• You start going after direct ad deals. You get two in the first week. Wow! Let’s see *math in head*, by February I should easily be sailing around the Bahamas in my new yacht.
• Two days later one of the deals dies because the advertiser doesn’t like the test data. What if all our deals fall through? Should I put together a resume? Do I know anyone at Wal-mart that can get me a job?

It’s never as good as it seems and it’s never as bad as it seems. True, but hard to remember.

The beauty of poker, and the reason it’s beatable while other casino games are not, is that you’re playing against other players instead of against the house. Every time a player at your table makes a mistake in a hand, the other players in the hand who play more optimally make money.  It stands to reason then that if you want to make the most money possible, you should not only play well, but you should play at a table filled with the worst possible players (affectionately known as “donks”).

That’s a good idea in theory, but in reality it’s easy to get stuck at a bad table. It takes some time to settle in and figure out the table dynamics, and as the bad players go bust and good players take their spots, it’s really convenient to just stick around so you don’t have to rack up your chips and start the process over again at another table. It’s the easy thing to do, but it’s also one of the worst things you can do if you’re serious about making money.

The same thing happens in life all the time. It’s incredibly easy to get stuck in situations that aren’t optimal for us out of laziness or fear or stubbornness. The secret is remembering we can always change tables, as Tony discovered:

I’d realized that whether in poker, in business, or in life, it was easy to get caught up and engrossed in what I was currently doing, and that made it easy to forget that I always had the option to change tables. Psychologically, it’s hard because of all the inertia to overcome. Without conscious and deliberate efforts, inertia always wins.

Spot on. Be sure to check out Tony’s book when you have a chance. It’s an easy read and packed full of practical wisdom.

That cute app typifies exactly what’s going on with print. Everyone is asking if the iPad can save print, but that’s not even a valid question–once content is on the iPad, “print” ceases to exist. It doesn’t matter how much the experience of reading the New York Times on the iPad is like unto reading a hard copy, it’s still digital content. Maybe this is just semantics. Maybe by saving “print” people don’t actually mean saving the traditional form of newspapers and magazines, but of saving the publishing companies themselves.

If that’s the case, then the real question is whether or not the iPad and other digital devices can save the big publishers. The answer to that question is yes, of course, in the same way it can “save” and sustain the new publishing companies. Digital is the new medium for content consumption, and the big publishers are not-so-subtly conceding this by hailing the iPad. It’s ironic that the device they’re pinning their hopes on actually just further blurs the lines between their content and all the other content residing on the web.

Unfortunately the blurring of that distinction is something they can’t avoid. Digital content is the future, and the rules are different on the web. The vast majority of consumers are content with getting their news from sources that aren’t the newspapers or magazines–sources like any number of hugely popular and well-written blogs on the Internet. These new publishers developed low overhead models of doing business that actually work on the web, and in order to survive, traditional publishers will have to make similar changes.

All publishers need to start thinking of themselves as digital content companies. They need to start shuffling things within their organizations to make them viable in the digital economy. They need to take a good look at the business models of new content companies that are thriving to see how they should adapt. Salaries are going to have to be slashed and budgets are going to have to be re-evaluated. It won’t be pretty, and it may very well have a net-negative affect on the quality of journalism available, but such are the demands of the market.

To make matters worse, I got a Kindle for Christmas. That’s like putting a giant vodka vending machine in an alcoholic’s bedroom and taking away their anti-depressants. I can literally buy a book with a click of a button and have it in front of me within a couple of minutes. The results of my post-Christmas binge are starting to pile up (both in ebooks and real books), so I figured I’d challenge myself to finish all of them before I bought another book. After I finish a book from list the I’ll write up a short review and add some of my own thoughts, the check it off the list. Here she is:

• The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
• Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore
• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
• Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
• Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur by Dermot Berkery
• Investment Banking: Valuation, Leveraged Buyouts and Mergers & Acquisitions by Joshua Rosenbaum
• The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
• Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
• Spin Selling by Neil Rackham
• Solution Selling by Michael T. Bosworth
• Secrets of Question Based Selling by Thomas A. Freese

It’s a not-so-gentle reminder that revenue models are more important than ever. Creating a start-up built soley around high traffic volume can, at the very least, lead to wasted time. Incorporating a revenue model upfront and actually understanding how you’re going to make money is far more important than it use to be. Why? Because generic forms of advertising are not nearly as effective as they once were. Banners are dead, and Adsense is the new Banner ad.

Develop a focused, engaging ad model that adds real value to the visitors experience. As the average Internet user gets savvier, anything less will lead to lost revenue.