That’s INSANE. But most of what happens on Wall Street is blind lumbering herds of animals getting roped by mercenary cowboys. What matters to you is how this is going to change the landscape.

Bottom line facts: Facebook’s operating expenses on their $3.7B are about $2.7B. They’re making about a $1 billion net income.

If their IPO goes super great, and they do get valued at $80 billion, then if they don’t get their ad sales up to $10 billion+ in the next couple of years, Mark Zuckerberg is gonna get a nasty spanking from the stock market.

You can only live on “Hey everybody, I’ve got 800 billion people, woo hoo!” for so long. Eventually you have to sell ads.

So here’s what’s gonna happen. Facebook has NO CHOICE but to get serious about their ad platform. They might get ‘er done with a carrot, or do it with a stick, but they WILL do it. They have no choice.

Practically speaking, businesses with a www.IsFBforMe.com score of 8-10 find FB advertising reasonably easy now. (If and only if they’ve read my book. I know that sounds like chest beating but it’s true. Facebook is NOT as straightforward as Google ads.)

After Facebook makes a bunch of upgrades they should’ve done 2 years ago, people with scores of 5, 6 and 7 will be able to generate biz on FB easily too.

If your score is 6+, you need to pay attention TODAY, not wait a year or two. Now is the wild west, when you can get 160 free acres of land. That window will rapidly close.

I do not advise you to buy Facebook stock. That’s what the dumb money’s gonna do. Here’s what the smart money does: Build real estate on the cheap land.

My advice to you is: Use Facebook to profile your customers. Find the fishing holes on Facebook that bring you new leads. Take Facebook Firestorm when we offer it (coming in March) – sign up for notification here.

I repeat: There will be smart money and there will be dumb money with the Facebook IPO. BE THE CONTRARIAN.

Perry Marshall

“All of your communication seems so cozy and personal etc but all your Infusionsoft messages have this statement at the bottom of them. I can’t help but think how “impersonal” and automated it looks and sounds especially when I know you have gone to great effort to get personal.

Just wondering….am I missing something here?”

Tony

Dear Tony:

Great question. When you send out 50,000 emails at a time, you’ll find out real fast, why we do this.

Once upon a time, the email address all those broadcasts come from was manned, and we answered messages that merited an answer. However when you let people indiscriminately send emails, you get all sorts of spam and nonsense and bitching and irrelevant remarks, along with “out of office replies.”

Less than 10% of that noise deserves a reply, and worse, inevitably we miss stuff that’s important. People send the occasional message like “please cancel my subscription” and we miss it…. then a month later they’re mad because we have “lousy customer service” and are “ripping them off.”

One of the problems with the Internet is it’s sooo eeeaaasssy to communicate that people communicate when they have nothing to say.

So, in Planet Perry, if you have something you need to say, open a support ticket and say it.

Along the same lines – ever walk into a retail store and have to wait while the clerk ignores you and answers the phone? And all the while you know that a breathing human being physically inside their store is worth a lot more money than a phone call? Annoying, isn’t it?

We give our best customer service to people who jump through the hoops, buy things, join memberships, come to meetings. We try to ignore spammers. So should you.

What does that mean for you?

AdWords has finally reached a spot where the “water level” is even with other media. AdWords is still the most amazing advertising machine in the history of the world, but click costs have leveled out.

There’s no such thing as a true monopoly in the 21st century. Not for Google, not for Ebay, not for anybody.

Up till now they’ve been able to tweak the algos (widening their kimono on broad match for example, soaking uneducated advertisers with low quality clicks) and meet their Wall Street forecasts.

They can’t do that anymore. They’re in what Thomas Friedman called “The Golden Straightjacket.” They have to work for their dinero.

Is that good for you?

Sure is. If they have another quarter like this, banned accounts are going to start getting phone calls from a friendly Google rep. They might even up the customer service an IQ point or two.

The other thing Google is doing is extending ad relevance tracking to ALL Google properties. Your Gmail messages will influence what you see on YouTube and everywhere else.

Huge news for Display Network advertisers. I LOVE the display network, it’s the Google playground for advanced practitioners. The privacy people are having a fit (for no good reason, really) but bottom line is:

The quality of your YouTube and Gmail clicks is going to go UP.

—> I’ve told people for YEARS they need to expand into other media like offline, print, email, direct mail. Compared to a $7 click, a 45 cent stamp starts to get attractive. Blending online and offline has ALWAYS been one of the most profitable moves you can make.

Tomorrow in Part 2 I’m gonna talk about Facebook…..

Perry Marshall

If You Are A Successful Entrepreneur
Running A $4 Million+ Business
- You MUST Know This One Thing:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/pcg/next/

If you’re coming for a 4-Man Intensive, a consultation, Roundtable meeting or seminar, you should stick around for an extra day or two and relish one of the great cities of the world.

Chicago holds its own with New York, San Francisco, LA, Boston, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Dubai and Shanghai. (In many respects it’s even superior to Calcutta.) Ha. Seriously, you could stay a week and only scratch the surface.

Some of my favorite places in Chi-Town:

The Magnificent Mile is the jewel of downtown Chicago. There, you can check out the Hancock building (5 states are visible on a clear day), the elite Watertower Place mall, the Apple store, world-class shopping at places like Sak’s Fifth Avenue. Tons of restaurants too.

Lake Michigan is gorgeous, especially in the summer, and its beaches are the site of biking, volleyball, rollerblading, swimming, soccer, baseball and sunbathing.

The El Train takes you almost anywhere in Chicago to almost anywhere else. Multilple lines run from downtown to Midway and O’Hare airports, north to Evanston, west to Oak Park and Forest Park, and south. The Metra Train is the suburban line that goes to the far edges of the suburbs as well as Northwest Indiana.

Navy Pier is a military installation turned shopping mall and eatery, jutting into Lake Michigan. In summertime they have fireworks several nights at week at 10pm. Enjoy the ferris wheel and the IMAX theater.

Millennium Park is famous for “the bean,” Pritzker Pavillion which is an outdoor concert hall, and Crown Fountain which changes colors all day long. Grant Park is home of the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Chicago Blues Festival.

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is not known to most tourists, but is Chicago’s longest-running theater production. “30 plays in 60 minutes.” It’s odd, offbeat, ideal entertainment for college students and weirdos of all stripes. In the 2nd floor of a mortuary in Andersonville on the North Side.

Tons of GREAT Theaters: Almost any night of the week, these theaters are delivering world-class performances: Looking Glass, Goodman, Schubert, Ford/Oriental, Congress.

You can always get a rundown of Chicago entertainment – bands, movies, theater performances, poetry readings and eateries at www.ChicagoReader.com.

The Chicago Architecture Boat Tour surveys the city from the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. Chicago has one of the most beautiful skylines of any city in the world and whether you go day or night, it’s breathtaking.

Second City is the comedy club that gave birth to John Belushi, Chevy Chase, John Candy, Tina Fey and Alan Alda. Delivers hilarious performances nightly.

The Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Science and Industry, Adler Planetarium and Shedd Aquarium are all within a few miles of each other, all fabulous.

Blues Clubs: My favorites are Kingston Mines and Buddy Guy’s legends. House of Blues has all kinds of acts.

Jazz Clubs: Andy’s Jazz Club, The Green Mill, Jazz Showcase.

Fitzgerald’s Night Club in Berwyn is known as “The best roadhouse north of Texas.” Rockabilly, Rock, Country and Jazz.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra keeps a full schedule right in the middle of downtown. It’s across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Sears Tower is Chicago’s most famous building. On the south end of downtown, will not disappoint you on a clear day.

Soldier Field and Wrigley Field are home to the Bears and the Cubs. A summer evening in Wrigley is the best time & place to drink a beer. They have plenty of it, too.

I LOVE Chicago. Moved here almost 20 years ago from Nebraska to take an engineering job. People ask why I still live here, when we could just as easily live just about anywhere else.

About 7-8 years ago it occurred to us, we could move away if we wanted to. Why didn’t we escape the winters? If you don’t have a commute every day, it’s as good as any world class city. A Nebraska boy can deal with 4 months of winter and the rest of the year it’s super.

We have fabulous food (we’re incredibly spoiled here, actually), we have Broadway-level shows almost every night of the week, and every great band and entertainer always makes a stop in Chicago.

With Midway airport I’m 6 hours away from any city in the US and with O’Hare I’m 24 hours from any city in the world. Yet it’s friendly and midwestern. You don’t get an “east coast attitude” from Chicagoans.

I hope you have an unforgettable time in our fantastic city!

Perry Marshall

P.S.: Some of my favorite restaurants: India House; Sushi Samba; Giordano’s Pizza; Arun’s Thai Restaurant; Fogo de Chao Brazilian Churrascuria. Pegasus in Greektown; Spring World in ChinaTown.

Here’s some of my staff’s faves:

http://ilovemarketing.com/episode-053the-one-with-perry-marshall-and-tom-meloche/