Click Here to Order
Author: Joel Comm
While the general public is familiar with the larger Internet companies such as Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon, very few are aware that small business is thriving online like never before, especially in the realm of information products. Click Here creates an entertaining and instructive narrative that provides an in-depth look at the unintentionally underground movement known as Infoproduct marketing, and the people who have profited and succeeded in the industry.
Table of Contents:
Dedication viiForeword Mark Joyner ix
Preface: The Unintentional Underground xiii
Working without a 'Net: When the Superhighway Was a Cowpath 1
Dreamers and Geeks 4
ARPAnet 7
Net Wars 8
From Net to Web 9
The Last Component 10
The Stage is Set 13
A Way With Words: The Write Stuff 17
Here Be Monsters 20
Brave New World 24
Trading Places 28
Classified Information 30
The Prospecters 33
On the Shoulders of Giants 36
Between the Lines: Commercial Zone 45
Do As I Say, Not As I Did 51
A Banner Year 54
The "baby announcement" of the World Wide Web 56
Gimme Fever 63
Business Class 65
Enclose {dollar} 1.25 plus 50[cent] for shipping and handling 70
The Unknown Copywriter 76
Do you copy? 80
Naming Names: Lists, Leads and the Curse of Spam 89
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam! 98
Winging It 102
Big Brother Meets Madison Avenue 115
Share the Wealth: You Click My Site, I'll Click Yours 119
Traffic Jam 123
How Many Clicks from Here to Success? 128
All in the Family 132
Thank You, Mary Alice 134
AdWord-tising 139
AdSense and Sensibility 146
Stage Coach: "Showing Off," from Seminars to Workshops 151
First, Foremost and Famousest 159
When the Student is Ready... 165
Enter Your Code and Press # to Connect 170
Sittin' Pretty 178
Pioneer 2.0 186
Focus Group 191
Show & Tell 196
Rhyme & Reason: Focus Your Sites 207
Abracadabra: Making Millions Appear 212
Think Big 217
Renaissance Man 221
Nitches and Neeshes 227
The More Things Change...: Milestones and Roadsigns 241
Work at Home in Your Underwear 243
Change or Die 248
Beginnings, Middles, and Endings 260
Social Truth: Don't Take My Word for It 265
Crystal Ball 275
Directory of Internet Marketers 281
Index 287
Book review: Frommers Italy 2009 or Searching for Whitopia
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Author: Michael Lewis
The Oakland Athletics have a secret: a winning baseball team is made, not bought.In major league baseball the biggest wallet is supposed to win: rich teams spend four times as much on talent as poor teams. But over the past four years, the Oakland Athletics, a major league team with a minor league payroll, have had one of the best records. Last year their superstar, Jason Giambi, went to the superrich Yankees. It hasn't made any difference to Oakland: their fabulous season included an American League record for consecutive victories. Billy Beane, general manager of the Athletics, is putting into practice on the field revolutionary principles garnered from geek statisticians and college professors. Michael Lewis's brilliant, irreverent reporting takes us from the dugouts and locker rooms-where coaches and players struggle to unlearn most of what they know about pitching and hitting-to the boardrooms, where we meet owners who begin to look like fools at the poker table, spending enormous sums without a clue what they are doing. Combine money, science, entertainment, and egos, and you have a story that Michael Lewis is magnificently suited to tell. About the Author
Author of the bestsellers Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, and Next, Michael Lewis is also a columnist for Bloomberg News. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Time
[An] ebullient, invigorating account of how an unconvential general manger named Billy Beane rebuilt the A's, a team with the second lowest payroll in baseball, into a team that won 103 games last year -- as many as the filthy-rich Yankees.
The New York Times
Whether Billy Beane is a prophet or a flash in the pan remains to be seen. In either case, by playing Boswell to Beane's Samuel Johnson, Lewis has given us one of the most enjoyable baseball books in years. — Lawrence S. Ritter
The New Yorker
The Oakland Athletics have reached the post-season playoffs three years in a row, even though they spend just one dollar for every three that the New York Yankees spend. Their secret, as Lewis's lively account demonstrates, is not on the field but in the front office, in the shape of the general manager, Billy Beane. Unable to afford the star hires of his big-spending rivals, Beane disdains the received wisdom about what makes a player valuable, and has a passion for neglected statistics that reveal how runs are really scored. Beane's ideas are beginning to attract disciples, most notably at the Boston Red Sox, who nearly lured him away from Oakland over the winter. At the last moment, Beane's loyalty got the better of him; besides, moving to a team with a much larger payroll would have diminished the challenge.
Publishers Weekly
Lewis (Liar's Poker; The New New Thing) examines how in 2002 the Oakland Athletics achieved a spectacular winning record while having the smallest player payroll of any major league baseball team. Given the heavily publicized salaries of players for teams like the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees, baseball insiders and fans assume that the biggest talents deserve and get the biggest salaries. However, argues Lewis, little-known numbers and statistics matter more. Lewis discusses Bill James and his annual stats newsletter, Baseball Abstract, along with other mathematical analysis of the game. Surprisingly, though, most managers have not paid attention to this research, except for Billy Beane, general manager of the A's and a former player; according to Lewis, "[B]y the beginning of the 2002 season, the Oakland A's, by winning so much with so little, had become something of an embarrassment to Bud Selig and, by extension, Major League Baseball." The team's success is actually a shrewd combination of luck, careful player choices and Beane's first-rate negotiating skills. Beane knows which players are likely to be traded by other teams, and he manages to involve himself even when the trade is unconnected to the A's. " `Trawling' is what he called this activity," writes Lewis. "His constant chatter was a way of keeping tabs on the body of information critical to his trading success." Lewis chronicles Beane's life, focusing on his uncanny ability to find and sign the right players. His descriptive writing allows Beane and the others in the lively cast of baseball characters to come alive. (June) Forecast: Lewis's reputation, along with extensive national promotion, first serial in the New York Times Magazine and a 13-city tour should help the book hit bestseller lists throughout the baseball season. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Steve Forbes - Forbes Magazine
One of the best baseball--and management--books out. It chronicles and examines the extraordinary success of the Oakland Athletics' general manager, Billy Beane, who is a colorful mix of genius, discipline and emotion. If you ever come across anyone connected with professional baseball and want to witness an interesting sight, just mention Beane and this book--there will be gurgling, sputtering, angry mutterings. (13 Oct 2003)
Library Journal
How the Oakland Athletics stay on top in baseball without a lot of dough: Norton's biggest book this season. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A solid piece of iconoclasm: the intriguing tale of Major League baseball's oddfellows—the low-budget but winning Oakland Athletics. Here's the gist, that baseball, from field strategy to player selection, is "better conducted by scientific investigation—hypotheses tested by analysis of historical baseball data—than be reference to the collective wisdom of old baseball men." Not some dry, numbing manipulation of figures, but an inventive examination of statistics, numbers that reveal what the eye refuses to see, thanks to ingrained prejudices. As in most of Lewis's work (The New New Thing, 1999, etc.), a keen intellect is at work, a spry writing style, a facility to communicate the meaning of numbers, an infectious excitement, and a healthy disdain for the aura and power of big bucks. Such is the situation here: The Oakland A's have a budget that would hardly cover the Yankee's chewing tobacco. Their General Manager, Billy Beane, and his band of Harvard-educated assistants, are the heirs of Bill James (of whom there is an excellent portrait here). They creatively use stats to discover unsung talent—gems not so much in the rough as invisible to the overburden of received wisdom—a guy who will get on base despite being shaped like a pear or control the strike zone even if his fastball can't get out of third gear, measuring the measurables to garner fine talent at basement prices. At least for a few seasons, until the talent's worth is common knowledge and off they go to clubs who can pay them millions. And the A's win, and win and win, not yet to a Series victory, but edging closer. The story clicks along with steady momentum, and possesses excellent revelatorypowers. There's a method to the madness of the Beane staff, and Lewis incisively explains its inspired, heretical common sense. Has Lewis spilled Beane's beans? Maybe so, but considering the mulish dispositions of baseball's scouts and front offices, they'll miss the boat again. First serial to the New York Times Magazine; author tour
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