Amazon Clickriver Beta

I got my invite to beta test Clickriver today. Yippie. I already set up my account, so lets see how long it takes Amazon to start showing my ads for things like my name and search engine optimization. Lots of people have asked me why my book is not on Amazon.com, but it is largely because I wrote my book more as a direct revenue stream than as an upsell for consulting services. I have seen nationwide top selling books given away by the thousands at conferences only to open them up and see that they were thinly disguised sales material. But if you hire a publicist, get a bit of buzz, and give enough way you are a great author. :)

As soon as you get an ISBN some of the major book retailers will start discounting its price even if they do not cary it. At least now I can start getting exposure on those sites without having to commoditize my book price, and the lack of printing costs and higher price point means that Amazon will always be able to make more by selling me ads than from selling physical books.

Many of the Clickriver ads are still quite a bit off target, which means there must be quite an arbitrage opportunity there. Where's Shoemoney when you need him? But irrelevant ads are ok on Amazon.com because their ad network is new, Amazon.com is such a trusted brand, and they are the model ecommerce website.

Part of the reason there will always be a need for SEOs (or equivalent) is because language shifts and new ad networks and new ways of advertising keep appearing. Did you know you can buy interstitial ads from AdBrite that are targeted to the keyword, category, AND demopgraphic level? And there are lots of other ways to target specific people cheaply (AdSense content targeting, social media manipulation, linking at their websites, etc. etc. etc. ).

Google's stock price is so high because they have virtually no physical products and thus have fat profit margins. Other traditional publishers and ecommerce sites like Amazon.com will eventually syndicate more ads and sell more ads directly in fairly automated formats. Major newspapers are doing partnerships with Google, Yahoo!, and are even talking about making their own nationwide ad network. Each changing publishing format or new ad network is an opportunity. If it is overpriced sell it. If it is underpriced buy it. And if you have a big stake in a few of the ad networks you can even use your market knowledge to trade stocks and options. It would be cool to have a big enough ad buy and content distribution network by the end of the year to get a pretty good picture of the direction of the market as a whole and specific stocks from my own advertiser and publisher accounts.