memorial

Although the streets were empty Monday, the phones here were at a normal pace. Memorial Day means everybody has the day off, except in retail. Consumers are out in full force.

Hard hard hard to admit when there was a problem that you overlooked. Our contact form worked fine every time I tested it, and we would even occasionally receive a message from a visitor. However we had our programmer look into it, make the Comments a required field, and while editing he made some other change that is too technical for me. Now we get several contact forms each day. Were we missing out on them all along? No, impossible, I refuse to believe it! ;-) It must take two months for the right type of visitor to learn about us.

The phones ring in waves. Quiet for hours, then everyone calls in at once. Answer customers' questions in a flurry, then get work done when it's quiet.

fill up

I sent this pic to my friends back in 1988, and even though they didn't have email back then, they responded.

" Wow you guys must have flying cars that get 130 miles per gallon, and minimum wage makes a person $240,000 per year."
Gas affecting shipping costs in a big way, and customers feeling the heat. A Great American air hockey table weight 475 lbs costs just under $1-per-pound to send across the country.

quiet busy quiet

Fridays are the quietest, but last Friday was our first day of having every available phone line lit up.


So much I would tell you, but somehow the course of a day goes by and I am left here with a string of notes, and no consistent blog topic.
Every day I try to embrace the idea of playing games and then writing about them. Instead I wind up analyzing and adjusting our online marketing. Talking with customers is no problem, in fact it's fun because usually people are in a positive mood when they're considering buying a fun product. Fixing shipping problems stinks. Messing with computer code or working with programmers is typically not my favorite either. How great is the day when I can sell an air hockey table, then turn around to play foosball until the phone rings again.

balancing act

Each day as a new business the number of visitors is determined by how you spend. Over time we aim for links and organic search engine listings, but as the new biz on the block we must first announce we are here, so for fifty cents each click we have an international billboard on the paid side of Google and Yahoo results. Cannot spend too much, must attain high click-thru, must determine if the keyphrases I'm chasing are the thoughts of people just about to buy my product.

The process is a balancing act of all the priorities on which you attempt to deliver. Through daily toil it can be made more efficient.

Yesterday we rebooted a ppc strategy going after air hockey tables in a new way. However a new campaign - an alternate instead of editing the current - means starting on the ground with no quality score. Our ads were more expensive for lower placement. In some ad groups our impressions were a fraction of what they could be. The struggle to balance goes on...

high stakes poker

Marketing vs sales in a small business seems like high stakes poker. Always an eye on the long-term outcomes, attached though we are to the moment's ups and downs. Each day we wager X, whether through paid search or affiliates or artwork or marketing mishmosh. Some days we profit 5X, some days we lose our stack. When you're putting money out on the table and see it disappear instead of multiply in returns, you um, get a little flustered.

Arcade Hits and other stories

So much occurs that the hope of documenting all from the startup business stage on through adaptation to success slips further and further away. Monster monday, financials tuesday, content and design, affiliate network marketing, on and on. Orders in the pipeline demanding attention. Quotes and questions for people who are a month away from buying, or a moment away from never. Promotions and advertising spend, graphics and backend uploads, getting the sale on the phone and trekking through each step until the customer says they love their new game room item.

How about Pacman? We sell several games in which the marquee 80's arcade attraction takes center stage. The controversy over Pacman's image is one of the most fascinating battles in the amusement field. Everyone thinks Namco owns the rights to Pacman the name, picture, and game. But they negotiate with an individual for certain royalty rights in sublicensing. Namco released a cd-version for upload to a computer, thinking it posed no threat to the arcade game on which they annually make so much money. (Pac man sells individually. 125 other games are packaged into Arcade Legends.) But Arcade Hits shows the industry evolving - this is a PC-based machine - it is a computer inside an arcade cabinet. Disliked though it may be by the coin-op heavyweights, the ClassiCade multi-game system (with no coin mechanism or dollar bill accceptor) represents the morphing of the video systems we interact with. As the computer and tv become one, what will this arcade-size cabinet do to the game? It is a sturdy standup computer with internet access, complete Windows interface, and 1000+ video games with classic arcade controls. Maybe computer access will sit in the corner of our living room in an arcade game cabinet that is now so much more. with Pac man too.

14' shuffleboard tables are so hot right now