Patrick Kim: Internet Affectionado

So It’s been a while since I’ve updated. I joined a really great internet start-up called yodle as a senior interaction designer. So far things have been going smoothly

So the latest thing that I am working on currently away from work is building this algorithmic data analyzer. What it does you give it a couple of rss/xml/data feeds, it will go though each feed daily and give you list of relevant keywords count up the number of occurrence and calculate a score depending on what value you give the words.

I’m not 100% sure what this will be useful for but I kinda swiped the idea from an article i read about a hedgefund whose approach is to use blogs and weight words to determine a buy or sell rating. We’ll see how that goes.

Sfunkt: the web/it consulting company is going well we have 1 employee and principal on payroll making good bank. Will update as time progress and something meaningful has been done.

I like to itemize what I’d like to accomplish in a given year. One of the techniques that has really helped me and has become indoctrinated into my mantra is “finite dating.” You map out a tangible date for when to begin and conclude various tasks.

How does anything get delayed for years? One day at a time.

Now some of my low priority goals I have planned out are the following:

Write this blog consistently at least once a week. So far this hasn’t been going 100% according to plan however I am gaining in page rank and my visitors are coming in based upon the keywords I am targeting. So far I’m the third link down when you search for “Patrick Kim”. I’m on the 1st page 8 links down on a search for “internet billionaire” I’m two links below Mark Cuban’s BlogMaverick! That’s not so shabby.

My goal regarding this blog is “self promotion” and creating the “Patrick S Kim” persona as a brand that I can use as leverage in the future. Eventually I’d like to reach the top spot for Internet Billionaire. So far Google has been kind to all the domains which I chosen in the past~ then again I don’t compete for competitive keywords.

Secondary goal to this blog and self promotion project is to add in linkedin and tie in a myspace campaign. So everywhere online my presence is felt.

Second goal is develop 3 semi turn-key websites. I have a couple of ideas in mind but I’m waiting to get those off the ground once the ad engine project stabilizes. Among one of them is a mobile start page. Haven’t figured out the details but I theorize that once iphones hit the market mobile web’s going to get a good increase in hand held traffic and those itty bitty browsers will get an upgrade. Currently as of now mobile internet is akin to what sites were back in the early 90’s and in comparison to today’s standards that is terrible.

I’ve also begun the process of closing down sfunkt and rebranding and legitimizing as Kimedia LLC. I’ve talked to an accountant (not yet “my”) and so far everything seems to be a go. I’ve done the research on copyrighting Kimedia and no one has it yet everything is a go. The only snag is that some guy in Taiwan has ownership of Kimedia.com, but I figure that I’ll register some site like kimediahq or something of that sort and use a bit of SEO so It won’t have any bearing that I don’t have the actual domain. 2007 will be the year where I legally legitimize all my online business activities.

I’ve acquired a programmer to help code and help develop some web projects that I had in mind. So far all is going well and according to plan and most importantly according to budget. Although due to juggling a full-time position as well as designing and managing is bit of an arduous task. I hardly get any sleep, as my day ends around 2AM and starts at 7AM. But at least I feel productive.

Current project that I’m working on is an ad/affiliate management program. Yes, there is google adsense, yahoos newly upgraded YPN, double click etc etc… But it seems that there are very little simple, light weight advertising programs. I’m trying to create a simple ad program thats minimal and super easy to set up and manage. I’m targeting small niche webmasters,bloggers, communities, who want an alternative with bigger returns and spend less time on trying to monetize so they can work on content. Also included in the target market are those same users who also want to advertise their small site. “Relevant Ads for the rest of us.” My slogan.

I’ve decided to use an open source program as a platform, while I could probably reap more rewards and benefits from a custom built system, Build cost and development time becomes an issue and I believe that I can sufficiently leverage its existing community as well as some other freelance and web/developer/ master forums that I’m a part of. That way advertising and marketing can be more effective and reach the most amount of people quickier and cheaper. Secondly I can’t afford to hire a team and all money invested is from my meager full time salary, after taxes and bills. On the bright side updates will be at least cost efficient.

Trying to monetize on an open source can be somewhat complicated however as this application has an EULA license and according to my knowledge and some research an EULA license stipulates that I can’t sell it as a stand alone but can build services using the software.

Here are my plans to monetize this ad service. 1) use google ads on user’s landing page where they advertise their site to advertisers 2) release the whole engine free of cost and having it integrate to my marketplace website and charge for ads bought from my marketplace. 3)Once I’ve built up enough of user base I’d also like to leverage that to acquire adspace on bigger more affluent sites brokering it with my userbase. This way my users can advertise on big sites way outside their budget by sharing the cost with other users.

Sounds like I’m counting my eggs before they hatch… Well, more on this later.

Some other projects that I’d like to work on in the future:

A site based upon the principles of dating sites for people who are looking to be mentors and people looking for an understudy. <- something I wish was around now, I too would like a mentor.

A site reviewing temp agencies, my last job search, I got interviewed by alot of recruitment firms and temp agencies.

A user based search engine, a la wikipedia leveraging all the search engines and adding a user interaction and rating system to determine what is “relevant”

Without management techniques and structuring we’d probably still be roaming around with sticks and stones.

In today’s information age there’s a even greater emphasis on organizational mobility. A lot of these big corporate giants are often times being ousted and one-upped by small start-ups, or as I refer to them, Stormtroopers or as the german’s called them “Sturmtruppen .” Although not really a new or innovative concept but it worked wonders in breaking the stalemate created by trench warfare for the Germans which lead to its full adoption by World War II.

“The new tactics, which were intended to achieve tactical surprise, were to attack the weakest parts of an enemy’s line, bypass his strongpoints and to abandon the futile attempt to have a grand and detailed plan of operations controlled from afar. Instead, junior leaders could exercise initiative on the spot. Any enemy strong points which had not been over-run by stormtroopers could be attacked by second echelon troops following the stormtroopers.”

It is my opinion that many of these corporations, countries have become so entrenched with their bureaucracy and redundant, unnecessary protocol. Just as the conventions of warfare changes so too should the world of business.

Countries now deploy special forces to quell conflicts rather than having a forward standing army. It makes sense. In the future when my organization of one turns to one of many, I’d have it based upon a core team of 3 and into squads of 7 or 9 running their own projects. No more no less. Each team capable of functioning as a business unit. All of whom work to achieve a common over arching goal.

Genghis Khan, was able to terrorize the whole continent of Asia due to his superior organization of the Mongol tribes into a swift devastating calvary force. Command always broke down to smaller self sufficient clusters who would then preform reconnaissance later convene at a pre-determined location to make war.

Totally off-topic but I don’t see any companies following such a format minus new tech start-ups.