Seth Godin (though he does not use the phrase) understands the Trial and Error Economy. He posts about figuring out where on-line pay-per-click advertising should appear. This is like the most obvious example conceivable; how sad that Seth has to explain the obvious. In a nutshell, don’t labor to ensure that your ads and clicks show up on the ESPN website rather than on Joe Schmo’s sports blog. Instead, track the performance of your click-throughs from both sites. Compare. Seth writes,
"The hard work of running contextual ads is testing. Run an ad, test the landing page, see what works. If it works, do it more. If it doesn’t work, do it less."
That’s more valuable than hiring a guru to tell you where your ads should appear. Good work, Seth.