Dr. Oz Sending me Traffic
6 Feb2012
I was puzzled today – Examine had a huge burst of traffic today.
Turns out Dr Oz did a story on “fat burners”
One of them turned out to be a supplement we have a page on – Raspberry Ketones. It’s a surge of traffic.
- In: Sweet 2.0
Losing Fat is Easy
29 Nov2011
It took me longer than it should have (and I’m 90% done), but I’m very cognizant of why it took as long as it did (I’d rather eat nachos with buddies on a Saturday night than not).
It’s really a matter of physics. If you burn more calories than you ingest, your body will lose weight. A bit of intelligent is required to ensure it’s fat and not muscle, but the general premise remains.
It’s also a lot easier to eat 200 calories less than to burn off 200 calories.
And please let’s not get into carbs, paleo, keto, protein TEF, and other shit. That accounts for 10%, not the actual 90%. Even the oft-mentioned hyperthyroidism is naught more than a weak excuse.
So yeah, easy. You have only your diet to look at.
- In: The Misc
Google is your God
2 Nov2011
Aaron from SEO Book has been talking about this for a long time – Google has been slowly but methodically using its monopoly to destroy entire internet niches.
I noticed the other day while searching for ‘what is my ip’ that Google now directly responds to the IP. Check out whatismyip.com’s traffic:
For the past year I’ve been doing my darndest to get away from anything that relies on Google – for traffic (eg DealCatch) or anything they would directly compete with (eg Examine). I’m not there yet, but I’m feeling more confident as time passes. I’m hoping that 50% of our revenue by 2013 will have nothing to do with Google (at any point of the transactional funnel).
I hope you are doing the same.
Broken Contact Page
17 Aug2011
Oops.
Seems like my contact page has been broken for … forever. So if you wanted to contact me, do so now.
- In: Uncategorized
The Fun in Researching Supplements
10 Aug2011
Who knew that Marijuana could be one of the best things you could take for overall health?
101 citations to back up the assertion.
- In: Fitness
LeanGains FAQ
27 Jul2011
As an update to my post on weight loss not being just about the number, I’ve created a LeanGains FAQ, a quick and easy summary of the LeanGains protocol I’m on.
I’ve gone from ~35% body fat to ~12%. I should hit 9% in the next 6 weeks. I’ll post comparison pictures when I finally hit 400 DL and 300 squat.
It isn’t hard, and it does not take up a lot of time. Best of all, it has a ton of science backing it.
- In: Uncategorized
Weightloss, Revenue, and Oversimplifying.
4 Jul2011
For the past few years, the latest rage seems to be blogging/tweeting about weight loss. Somehow people have convinced themselves that declaring their plans publicly will make it happen.
I won’t get into that (there are enough scientific studies that show the opposite happens), but what gets to me is the complete focus on an arbitrary number. If I was to say “Hey I have a website that generates $100,000 revenue, do you want to buy it?” you obviously want context for that revenue. So when people start criticizing Groupon because their margin isn’t as good as some other (not-competing) company, you have to shake your head. Mark Cuban does have the right idea … most of these guys only care about pageviews, intelligent discussion be damned.
And so back to losing weight, it’s the same foolishness. Except at least in the case of business and finances, such simple minded thinking gets called out. Weight loss? Never. Would you rather be 150lb at 25% fat or 160lb and 15% fat?
We seem to be living in a world of context-less sensationalism, slowly rotting away any and all meaningful intelligent thought. What a dour note to end on 
I’m a huge fan of the NBA … in fact one of my projects for winter (once I’ve moved) is to build an automated predictor of NBA results and see if I can use it to beat the spread. Something fun to do, but for another day
I just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to cancel my ESPN subscription. Turns out you can’t do it online (you have to call them at 1-888-549-3776). The actual phone call etc was pretty easy, but it completely boggled my mind that for a subscription I began online, I had to go offline to cancel it.
Every time I start to think that companies have finally figured out that using the internet only makes life easier, something like this reminds me how asinine they can still be.
- In: Crap 2.0
My Timing is Decent
10 Jun2011
I was talking to a friend of mine about Examine when we both came to the conclusion that my timing (in general) seems to be pretty decent.
Amongst other things, I:
- Pulled out of MMO/virtual currency just around when WoW came out. WoW became so big it spawned a ton of Chinese gold farmers that significantly hurt margins.
- Pulled out of blog directories etc right before Google slapped them all out.
- Pulled out of CSS just as it went from “cool” to “commodity”
- Pulled out of local before Google slapped everyone around with Panda
Really though, the above post was just so I could pimp out Examine. We’ve been getting the most random search engine phrases as referral, a sample of which include:
- “dimethylamylamine drug test” (for DMAA). A stimulant used to increase workout performance. It also causes you to fail drug tests as it results in a false positive for amphetamines. An ingredient in the popular pre-workout supplement “jack3d”.
- “quercetin dihydrate bioavailability” (for Quercetin). A “healthy to have” supplement found in fruits and veggies, especially apples and onions).
- “Alpha 2-antagonist compounds and lipid mobilization: evidence for a lipid mobility” (for Yohimbine). A popular fat-loss supplement that helps you target fat loss in stubborn areas like your stomach.
- “Ketonic Bodies adrenergic lipolysis” (also for Yohimbine like above). This one is cool because the Google results specifically link to a section under our “Compleat Summary” that explicitly discusses Ketogenesis and Lipolysis.
- “fish oil protein synthesis” (for fish oil) A popular blogger recently summed up scientific research that indicated omega 3 fatty acids could help in adding muscle.
Anyway, completely random stuff, but the sheer breadth of information and the million+1 combinations of keywords has me pretty excited. The site performance is quite solid (4 pageviews per visitor, over 3:00 on site per average user, ~50% bounce rate), and I think in the long run this could end up being one of my biggest sites ever (and not to toot my own horn, but having done this for 14 years, I have built some pretty big sites).
Read over at Mike’s Blog that Google has finally gone live with its daily deal equivalent.
What I find interesting now is that the entire concept of “tipping” (need X buyers to get this deal) seems to have disappeared. The entire shtick of Groupon was that you needed at least X buyers to get a deal … and thus you had to tell your friends, spread the word, etc.
Instead the reality has become with so many people buying deals now, instead of tipping, the bigger concern is quantity. The deal has a limit of 2000 – something that was pretty rare to see before, but with AT&T (via YellowPages.com), Facebook, and other giants starting to really move into this space, the demand problem will no longer remain a problem. Instead the supply of specific deals will likely become the more pressing concern.
- In: Daily Deals