Whatever happened to 'Girl in Your Shirt'?

I read about Girl in Your Shirt a couple of months back on Mark Cuban's blog. An enterprising young woman was recording video clips of elevator pitches like this one below for various businesses:



That video was posted on her site at the end of May, and it appears to be the last one she's done. I e-mailed her via her site a while back to see about doing one of these clips for Short Screen, but never heard back. If she gave this up, another young woman who's comfortable in front of a camera ought to run with the idea, preferably on some sort of CPA basis.

Ill-equipped to act, with insufficient tact

This didn't last long. On the advice of one of my developers I deviated from the personalized tweeting and sent the same reply to 20 or so folks on Twitter yesterday. I searched for people tweeting about short selling and then suggested they might want to check out shortscreen for other short ideas. In fairness to my developer, he didn't suggest to do that, exactly: he suggested to tweet a handful of folks at once. In any case, my Twitter account has been suspended, which frankly surprised me.

Judging from 100% of the tweets I received from 30 individuals over my few days-long Twitter career, my tweets were better targeted and more relevant than pretty much any of them. For example, unlike the fellow who managed to send me -- someone hasn't golfed in maybe four years and has a set of Costco clubs gathering dust somewhere -- 20 links to golf tips in two days, I only contacted actual short sellers about a site geared to short selling. That's not to suggest that all of the tweets I received in the last few days were commercial in nature: some were just inane bits of trivia, e.g., the one from a woman in the Southwest who mentioned that she had moved that day and asked if anyone else liked moving.

I appealed for clemency to the powers that tweet, noting that after reading the TOS I understood my mistake. The form for contacting Twitter about stuff like this includes a field asking "how do you feel"¹. I entered "chastened". But I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, the ratio of visits to Shortscreen from Twitter to my tweets was pretty high -- about 50%. On the other hand, the whole Twitter enterprise seems like a pointless time suck. So I leave it to the folks at Twitter to decide if my tweeting days are over. If they are, so be it.


¹This question reminded me a little of that test the reincarnated Spock takes at his parents' house on Vulcan in Star Trek IV. He gets a series of questions, one of which goes like this, if memory serves, "Adjust the sine wave of the magnetic envelope so that anti-gravitons can enter and anti-protons cannot". And then he is stumped by the last question, "How do you feel?".

Short selling and risk

At the suggestion of my developers, I requested a review of Shortscreen by John Chow's site. You have to pay to have your site reviewed by John Chow, but he and his team are free to write whatever they want about it: they have complete editorial control. The review is up now; you can read it here: Screening Stocks for Short Selling.

A couple of the commenters raised reasonable questions about the risks of shorting. I addressed those questions in the comment thread there, but it's worth recapping here too.

Question/comment: Additionally, short selling as a whole is risky because you can lose an unlimited amount of money because a stock can go up an unlimited amount theoretically.

Answer: There is a way to limit your downside, if you want to bet against stocks: you can buy puts on them instead of shorting them. As with shorting, you’ll profit if the stock drops, but in the case of buying puts, your maximum loss is limited to what you paid for the put. You can use Shortscreen to screen for candidates to buy puts on as well as to short.

I personally don’t limit myself to buying puts, because I believe there are often better short selling candidates among stocks that aren’t big enough to have options traded on them. There is of course a risk that I will lose money on some trades, but by limiting myself to shorting stocks that a highly accurate model predicts are headed for bankruptcy, I believe the odds are on my side.

Question/comment: Selling stocks short is a good way to also LOSE A LOT of money.

Answer: Although there are risks involved in short selling, it’s important to note, as a previous commenter alluded to above, that, for knowledgeable investors, adding short selling (or buying puts) can reduce the overall risk of your portfolio.

For example, although it is risky to own (i.e., to be long) one stock in a particular industry, and it is risky to short one stock in the same industry, it may be less risky to do both at the same time. As Investopedia notes, this strategy, called a pairs trade, is often used by professional investors to hedge against sector and overall market risk.

For more on this general concept, see, for example, this essay by Ken Hawkins: Make Your Portfolio Safer With Risky Investments.

Insomnia and social media

Couldn't sleep last night, so I signed onto Twitter. Yeah, I remember what I said about it here, but my developers suggested I use it to help get the word out about shortscreen.com. So I searched for phrases related to short-selling, and then looked up the profile or blog of the senders for the individual's name and other details. Then I sent them a personalized tweet inviting them to check out the site.

The funny thing about Twitter is that this sort of unsolicited contact gets an entirely different reception than it would if it were e-mail. People start to "follow" you, (i.e., sign on to receive your tweets; apparently, you have to immediately follow them back, otherwise they may feel hurt and un-follow you). I guess everyone wants to have a large number of followers and pretend those folks are actually reading their tweets.

Because pointing and walking is epic

Hat tip to Hit Coffee for this clever commercial for a business that sells refurbished mobile homes:



And hat tip for the Hackensack for digging deep to find this video of the making of that commercial:



I may have to hire these guys to make a commercial for Shortscreen.com.

Another Take on Social Media

Via the Un-Marketing Blog:



David Silver agrees with the point about product sales being driven by recommender communities versus advertising, but I imagine if he saw this video he'd reiterate that all the big numbers for the general-purpose social media sites haven't translated into profits.

How to Promote an Online Business

Although my sites are still in development, this is something I've been working on. This week I explored a couple of options: hiring a public relations professional and commissioning a short animated clip. The jury's still out on both of those options, but here are some preliminary thoughts.

First thought: good animation is expensive. If a clip is catchy enough that it gets some viral circulation, it could pay for itself many times over, but that's a lot money to put on one spin of the roulette wheel (e.g, the cost I was quoted by an animator this week for one 30 second clip was almost as much as it will cost to develop one of the programming-intensive sites). I think I've got a clever concept, but it's what everyone else thinks that counts.

Second thought: when looking for a public relations pro (or any vendor, for that matter), try to find one who thinks like an entrepreneur. To put it in military terms, look for a commando, not a REMF. I remembered reading an article a couple of years ago about a commando-style PR guy, someone who generated millions of dollars in sales for his clients through his work alone. I contacted him, but my sites aren't in his sweet spot (he focuses on off-beat household products). He did refer me to a colleague though.

Earlier this week, I had a pleasant conversation with his colleague, who was bright and personable, but no commando. A few days after our conversation, he sent me an e-mail saying he enjoyed our conversation and suggesting some services he could offer me. These were two of them:

Messaging Workshop and Media Materials Development

A messaging workshop will help identify the primary and secondary messages that will help both services further develop their brand and identity. The Messaging Bible we develop as a result of this workshop could also be shared and used by your entire team so you are communicating with one voice throughout all communications vehicles (blog, website, social media platforms, newsletter, bylined articles, etc.). Once these messages are identified we recommend developing a comprehensive online press kit that can help supplement any pitching and marketing efforts.

Fees: $3,500 for a ½ day messaging workshop plus any travel expenses

$1,500 for the initial development and ongoing edits of all materials

Executive Communications & Media Skills Training

Executive communications and media skills training enable your spokespeople to be well prepared to handle media interviews and become a better all-round communicator in your day-to-day life and during speaking opportunities. Such training is based off of the Messaging Bible and allows you to proactively tell your story to existing partners, clients, consumers and especially with the various media audiences while launching both brands throughout the U.S.

Fees: $3,500 for a ½ day communications training plus any travel expenses

He went on to suggest more REMF services in that e-mail. This was what I wrote him in response:

Thanks for getting back to me. It was nice speaking with you as well.

To be candid though, what you've sketched out below isn't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for results, and I'm willing to pay for them. The specific results I'm looking for are getting articles about my online businesses placed in established media. I'm not looking for workshops, boot camps, messaging bibles, etc.

I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me though, and wish you the best of luck with your business. Perhaps we'll be able to work together in some other capacity in the future¹.

¹Offhand, I can't think of a capacity where he and I might work together, but you never know; so instead of burning this bridge completely, I just left it a little charred.

A Clever Promotional Idea

Checking the NY Giants' website for the injury report ahead of Sunday's divisional playoff game versus the Philadelphia Eagles, I came across this clever promotion by Del Monte Foods' Snausages brand dog treats. Snausages came out with a football-shaped treat, and they invited Giants fans to send in photos of their dogs in Giants jerseys and other accouterments. Pictured above is "Sonny", one of the MVPs ("Most Valuable Pooches") from week 6, wearing an Eli Manning Jersey.