Sunny Skies at PVPower - Going Solar!

News Update:

As of today, I am VP, Marketing at PVPower. PVPower is an online retailer of solar products (solar panels, charge controllers, inverters, etc.) based out of Chicago.

I'm still focused on SEO and plan to use my ecommerce SEO experience to make PVPower's content, community and products more relevant to industry queries.

At the same time, I'll be involved in helping grow the company, provide our customers better service and the right selection of products at competitive prices.

I'm looking forward to the new opportunity!

Regards,
Dan

Shooting at Fort (Ft) Hood Sparks Interesting Psychology Conversation

My girlfriend, Lindsay Doyle, is a PhD psychology student at the Chicago School for Professional Psychology and is attending a conference put on by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies today in Atlanta, Georgia. Much of the conversation at the conference is in regard to traumatic stress in war veterans.

She wrote a post today that looks at the shooting from a psychological perspective and makes some commentary on Major Nidal Malik Hasan (the shooter's) role as a trauma psychologist in the base's hospital.

Check it out:

Shooting at Ft. Hood

Well, It's True: The Bird is Indeed the Word

Some of you may have taken a glance at the application I referenced in my last post, The Birds the Word.

When I posted a few links for you guys to try the application on April 8th, the domain only had 2-3 URLs indexed in Google.

Today, there are 1,590 unique URLs from the domain indexed by Google. The site is beginning to receive traffic on niche keywords like:

• 3d animated disney clipart
• gnr fanart

Here are a few of the URLs that might be getting ranked for these keywords and are already indexed in Google:

• digital 3d
• fanfic site

This application is also great for exploring concepts in a meandering, aimless sort of fashion. Check out what happens if you input John Deere. One of the results is february 7, 1804. At first, I was disappointed to see the seemingly irrelevant result come through the application. Until I realized that February 7th, 1804 is the birth date of Mr. Deere.

Very cool!

Everybody Knows, The Birds the Word

I'd like to take a quick moment to introduce a Web app. I don't want to go into its uses in great detail, but rather, let its users determine its best use.

Here it is: http://www.thebirdstheword.net

Try a few searches:
Villain
Superhero
Batman

Feel free to click around wherever you like - explore and let me know what your initial reaction is.

Snuggie Pub Crawl in Chicago - Viral Media is Powerful

I just want to take a moment to plug a recent project that one of my co-workers, David Barnes, and I are working on.

Behold, the Snuggie Pub Crawl in Chicago.

The Pub Crawl became an overnight success. On a slow Friday afternoon, Dave and I launched the site and sent out a few notes to friends and co-workers, hoping they were interested in attending. And like the California wildfires of 2008, the word spread fast! (Too soon?)

By the numbers:

Traffic:
Day 1: 199 Visits
Day 2: 49 Visits
Day 3: 42 Visits
Day 4: 239 Visits
Day 5: 1529 Visits
Day 6: 2869 Visits

Top Traffic Sources:
Day 1: Direct entry, Facebook, Digg.com
Day 2: Direct entry, Facebook, Google
Day 3: Direct entry, Facebook, Craigslist
Day 4: Direct entry, Facebook, Twitter
Day 5: Direct entry, Chicagoist, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Google
Day 6: Direct entry, Gapersblock, Chicagoist, Twitter

As of yesterday, we had a total of 4,927 visits and ~450 submitted their email addresses on the site.

About a 9-10% conversion rate. Not bad.

More to come as this project continues to grow. I hope you plan to attend, it's going to be a riot!