Erich Staffer

  • Books are the New Business Cards

    Denis Papathanasiou’s “A practical guide to selling ebooks online” on Hacker news, which reminded me about a report I compiled, but never published online. You may remember me running a local marketing meetup in Indianapolis. The content was posted on the board there, but since I stepped down, that meetup has since disbanded and the…

  • New Kindle Fires Sparks Interest in Google Maps App Post

    My Map Strings web site has made $6.50 in ad clicks this month vs. ‘nothing’ most months (a 22,000% increase). I’m assuming this has something to do with Apple maps, but let’s look at the data: Visits started going up Sep 5 and peaked on Sep 6 at 42 visits a day, but averaged 30…

  • Forbes Gets Jeff Bezos

    I’ve written on Amazon before and about CEOs I admire, but until I read Forbes’ April 2012 article on Jeff Bezos entitled Jeff Bezos Gets It, I didn’t realize how much I admired the man behind the company. Bezos seems to embody Steve Blank’s ideas of customer development by making the customer first in all…

  • Should Amazon.com Go Brick-and-Mortar?

    Those who remember walking into a Service Merchandise may recall the assortment of toys, electronics, and fine goods where the selection was larger because there was only one of everything. That’s because you ordered your item in-store and picked it up from a warehouse in the back. It was the pre-Internet version of Amazon.com and…