by Willy Franzen on February 15, 2010
I’m sure that you’ve heard a lot in the news about how traditional media companies are having trouble taking their business models online. You may be under the impression that making money from web content is near impossible, but there’s a dirty little secret: it’s not. While companies like the New York Times stick to editorial integrity and chasing Pulitzers, there are companies out there that craft their content with the sole purpose of making money. A perfect example is Santa Monica, CA based Demand Media. They’ve secured more than $355 million in venture capital funding, grown annual revenue to more than $200 million annually, and reached a valuation north of $1 billion all by taking an ROI based approach to content development. How does that work? Demand Media has developed an algorithm that helps them find profitable topics. By using data from Google AdWords, they’re able to estimate the demand for a given piece of content (example: an article and video on how to tie your shoes) along with the revenue that the yet to be developed piece of content could be expected to make given a certain number of pageviews.
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by Willy Franzen on December 12, 2009
I have to say that democracy is a pretty darn good thing—even if it is the only government system that I’ve ever known. It certainly has its flaws, but I’m not sure that we’ve found a better way to ensure the freedom of a nation’s citizens yet. I don’t think that there is a lot of debate about whether spreading democracy is a good thing—most of the debate centers around what are appropriate ways to spread it. The National Endowment for Democracy is a Washington, DC based “private, non-profit, grant-making organization” that aims to “strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts.” They’re funded through “an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress through the Department of State;” however, they are not a government organization. They make grants to pro-Democracy groups across the world with the goal of helping democracy evolve naturally in a way that suits the nations culture and history.
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by Willy Franzen on December 7, 2009
Remember that time that you predicted the walk off home run during the baseball game or the fact that your friend would get back together with his girlfriend for the 7th time? Of course you do. It was proof of your psychic abilities. Remember the time that you made a similar prediction but were wrong? Of course not. When you only count your wins and not your losses, it’s easy to have a perfect record. Politicians take advantage of this all the time. The truth is that there aren’t a lot of people out there who are good at predicting things, whether it’s weather, the economy, sports, or any number of other things. Nouriel Roubini may be an exception. He could be insanely “lucky” with the fact that his descriptions and predictions of the current financial crisis were dead on, but you have to give him credit for the amount of detail included in his predictions, like when he said “the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession.” He’s very obviously a brilliant guy, and he’s also the founder of New York City based Roubini Global Economics, a company that provides “a uniquely tailored look at the logic of the global economy” for its clients.
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by Willy Franzen on November 10, 2009
Today’s post comes with a big announcement. I’m writing a book! A textbook on Career Development to be precise. The best part of that news is that the textbook is going to be available online for free because I’m working with an awesome publisher named Flat World Knowledge. They’re a Nyack, NY based startup that is aiming to revolutionize the textbook industry. I’m sure many have you have been forced into spending thousands of dollars over the course of your college career on textbooks (and how many of them remained in their shrink wrap?). Flat World Knowledge is building a business by providing you with better, more affordable options. Textbooks from Flat World can be read online for free. You can pay to print a chapter (or the whole book) at home. You can buy a softcover copy in black and white—or color. You can even get an audio book version. When my book comes out, you can read it however you want to read it—and you’ll never be forced to pay an arm and a leg for it.
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by Willy Franzen on November 9, 2009
The magazine business is dying, right? A lot of people seem to think so, and for the most part I agree with them; however, we seem to be seeing a new breed of magazines cropping up. They’re web integrated, extremely well designed, and laser focused on a specific audience. They still sell advertising, but they offer advertisers access to a well-defined audience that general interest magazines can’t compete with. The company behind one of these magazines (Seed Magazine) is Seed Media Group. They’re based out of New York City, and they are a media and technology company built on the premise that science is culture. They’ve been offering a new take on science since 2005, and it seems to be working with them.
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by Willy Franzen on October 20, 2009
Back when I was looking at colleges, I had to rely on traditional guidebooks to get relevant information like average SAT scores, whether freshmen are allowed to have cars, and what the food is like. Finding solid information online was pretty much out of the question, and none of the guidebooks that I looked at seemed to have a good read on what the campus was really like. Then along came College Prowler in 2002 (after I was already at Cornell, which turned out great). They’re a Pittsburgh, PA based company that aims “to be the most accurate, complete, and honest resource on colleges and universities across the United States.” Although those are their words, I think that a more accurate description of what they do (also in their words) is:
No university affiliations. No half-truths. No out-of-touch authors who haven’t been in school for decades. A class project turned company, College Prowler produces guidebooks that are written by actual college students and covers the things students really want to know.
College Prowler’s guides are what college guidebooks should have always been. Unfortunately, it took a long time for anyone to realize how big the need for “real” information was. Along with guidebooks, College Prowler has also built an awesome web resource to help high school students make informed college choices. The best part is that they’ve recently made all of their online content free.
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by Willy Franzen on August 4, 2009
Last week we took a look at jobs with the YES Network, which was fun for me because I’m a huge Yankees fan. On the day that post went up, I got a direct message on Twitter from Charlie O’Donnell that said, “No SNY?” Since my buddy Charlie is a big Mets fan and the CEO of a very cool career related startup called Path 101, I had to give SNY a look—even if Interleague play, a Subway World Series, and Mets fans’ jumping on the Red Sox bandwagon has soured me on the team from Flushing. Still, the Mets are a big deal, they have a beautiful brand new stadium, and they even have their own TV network. SNY is “a 24/7 regional sports and entertainment television network that features up to 125 regular season New York Mets telecasts.” It’s available “in New York, Connecticut, most of New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania,” and it’s also “the official year-round television home of the New York Jets.”
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by Willy Franzen on July 12, 2009
Last night I enjoyed one of my favorite Summer treats—a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Now, this wasn’t just any Blizzard. This was a Tagalong Blizzard. If you’re not familiar with Tagalongs, then you’re missing out. They are my favorite Girl Scout cookie. And that brings me to the Girl Scouts of the USA, which is a New York City non-profit organization that you probably know best for pushing cookies. Obviously, the cookies have little to do with what the Girl Scouts of the USA are all about, but the funds raised from selling the cookies enable the organization to continue to pursue its mission of being “the world’s preeminent organization dedicated solely to girls—all girls—where, in an accepting and nurturing environment, girls build character and skills for success in the real world.”
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by Willy Franzen on July 10, 2009
Who knew that Barnes & Noble owned a publisher? I certainly didn’t, but it makes a lot of sense. If you own the sales channel, you might as well start creating your own product too. That’s why Barnes & Noble acquired New York City’s Sterling Publishing a few years back. It’s allowed them to squeeze more profit out of their dominance in retail book sales. It seems to me that the scope of the types of books that Sterling publishes is expanding, but their main focuses are in puzzles, photograpy, crafts, gardening, and do-it-yourself. If you really want to take a close look at what types of books Sterling Publishing puts out, you can see a list of their imprints with descriptions on the Sterling Publishing About page.
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by Willy Franzen on June 6, 2009
Most scientific literature isn’t what I’d call an easy read, so I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you aren’t beating down the doors to get your hands on the newest research papers. Unless you are a big consumer of research literature, then you probably don’t care much about the openness of scientific and medical publishing, but you should. Open sharing of information can significantly promote innovation, and who can argue against wanting more advances in science and medicine? The Public Library of Science is all about open sharing, as they are a San Francisco, CA based “nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource.” They were founded in 2000, and since then they’ve been pushing for scientific and medical journals that “are immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use.”
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by Willy Franzen on May 27, 2009
Once you get your undergraduate degree, you have a choice. You can continue with higher education, or you can get a job. You can start making money, or you can keep spending money. If you’re having trouble deciding between those two options, don’t worry. There’s a way to get a job without leaving the world of higher ed. That’s because The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is based in Washington, D.C., is hiring. As they put it, they are “the No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators.” Apparently 80,000 academics and 350,000 people in total subscribe to The Chronicle of Higher Education, while their website gets 12 million monthly pageviews. They were even “ranked in the top 10 of most credible news sources by Erdos & Morgan.” Clearly, The Chronicle is the place to go for information about higher education.
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by Willy Franzen on May 23, 2009
Although the book publishing industry isn’t struggling like the newspaper publishing industry is, I still wonder what the future holds for publishing. Maybe Graywolf Press has it right—they’re a non-profit publishing house based in Saint Paul, MN. (I hear that the New York Times is now non profit too. badum-CHING!.) Now, I can’t find a mission statement for Graywolf Press, but I’m going to guess that it has something to do with advancing the art of the written word. Unlike Island Press, a non-profit publisher and “provider of the best new ideas in environmentalism” whose internships we featured on One Day, One Internship, Graywolf Press doesn’t seem to have a common theme that ties together the books that they publish. The most that I could find was that Graywolf Press focuses on “introducing and promoting the most exciting and creative writers of our times.”
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by Willy Franzen on May 11, 2009
Part of my daily routine is reading Greg Mankiw’s Economics Blog. When I saw his post announcing that the text book that he wrote will now be accompanied by an interactive learning tool, I was intrigued. I quickly read the Washington Post article that Dr. Mankiw linked to in the announcement to learn more about Aplia, the company that developed this educational tool. It turns out that Aplia, which is based in Belmont, CA, was developed by a Stanford economist named Paul Romer who was very successful in developing a theory to explain why different economies grow at different rates, but not so successful at engaging students. Since Dr. Romer is clearly a problem solver at heart, he developed a product (and company) called Applia that “offers high-quality, auto-graded assignments” and is “dedicated to improving learning by increasing student effort and engagement.”
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by Willy Franzen on April 24, 2009
When you don’t know how to do something (like find a job), what do you do? You probably head straight to Google and look for an online resource to tell you how to do what you want to do. It didn’t used to be that easy. You’d either have to ask someone, or buy a book (if you could figure out which book to buy), or figure it out yourself. Answering “how to” questions wasn’t easy, but now it is because of websites like New York City’s Howcast. Whether you head straight to Howcast or you find their answer to your question through Google, you’ll be delighted to find what they call “the best how to videos on the web.” Howcast covers nearly every topic you can imagine – from How to Adopt a Child to How to Psyche Out the Competition and – more relevant for our purposes – from How to Deal with a Smelly Coworker to How to Dress for a Job Interview. Each topic has both a video and a Wiki with written instructions, and the content is either user submitted or Howcast produced (it’s generally very high quality content). Oh yeah, and Howcast was named one of Time’s 50 Best Websites of 2008. That’s pretty cool.
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by Willy Franzen on February 3, 2009
These days a magazine’s website is absolutely essential to its success. Many are saying that there’s a day not too far off when most of the magazines that we know and love won’t be published in hard (soft?) copy and will only be found online. Things are changing, but some magazines seem better suited to weather the changes than others. New York Magazine is one of those that seems to be keeping up with where the industry is going. NYMag.com gets well over a million unique visitors per month, and that’s excluding the month that they published nude photos of Lindsey Lohan when their traffic increased by 2,000%. (No, we’re not going to link to them. You can find them yourself). New York Magazine “covers, analyzes, comments on and defines the news, culture, entertainment, lifestyle, fashion and personalities that drive New York City” on a weekly basis. Basically it’s everything New York.
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by Willy Franzen on December 10, 2008
Our HP Magic Giveaway Contest has ended, and we will announce the winner some time tomorrow. That’s not the end of the excitement though, we have a fun 4 question quiz for you all to take to evaluate how you’re approaching your job search. And of course, we have another exciting entry level job for you today. If you love social networking and social media, then you probably already follow Mashable. It’s the “world’s largest blog focused exclusively on social networks.” They get 5 million pageviews a month, and they’re constantly breaking news on “all that’s new on the web.” They’ve even had a lot to add to the online job search. They’ve published articles like 70+ Tools for Job Hunting 2.0 and 9 Sites for Successful Job Interviews. They have seem to have missed one important site on both of those lists, but we’ll forgive them.
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by Willy Franzen on November 18, 2008
If your college experience is anything like mine was, then your apartment probably has a giant mold blossom flowering into your living room from the ceiling below your bathroom. You’ve probably called the landlord half a dozen times, and he’s finally sent over his crew to take a look at the problem. They make the executive decision to hack off as much of the mold as they possibly can and then paint over it. Brilliant! You dream of one day owning your own place when you can hire a higher quality team to take care of such pressing issues. Finding a higher quality team isn’t as easy as it may seem. Whether you’re looking for a contractor, plumber, painter or electrician, it’s hard to know what you’re going to get – unless you use Angie’s List. I hadn’t heard of Angie or her List until a few months ago, but now her name seems to come up once a week. Angie’s List is a rapidly growing Indianapolis based company that allows consumers to post reviews of local service companies and healthcare providers online.
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by Willy Franzen on November 7, 2008
Considering that college is a time when you’re supposed to be working towards having a productive adulthood, a whole lot of self-destruction seems to be going on. It must be hard for the health nuts to fit in. If you prefer 8 glasses of water a day to keg stands, celery sticks to buffalo wings, and the Nintendo Wii to the Xbox, then you’ll be a lot more comfortable in an entry level job at Rodale than you will be at a frat party. Rodale is a “global media company with a heritage, mission, and authority dedicated to the health and wellness of the individual, community, and planet.” They publish magazines such as Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Organic Gardening, Prevention, and Runner’s World. They’re also the largest independent book publisher in the U.S.
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by Willy Franzen on October 30, 2008
If you’ve been paying attention to what we’ve preaching here every day, you know that we think that in-depth employer research is the key to finding and landing great jobs. You also may have noticed that we routinely feature tech startups, and when we do, we usually encourage you to check out what TechCrunch has to say about them. TechCrunch is the blog when it comes to news and information about Internet products and companies. They’ve been around since 2005, and they’ve rapidly built themselves to be one of the top 3 blogs in the world according to Technorati. They also happen to have an RSS subscriber base of close to 1.3 million. That is an insane number. Despite all their success, or maybe because of it, TechCrunch has continued to break news stories and deliver quality content. They’re not resting on their laurels.
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by Willy Franzen on October 24, 2008
Back when I was in high school (yes, part of that was in the 90s), I thought that I was really savvy when it came to using the Web to do better in my English classes. I found online, public-domain versions of many of the books that I was reading. The best part was that these were searchable, so if I needed to find a quote or a specific passage, all I had to do was remember a key word or two. It was fantastic. A lot has changed since then, and I don’t even know the extent of what academic resources are available online now. What I do know is that it’s not fair that today’s students have access to sites like Shmoop, when I couldn’t even dream of something like it. What is Shmoop? It’s hard for me to describe briefly, so maybe you should take the Tour de Shmoop.
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by Willy Franzen on September 13, 2008
We’ve written about Andrew Carnegie’s generosity before – we discussed entry level jobs with the Carnegie Corporation of New York back in May. It’s just one of many non-profit organizations that bears Carnegie’s name. Another is Carnegie Hall, which Andrew Carnegie built because of his interest in music. It’s an architecturally beautiful building in the heart of Manhattan with a storied history and amazing acoustics. It’s also host to approximately 250 performances every year. Carnegie Hall is the “ultimate destination for music lovers across the world,” according to Sanford Weill, the Hall’s Chairman of the Board, and it’s hard to argue with him. Carnegie Hall is all about music at its best, and if you believe strongly in the importance of music, you should consider working at Carnegie Hall.
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by Willy Franzen on July 27, 2008
A child’s first sign of teenage (pre-teenage?) rebellion often begins at the radio dial. The parent’s up-to-this-point unchallenged decision of what to listen to while in the car is called into question, and all hell breaks loose. If there are multiple kids in the family (or even just in the car), the negotiation can quickly becom more heated than a multi-lateral peace process in a war-torn nation. The parent will fight hard to maintain his or her right to National Public Radio, but the kid will persist in his or her challenge to hear something that feeds a suddenly “eclectic” taste in music. Often the parents cede this battle in hopes of winning in the future (bad idea!), which results in the parent’s driving the kids around the mini-van listening to rap music that would be a lot more offensive if the parent knew what some of the words meant. Eventually the rebellious tykes will grow up and realize that they too want to be more cultured, and they slowly, but surely come around to listening to NPR. Or maybe some kids just never speak up. They like NPR from the start. Maybe those are the ones who end up taking entry-level jobs at NPR.
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by Willy Franzen on July 10, 2008
Since we’ve hit you with more technical jobs over the past few days, we figure that we owe it to those of you who aren’t programmers to cover some more traditional jobs. And what could be more traditional than working for a major publishing house in New York City? If that sounds like something that intrigues you, then you should take a look at the Penguin Group and their entry-level jobs. They don’t appear to have a distinct college hiring program like Random House’s Associates Program, but they do have plenty of jobs that require little or no previous work experience.
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by Willy Franzen on May 29, 2008
Most people like shoes. They protect your feet, offer support, and keep you warm. Some people love shoes – love them to the point that their loved ones (not the shoes) are likely worried about them. Oddly enough, the people who deeply love shoes often seem most interested in shoes that barely protect their feet, offer little support, and provide little or no warmth. We don’t really get that. Zappos.com puts these people to shame. As a company they have a shoe obsession that is far worse than that of the most Sex and the City addicted, Daily Candy reading, New York City fashionista. Why do we say that? Because Zappos.com is obsessed with everything shoes, not just the shoes of some designer whose name you’re supposed to know.
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