Great entry in the Daily Drucker today! Here is a snippet:

Each institution will be the stronger the more clearly it defines its objectives. It will be more effective the more yardsticks and measurements there are against which its performance can be appraised. It will be more legitimate the more strictly it bases authority on justification by performance. "By their fruits ye shall know them" -- this might well be the fundamental constitutional principle of the new pluralist society of institutions.

Meaning: organizations, institutions, indeed, individuals, will be known by their "fruits" -- not their marketing campaign, their PR wizards, or their shareholder rhetoric. But the interesting thing is the commentary on organizational effectiveness. Clearly defined objectives. Measurements and yardsticks in place to evaluate the effectiveness of meeting objectives. And, most interestingly, basing authority on justification by performance.

This whole thing is damned applicable to personal effectiveness as well!

Yesterday Dan commented to my post about me questioning the threat that a site like Pricegrabber.com has for JetSet. He wrote:

I think your missing a potential value add to JSJ... part of the aggregation of products/prices is quantifying the *quality* of goods. So 50% off of a Yugo isn't nearly as significant as 25% off a Z4... right!

Perhaps work some quality metrics into your aggregation algorithm (ie. Andrew's brain)... ala customer feedback on Amazon or editorial reviews ala C|Net...

...what if the consumer really doesn't know which of those two golf balls is good.... what if you had a stat like "Precept Laddies... best selling ball in 2002"

This is the great stuff I've come to expect from Dan. He's right, there is a lot of room for selection on the site, which is something that aggregation sites like PG just don't do. Not only that, having links to evaluate products, or especially having those embedded "metrics" or yardsicks measuring value of the deal would be awesome!

As an extension of this, I have wanted to use news and other popular sites as a "driver" of what gets put up on JetSet....I think I have mentioned it before, but if AskMen.com puts up a new article about cashmere sweaters, post a bunch of cashmere sweaters. Likewise, when sites release their retail stats (best selling ball in 2002) I should see that as a workdriver to post up about that stuff. Popular isn't popular for nothing -- it's what people are buying, Googling, and researching.

Thanks for the good ideas Dan!

From Curt Rosengren's The Occupational Adventure blog:

People over 65 were asked, 'If you could live your life over, what would you do differently?' They said three things: 'I'd take time to stop and ask the big questions. I'd be more courageous and take more risks in work and love. I'd try to live with purpose--to make adifference.'

I'm 27, and when I think of this, I immediately think "What am I doing to NOT answer the same way when I'm 65?" In other words, am I acting now such that I won't regret not taking more risks? Lots of food for thought behind this one...

I haven't gained traction on Jetset yet...the posting aspect yet. I'm still gathering sources. Frankly, I'm a little scared after reading an interview in BusinessWeek with the CEO of PriceGrabber.com. I'm thinking, how am I supposed to pick and choose "deals" on the web when anybody could just surf to PriceGrabber, type in what they want, and find the very best deal on the web? Regardless of whether I'm an affiliate with them or not!?

On the other hand, I feel as though there is opportunity here, and I've brainstormed out some ideas to kick start it. And secondly, this is a business model that is working for people on the web! There are successful affiliate models out there that work. Just gotta keep the faith I guess.

BTW, Joi Ito is one of the coolest guys on the planet!

My day job company has numerous "guiding principles" that are engrained in the heads of all employees on a regular basis. They truely represent the way this company does business, so much so, that I have never seen a company more true to its principles than this one, which will remain nameless.

I was thinking what my guiding principles are for Jetset Johnny, and while I don't have a mission statement or anything like that at this point, I do have an overall growth strategy that looks something like this:

1. Flood site with content
2. Content brings customers
3. Customer bring money

No, this doesn't involve a marketing plan, customer retention scheme, brand awareness compaign, etc. All it tells me is that content is king, and at this point, that's what I'm operating on. Very soon, within the next few days, comes the arduous task of starting to update the site every day with massive amounts of hand-picked content that is relevent and timely.

My aggregation system outlined last post was started last night. I compiled a document of all my affiliates, and some other sources as well. I did not get farther than that because my home computer is on the verge of death. But here's something cool that will really help me out with JetSet.

Tabbrowser Extensions is a plugin for FireFox that allows you to supercharge the way tabs work in the browser. It adds all sorts of crazy functionality to the tabs feature, way too much to go into here, but one particularly cool feature is the ability to save off tab instances. So you can open up numerous tabs, then "save" all of them in an instance. Later, you can open that instance, and all the tabs will open up to where they were saved. A friend of mine immediately thought: morning tabs, news tabs, blog tabs, etc. I'm thinking:

Basic tab set: Gmail, LinkShare.com, CJ.com, JetSet web page, Startup! (this blog), and Typepad > all of this gets me to that base state where I can check the web site, check my blog, check my stats of affiliates, etc.

Typic tab sets: For each category on JetSet (Gadgets, Travel, Clothing, Accessories, Fitness, Services, etc...) I will compile a list of the sources I mentioned last post -- my affiliates in those categories, informational sources, and other sites that will help me find information for that topic. When I want to post a deal on Sports, I have all the golf / sporting sites come up. Travel? Same thing. Easily groups my content sources together.

At any rate, a nice way of optimizing that systematic approach to information aggregation I spoke of earlier.

Jetset Johnny is all about aggregating content already available on the internet. With over 30 affiliates to manage right now, and roughly 10 more in the pipeline, I need a consistent, and reliable way to aggregate the content from those affiliates, and other sources, to bring readers of the site relevent, timely, and cool opportunities to purchase things at discounted prices.

Tonight is when I plan out the best way to do that. Here is my approach:

1. List all the content sources by category. So far I have three categories of information sources
a. Paying affiliate retailers
b. Non-paying retailers my readers deserve to be referenced to because they have great deals
c. Informational sources such as MensFitness.com and AskMen.com, which will provide timely and important cue's for me to find content for.

(regarding the last item, think of it as an idea of where and when to post certain things. Every day Overstock may have thousands of items on sale, but if AskMen just posts an article saying that cashmere is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I could ride the fact that 5 million people just read that article that month and may garner more interest if I'm "in line" with popular informational sources)

2. Develop the best way to get updates from my sources. Informational sources might best be delievered through RSS, same as sales for some sites, while some others may not have RSS and will require a bookmark and a manual visit. Which pages to start on? A sale page? Certainly try and shave off having to start from the main page every time. Try and "bulk together" sources (aggregate things through a single RSS reader), or streamline visiting. Create saved tab sessions for Firefox so I can open several simultaneously.

3. Develop an agenda for reviewing the content. A routine. For example, I should probably review most of the sites every day, including the RSS (which will be more frequently). But do I want to have weekly features? Biweekly features? Things I cover every month? I think it might be cool to have a mid-week roudup, cheapest on the net, what's hot, or some such things, regularly occurring.

4. Be systematic. One of the things I have had a hard time with (for the prior Jetset, and Modster before it) is that there is a lot of junk content out there. At any given day, between Amazon, Dell, Buy.com, Overstock, and then more niche retailers, you know how many great bargains are out there?! And how do you pick the most relevent for any particular day? It's easy to get swamped, to be random, and post some of that junk. So I need a reliable system for figuring out what to post and how. That's why I like the idea of the weekly features, because it gives a framework for what to post. The other thing about timeliness is important because I want to provide content relevent to, say, holidays. A couple of weeks before Valentines day, post up great bargains on flower delivery and chocolates.

We'll see how the planning goes tonight.

Many affiliates literally cruise your site and make sure you "qualify" to be an affiliate based on status of the site and the current content you have up. I have been turned down for several affiliate programs, probably because my site is new, looked sucky, or couldn't be found by a search engine. This is what my Gmail account looked like this morning based on the signups I did last night -- LOTSA new content!

Click to open in a new window:

Representing the new direction of the site, that is, towards a well-rounded man, I have signed up for approximately 25 new affiliates. This will provide me content for everything I can think of to post, and find the best deals for everything from 1-800-Flowers to Dell to Delta Airlines. The more I think about it, the better this sounds -- providing timely deals and bargains on things that guys need and want. For example, a week before "Administrative Professional's (Secretary's) Day", providing links to flower delivery services online and/or Roses.com. Man...I should have been all over MacWorld this week! LinkShare.com has iTunes and the Apple Store available as affiliates...

Well, I have 22 minutes more to find some new content. Time to get back to work.

Well after a week of not checking, it seems I have made my first sale on JetSet!! Someone bought almost $400 of stuff on Overstock.com, and I made $11 from it. YES.

The interesting thing was I had an Overstock banner on there for a few weeks, and it was getting a lot of hits, but I took it down and replaced it with more "designer" banners and stuff, thinking that I wanted to stick with the up-scale names that people recognize. Apparently this is not what my users wanted, though, because Overstock still gets the most click throughs. Live and learn....and link to more Overstock! :-)