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Posted by: trunthepaige Original: 10/31/2009 8:43 AM Views: 324 Comments: 46 eProps: 54 Read Comments Post a Comment Back to Your Xanga Site

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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Today I had the regional sales manager say nice things about me. I was a bit concerned, my sales have dropped off a good 15% from last year. He told me to keep doing what I was doing, whatever that was. Our companies sales are off close to 50% nationally, which is far better than most of the industry. In the Seattle area, sales of the type of products we sell are down well over 50%. In other words my sales are down, but I am really gaining a good deal of market share. My sales are situated to really explode when the building industry kicks back up.

But if the market was rising and I had a 5% every quarter long term drop in sales. Well I would likely lose my job. And that is far better than Xanga is doing.

I have been looking around and Xanga has a very good product here. But they are losing about 10% of their traffic every quarter. And they are doing this in a growing market. All the other blogging sites are growing or holding their own.

Xanga, whoever it is who is responsible for selling your service. They need to lose their job. And if it is an owner who has his head up his ass. He needs to sell out before he bankrupts the company.

Or maybe bring back whoever it was who promoted Xanga in the first place.

Posted 10/31/2009 8:43 AM - 324 Views - 54 eProps - 46 comments

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Congrats on gaining market share. Of course when things do pick back up you'll be very busy.

Posted 10/30/2009 4:58 PM by randomneuralfirings

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@randomneuralfirings -

It's amazing how busy I am not making as many sales as I used to

Posted 10/30/2009 5:00 PM by trunthepaige

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Visit mathematicalbagpiper's Xanga Site!

Hopefully your business is thriving, and you're right about Xanga. I'd hate to see it go bankrupt, when it will always be #1 in this blogger's heart.

Posted 10/30/2009 5:08 PM by

mathematicalbagpiper

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I am in a tough market too. But my numbers just went up. haha. Marketing Nazi style for the win. When the market is tough, you have to work harder. You have to find new ways to market your product. When I think of the other locations that are doing poorly in my industry, I see them knocking off 30 minutes early. But the next time I talk to them, I hear something like "The market is so tough out there." They came in and asked me what I was doing at my work to increase numbers. So I wrote out a memo on how to increase business. They sent it out to all 70 locations. You would be surprised at how many of the people just plain didn't do it. Why? The internet marketing plan took 1 hour a day. It is plain and simple. Most people are lazy. They had to learn something new and they were too lazy to follow through.

With xanga, it isn't laziness. Clearly whoever helped xanga grow, is no longer with them. I feel bad for them because when you talk to them, it is obvious they don't know how to stop xanga from declining. They are frustrated and they feel hopeless. I talked to a few insiders after they left xanga and the best I can tell is that the "higher ups" are not very open to suggestions.

And by the way, if the people in the organization consider you the "top three" and you only have 7 team members, you have elevated yourself to a status that doesn't allow for free thought.

Posted 10/30/2009 5:14 PM by

TheTheologiansCafe

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The corporation I work at has lower sales too =[

Posted 10/30/2009 5:17 PM by crazy2love

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At least y'alls got corperations to still work for!

Posted 10/30/2009 5:31 PM by wenty3208 - reply

My understanding is that the person who helped Xanga grow, who basically made Xanga, was Biz Stone who now created Twitter. Maybe they can get him to help out.

Posted 10/30/2009 5:50 PM by scrambledmegsntoast - reply

@mathematicalbagpiper -

I would not care if Xanga was just another blogging site. But they they really do have a great thing here. A very good product. And from my point of view a sucky prepositional campaign. I have real reason to believe they do not promote Xanga at all. I know for a fact that Xanga only came about because of a fairly clever and very aggressive proportional effort in its beginnings. From wikipedia

# December 18, 2000 - December 19, 2000, Xanga goes hugely public as the first wave of GeoCities members respond to a spam email recruitment from Bianca Broussard, a fictional PR personality of Xanga.

I think this was what got them started and the regaining of the fall.

# October 30, 2001, Genius, aka Biz Stone, the former Creative Director (and alleged creator of Bianca) leaves Xanga. He eventually goes on to become part of the Blogger team at Google, and then to work at a new internet startup, Odeo.com

Posted 10/30/2009 5:53 PM by trunthepaige

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@scrambledmegsntoast -

I was just looking into the same stuff. He sounds like he was an aggressive promoter. And that is what xanga needs. A promoter because they really do have a good product

Posted 10/30/2009 5:55 PM by trunthepaige

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i volunteer to babysit for Chris Choi - i miss you man...

Posted 10/30/2009 6:10 PM by pamilvr

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@trunthepaige -

I am not sure it was just him. I think it was a few strong people. I am not sure that some of the "top three" were aware of how important marketing was to the success of a growing organization.

Xanga is really a small organization. It has 7 people. That is pretty small. I think that the leadership at the very top is just very limited.

Posted 10/30/2009 6:19 PM by

TheTheologiansCafe

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@TheTheologiansCafe -

We have more people than that in just our Seattle warehouse. Most of the staff here is involved in marketing. It matters not if you have a good product, if no one knows about it

Posted 10/30/2009 6:38 PM by trunthepaige

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I'm not surprised that you're good at your job, congrats! And of course I also think you are right about Xanga.

Posted 10/30/2009 6:46 PM by Such_Were_You

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I am confused. I'm sure there are a lot of fresh thinkers out there who would love to take this site on as a project and help get things moving again. Why aren't those people getting employed, and why aren't the people currently working either A) Scared or B) Working harder?

Posted 10/30/2009 6:51 PM by suggestivetongue

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When you know you are good and you are aware of your abilities than you are never job scared.People also recognize the same thing. You realize that markets fluctuate, sometimes you have to realize when it is time to change markets though.

I am not sure xanga is a team, but rather a group of individualists. I said it b4, and so I will agree with you now, some people should be fired for failure to produce..it is nothing personal..they just suck in the results department.

Posted 10/30/2009 6:58 PM by ProvokingThought

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@scrambledmegsntoast -

That makes a ton of sense. He'd probably be rather expensive to get now though.

Posted 10/30/2009 8:41 PM by striemmy

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Visit MoistLipsChappedHearts's Xanga Site!

I think it's a bit moronic for you to tell someone else how to do their job and/or whether or not they should be fired. That's somebody's livelihood that you know nothing about. Especially when you compare it to yours which has nothing to with Xanga. Let alone to have the gaul and arrogance to preach bullshit like you know the intricacies of Xanga and its promotion just because you got a "good job" from your supervisor.

It's just plain rude, and it makes you look like an idiot.

Posted 10/30/2009 8:42 PM by MoistLipsChappedHearts - reply

I think xanga has a great niche that no one else really does. Or does well. But it does seem like the marketing dept. has taken a really long vacation.
When I see an article I'd like to reference and hit the 'Share' button and there are 150 bookmarking/networking sites most of which I'd never heard of, and NONE of them are xanga, you have to wonder what they're doing over there.

Posted 10/30/2009 8:42 PM by followfreedom

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@MoistLipsChappedHearts -

No some things are more than obvious. Xanga is dying and it is due to who is running it. The rest of their industry is booming it only xanga that is dying. And yes I am an expert on sales and promotion, obviously no one at xanga is. Yes I do know more than they do about sales, I am successful and they are not. Their hits pre day are dropping like a rock and they do nothing except watch it fail. I could not care less if someone thinks that stating the obvious is rude

Posted 10/30/2009 9:34 PM by trunthepaige

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@followfreedom -

Exactly I have seen the same thing. Those other sites make damn certain they are on that list. Xanga does not

Posted 10/30/2009 9:35 PM by trunthepaige

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free viewing got me

Posted 10/30/2009 11:46 PM by apyus

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I'd like to see Xanga get big again. People def have time to blog right now. They need to get Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser M.D.) to promote them. He was the first blogger.

Posted 10/31/2009 1:00 AM by TheGreatBout

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Obama has waged war on Xanga. Calling Xanga "a wing of the Republican Party," the Obama administration on Sunday escalated its war of words against the blog site, even as observers questioned the wisdom of the White House war against Xanga. There's the real reason the numbers here are declining.

Your sales might be down now and you've been working more but at least your hard work is paying off. Hopefully things will pick up soon. I have a feeling you're going to be really busy very soon.

Posted 10/31/2009 2:53 AM by dikdoktor - reply

@MoistLipsChappedHearts - Of course someone's job is at stake. I mentioned this in a post a little over a year ago. The Xanga Team had 18-20 members then. I said that the Xanga Team as we knew it would break up if xanga continued down the same path. The Xanga Team is down to 7 people now according to someone who just left xanga.

Some of us liked the people that were on the Xanga Team and were sad to see them go. I noticed you were concerned about their jobs. I just want you to clarify. Are you concerned about the jobs of the 7 that are left. Or are you concerned about the 11-13 that were let go?

Paige had communications with one of the 11-13 that was let go. Some of us have had discussions with some of the Xanga Team members as they have left. Is it ok to care about their jobs too?

Paige is not the one who indentified Xanga's problem of shrinking. Mashable which a respected source in the Internet community identified xanga as one of the fastest declining sites on the internet. It wasn't Paige. It was Mashable. Mashable cited compete.com which tracks the traffic of sites. Paige is making reference to those numbers.

Paige is not a moron for being sad at people losing their jobs that she may have liked. She is not a moron for stating that xanga is declining at a rate that is hard to imagine. She doesn't have to be an expert in social networks. She can see what industry insiders are reporting based on their actual data of traffic numbers.

Posted 10/31/2009 8:37 AM by

TheTheologiansCafe

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@TheTheologiansCafe -

Thank you, you said it far better than I did. But some really think it is us pitiful bloggers, our words that are responsible for Xanga not even being on the pull down share lists on other web sites. On one hand individual bloggers are not important enough to support. But on the other hand a few negitive words from them are tearing this place apart. Whatever I am just pissing into the wind

Posted 10/31/2009 8:58 AM by trunthepaige

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