Building project proposals and negotiating contracts is a time-consuming process. If a deal doesn’t close, that time is wasted, and the less time wasted, the better. Knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em is an art. Push ROI has some hard and fast rules for when to simply walk away from a negotiation, and never return. Repeated Failure To Communicate Desired Outcomes Part of any project proposal is defining goals and budgets, at least broadly. The longer it takes to pry the real goals and actual budgets out of the other party, the more time is wasted. Several years ago, Push ROI was ask ..read more

Dear Startups Folks, Most of you live in a fantasy land, where numbers are not real and, therefore may be anything you want. This comes up across every situation; a founder believes the total addressable market is the entire population of the earth, or that the conversion rate will be an easy-to-calculate 5%, or that ad spending scales perfectly across budgets, leaving no change in efficiency between $100, and $100 million. This is all nonsense, but it is at least such unrefined nonsense that everyone knows you’re diluted. However, the made-up numbers also come up for metrics that are far less ..read more

Mainstream publications like The Atlantic, or The New York Times, or even digitally native publications like Vox and Buzzfeed, don’t get much traffic from Twitter. Extrapolating from third-party tools, Twitter drives around 3% of overall traffic for publications. The traffic is variable; here are 15 examples using data for March of 2023. Traffic from Twitter 2.45% – nbcnews.com Traffic from Twitter 3.77% – theatlantic.com Traffic from Twitter 1.87% – nytimes.com Traffic from Twitter 0.28% – bustle.com Traffic from Twitter 2.60% – vox.com Traffic from Twitter 1.22% – buzzfe ..read more

AI is going to give super powers to Blackhat SEO, breaking online search as we know it. RIP magic box at the top of the browser where we all reflexively type “how to [blank]”, “[blank] near me”, “best [blank] Reddit”, and anything else we seek a semi-reliable answer to at any given moment. Online search results are about to get flooded with Astroturf and spam content at a level never before possible. People have discussed Google Search results going down hill for years. A lot of factors influence why Google search lost some of its magic, I’ve written thousands of words on the topic. Experts ha ..read more

Push ROI is no longer offering search engine optimization as a stand-alone service. Online search, like the internet, constantly evolves. Bringing ROI-focused results without resorting to unethical or illegal techniques is now only sometimes possible with stand-alone SEO.  Very few websites existed in the early days of the internet; getting a website online at all required technical knowledge. Fewer websites meant less competition. More hurdles to getting a site online meant nearly every website launched with room for a laundry list of needed improvements to performance, information archi ..read more

Neil Gaiman is known as one of the greatest living authors. In ’98, when he pitched his publisher the idea for American Gods, it was approved from a short description. Were American Gods the first book of an unknown writer, guaranteeing its publication would have taken more than a letter with an idea. Even 25 years ago, Gaiman was branded as a world-class author. If he wasn’t broadly a household name yet, he was well known among those who mattered to a publisher—people who would buy his books. A talentless hack who is also famous has a better chance of getting published and selling a hundred t ..read more

Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, and Charlie Javice share a few things in common. They all seem to have committed fraud; tho a court of law convicted only Homes at the time of writing. The three are also Forbes ’30 Under 30′ Alumni. Forbes is the best in the business at monetizing frauds on the way up and later on the way down. Javice was the CEO of a startup called Frank that JPMorgan Chase acquired in large part because of the over 4 million users the company boasted. The best coverage of JPMorgan Chase’s lawsuit claiming Frank only had 300,000 real users and created 4.265 mill ..read more

So your business is growing, and you’re conducting interviews, big congrats. Here are some tips to improve the job interview process over the standard “so tell me about yourself” line of questions. Following these tips should help you hire the best candidate and avoid resentment from all the candidates who don’t get an offer letter. Founder’s of anything from, a cafe to crypto exchange are typically protective of their venture, and they want the best people in pivotal roles. The search tactics from the job listing to the interview are often counter productive to the goal of hiring the best peo ..read more

Ed Note: This article was written by Push ROI’s Mason Pelt, and first published in Social Media Week on March 31, 2017 prior to the Adweek acquisition. Need some tools and tricks to promote your brand with PR? Here are some of the methods I’ve used to be more successful with PR strategy, execution, and results. 1. Direct Outreach Beats A Press Release If you’re after traditional media attention, you’ve probably considered publishing a press release. For branding, press releases offer value. But I’ve never seen significant media coverage result solely from a wire service. If you ..read more

When someone I’m considering working with says, “we’re a family” or anything similar about their business relationships, I start backing away slowly. I’ve almost written this post a few times, but held off because well… family is an almost universal virtue. Although most families are located someplace along the dysfunctional spectrum, people seem wired to stick it out with the folks sharing their bloodline. The number of people I know maintaining relationships with toxic siblings, partners, and extended family is shockingly high. While at some point (even with family), a time comes to kick ter ..read more