = rank of the specific keyword):
Note: : I run the report daily over the last 30 days. Some refinement could be done at this level to run different advisers (one over 1 month, one over 1 week, one over the last 2 days) to add some weight on the changes...

function Adviser($roi, $cpc, $cost, $rank)
{
if ($cost == 0)
{
if ($rank>8 && $cpc<$this->maxBid)
$cpc = $cpc+0.01;

} elseif ($roi<0.5){ cpc =" $this-">minBid;

} elseif ($roi<0.9){>$this->minBid)
$cpc = $cpc - 0.01;

} elseif ($rank > 3){
if ($rank < cpc =" $cpc+0.01;" cpc =" $cpc+0.02;" cpc =" $cpc+0.03;">

to be even more accurate in your ROI calculation, I would advise you to export your adsense stats too (keywords clicks). You can easlily get these figures with scripts such as this one.

If you have got any question, please click here

I think that it is important to let the bid automators open source since a bid automator needs to be tuned according marketing segment, and products types.

mum in the tube

My parents have paid a little visit to london - obviously, it has been raining during all their stay...

What is astonishing for french people visiting London?

• people eating in the street
• huge contrast of architecture and standard of living between areas very close to each others
• people dressed badly in general
• stunning cars everywhere
• how mixed the crowd is.
• how high the prices are behind the estate agents windows!
• how calm the streets are (except leicester square obviously ..)
• how badly maintained the tube is :

Monsieur, my ticket is stuck!

problem with a third part designer?

We have just been trough hell with a third art design - she has not been productive, and we have ended up paying £400 for the design of a basic home page.

Initial budget was £800, and things were getting worse!

Issue:
1) The client seemed never happy about her work, and she became pissed off, having to send deliverables after deliverables while the client kept changing his mind all the time.
2) She eventually charged £400 for a single template - The client complaned that she never got it right, never following his indications, etc ....

Analysis:
Well, I had not done my duty - project management ... Never assume that a third part will be professionnal enough to handle his own stuff well with the client. You have still to coordinate, and to make sure that a process is respected (otherwise, like here, things get worse and worse, issues become individual issues, and communication is then impossible.

Solution:
Pay a lot of attention to project management - it is very important, even for small teams or small projects. Here is a template I have used to address the issue with the designer, and to sort it out :

Id	Title	Description	Deliverable 1	Reviewed	Second Deliverable	Status
1	T1	Desc 1	01/01/2003	03/01/2003	07/01/2003	Del 1
2	T2	Desc 2	04/01/2003	09/01/2003	14/01/2003	New

TITLE: Title of the page
Status: Status of the page
Description: Description of the specific page
Deliverable: Date expected to receive the first template(s) from the designer.
Reviewed: Date expected to receive the feedback from the client.
Second Deliverable: Date expected to receive the fixes (along with PSD) - creative considered as signed off.

Status : New Delivered Reviewed Signed Off

BlogShares.com

I did a quick site:www.jazar.net/galide in google this morning, and what do I find? This brilliant website Blogshare linking to this blog.

The idea is just brilliant. It measures the popularity of your website, and assign a value to your blog according to its popularity :
"
BlogShares is a simulated, fantasy stock market for weblogs where players invest fictional money to buy stocks and bonds in an artificial economy where attention is the commodity and weblogs are the companies. Weblogs, or blogs for short, are valued by their incoming links from other known blogs. In effect, links become the business deals in the simulation and players speculate on the fortunes of thousands of blogs by buying and selling shares. A whole host of options exist for advanced play including gifting shares, leveraged buy-outs, stock splits, additional share issues, market and player bonds
"

Looks like the guy has built his own spider for the purpose of this website (an other brilliant idea!).

This website rocks, and I think that we will soon hear about it ...

meme

I've lost track of who started this meme, but I've seen it all over the place. So what the hell, I'll play along:

1- Grab the nearest book.
2- Open the book to page 23.
3- Find the fifth sentence.
4- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

From "Sun Tzu - Strategies for Marketing" (Auth: Gerald A. Michaelson):
"Copying misses the subtleties that are so important to success."

Well, .... no comment!!