Think Tank, SEO for Opera, & Sustainable Online Business Models

Shoemoney is giving away a free ticket to ThinkTank, a free form gathering about Internet marketing on September 26th through 28th. My wife and I will be attending as well. Check out the official Think Tank site for more information.

An SEO Book reader has ported over SEO for Firefox to make an Opera SEO extension. I have not tried it yet, but if you are an Opera fan let me know what you think of it.

Dan Thies recently launched his Stomping the Search Engines 2 video series with an interesting business model...the buyer only has to pay $10 for shipping and handling, and is added to a continuity product where they buy a print magazine about marketing each month.

In Macropayments Cory Doctorow highlights the incremental costs (and flaws) of an artist acting like a publisher selling information at a low price point. Truth be told I stretched my limits under my old business model and the new one is much better...proving his theory correct.

In this video David Heinemeier Hansson highlights why most start ups that charge money for their products do better than the start ups that aim to make everything free and make everyone happy.

To appreciate how bad free can be (in the wrong context), think of how good many of Amazon.com's reviews are, and then read the drivel in their political forums. Same site, same audience, and yet one is remarkably intelligent while the other is equally banal and belligerent.