Why You Shouldn’t Stress Over Kaneva Layoff’s
Ok, so I know the layoffs from Kaneva are sooooo two weeks ago, but I really hadn’t had time to sit down and think what I was going to write about.
Going through the forums, reading comments on this blog, and just generally talking to other members – I’ve noticed that a lot of people are stressing about the fate of Kaneva because of the layoff’s. My thoughts – we are in tough economic times for everyone… and if Fortune 500 companies are laying off employees what would my make anyone think that a startup like Kaneva would be free from layoffs?
It’s a sad fact of life – Everyone’s gotta work…. they just don’t have to work here. Will I miss those that got laid off? Of course, but I still plan on keeping in touch with the ones that I enjoyed talking to. I do feel bad for those that lost their jobs, but unfortunately that is one of the risks you take when working for a startup like Kaneva. All of those that were good at there job will more then likely find a new one working for another company.
Why you shouldn’t stress – Too many people in Kaneva like to jump to conclusions or read to far into things (hence all the drama people seem to complain about). Don’t get up in arms over the company changing…. companies have to be dynamic in order to survive…. “I DON’T WANT KANEVA TO GO CORPORATE” – Well, what the hell do you expect them to do. You don’t honestly think that credit sales can keep the company afloat do you? Kaneva has to look at all possible ways to bring in new income and get rid of as much expense as possible or else they will ultimately fail. Why should this bother you?
If your stressing because you were friends with some of the GM’s – check out my post on staying in touch with people outside of Kaneva.
If your still stressed, think I’m wrong, or think this is some sort of conspiracy and that Kaneva paid me to write all of this then feel free to leave a comment and get it all out. Love it or hate it – Kaneva, just like any business has to make changes to survive.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )QuickPost – For All Those Looking For My Comments On The Kaneva Situation
I am still trying to get all of my facts straight before I make any comments on the situation. The only “official statement” I’ve seen so far was the overly vague statement posted in the forums by Kaneva co-founder Greg Frame. I went to try to contact Shameless Plugs for more information… However, it looks like she was also let go from Kaneva.
I will be sure to post my thoughts and any information I gather as soon as I have collected it.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Where The Hell Have You Been?
So have you missed me?……. Well, that’s ok I didn’t really miss you either….ok, maybe a little bit…… alright, I missed you a lot – I just didn’t want to to come off as desperate. It’s been a while since I’ve written a “real” post on here, but that’s because I’ve been very busy – what? too busy for you?…. No I’m never too busy for you – ok, maybe I was too busy for you these past few weeks, but I have good intentions. What have I been up to?…. I’m glad you asked –
I love playing Kaneva and I love blogging, but two of my big passions are Internet Marketing (mostly affiliate marketing) and web design. Recently I’ve been working on several new websites and I don’t know how many designers/programmers read this blog, but you will understand that a custom designed website from scratch can take anywhere from several days to several months to get up and running.
On the Internet Marketing side. I recently signed up with a service called PPC-Coach. For those that have never heard of PPC-Coach let me give a brief explanation of what PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertising is and how it works in terms of affiliate marketing:
First lets start with “what is affiliate marketing” – affiliate marketing is basically selling or preselling offers for other companies. When you hear or see the ads that talk about “making money online”… they are normally refering to affiliate marketing. To become an affiliate marketer you can sign up with any of the following companies:
- wotogepa
- affiliate.com
- clickbooth
- flux advertising
- xy7
- neverblue
- marketleverage
- commission junction
- clickbank
Each of these companies have there own offers with their own conditions for each of the offers. Some of the offers only require that you get a user to enter a zip code or email address to get paid. Pay-per-click advertising is buying ad space on places like Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Facebook. You create your ad with the keywords you want to be listed for and then bid on those keywords. You only put in a maximum bid so what you actually pay when someone clicks on your ad might be lower (in some cases a lot lower). The best part of this type of advertising is that you only have to pay when someone clicks on your ad. You use these PPC ads to send users to the offer that you are promoting. The idea being that you spend less on advertisement of the product then you make when someone buys the product through your affiliate link.
Now I’ve been doing affiliate marketing for about 6 months now off and on and was struggling with it. Mostly due to my lack of dedication. Affiliate marketing is hard work (I put in about 5 – 8+ hours a day with affiliate marketing campaigns alone). Since I was struggeling I decided I needed to seek help and get serious about it. That’s when I found PPC-Coach.
PPC-Coach is a service that offers videos, tutorials, a private forum for answering all of your questions, tools (which are worth much more then the subscription cost), and direct contact with people who have been doing and succeeding with affiliate marketing for a long time. Many of the senior members on the forum do affiliate marketing full time now and were able to quit their day job. One of the most successful members of PPC-Coach makes an average of $3000 a day doing affiliate marketing (that’s about $90k a month). This is the high end of the spectrum. On average a lot of memebers will make a passive income of about $100-$1000 a day (that’s an extra $3k – $30k a month!). Ok, Ok… I know all of this sounds really sales pitchy, but I wanted to share what I have been up to with all of you and thought that I would pass along this great program if any of you are interested in making money on-line: CLICK HERE to check out PPC-Coach. The cost is $50/month – Canadian… so less then $50/month if you live in the US. If you create a good campaign that $50 will be made back within a day so it makes for a good investment. The money is basically to keep out those who aren’t serious about affiliate marketing – take a look around alot of the other private forums for affiliate marketing cost at least $100/month and the free public forums are mostly BS… all they will do is insult you for asking what they consider to be a dumb question.
What else has been in the works?
Currently I am working on a plan to move The Kanevian Blog off of the wordpress.com servers and on to my own servers. With this move will come a site re-design. So between working on the new design and planning the move so that none of the posts or any of your wonderful comments are lost – it will take time.
I am also trying to plan more contests for the blog so in the comments let me know what you would like to see as contests/prizes for the contests. Also, if you have any questions about affiliate marketing feel free to put those in the comments section also and I will try my best to answer them.
I know this was a super long post with a little bit of a sales pitch in it, but I am honestly trying to help out the Kaneva members that want to find a way to make a little bit of extra money while staying at home. It is always inspiring when I hear that someone quit the day job that they hate because they now make enough money online using sites like PPC Coach.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )6 Things To Improve Your Kaneva Relationships
They blossom, they fall, they are always changing – your relationships on Kaneva. There are many types of relationships that occur – the friendship, the temporary lust, the puppy love, the romance. All of these types of relationships/interactions are similar to the real-world, except since we are in a digital space… they seem to move at the speed of light.
In this post I want to focus more on the romantic relationships. I’m not a “love doctor” by any means, but I think I have some solid advice to offer.
1. Communicate
This is probably the biggest downfall of any relationship, but it is also what can be used to fuel the fires. Communication is sooooooooooo very important. Choosing the right words to describe how you feel, picking the right time to use these words, and making sure that you are consistent with them all play a huge role in how your relationship unfolds.
Don’t jump in too quickly with the “L-bomb”, people throw out the word “Love” a lot – and sometimes too quickly, involving feelings from the other party that might not be exactly what they expected. I’m not saying you can’t find love or fall in love quickly – it happens. Just be careful and be sure that you are using the term correctly. People often confuse the pre-feeling of love (lust) with actually being in love.
Do tell the other person exactly how you feel, but make sure it’s not just a fleeting feeling of the moment.
Use as many forms of communication as possible… use Kaneva chat, Instant Messaging, Phone, Twitter, Kmail, Email… whatever you are comfortable with in your relationship at the time.
2. Don’t sweat the small stuff
If you get mad about what you sig. other is doing or saying… think about it for a minute before you express your anger. Try to decide if this is even really worth discussing. So many fights are started about issues that in the grand scope of things are really insignificant. If your partner is doing/saying something that really upsets you then read #3.
3. Don’t get angry – discuss
It’s ok to tell someone that what they are doing is hurting you or upsetting you. Just try to detach as much emotion as possible (which I know is extremely hard to do). Try having a civilized discussion with them telling them how you feel and why you feel that way. Don’t run circles around the issue since this just generally causes tempers to flair even more.
4. Keep things interesting
Don’t do it by creating drama – Do it by creating surprise and intrigue. Send a text or a kmail telling them how much you appreciate them when they don’t expect it. Send out a blast with an inside joke that only they might get. Plan out a Kaneva date for them and keep them entertained.
5. Don’t be so fucking serious!
Joke with the one you call your own…. if you are serious all the time then you are just a stick in the mud… and no one is generally a fan of this. If I can’t have fun with you because you are always being serious, then I won’t have fun in our relationship… I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
6. Compliments are complimentary
Don’t fish for compliments and don’t wait to compliment until your significant other says something nice to you. Everyone likes to be told they look good or that they are the bees knees…. Compliment based on how you feel about the other person and don’t do it expecting something in return. Be genuine and thoughtful and they should return the favor.
What’s your advice for having a good and strong Kaneva relationship? Harleys, Char, Fur – I’m lookin at you guys here ;-)… let me know in the comments!
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The Kanevian Blog 
My Field Trip To The Kaneva Inc. Office
Posted on February 24, 2009. Filed under: Contests, Kaneva Inc., Relationships | Tags: Chris Klaus, Comment Contest, Corelli, Kaneva, Kaneva Business, Kaneva Contest, Kaneva Inc., Kaneva relationships, Kaneva Suggestions, SFNdust, ShamelessPlugs |
Last Thursday I took a field trip to the real life home of the Virtual World of Kaneva. A few days prior to this trip I sent a quick message to ShamelessPlugs – Kaneva’s head of marketing and public relations to talk to her about doing a guest post on Kaneva’s official blog. We talked about meeting up for lunch and she offered me an invitation to come and meet the team at the Kaneva office.
Unfortunately, I was running late and missed most of the team as they were already at lunch. However, I did get to meet many of the names that we know and (sometimes) love – Rotini, Corelli, and CKlaus were among those I was able to shake hands with and say hello to.
The visit started off by me getting lost in the large office complex that Kaneva is located in here in Atlanta. Once I found the right building I was surprised when the elevator door opened and I was greeted by a vast blue wall that hosted the Kaneva logo – a very clean (almost zen like) lobby. I was actually expecting the elevator doors to open and see doors that matched all of the others that I had seen in the other office building (the wrong one). However, I was surprised to learn that Kaneva had grown so much that it needed it’s own floor.
I got a quick tour from ShamelessPlugs showing off the offices and seeing the employees hard at work to develop the 3d world of Kaneva. After the tour concluded Shameless, Corelli, and I went to lunch and talked shop. On the way over I got a nice surprise as we were accompanied on our walk by Chris Klaus (Kaneva CEO and Co-Founder) and Animesh Saha (Vice President of Kaneva Engineering) and was asked several questions about my feelings on Kaneva and was told about some of the new exciting features to come – such as user developed flash games and new deeds that will soon be released.
At lunch we talked about my feelings on the changes made to 2d profiles, some of my pet-peeves with the game, some of the things I would like to see, and one of the most important things of all… the changes YOU would like to see. We talked about how Kaneva Ideas has made it easy for customer service to keep track of all of the changes the users would like to see and get the attention of these ideas from developers and Kaneva upper management.
Corelli and I discussed challenges faced by customer service professionals (I have spent many years working in the technology industry with several degrees of customer service). Overall I was happy to see how much Kaneva wants to listen to their users input to make changes (even though those changes sometimes seem to take forever).
Like a dummy, I forgot to bring a camera – but I am hoping to make more trips to their office and will try to take some more pictures (and show up on time so I can meet more of the staff). They were very nice to me and if nothing else made great company for lunch.
OK – Now the fun part of this post for you guys…. ANOTHER COMMENT CONTEST!!!!
While I was at the office I was given a Dance Party 3D card (the card they used to sell at Target) worth 1500 credits as a gift. I wanna give these credits to you!!!! This contest will be very similar to the last comment contest I had on the blog, but there are a few changes so read the rules below:
What your blast should look like:
Tips for helping me help you: When you leave a comment for the contest use your Kaneva Screen Name and an email address that is valid so I can contact you easier if you win. If you email me a screen sot of your blast, please include your Kaneva Screen Name in the email. If you have any further questions – feel free to PM, Kmail, or Email me.
So let’s get to it Kaneva – Come and win your 1500 credits!!!
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